Signs of the Times [antikvár]

PROLOGUE We live in the age of the sonic boom—one of the less desirable consequences of the modern craze for speed, in the air as well as on land or water. In addition to the anticipated results, the shaking of windows and cracking of ceilings, it seems to be producing all sorts of unexpected side-effects. One of them was the subject of a remarkable if involuntary prophecy not long ago. A light-hearted week-end article in the Daily Mail ended with a forecast that any day now a golfer would return to the clubhouse with the story that his ball had stopped at the edge of the hole, and that a sonic bang had pushed it in. This was in the first column of the front page. In column seven of the same page was the story of a chip shot that left the ball on the edge of the eighteenth hole on the London Scottish course at Wimbledon Common at precisely 11.58 a.m. the previous day. There was a thud in the sky from the sonic boom, and the ball duly fell in. A magazine which drew attention to these two items carried the caption: "Instant Prophecy." The high-pressure advertizing of our day has familiarized us with instant beverages; perhaps instant prophecy has been given less publicity. But the fact is that we are living in an age when things predicted in God's word are being unmistakeably fulfilled before our eyes. This is true of many areas of life, as later pages will suggest, but a most striking instance in recent years has been the course