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The PLAIN TRUTH is STILL GROWING. Newsstand officials in England
told us that when The PLAIN TRUTH went on the newsstands people
would take it in preference to Life, Time, or Newsweek. AND
APPARENTLY THAT IS WHAT HAS HAPPENED!
Finally, dear Co-Workers and Brethren, we need, ourselves,
AN AWAKENING -- a renewed SENSE OF URGENCY. I'm afraid that, more
than I realized, many of you did definitely point to the date of
the first week in January, of last year. It was only natural to
desire to know HOW MUCH TIME we had left, to finish God's Work. I
have asked audiences if they had not had that desire, and I could
see dozens and hundreds nodding that they did. And so did I -- but
in that we were no different than the original apostles. They just
made a 1,900-year bigger mistake than we did.
It was BECAUSE they thought that the Kingdom of God was
IMMEDIATELY, THEN, to be set up, that Jesus spoke the parable
showing He was first to go to heaven to RECEIVE the authority of
the Kingdom (Luke 19:11-24). After His resurrection, just before
Jesus' ascension to God's throne in heaven, the apostles again
asked if He would set up the Kingdom then. The apostle Paul
thought Christ's return, and the end of his preaching was imminent,
and to occur in HIS LIFETIME (I Corinthians 15:51-52; I
Thessalonians 4:17).
Yes, they were human, and made mistakes the same as we. But
we need to FORGET that mistake -- learn a lesson by it -- and ask:
"JUST WHERE DO WE STAND TODAY?"
This we can KNOW: We are now IN THE VERY "TIME OF THE END."
The apostles asked Jesus: "What shall be the SIGN of thy coming,
and of the END of the world (age)?" He replied there would first
come false ministers, PREACHING Christ yet deceiving the world;
there would come wars -- but these were not at the END. Then He
said: "But he that shall endure unto the END, the same shall be
saved. And this Gospel OF THE KINGDOM shall be preached in all the
world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the END come."
(Matthew 24:3, 14.) Then, following the preaching (and publishing
-- Mark 13:10) of this Gospel -- the Gospel of the Kingdom of God
-- ". . . then shall be GREAT TRIBULATION, such as was not since
the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
And except those days should be shortened, there should be no flesh
be saved ("saved alive" -- Moffatt translation): but for the
elect's sake those days shall be shortened" (verses 21-22).
In other words, except God supernaturally intervened to cut
short this coming time of GREATEST trouble ever, men would blast
all human life from the earth. Until the discovery and production
of the hydrogen bomb, men could never have erased all life from the
earth. Now they could -- and except God intervenes, they
undoubtedly WOULD!
Daniel's prophecy speaks of the same GREATEST TROUBLE ever:
". . . and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was
since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time
thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found
written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of