Modern Inventions
Did you ever stop to think how very strange it is that the
world should have gone on for full 6,000 years without making but very little
progress in the lines of invention and discovery, and then all at once burst
out in such a blinding glare of smartness as we see around us today?
With the exception of printing and steam, which date a
little farther back, practically every thing we speak of as modern inventions
or discoveries have come to us inside of the last 50 years. The world’s way of
living 50 years ago was not much different from what it was five or six
thousand years ago. During all that time there was no marked advance along any
line of invention or discovery. But just about the time the 6,000 years ended
and we started on the seventh, you notice how the pace begins to quicken.
Things never dreamed of before came crowding right on the heels of each other
until now we live in a different world. Make out a list of the great inventions
that were in use before 1872, and it will be a mighty short list. Then go ahead
and make out another list containing the great inventions and discoveries that
have come into use since 1872. Your second list will contain, among other
things, the following:
Electric lights
Electric power
Telephone
Wireless telegraph
Phonograph
Automobile
Typewriter
Type-setting machine
Web printing press
Daily newspaper
Moving pictures
X-Ray
Submarine
Flying machine
And many others too numerous to mention. Imagine the world
suddenly deprived of all these things and set back where it was 45 or 50 years
ago! It would be hard getting along, wouldn’t it? And yet our ancestors got
along for 6,000 years and probably thought they were doing well enough.
Can you give any good reason why these things didn’t start
way back yonder and come in gradually? Did the people have no inventive minds
among them, or what was the matter? I’ll tell you why. It just wasn’t in God’s
Plan for these things to be until the “time of the end.” They COULDN’T have
come any sooner. And when the right TIME rolled around they came in a hurry.
And yet their coming has been gradual enough so that we considered it a very
natural process. If these things had dropped down from heaven all in one day we
would have called it a miracle. And would have been. But it is no less a
miracle as it is. The hand of God is in it, and He has allowed men to make
these things just at this time for a wise purpose. They are being gotten ready
to be used through the glorious Millennial Age for the comfort and blessing of
the whole race. And even greater wonders that we can’t even dream of now will be
added, until it will indeed be a paradise on earth. Everything will be done my
machinery, and ALL THE PEOPLE will get the benefit of the leisure thus
afforded. There will be no more millionaires nor paupers. Every body will have
plenty and nobody too much. Good roads will be everywhere, and every family
will have its automobile and plenty of time to ride in it. No more slaving from
dawn till dark to squeeze out a bare existence. The wildest dreams of Socialism
will all be true, and then some.
But now here is the vital point of it all that I want you to
remember. These great Millenial blessings cannot come to their full ripeness
until the devil is chained. As long as he is loose in the world he will only
use these modern inventions to make more trouble. We all know it has been that
way so far. The labor-saving inventions have made it harder instead of easier
for the masses to get a living. God permitted these modern inventions to come
right in the last years of the devil’s rule over the earth in order to give man
an object-lesson in how the devil can turn a blessing into a curse. But pretty
soon the devil must go down into the pit, chained and helpless, so that he
cannot deceive the nations any more for a thousand years. Then the spirit of
righteousness will rule the earth and these modern inventions will come into
their own as agencies of comfort and blessings for the human race.
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