CHAPTER 6
Now Picture Tomorrow's World!
WE HAVE COVERED SOMETHING of the organization of the government that will rule tomorrow's world. Now picture the changed conditions! Look now at the solved problems! See, now, a glimpse into a world of no illiteracy, no poverty, no famine and starvation, into a world where crime decreases rapidly, people learn honesty, chastity, human kindness, and happiness -- a world of peace, prosperity, abundant well-being.
The Population Explosion Solved
God predicts vast reforms everywhere in the wonderful utopian era He says will soon break out on this earth. Can you imagine it? A world of great strides in solving the most crucial problems facing mankind. Today -- the greatest and most awesome problem of all is the population explosion. Growing populations in all nations are rapidly outstripping the ability of the world to sustain them. And the areas of the greatest rise in population are the underdeveloped parts of the world -- the "have-not" nations of poverty, illiteracy, disease and superstition. Remember, not more than 10 percent of the earth's surface is tillable, or arable, land. And now the latest U.N. figures indicate the world will double in population in just 34 short years. The daily, ominous pressure of people is one of the truly incomprehensible problems today. But God has the solution, and how simple it is. Simply make most of the earth cultivatable. Reduce the bare, snow-swept and craggy mountains, raise up some of the deep, arid desert valleys, change the world weather patterns. Make all the deserts green and fertile. Open up huge slices of the earth, like the Kalahari Desert, the Lake Chad basin and the Sahara in Africa, the Gobi Desert in Asia, and the great American deserts. Make green and verdant the vast wastes of Mongolia, Siberia, Saudi Arabia and many of the Western states in the U.S. Thaw out the deep ice packs and snowdrifts, the permafrost and tundra from the vast, almost limitless expanses of Antarctica, North America, Greenland, Northern Europe and Siberia. Make level the awesome Pamir Knot, the huge giants of the Himalayas, the Atlas, Taurus, Pyrenees, Rockies, Sierras and Hindu Kush -- level the immense sweep of the Andes, and all the other forbidding, towering, virtually uninhabitable mountains of earth. Then, provide good, gentle rainfall, in right balance, just at the right season. And what happens? Multiple millions of acres of unbelievably fertile, productive, wonderful farmland suddenly become available -- just waiting to be discovered, and pioneered. Impossible? In the hands of man -- certainly. But look what God promises. Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the [Eternal], and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. "Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them: and thou shalt rejoice in the [Eternal], and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel. "When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the [Eternal] will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers in high places, and fountains [artesian wells] in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. "I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah [acacia] tree, and the myrtle and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree [cypress] together: That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the [Eternal] hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it." (Isaiah 41:14-20).
Pure Water-Fertile Deserts
Can you imagine such a fabulous scene? Deserts becoming green, fertile, garden lands of trees, shrubs, bubbling springs and brooks; mountains brought low, and made inhabitable. Notice how God describes these conditions in many parts of the Bible. "Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons [jackals], where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes" (Isaiah 35:6-7). Read the whole 35th chapter of Isaiah. God says, "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing ..." (verses 1-2). Some years ago, in a dry, dusty canyon deep in the profusion of hills between Bakersfield and Los Angeles, California, a minor earthquake struck. The proprietors of a small resort, now almost totally ignored, and nearly always deserted because of the parched conditions of the area, were considering closing up and moving elsewhere. Suddenly, a groaning, jolting earthquake rippled through the arid hills. Not long after the earth rocked and groaned beneath their feet, they heard a faint gurgling sound. They ran to the dry, dusty creek bed that coursed through their property -- and were utterly amazed to see water flowing swiftly along. As the creek gradually cleared up, they found the water to be crystal clear and pure -- sweet and refreshing to drink.
