WHY WISH FOR THE NEW ORDER?
No doubt many homes will be built after the "great tribulation". