Kingdom News No. 22

How Crime and Violence Will Be Stopped

 CRIME IS HURTING YOU

Have you been mugged or robbed? Has someone in your family been a victim? Then you know the hurt that crime is causing.

Even so, did you realize:

◆ In many areas, most families have at least one member who has been robbed, mugged, raped or murdered.

◆ The rate of increase in crime is now greater in many small towns and rural areas than it is in the cities.

◆ More and more, women and children are committing crimes of the most violent types.

Perhaps you have never had your life threatened, never even had your wallet stolen. But do you think you are escaping? You’re not!

You pay higher prices. When employees steal, it is not only the company that gets hurt. The cost is passed on to you, the consumer. And when merchants are dishonest, again you are the one that feels the hurt.

You also pay higher taxes. Why?

◆ Because law enforcement is costly.

◆ Because political corruption wastes tax money.

WHY THE FRIGHTENING UPSURGE?

Are the laws, the courts, the prison system to blame? Is breakdown in family life doing it? Has motion-picture and TV violence caused it? These are factors. But even authorities on crime admit that there must be more to it.

The Bible probes deeper, to the very roots of the problem.

Over 1,900 years ago it foretold that our generation would experience a shocking ‘increase of lawlessness.’—See Matthew 24:3-12; 2 Timothy 3:1-5.

 That same source names the chief cause. It points to an invisible spirit force, one that is adequate to account for all the frightening upsurge of crime.

Concerning our day, it says: “Woe for the earth . . . because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing he has a short period of time.”—Revelation 12:9, 12.

But who is this Devil?

He is no mythical character. His existence is real.

The Bible shows that the Devil is a powerful, invisible spirit who exercises influence on the minds of men. He is the main instigator of crime. Under his control are vicious demon forces in the spirit realm.

Nothing else can account for the inhuman, often fiendish and depraved nature of crime. Nothing else can explain its shocking upsurge on a global scale.

Some persons may balk at this explanation. But they have no other satisfying answer. Why follow their view? To do so is to reject God’s Word.

CAN’T SOMETHING BE DONE ABOUT CRIME?

Stopgap measures can be taken.

✔ You can safeguard yourself by keeping alert, and you should.

✔ More police and faster punishment of criminals would help in some places.

But none of these measures get at the real source of the trouble, do they?

Since the Devil is more powerful than man, lasting relief must come from a source higher than man. Is there reason to believe that it will?

Yes, indeed! The Bible tells us how.

THE ONLY REAL SOLUTION

✔ The chief instigator of lawlessness, Satan the Devil, must be eliminated. Men cannot do it. God can.

The Bible promises: “The God who gives peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly.”—Romans 16:20.

 ✔ Before crime will ever end, all persons and systems that are motivated by greed, and that further their aims by violence, must be removed. Only God can do this. His Word assures us: “As regards the wicked, they will be cut off from the very earth; and as for the treacherous, they will be torn away from it.”—Proverbs 2:22.

✔ A basic need is for a change in people themselves; they must learn to love God and to express genuine love for their fellowmen.

The Bible says: “Righteousness is what the inhabitants of the productive land will certainly learn.” “Love . . . is a perfect bond of union.”—Isaiah 26:9; Colossians 3:14.

What will life be like when all these things come to pass? “They will actually sit, each one under his vine and under his fig tree, and there will be no one making them tremble.” As God says: “My people must dwell in a peaceful abiding place and in residences of full confidence and in undisturbed resting-places.”—Micah 4:4; Isaiah 32:18.

When will this come about? Study of Bible prophecy has convinced millions of persons that it will be in our own day.

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