Modern Feast Of Belshazzar
Are we losing our willingness to pay the price of scientific, cultural and economic leadership? Competition is growing keener in the modem world. Can we as a Nation stay in the race if we continue to emphasize shorter hours, more leisure, and less work?
Have rock-and-roll, cocktails, parties, country clubs, soft living and frivolity proved more appealing to us than the desire to succeed through paying the high price of studying from God's Holy Word and attending to the work that needs to be done in the Lord's vineyard?
Is the loss of discipline endangering our society and the Lord's church? We seek passive rather than active methods in training our minds. Watching television and motion pictures, useful within limits, are, nevertheless, not effective developers of intellectual capacity. Smutty literature does not develop men and women of integrity. Avoiding hard work and exercise insofar as possible does not build strong bodies and sound minds.
Have we as a Nation lost the will to win the race for freedom and Christianity? Does the price seem too high? We seek rich food and increasing quantities of liquor; we run from one resort to another; we pile gadget upon gadget. The latter are useful as means, but not as goals. Many of our schools have abandoned the disciplines that develop integrity, require little or no effort, and are turning out graduates inadequately prepared to win in a modern world which requires knowledge, strength, and endurance.
One shudders as he sees a careless, indifferent, uninformed, unconcerned populace, unmindful of God and interested, chiefly so it appears, in seeking sensual pleasures that require little effort. Are we as a Nation fiddling while Rome bums? What is the hand-writing on the wall as we sit at the modern feast of Belshazzar?