-------------------- PHOTO CAPTION: CAN YOU IMAGINE deserts becoming green, garden lands of trees? Imagine the joy of the impoverished desert dweller when he sees fulfilled the prophecy: "... in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water ..." (Isaiah 35:6-7). --------------------
Needless to say, their business picked up again. Somehow, the earthquake had broken open an underground water source, sending it cascading through their property. Think about the vast wastes of this earth. Does it sound incredible, unbelievable that God could make them blossom like a rose? Why should it? The mountains were formed. Great forces caused gigantic upheavals, or huge cracks and slippages in the crust of the earth. Massive blocks of granite lunged up into the sky -- the earth rocking and reeling in the throes of the greatest earthquakes in its history. Mountains were made -- they didn't just happen. The God of all power, who formed the hills and mountains (Amos 4:13; Psalm 90:2), will reform them -- will re-shape the surface of this earth. Read of the huge earthquakes yet to come which will directly accomplish much of the rehabilitation of the land surfaces. (See Revelation 16:18; Zechariah 14:4.) God says, "The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt ..." (Nahum 1:5).
Land Beneath Sea Reclaimed
Man recognizes much of the wealth of the world lies beneath the seas. Oil, gold, silver, and dozens of minerals -- these all remain unobtainable today, lying untapped deep under the vast oceans. Also, seawater contains a great deal of gold and most of the world's gold supplies are under the oceans. Many areas of the earth are ravaged by tidal action -- by the ceaseless pounding of the surf that gradually wears away additional land. The lowlands of Europe, Holland in particular, consist to quite an extent of land reclaimed from the sea. Think of the multiple millions of additional acres available to mankind if some of the world's oceans were reduced in size. And God says they shall be! Notice it, "And the [Eternal] shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dryshod" (Isaiah 11:15). Sounds incredible -- but it's true! Today, the United States realizes water shortages are becoming critical. Wasted water through the huge consumption of industry, through pollution, and through the prodigious amounts used by each person each day, mean the ominous approach of that day when water is scarce. As a result, additional huge dams are planned -- fantastically expensive seawater conversion plants being constructed. So far, however, the cost of desalinization is completely prohibitive. But God describes a wonderful era of discovery and invention in the world tomorrow -- major portions of the earth reclaimed and put to productive use. The problems of the population explosion are real and manifold. Not only does mass starvation face millions within the foreseeable future, but government leaders recognize there is an even more immediate concern. Food wars. Witness what happened in India. Government troops once battled 100,000 people who were rioting because of the slaughter of "sacred" cows in their country -- done, in part, in an attempt to stave off starvation for those same rioters. You see, there are more cattle in India than in the U.S. Yet, because of religious beliefs, the cattle are not eaten. They wander about the fields, and into the villages and towns, eating prodigious amounts of food, some of which would be edible for humans. The cattle are not used for any constructive purpose. In addition to this, some years ago terrible floods and long- term drought in many areas produced grain shortages more severe than usual. (Fully half of India's crops traditionally have been lost as well through lack of adequate transportation and storage facilities, to rodent and insect damage and by being siphoned off to the black market.) As a result, India asked the United States for help. The largest peacetime armada in all man's history was assembled -- over six hundred ships -- and began plying the oceans between U.S. ports and India. Quickly, the vast wheat reserves of the United States were depleted. But the famine in India was only barely staved off for one season. And any sudden disasters in American wheat areas could mean threatening famine in the United States -- because she has insufficient reserves.
-------------------- PHOTO CAPTION: A HYDROELECTRIC PLANT on St. James Bay, Canada, captures natural energies for human use, while in India solar energy dries mud bricks made by hand. Tomorrow's world will have to be built from the ground up because humans in today's world did not learn the way to peace. Man will finally be forced to learn how to live with his neighbor in mutual harmony and how to share the natural resources through the way of giving, instead of the way of greed and getting. --------------------
But what about the following years? Government leaders fear huge food wars may be fought -- each nation struggling mightily to possess the dwindling means of survival -- food and water.
