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Show ,; j ;j (lLr ' lnl.rn.lund Undone LH j By ; DR. KNMETH ;J. FOREMAN . j SCRIPTURE: Daniel 7: Revelation 1; 4:8b. 11; 11:15b; 15:3b-4; 21-22. DEVOTIONAL READING: Revelation 7:917. God's V-Day I Lesson for December 26, 1943. EVERYBODY loves a fight, they say. But the underdog does not love It, and nobody loves one that goes on and on and seems to have no end. The long- IvSi " ? est war 'm history j the war that 4 ' '' ' mankind wages v 'H against everything ;V , that is out to de-' de-' 4 -j 'J stroy him. It is the ff y war between man : W y p3 1 at his best and j $ I man at nis worst, LaW.jA.,;-j between the angel Dr. Foreman and devU 1x1 man himself. We seem to be the underdogs and how tired we grow of it! God's Fight TPHE Bible shows us that this fight is not one in which we human beings are left to defend ourselves alone. We have an enemy, Satan; and we have an ally, God. Whenever a man lines up against anything that' is wrong-, hateful, deceitful, destructive, and on the side of what is "creative, just, brotherly and true, he finds that this' is not a private fight, it is not even the struggle of mankind alone. It is a cosmic conflict. God's universe Is not a neat garden in which only flowers grow; he has to work cutting down the weeds. Ills universe is not a realm at peace, with no need even for police; treason is abroad, rebellion breaks out here and there. The Greeks used to think that the gods never went to any trouble, they ruled without effort. But the Christian Bible tells of a God who does have troubles, who meets opposition op-position and fights against it. Bright Books for Dark Times TWO books in our Bible bring this out in a startling way: Daniel and Revelation. We have been thinking through three months now about vari6us kinds of literature litera-ture in the Bible. The kind represented repre-sented by these two books is called "Apocalyptic." Scholars have discovered a number of similar sim-ilar books,, but these two are incomparably in-comparably the greatest and were the only two to be admitted to the Bible. One feature of all apocalyptic apocalyp-tic literature is that it always appears ap-pears in dark times, and its first-readers first-readers are people down at the bottom bot-tom of the heap, people beyond all human hope. Daniel, long before the time of Christ, and Revelation, two generations later than Christ, came as lights in a very dark world. The first of these books circulated when the Jews were hard pressed by Syrian persecutors, perse-cutors, 'and when the other came out, the Christians were about to be crushed out of existence ex-istence by cruel Roman emperors. em-perors. Observing what went on in those days, you might have thought the Jews, or the Christians as the case might be, bad no prospects of surviving. sur-viving. But these books brought a brighter message: Have courage! God will not lose! A Code in Pictures DANIEL and Revelation are both hard to understand, and for the same" reason. Their messages mes-sages are framed not always in plain language but in symbols. Hidden meanings abound. This had. to be so; if one of these books fell (as sometimes they did) into the hands of the persecuting agents of the Syf- lan or Roman governments. It would not get the owner Into trouble, for the agent would , hardly be able to interpret the strange language. All sorts of weird creatures and events move through these mysterious myste-rious pages, and they often probably prob-ably refer to persons or events known to the writers and the first readers: beasts with iron teeth and horns with eyes; a flaming throne set on a river of fire; golden vials filled with the wrath of God; a red dragon sweeping the stars down with its tail. ' God's Victory WE NEED not be distressed now at not being able to unlock un-lock all the code in which these extraordinary books are written. We can read them for their sheer beauty and force of imagination, for one thing, and we cannot miss their main truth. The bright picture ol the New Jerusalem in Rev. 21, 2' is one of the loveliest and most comforting passages in the entire Bible (Copyright br ' lntttnttional Couoctl Religious Education on bhtU ol 40 Protestant danowiottions. Ralttsed bj WNU FittuiM ) If you suffer from pocket-book pinch come the Yuletide season, here's a grand way to get around the gift-giving problem. For the smokers on your list, order cartons car-tons of mild, flavorful Camel cigarettes cig-arettes and pound tins of Prince Albert Smoking Tobacco the largest-selling smoking tobacco in the country. When you give Camels or Prince Albert, you're giving smoking pleasure at its best and a ' generous supply of it! The Camel carton, for example, contains con-tains 200 mild, cool cigarettes. Both Camels and Prince Albert packages will fit in perfectly with the spirit of the season, thanks to their colorful and gay wrappings. wrap-pings. There's even ample space provided for a "Merry Cliristmas" message in your own handwriting. If you remind your dealer now to put away a gift-quota of Camels and Prince Albert, he can have them ready when you want them. (Adv.) |