WHEN Ruth Graham read the first chapter of her husband's new book World Aflame, with its graphic description of the lawlessness of our cities today, she remarked, "If God does not send judgment to our cities soon, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah!"
I suppose that the greatest enigma of Adventist evangelism is the challenge of these seething, rebelling metropolitan areas over the surface of the earth.
We all agree that the countryside is the work of God. But the city is the work of fallen man. It was God who made the first garden. It was a murderer who built the first city. God took the garden to heaven. But the city, with every other city of the old world, was buried in the waters of judgment that covered this planet in the days of Noah.
It was shortly thereafter, you recall, that men set out to build a city and a tower that would reach to heaven. We call it Babel, a fitting name for the forerunner of our modern cities. These restless cities are still reaching their fingers of steel and neon into the sky, still just as defiant of Heaven, still just as corrupt.
Jungles of Terror
Do I need to spell out the horrible tale of the cities? You know what is happening. I don't need to tell you that our city streets are fast becoming jungles of terror, that the flame of lawlessness is burning out of control. It makes one think seriously of the experience soon to come when the Spirit of God will be completely withdrawn from the earth.
The conscience of the city has been paralyzed. There are wide, gaping cracks in the moral dam.
But is it any wonder? We have been taught that morals are relative, that they are nothing more than rules of a game, rules that can be changed at will. And now it is suggested, in persuading scientific language, that existence itself is only a chemical accident. No wonder the city's last grip upon morality is slipping.
But our vaunted substitutions have not worked. We are reaping the harvest. And we are reaping it to the full in our cities. But is that all the story? The record of the cities is a record of God's deep concern. It was to Nineveh that He sent His most eloquent preacher. It was to Babylon that He sent a prophet-statesman, to win it if he could. Jesus wept over Jerusalem. "0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!"
And God is concerned about the cities of today. For that is where the people are. NASA predicts that in twenty years there will be three super metropolitan areas in the United States—one reaching all the way from San Francisco to Los Angeles, another reaching from Chicago to Buffalo, and one from Boston to Washington. And we can see it happening.
God is concerned about the cities. He has always been concerned.
Restless Angels
I like to picture a day long ago. It was noon. It was summer. It was hot. A man sat in his tent door, looking out over the quiet landscape as he saw three travelers approaching. He urged them to stop for refreshment.
Abraham had seen only three tired travelers. But now their true character was revealed. They were on their way to the city as ministers of wrath, strangers about to do a strange work. The two angels departed, restless in the knowledge of their mission. And Abraham was alone with the Son of God.
Read the eighteenth chapter of Genesis and watch the picture unfold. See a man pleading with God, a man of faith pleading for the city. Once he had saved it by the sword. Now he endeavored to save it by prayer.
"Love for perishing souls inspired Abraham's prayer. While he loathed the sins of that corrupt city, he desired that the sinners might be saved. His deep interest for Sodom shows the anxiety that we should feel for the impenitent. . . . All around us are souls going down to ruin as hopeless, as terrible, as that which befell Sodom. Every day the probation of some is closing. Every hour some are passing beyond the reach of mercy. And where are the voices of warning and entreaty to bid the sinner flee from this fearful doom? Where are the hands stretched out to draw him back from death? Where are those who with humility and persevering faith are pleading with God for him?"—Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 140.
"If There Be Ten"
Pleading—at the risk of offending God! If there be fifty. If there be forty. If there be thirty. If there be twenty. If there be ten. Praying like Moses, "If not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written."
But can you imagine Abraham not pleading? Can you imagine Abraham unconcerned? Can you imagine Abraham letting the angels go on, restless in the knowledge of their awful mission, without crying out for souls in the way of judgment?
Are there cities still standing today because of the prayer of some humble shepherd of the city?
God's Last Call
Cities are like people. They live, breathe, and die like human beings. They may be dressed in brick and mortar, stone and steel, but they beat with a heart. And God speaks to the heart.
Tolling like a mighty bell over the cities is the call of God, "Repent!" And the bell tolls loudest just before it is forever silenced!
It is the Jonah of today for the Ninevehs of today. It is the Daniel of today for the Babylons of today. It is the rumbling of Vesuvius for the Pompeiis of today. It is Christ weeping over the Jerusalems of today. The bell still tolls. But it is God's last call.
The city, for a generation and more, has been the greatest enigma of Adventist evangelism. Its jungles of cement and chrome and neon have baffled all our planning. Its walls of sophistication and indifference and preoccupation have seemed impenetrable. The very size of the city has made the task formidable. For how could a lone voice from even the largest auditorium touch the millions of a seething metropolis?
And the great centers are not the only problem. Millions live in sprawling suburbia. Even the vast rural areas are like scattered units of the city, for radio and television have spread our culture evenly over the land. The farmer views the same programs, shares the same hopes and fears, speaks the same language as his city cousins.
And the city is unaware of its danger. But today, just as truly as in the days of Abraham, angels of destruction are on their way to the city. And their mission cannot be postponed much longer.
Calamities Will Come
"I am bidden to declare the message that cities full of transgression, and sinful in the extreme, will be destroyed by earthquakes, by fire, by flood. . . . Calamities will come—calamities most awful, most unexpected; and these destructions will
follow one after another.................... Strictly will
the cities of the nations be dealt with, and yet they will not be visited in the extreme of God's indignation, because some souls will yet break away from the delusions of the enemy, and will repent and be converted."—Evangelism, p. 27.
And listen to this:
"The burden of the needs of our cities has rested so heavily upon me that it has sometimes seemed that I should die."Ibid., p. 34.
May God make us sensitive to the need!
During 1961 a big fire began in the sun-parched Los Angeles hills and spread like a holocaust into exclusive Bel-Air. A reporter asked Zsa Zsa Gabor to comment on the total incineration of her rather expensive place, and her reply deserves to be framed if it were not so tragic. She said, "I had no idea a thing like that could happen in such an elegant neighborhood."
Why Did You Not Tell Us?
What does that make you think of?
"In the visions of the night a very impressive scene passed before me. I saw an immense ball of fire fall among some beautiful mansions, causing their instant destruction. I heard someone say, 'We knew that the judgments of God were coming upon the earth, but we did not know that they would come so soon.' Others, with agonized voices, said, 'You knew! Why then did you not tell us?' "—Ibid., p. 43.
God is about to reckon with the cities. God will touch the cities. And the finest, most fireproof buildings will crumble like the ashes on the end of a cigarette. Buildings perfectly safe, by modern standards, will be consumed like pitch. Fire departments will be helpless when God allows the fires of judgment to be lighted.
That is what makes me restless. That is what makes the angels restless. There is so little time—and so much at stake!
God is about to deal with the cities. He is a God of love. But I promise you, He will not have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah. Angels of destruction are on their way. And where are the Abrahams who will plead for the city?
I ask you, Could Abraham ever have faced God if he had not pleaded? Can we face God if we don't?