Sickness and Disease Feared
A horrifying "solution" to the population explosion may right now be in the making, unless God averts it. With growing malnutrition and starvation comes the macabre threat of disease epidemics of massive, worldwide proportions. Already, officials warn of the threat of vast epidemics of cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis, flu, or even the dread "black death" (bubonic plague) that took the lives of millions in Europe during the 15th through the 17th centuries, and in the huge plague that ravaged England in 1664 and 1665. But God says disease and sickness will finally be conquered. That is the express aim of all the vast medical and pharmaceutical companies today -- the final conquering of the ills, sicknesses and diseases of mankind. Medical science seeks to find cures for sickness -- cures for flu, and the common cold -- cures for cancer, sclerosis, heart disease, arthritis, deafness and blindness, muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, and all the other pain-ridden debilities of man. Let's understand the real meaning of this word "cure." Do you realize that cures for diseases already contracted merely mean rendering God's laws ineffectual? It means ignoring the cause -- allowing people to perpetrate the cause -- and then treating only the effect. It means continuing to break nature's laws which God has made to operate in the human body, and then trying to prevent nature's laws from exacting their penalties. But God shows that, when His Kingdom rules, He will teach people to obey nature's laws -- stop causing sickness and disease. In other words, stop sinning -- because sin is defined as transgressing God's laws (I John 3:4). God reveals a great result of the increased productivity of the land, and the abundance of right and good foods -- together with right knowledge and education in health laws -- will be good health for all. The dream of conscientious doctors may be to put themselves out of a job, by finding cures for every sickness and disease. But let's face it! To ignore the cause and merely treat the effect -- to tacitly encourage people to continue causing sickness and disease by neglecting to educate them against it -- could only perpetuate the medical profession. Can we have utopia with people causing themselves sickness and disease, secure in the delusion that medical "science" can remove the penalty? In God's new world tomorrow, there will, indeed, probably be a place for doctors. But it will be teaching people to keep well, by avoiding the causes of disease. That will require an entirely new type of medical education -- only we shall then drop the term "medical." A very good doctor friend once said to me: "We physicians have been kept so busy treating sicknesses and diseases, that we haven't had much time to do extensive study and research into the causes of these troubles." In God's new world, they will be given ample time for that. In the world tomorrow there actually will be utopia. There will be universal good health. How can such utopian dreams come true? It's simple. Remove the cause of disease. But how is that going to be done? Two ways: First, by right education. Cause people to know that God did not design the human physical body so that it must be getting sick all the time, catching continual diseases. Sickness and disease occur only when nature's laws are broken. It is not natural to be diseased -- it is unnatural. Educate people in the laws of good health. In proper diet. God designed certain foods for good health. Some things that grow are not designed for food. Some are poison. Educate people in sanitation, hygiene, required amounts of sleep, pure water, fresh air, sunshine, exercise. And secondly, when people in spite of this education, do get sick or catch a disease, it can be healed -- God's way. Actually, Christ's healing is forgiveness of sin. It works on a principle exactly opposite to the supposed cures of medical "science."
-------------------- PHOTO CAPTION: TODAY'S WORLD is afflicted with innumerable degenerative diseases. Above, the first heart transplant on a child. The operation was done in Paris. Education today includes little to help solve the causes of today's diseases. With all the God-given food available to keep us in good health, why is it so few know how to cook properly? --------------------
The medical equation is this: One poison in your body, plus one poison in the form of medicine, equals no poisons. One plus one equals nothing? That isn't the way they teach in second grade arithmetic. God's equation is different. God supernaturally removes the poison in the body. One minus one equals nothing. The second-grader could figure that one out. But does God, then prevent His laws of nature from working -- from exacting their penalty? Oh, no -- not at all. Upon repentance, and faith, God forgives the sin, and removes the penalty. How? Why? Because Jesus Himself "took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses" (Matthew 8:16-17). And Peter explains that by His "stripes" [we are] "healed" (I Peter 2:24). Before Jesus was put to death (paying the death penalty for spiritual sin in our stead -- Romans 6:23), He submitted to being beaten with stripes, thus paying in our stead the penalty of physical sin. God does not prevent His laws from working. Christ paid the penalty for us. In God's way, the penalty was paid -- not nullified. Christ said, when He observed the faith of some friends of a man with palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee (Mark 2:5). Christ's healing is forgiveness of sin. But when the people didn't understand such a strange statement, Christ said, "Why reason ye these things in your hearts? Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins ..." (Mark 2:8-10). And when Jesus Christ becomes the great ruler of this earth, He will use that great power. In vision, John saw the angels praising Christ at His coming to rule this earth. They said, "We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned" (Revelation 11:17). The combined force of right education about true health, and healing of all sickness, when it is repented of, will mean perfect, utopian health. Notice how God describes it. "But there the glorious [Eternal] will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams; wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. For the [Eternal] is our judge, the [Eternal] is our lawgiver, the [Eternal] is our king; he will save us. "And the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick: the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquity" (Isaiah 33:21-22, 24). Listen to this wonderful promise: "Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing ..." (Isaiah 35:3-6). God describes the rewards for obedience to His laws of mercy and love. Notice Isaiah 58:8: "Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily ..."
