"Knowledge Shall Be Increased"

Daniel not only declared that our day would be marked by running to and fro, but also gave another indication: "Knowledge shall be increased." Surely we have this fulfilment also. Instead of plowing with a crooked stick, we have up-to-date steam-plows which accomplish a hundred times the work. Contrast writing upon stone and upon parchment, laborious and expensive, with our modern printing. Contrast the beginning of printing with today!

No printing establishment in the world better illustrates the perfection of this art in our day than does the U.S. Government Printing Office at Washington. No library better illustrates modern learning than does the Congressional Library.

Today the learning is not confined to the great, the wealthy, or the few; it is general. The Schools of the civilized world are full, and thus, too, knowledge is increasing.

How wonderful that God foreknew all these things and foretold them through Daniel's prophecy twenty-five centuries ago, saying, "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased!" Here we have it! We are evidently in the Time of the End mentioned, and well we may rejoice in the oncoming New Age! No longer do we hold that the world will literally end, and with a combustion which will reduce it to a cinder. We are ready to believe God's Word--that He created not the Earth in vain, He formed it to be inhabited--to be the Paradise home of humanity, regenerated under Messiah's Kingdom.--Isaiah 45:18.

Year by year we see the Earth preparing for full inhabitation. Recent earthquakes closed some and opened other channels of the Japan Stream, affecting the climate of Alaska and the Arctic zone remarkably. Gradually the glaciers in the form of icebergs are running out and dissolving in the more Equatorial waters. Gradually the Earth is preparing to blossom as the rose. Gradually the curse will be removed and the blessing of God will be substituted.--Isaiah 35:1.

There are various theories regarding its formation. We follow the one most closely harmonizing with the Bible. It is called the Vailian theory. It assumes that Saturn's rings and Jupiter's belts illustrate Earth's development as a planet.

The Earth was once molten, as indicated by the igneous rocks of the Azoic period: so called by scientists, but not discussed in the Bible. When the Earth was molten, its water and minerals were thrown off a great distance in gaseous form. As these cooled and took shape, they constituted great rings at a distance from the Earth.

Gradually the motion of the rings became different from that of the Earth in proportion to the distance from the center of gravity. These rings of water and mineral gradually approaching the Earth would be kept off by centrifugal force, particularly strong at the equator. The "brooding" of Holy Energy developed a light, probably resembling the Aurora Borealis--not sunlight. The Sun did not appear until the Fourth Day.

"Let there be light! and there was light." Thus, briefly, is summed up the result of the 7,000 years, styled the First Day. Not that God's Word would not have been sufficient for any miracle, but because He prefers to work out His glorious designs along natural lines.--Genesis 1:3.