Nearly 4,000 years later, youth is still speaking with the same voice as Elihu; and with the same bumptiousness!

Youth Views Politics
Young people look at politics, and find them dominated by middle-aged and elderly folk, who try to keep back the tide of war, violence and crises with nothing more effective than a broom of their own manufacture. No matter whether the government is a dictatorship or a democracy, the same economic and social problems defeat the rulers again and again. Muddle, muddle and more muddle is the result!

Every country seeks a favorable economic budget; in short, it seeks to export more than it imports. Governments strain every means to accomplish this. All sorts of financial expedients are resorted to achieve it: import quotas, tariffs, devaluation, bank rates, speculation. Most of us do not really understand what it is all about, but in some hazy way we do realize that economic insecurity is rampant in every country, and consequently our livelihood is at stake. First there is boom and we earn good money; then the government calls, "Crisis!" and immediately clamps down, so that the specter of unemployment and shortages again appear on the horizon. At the back of our minds we have a notion that international financiers have something to do with it all: those folk derisively called by an English politician "the gnomes of Zurich" (the Swiss town, where many international bankers have their headquarters). These are people who buy stocks and shares when they are cheap, and sell them when they are dear. Then people panic, and assume that the company whose shares are being widely sold is about to go bankrupt, and before you know where you are, financial chaos stalks the earth.

What do politicians do about all this? They seem powerless whether they are Conservative, Liberal, Socialist or Communist. If they are democratic, then a general election throws everything into deeper chaos whenever it occurs. With this in mind, many politicians rule, not for the good of the country, but with one eye on the next election, what will please voters best. If the government is a dictatorship, then there is loss of Elihu's precious possession of free speech, "Let me declare my opinion," and this pamphlet is unlikely to see the light of day in such countries. But even a dictatorship - at least a human one - cannot sort out the economic problems of a complex civilization. Even Russia is faced with economic and food problems that defy solution. The Polish debacle is a case in point.

When we look at it all, simple laymen like ourselves may be forgiven for asking whether the whole basis of the economic and monetary system is not based on a fallacy. How can every country hope to sell abroad more than it buys? If some countries have favorable balances, others are bound to be in the red!

And what of underdeveloped countries? The feelings of youth are particularly stirred by that theme. While the politicians talk -- perhaps in all sincerity -- thousands die, hungry and ill clad. Poverty is rampant whilst a population explosion lies round the corner. Half earth's inhabitants are undernourished. A few charities like "Oxfam" and the various United Nations Organizations can but scratch the surface of the problem.

Yet billions of dollars, pounds, deutschmarks, pesetas, francs and roubles are spent every year in armament manufacture. Every little nation now wants its own nuclear weapons, so that the prophecy of the Bible is fulfilled: "let the weak say I am strong" (Joel 3:9-11). And the strong nations go on stockpiling the most horrific weapons. Politicians talk -- but young people can't help feeling resentful at the thought that some aging ruler's incompetency might one day bring it all to an end in a terrible explosion. Gone will be all their hopes, their careers, their ambitions, perhaps their lives!

Youth Views Religion
What remains? Religion? Is there an after life? Youth is contemptuous. It sees empty churches and mocks: "I don't wonder at it! What message have the churches for me today? I am not interested in being sent to glory to sit on the edge of a cloud, strumming a harp, or even a guitar, for evermore. I should be bored." Young people are full of doubt. Can you wonder at it, when so many clergymen talk insipid platitudes, or when the leaders of the churches are torn with dissension? Some don't believe in a personal God at all; few of them fully believe in the Bible. "Religion, is so airy-fairy -- no clear message -- nothing much to agree with or disagree with," says one young man. "It's all so goody-goody," says another. "When you ask them to prove it all, seems they don't believe it themselves," says a young woman, after a talk with a minister of religion. Of course the Roman Catholics are growing. Some young people like the grandeur of ceremony, and magnificence of architecture -- but for the majority it all smacks too much of superstition and commercialism. "You go out and sin: you come back to church, pay up and confess. Sins forgiven and off we go again." A sincere Catholic would deny this interpretation, but that's how it looks to many a young mind.

No! away with it all!
The Politicians - failures! outmoded!
The Churches - half dead! outdated!
This is the feeling of modern youth.

Wanted - A Clean Sweep!
And this clean sweep is coming too! The purpose of God, revealed in the Bible, guarantees that.

