Earlier text: Somabula Mission, Gwelo, Rhodesia, S. AEven so hath God a message for THIS TIME, for this very age; a message against its sins and crimes, against its shams and traditions which murder truth, against its false doctrines and false worship of Mammon and Mars and Moloch and Fashion and Folly and Bacchus and Venus. That message proclaims the great everlasting Evangel, with all its healing, life-giving power for all the ills of this age; its truth instead of error, its righteousness instead of sin, its worship of the Creator instead of the creature, its living word instead of tradition, its reality instead of sham, its living truth instead of theory. And, as of old, men may not dally with the message. He who rejects its life-invitation rejects it to his death; he who receives it receives it unto life. And this is the message which in the goodness of God the SIGNS OF THE TIMES is permitted and commissioned to give during 1908. It must give that message. It would be false to its trust should it do otherwise. And therefore, according to its motto, “As we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the Gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts.” May many thousands yield to its blessed power. Looting of the California Trust Company
Investigation of the affairs of the California Safe Deposit and Trust Company, which failed recently in San Francisco, bringing loss to many and the suicide of one, clearly shows that the cause of the failure was the wholesale looting of the bank by its trusted officials. Mine Explosion at Jacob's Creek
On December 19 there occurred another terrible mine explosion at Jacob's Creek, Pa. It is feared that 200 men have met their death by the disaster. This is the third calamity of the kind during the first nineteen days of December that has come to the bituminous coal mines in the veins underlying western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The Times and the Law.—Some are perplexed over the word "times" in Dan. 7:25. The little-horn power thinks to change times and law. "The times and the law" the American Standard Revision reads. Other translations read, "The appointed times and the law," that is, the times ap-pointed of God and the law of God. The word "times" is translated from zeman, defined by Strong "an appointed occasion, times." It comes from zaman, "to fix," rendered "appoint." Every instance where it occurs in Scripture is as follows: rendered "season" in Eccl. 3:1; Dan. 2:21; 7:12; rendered "time," Ezra 5:8; Neh. 2:6; Esther 9:27, 31; Dan. 2:16; 6:10, 13; 7:25. It will be seen from its use in these texts that it has no definite reference to feast, but definite times appointed by either man or God. In Dan. 7:25 it refers to times appointed of God that apostasy could only "think" to change. The two earliest appointed times of God are the day and its place in the week. Class Hatreds and Christ’s Second Coming
This is a time when class hatreds are manifesting themselves in a most marked manner. A system of education has been going on for years that is making the poorer class hate the rich; the laboring man is in arms against the capitalist, as is abundantly shown in the bitterness of so many of the strikes; the union laborer is bitterly opposed to the non-union man, and has declared relentless war upon him; and not only is the union man opposed to those who refuse to join the unions, but some of the bitterest wars are waged between some of the unions themselves. One union will declare another union "unfair" and as bitter a struggle will be waged as ever exists between union and non-union men. Any one should be able to see that these contending factions are becoming more and more bitter toward each other, and soon the crash must come. And when it does finally come there is no power on earth that is strong enough to stop it. It can only be stopped by the power of the second coming of Christ. The logic of the situation is confirmatory of the prophecy, all of which shows that the second coming of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ is even at the doors.