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 TOMORROW'S cities are going to surpass your wildest imagination! They will be the most exciting, the most spectacular, the most modern up-to-date cities the world has ever known. They will be like sparkling jewels on the landscape - filled with radiant beauty, with peace and prosperity, with happy, healthy people. Mankind will never have seen anything like it!
Sound too good to be true? Sound impossible? It isn’t.
Such cities are coming - and that before the end of this century!
But where will they be built? And WHO will build them—and how?
Blueprints Already Prepared
Basic plans for these fabulous cities have already been drawn up. All the necessary resources lo see this entire plan through to successful completion are available.
The plan is already so far along that a select group is right now being given top-flight training to qualify for future responsibilities as administrators of these cities.
Everything is being carefully worked out. Nothing is being left to chance. The major problems of today's cities will be completely solved in advance before construction on tomorrow's cities ever begins.
Today's cities, by contrast, are a mess. And the bigger the city, chances are, the bigger that mess is.
Problems That Need a Solution
Today, city air is laden with every kind of foul pollutant imaginable. Noxious soot, dust and chemical debris from industry. Toxic monoxide fumes and lead from hundreds of thousands of motor vehicles. Stale, filthy smoke from the millions of cigarettes smoked daily. In some big-city areas multiple tons-per-square-mile of such refuse and waste float down every single month.
City water has frequently been reused oftener than anyone cares to remember. The water being used in one city today has often been flushed down a commode and into the sewer in another city just a few days before.
The food eaten by city dwellers—probably grown on depleted soil to begin with—has been waxed, polished, colored, pasteurized, homogenized, taken apart, preserved and chemically "enriched" until it contains pathetically little nourishment.
The noise level is right on the brink of what the human mind can tolerate and still remain sane.
The normal working day's routine for many begins and ends with a nerve-wracking flight through miserably congested traffic. And what are the sights along the way (besides the back end of the car in front of you)?
A miserable jungle-like labyrinth of steel, glass, wire, asphalt and cement—of streets, supermarkets, shopping centers, housing tracts, office buildings, railroad tracks, electrical lines and industrial smokestacks. A helter-skelter conglomeration of unsightly billboards and gaudy neon signs. A sickening bluish-yellow haze called smog.
Small wonder so many people seek escape!
But these are by no means the only problems.
Personal Safety and Crime
In today's cities personal safety is almost nonexistent. Without God's protection you aren't safe anywhere—not even in your own home. Not even with an elaborate alarm system.
And on the street? Anything can happen! Day or night.
The danger on city streets is no longer confined to traffic accidents. Today, the "normal" street dangers include the possibility of being robbed, assaulted, stabbed or murdered. It includes the constant danger of someone suddenly going raving mad and shooting everyone in sight.
In certain areas, especially at night, the streets have plenty of motor traffic, but the sidewalks are empty. And if you do see an occasional person on the sidewalk, you immediately wonder whether he is about to commit a crime or if he has lost his mental balance.
This is the shocking point to which we have progressed - or retrogressed - in this "enlightened" 20th century!
Huge sections of some cities are designated as "crime containment zones." Poverty, unemployment, overwhelming welfare toads, wall-to-wall children, illegitimacy, looting, riots, racial tensions and gangs are the trademarks of these areas, Here crimes of every description run so rampant that the police hope, al best, merely to keep this excessive crime from spilling over into other areas.
Farther downtown there is the bowery or skid row. Its trademark is cheap hotels and saloons; filled with hopeless derelicts, dope addicts, prostitutes and similar types of degenerate humanity.
And out in suburbia - in the nice part of town? Well, the problems of today's society are here, too.
The homes out here may contain two-car garages, boats and double ovens. But they also contain family strife, broken homes and divorce. The fear of not being able to meet next month's payments on the house, car, boat, stereo and color television. Envy at the neighbors next door who just installed a backyard swimming pool and are planning a trip to Europe,
Bored with the blessings of life - but coveting more - many of the inhabitants of suburbia seek escape in the excitement of wild, permissive parties - replete with alcohol, drugs, and sexual debauchery.
And the younger suburbians, with too much free time on their hands and with too little parental supervision, run the usual gamut of licentiousness from vandalism and crime to promiscuity, drunkenness and drugs. At every level of city society and in every part of town we see serious problems in need of a solution.
And we have yet to mention the matters of corrupt business practices, bribery, cheating, bitter labor disputes, organized crime, payoffs, weak and ineffective city government and exorbitant taxes.
Add all these problems together and you can begin to comprehend what a tremendous top-to-bottom change is necessary for our cities to become decent places in which to live.
But thank God, such a change is coming - and soon!
But how? Who and what will bring it about? Where would you start if you were responsible for undertaking such a gigantic project?
Biggest Problem Solved First
Today men seek to solve the problems of our cities by money, schools, integration, night lights to deter criminals, new laws, more police.
But all these methods ignore the basic reason that today's cities are the way they are.
What is the biggest problem in cities today? What makes cities so bad?
It's people!
It’s the fellow who takes off for work in the morning with his eyes filled with smog and depressing sights, a hostile look on his face, the din of traffic in his ears, his lungs and nostrils full of foul air and cigarette smoke, his stomach full of nutritionally raped food, his veins full of drugs and Tranquilizers, and his mind filled with the violence of the previous night's television programs or his plans to beat the other guy out of as much as he can when he gets to work. He's the problem in today's cities - along with millions of men and women just like him.
And what is it that makes people so bad? lt’s their unconquered HUMAN NATURE. This nature is a nature of vanity, jealousy, lust and greed.
In tomorrow's cities, this basic cause of human suffering is going to be solved first.
Human nature will be changed.
But HOW?
Through the prophet Ezekiel, God gives us the answer: "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will lake away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I wil! give you an heart of flesh- And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. . . . I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the wastes shall be builded" (Ezek. 36:26-27, 33). See also Jeremiah 31:31 and Hebrews 8:10.
Human nature will still exist in tomorrow's cities. The inhabitants of these cities will still be physical, flesh-and-blood human beings. But God is going to give these people his power - his Holy Spirit to resist and overcome the downward pull of their human nature. They will be able to direct, control and guide their lives into constructive channels. They will obey God's laws. They will live in the way that brings peace, happiness and prosperity for all.
God's Holy Spirit is available today. But mankind as a whole is not interested in God's Spirit. He is by nature hostile to God and thinks he can solve his problems without God's help. He won't submit to God's way unless he is forced to. And that is where tomorrow's mayors come in.
Tomorrow’s Mayors
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