Happiness in Health
In describing the conditions of good health and plenty to be ushered in upon the earth, God says, "For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds ..." (Jeremiah 30:17). "Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of the [Eternal], for wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock and the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all. "Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, both young men and old together: for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow. And I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness, saith the [Eternal]" (Jeremiah 31:12-14).
-------------------- PHOTO CAPTION: FEW NATIONS have ever shared in the blessings of a land "flowing with milk and honey." But in the world tomorrow, the whole earth will enjoy fantastic abundance. --------------------
And why not have good health? Why should we be so willing to believe such a perfect state of health and joy is impossible? There are blessings for observing the laws of health -- absolute guarantees good health will result -- and that sickness and disease will become a thing of the past. Notice what God promised His people, "... if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the [Eternal] thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day ... all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the [Eternal] thy God. "Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy store" (Deuteronomy 28:1-5). But we are not receiving those wonderful blessings today. Instead, we are under a curse! Our cities are festering sores, filled with the clangor and confusion of jangled traffic, riots, racial hatred, crime, pornography, air pollution, and an unhappy, wretched populace that seeks fast money so it can escape the obnoxious environment of the big asphalt and concrete "jungles" of our time! Our fields are cursed; cursed with upset weather, drought, flood, insect damage and disease -- cursed with chemicals and man- made blight. One out of fourteen of the babies born in the United States are illegitimate, and in Chicago, Cleveland and Houston, it's one out of ten -- and of the total babies born each year, over six percent are blighted at birth with a serious defect; cursed with blindness, dumbness, deafness, malformed limbs, or terrible diseases even from the womb. Some babies are born each year with cancer! Our basket and our store is cursed -- depleted national reserves -- gone overseas to feed starving peoples (to nations which rarely, if ever, back U.S. policies) in an admittedly temporary effort -- only delaying the starvation facing millions. Whether we like to admit it or not -- our peoples are under a curse today. But soon, the great God will force us to take the blessings. He will impose His warm and merciful rule on rebellious, stiff- necked mankind, and bring us compulsory joy. He will insist on happiness for us; demand plenty of goodness in our lives; command us to be healthy, and filled with a sense of well-being and contentment. And so the frightening, manifold problems of the population explosion, bad weather, sickness and disease, and all problems relating to the population rise -- such as over-crowding, pollution, rising crime, and the psychological pressures from big-city living -- all these will be solved -- and in our time.
What about Distribution of Populations?
Will there be room for the multiple billions of humans on earth? Of course. Remember, only 15 percent of the earth's surface is habitable today -- and not more than 10 percent is cultivatable. But when God makes all the earth inhabitable, even changing the whole weather patterns of earth, the ocean currents, and flow of arctic air, the jet streams, the pattern of mountain ranges and placement of continents, all earth will be peopled. God shows individual races returning to their own lands, repopulating them. "He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit" (Isaiah 27:6). God says the wastes will be rebuilt. "For behold, I am for you, and I will turn unto you and ye shall be tilled and sown: and I will multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel, even all of it: and the cities shall be inhabited, and the wastes shall be builded: And I will multiply upon you man and beast; and they shall increase and bring fruit: and I will settle you after your old estates ..." (Ezekiel 36:9-11). Read the whole chapter of Ezekiel 36. God says, "... I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the wastes shall be builded .... This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are inhabited" (verses 33, 35). And what about all other nations? Notice: "In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt [Egypt still exists as a nation] to Assyria [many of whose people migrated centuries ago to Europe -- modern Germany], and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land: whom the [Eternal] of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance" (Isaiah 19:23-25). What a utopian prediction that is! Egypt and Germany are pictured in loving, respectful, serving cooperation with the very peoples they contended with in the past. That's real progress! So your Bible reveals nations still existing -- and in specific places. It reveals repopulation of waste places rendered temporarily useless by the ravages of war and plagues.