Crime Statistics
Press reports indicate that crime in Scotland has risen by nine per cent during the past year. These figures are alarming. The Home Affairs Minister, Lord James Douglas-Hamilton declared: “The police are in the front line, but they cannot win the battle against crime alone. We must all support their efforts if there is to be any success in reducing these figures.”
How clear it is that these figures give evidence of the low moral state of the nation. The abandonment, by a large percentage of the people of the land, of the Bible and the law of the Ten Commandments as the standard of moral conduct, has resulted in the abandonment of Christian values, every man becoming a law to himself. More police and more jails for criminals will never improve the state of the country, however necessary these may be to restrain evil men, but a return by the people of the land to the Word of God which is the only rule to direct mankind. If the leaders of the nation are sincere in their desire for a real improvement in the moral condition of the land, then let them set an example to the nation, by returning themselves to the precepts of God’s Word.
Famines, and Pestilences and Earthquakes in divers places.
The Saviour declared while He was in this world that the time would come when there would be wars and rumours of wars and that there would be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. Our day seems such a time as we hear of wars and famines and pestilences (AIDS being one of these), and earthquakes. At the beginning of May the newspapers were reporting the number of the dead in an earthquake in the Soviet republic of Georgia and in the cyclone which hit Bangladesh. Famines, as we well know, are endemic in some parts of Africa. What desolations there are in the earth. Yet the Lord is ruling over all, and sits King upon His throne. What reason men have to tremble before Him when they hear these whisperings of His power. What need there is for the children of men to hear the voice of Jehovah speaking in these desolating judgments which He is bringing upon the earth. How few have ears to hear it? How few regard it as a call to the sons of men to repent of their evil ways and turn from them unto God. He is the One who makes plain in His Word that sin shall not go unpunished. While it is right for us to sympathise with those who are affected by what men call “natural” disasters, yet we are to recognise the Hand that afflicts. There is no ground for complacency because we are not likewise afflicted. We ought to remind ourselves of what the Saviour said: “Suppose ye that these Galileans (whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices) were sinners above all Galileans because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish.”