It speaks of how God will sweep away the politics and religions that have so conspicuously failed. The Bible is a very down-to-earth book far from the sickly sentimentality so often wrongly attributed to it.

Throughout its pages, it speaks of a day that is coming, when all that is wrong will be put right: when the sickness of society will be healed.

Even the phrase "a clean sweep" is almost Biblical. Hear it from the lips of the prophet Isaiah, several thousand years ago, speaking of the Babylonian civilization as representative of all human civilizations of all time:

"I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts" (Isaiah -ch. 14:23). [A "besom" denotes a straw broom -- we used to call them "witches' brooms" -- most effective for removing the last vestige of dirt.]

Again speaking of the day when God will establish human affairs on "a sure foundation," the prophet uses the word sweep, as we do when we say that a storm swept all before it:

"The hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding places" (Isaiah 28:1-7).

God's judgment is going to come upon the world as a whirlwind upon a shelter in which people are hiding, and because of its insecurity called a "refuge of lies". How eloquent to describe the fallacies with which people surround themselves -- the make-believe with which they try to protect themselves from the harsh realities of life to which there is only one answer.

God's New Broom
How is this clean sweep coming? Who is to be the new broom?

It is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ -- alive and real. He rose from the dead some nineteen hundred years ago and he comes again to take over the government of the whole world: literally, politically, personally.

"But surely you don't believe so fantastic an idea?" some may ask. "I agreed with your analysis of what's wrong with the world - but now you are as bad as any of the religionists. Worse in fact! I read recently in one of the Sunday papers, an article by a bishop, in which he called the teaching that Jesus Christ was coming back to earth 'the greatest bit of fantasy in the whole collection of mumbo jumbo that goes under the name of Christian doctrine'" (London Sunday Mirror).

Well we do believe it, and see in it the only hope for mankind. Stay with us, just a few more pages, and hear us out.

You will agree with us that nineteen and a half centuries ago a man named Jesus lived in Palestine. That is a fact of history -- as much as the existence of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar or Napoleon. (I did once meet a man who when pressed with this line of argument promptly denied that Napoleon ever existed -- but we take it that our readers are intelligent people who accept the normal rules of evidence). Just look at a coin; notice the date 1982 on it. The "1982" means something -- it speaks of "the year of our Lord" -- and if the idea of Jesus' existence was foisted upon us by some charlatan, then he is cleverer at miracles than even the God of the Bible.

Right! Jesus Christ existed. Next we learn he died because of the envy of the Jews and the timidity of the Roman governor -- Pilate. No difficulty in believing that.

Then comes the really difficult part. He rose from the dead! This assertion is based on contemporary evidence. Men who were frightened and cowered into the shadows when he died, a few days later boldly proclaimed that he was alive again. They were either liars, mad or spoke the Truth. They wouldn't be liars -- they gained no advantage -- only persecution and martyrdom. Mad men would never have written words of such sober majesty as you will find in the Bible. Then they spoke the Truth!

But perhaps they were mistaken; perhaps Jesus only appeared to die on the cross. Perhaps he only fainted and reviving came out of the tomb. Such an incredible idea has been advanced. But it does not accord with the facts. The cold tomb would have killed a half-dead man. How, if he survived, would he have rolled away the sealed stone? Would a half dead Messiah have changed the lives of the Apostles? No! Jesus Christ raised from the dead is still the only satisfactory explanation of the empty tomb -- which mark you -- everyone admits was empty!

Granted the resurrection of Christ (and when all the facts are brought into view this cannot be logically denied), then everything else follows. He must have been, as he claimed, the Son of God. There must be a God. The Bible, which Jesus accepted, as far as it then existed (i.e. the Old Testament), is a divine revelation, and we can read it with confidence, gaining hope instead of cynicism, light instead of darkness. Jesus believed the Old Testament and commissioned the New Testament, and to the Bible we therefore must go to find out the purpose of God. Let anybody read this remarkable book properly, and he will find its influence gradually asserting itself demonstrating: "this is no ordinary book." Persevere and notice its wonderful unity. Though made up of 66 books, written by more than 30 people, over a period of 1,600 years, it yet proclaims one consistent message. See the harmony, feel the depth of the book. At least read it! Give it a chance! Its claims and offers demand investigation. And you will be surprised how interesting it is - even exciting!