LAWLESSNESS
By
D. M. PANTON
LAWLESSNESS
is a deep antagonism to law, all law, and especially Divine law: it is
an appeal to force, not law; and it is preceded by a weakening of all
authority-parental, scholastic, civic, national, moral, and Divine. Scripture reveals that the supreme sin at the
end will be lawlessness. Translating the
Greek exactly as it is, our Lord foretold that, at the end, "because lawlessness shall be multiplied,
the love of the many shall wax cold” (Matt.
24: 12) - that is, lawlessness will undermine the Church; and He
foretold that He would say to latter-day sinners, - "Depart from me ye that work lawlessness”
(Matt. 7: 23) ; and so also He says that
at his Advent His angels will "gather out of his
kingdom those that work lawlessness" (Matt. 13: 41).
Lawlessness
Modern
statesmen, who have charge of public order, are naturally sensitive to the ever
deepening lawlessness. Before the first
World War Lord Balfour said:- "I remember a good
many years ago Mr. Gladstone telling me that the problems that would have to be
solved by my generation were far more intricate and difficult than those that
had to be solved by the generation of which he was one of the most
distinguished representatives. Mr.
Gladstone, I suppose, was about forty years older than myself. I suppose about the same difference of years
separates me from the great bulk of those I now address, and I say to you what
Mr. Gladstone said to me. I say to you,
that the problems which your generation will have to solve are more difficult
even than the problems that have fallen for solution to the generation of which
I am a member." Much more
can we say the same thing today. A former Archbishop of Canterbury said:-
"There has grown up of late years a distinct
change of attitude towards the laws of the land; I do not think it can be
denied that in recent years the sense of the reverence of law - to law as law -
has become weakened in a curious degree." Mr. Bonar Law said: "I believe that one of the worst signs of the times is a loss
of respect for the authority of the law."
Anarchists
It
is exceedingly instructive that the first open profession of lawlessness - the
Anarchists - began in Russian origin.
Prince Kropotkine said: "Instead of inanely repeating the old formula, 'Respect the
law', we say, 'Despise law and all its attributes'. In place of the cowardly phrase, 'Obey the
law', our cry is, 'Revolt against all laws'!" So Lavaleye's Contemporary
Socialism, p. 202:- “We wish to destroy all States
and all Churches, with all their institutions and laws, religious, political,
judicial, magisterial, academical, economical, and
social." The Russian founder
of Anarchism, Bokunine, says (Lavaleye's
Contemporary Socialism, p. 204):- "The
Revolutionist despises and detests existing morality. Between him and society there is war - war to
the death, incessant, irreconcilable. So much the worse for him if he has in this world any ties of
relationship, of friendship, of love.
He must live in the midst of society, feigning to be what he is not; he
must penetrate everywhere. Poison, poignard, running noose - the
revolution sanctifies all means without distinction"
(Lavaleye's Contemporary Socialism, p. 204). Marriage, the social foundation of every
State, is rejected by all Anarchists. In
the words of Carlyle a century ago:- "Is not Anarchy, or the Rule of what is baser over what is
nobler, the one life's misery worth complaining of, and in fact the abomination
of abominations, springing from and producing all others whatsoever?"
*
[*
The word ‘Anarchy’ is now scarcely ever used, nor its successor ‘Nihilism’; but
its whole force is now in Communism which is threatening all the governments of
the world.]
Atheism
Lawlessness
naturally involves the abolition of God, the source and fountain of all
law. Stepniak
says:- "Absolute Atheism
is the sole inheritance that has been preserved intact by the new generation,
and I need scarcely point out how much advantage the modern revolutionary movement
has derived from it" (Underground Russia, p. 7); or as Karl
Marx, the founder of the Communism which is now sweeping the world, expresses
it:- "The idea of God must be destroyed: the true
root of liberty, equality, culture is Atheisrn." So Lenin, the creator of the Soviet, says:- "Religion is one of the
worst forms of spiritual oppression. Our
propaganda must include Atheism."
"If God existed," says Bukunine, "it would be
necessary to abolish Him."
"By precipitating from the heights of the
heavens Him from Whom all power is reputed to descend,
societies unseat also all those who reigned in His name" (Messrs. Caflero and Reclus, God and
the State, p. 4).
The Lawless One
But
the extraordinary fact is that lawlessness, while it is atheism towards Jehovah,
is worship of its own gods. The Satanic growth of Lawlessness has a
very definite aim and goal. Lawlessness
will culminate in the Lawless One - an embodiment and perfection of
anarchy; an abrogator of all law, in order to impose
his own; a monarch whom the Old Testament calls "the
wilful King," and the New Testament (2 Thess. 2: 8, R.V.), "the
Lawless One." "And the King shall do according to his will and
shall exalt himself above every God; for he shall magnify himself above all"
(Daniel 11: 36): "And he shall think to change the time and the law"
(Daniel 7: 25). Now the drift of Imperialism all over the
world towards this fearful issue is supremely revealed by an utterance of the
late Kaiser, truly called by Lord Cromer an "astounding"
utterance:- "There is only one law, and
that is my law" (Spectator, July 31, 1915). As far back as seventy years ago, Dean
Vaughan said:- "The
reign of lawlessness is begun ; though a few years, or a few tens of years, may
yet intervene before the actual unveiling of the Lawless One."
Worship
One
example will be sufficient of this astounding drift of lawlessness. Even seventy years ago this was written of a
young Anarchist. "Lassalle is looked upon by his disciples as the Messiah of
Socialism. After his death they
venerated him as a demi-god. To them he is the object of a real
worship. They do not hesitate even to
compare him to Christ. The impression is
so profound that numbers of people believed, and still believe (in 1883) that
he did not die, and that he will come again in his glory, to preside over the
great revolution and reorganization of society” (Lavaleye's
Contemporary Socialism, p. 54).
So modern Anarchism is acting as a dissolvent on Divine Law, and yet
concurrently building a platform for the worship of the Lawless One: the very
revolt against law is preparing the world to receive his lawlessness as its
final and supreme law.
The Wrath of God
Jude's
unutterably awful description of the corruption in the closing days begins with
its lawlessness: "These set at naught dominion"
- destroy every form of government - "and rail at
dignities" (Jude 8) - whether
civil or ecclesiastical: a lawlessness which holds all authority in contempt,
and creates a volcano of revolution.
Their doom foretold is one of the most extraordinary prophecies in the
Bible. Five thousand years before they
exist, today's anarchists are directly warned of the Second Advent. “To
THESE also Enoch prophesied" - not of them, but to
them - "saying, Behold, the Lord came with ten
thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment upon all"
(ver. 14, R.V.). The warning is explicit: what army can fight
angels who cannot be shot, and who cannot even be bruised by an atomic
bomb? And with extraordinary
appropriateness the prophesy is given by the embodiment of all rapture, Enoch,
who was caught up from earth before the whole human race was wiped off the
earth; thus signalling to us that if we
too are to be translated, our whole soul must be poured out, like that of Enoch,
in, warning of the awful judgments that are on the threshold.
Grace
Before
our Lord returns and stamps it out, there is only one effective antidote to
lawlessness - grace. It is exquisitely
expressed in a recent incident. In the
Communist rising in
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