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HIROSHIMA, AUGUST 1945.
The Japanese called it
hibakuchi,
" the place of suffering." A modern 20 -megaton hydrogen
bomb ca n excavate a crater 640
ft.
deep a nd % mile in diame ter if its 21J2 miles-in-diame ter fireball touches the ground.
ing the wor1d from coming to an
end was the might of the Roman
Empire. But the empire fell, and the
world didn' t come to an end.
Even the writers of the Bible
thought that Jesus Christ of Naza–
reth was going to come back during
their lifetimes. The apost1e Paul
wrote: "Then we which are alive
and remain shall be caught up to–
gether with them [the dead] in the
clouds, to meet the Lord in the
air ..." (1 Thessalonians 4: 17). He
said "we." He thought he wou1d still
be a1ive to see the second coming of
Christ. But Paul was martyred, and
Christ didn't come.
At the approach of the year A.D.
1000 by man's chronicles, mil1ions
thought that surely the end of the
world was nigh. As the Black Death
ravaged Europe and millions died,
PLAIN TRUTH December 1973
people who looked at the Bib1e
thought the end was near.
But the plague burned itse1f out.
The bodies were finally buried and
the houses burned and Europe stag–
gered through. Jesus didn't come.
Martin Luther, in the Middle
Ages, thought that Jesus was going
to come during his day. He said: "I
do not wish to force or to constrain
anyone to believe as
1
do, but nei–
ther will
1
permit anyone, on the
other hand, to take from my be1iefs,
that the day of judgment is not far
off. Christ's words and tbese signs
move me so to believe. For wbat–
ever chronicles we may read of the
time of Christ until now, we shaU
not find a parallel to the present
century."
Luther added: "The world has
reached its culmination in what re-
U.S. Air Force
lates to temporal interests or what
Christ called the cares of this life,
eating, drinking, building, planting,
buying, selling, marrying and caring
for children and the like, whoever
considers must acknowledge that
this cannot hold much longer." But
that was more than 400 years ago.
Poor Martin Luther. He thought he
was living in the time of the end.
At the beginning of mecbanized
warfare, witb the invention of gun–
powder, the creation of the Gatling
gun, the first automobiles, the
steamship, and then the airplane,
surely, thougbt the preacbers, the
end of the world is near.
WiUiam Miller believed with bis
followers that Jesus would come in
1843. He calculated a time period of
2,300 days from Daniel 8, and
counted from 457 B.C. But he fig-
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