THE WALL STREET JOURNAL MONDAY, JAN 19, 1981

A Voice Cries Out:

What’s Right
About the World
Tomorrow?

Three world views for tomorrow:
Only one will become reality!

   Today, chaos, tomorrow, the world erupts into peace! Today, thread of human extinction. Tomorrow, Utopia grips the earth!
     You don’t have to believe it! It’s as certain as the rising of tomorrow’s sun!
     Humanity won’t bring it about! It is going to be done to us! People are going to be compelled to enjoy PEACE worldwide, to be happy, to experience universal ABUNDANCE! Utopia? Why not! Why should it be an imaginary or impossible pipe dream? Think about that! There’s a CAUSE for today’s apparently insolvable problems and unstoppable evils. It’s a way of life—the way I simplify by the one word “GET”.
     What do world leaders expect? The two most widely held are divergent views. Paradoxically they point in opposite directions.
     Many world leaders now expect—though they immediately put the thought out of mind—that nuclear and other means of mass destruction eventually—perhaps soon—will erase mankind from the face of the earth!
     At least four other causes, beside nuclear annihilation, now for the first time in history make possible human extinction—and by the hand of MAN! Some point out that man has never yet invented a new means of greater mass destruction that has not been actually used!
     Yet we all try to simply put that awesome possibility out of mind! Do we suppose that just not thinking about it, and doing nothing about it, will automatically cause the threat to go away?
     But a well-known philosopher and author, Aldous Huxley, said, “Most prophecy tends to oscillate between an extreme of gloom and the wildest optimism.” Another set of seers thinks the world is destined soon to become a gigantic sort of fantasy land. The human race will find perpetual happiness playing with an endless assortment of ever more ingenious mechanical toys produced by science, technology and industry.
     But these optimistic, glamorous predictions seem totally to exclude the stark reality that human happiness and well-being is a spiritual, not a physical or materialistic, condition. The near-future glamorous predictions overlook the additional snarls and problems their own predictions would bring! The overcrowded, snarled, enervating cosmopolitan life of this optimistic view is rather frightening!
     But when we take a hard, cold, realistic view of conditions and trends, they point inevitably to a fast-approaching WORLD CRISIS of combined nuclear war, starvation, uncontrollable disease epidemics, continued escalating crime, violence, the population explosion—and human extinction!
     Yet NONE OF THESE IS GOING TO HAPPEN!
     It is not fantasy or superstition but reality and FACT that before man annihilates mankind, that supreme-powered unseen “Strong Hand from Someplace” is going to intervene in this world’s affairs.
     Some world-known scientists have said our only hope, now, is for a super government ruling over all nations—with only its one military force. Man can’t bring this about! But that “unseen Power” CAN!—and before we destroy ourselves WILL! All our insolvable problems and evils are being CAUSED by a way of life I simplify by the word “GET.” Mankind will be turned to the way of “GIVE”—outflowing LOVE toward God and man!
     There shall, in actual fact, be a one-world GOVERNMENT. Human civilization won’t bring it about. It will be done to us! Whether one believes it, doesn’t matter. It’s as certain as the rising of tomorrow’s sun.
     After we pass the supreme world crisis just ahead, there shall dawn the WONDERFUL WORLD TOMORROW! World PEACE, happiness, universal ABUNDANCE shall at last grip this earth. Utopia? Well, WHY NOT! It is our SURE HOPE!

    
Herbert W. Armstrong
(1892-1986)