Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/371

 God" truthfully, accurately in a manner to be depended upon. Meantime we hope their followers will give them no anore credit for accuracy in other features of their religious teaching than in the one under consideration.

Let us do a little figuring; let us do it in a manner that any schoolboy can follow. We want to inquire how many people will be living on the earth at the end of fifty thousand years about the time Dr. Eaton estimates that Christ will come. We will take as the basis of our calculation the present population of the world as 1 ,600,000,000. "We will take as the basis of our reckoning for increase the census returns for the, last decade, namely, eight per cent., which would mean 115 per cent, increase for the century. If the favorable conditions of the present continue, no doubt the increase will be far in excess of eighty per cent., but let us confine our- selves to present conditions. A little figuring shows us that at the end of the first of these fifty thousand years the living population of the world would be over 580,000,000,000, and at the same ratio of increase the close of the second thousand years would find a living population on this earth of over 210,500,000,000,000, and by the close of the third of these pfty thousand years the living population on earth would be over 76,328,500,000,000,000.

What do these figures mean? They mean that if God's Word is not true, if the great change of dispensation which we preach is aaot soon inaugurated, the whole world of man- kind will be an great distress, not only for food to eat, but for standing room. We have only counted three of Dr. Eaton's fifty thousand years! What would the figures be if we were to run them up further?

ANTI-MILLENNIALTSTS PUT TO CONFUSION.

Those who deny the teaching of a Millennium must o course ignore the promises which declare that "the wilderness will blossom as the rose and the solitary places be glad," and con- sequently any reckoning from their standpoint must exclude all the at present useless portions of the earth's surface. Ap- proximately estxniating the habitable and tillable portion of the earth at 25,000,000 square miles, we find that this would give us 16,000,000,000 acres or 696,960,000,000,000 square feet

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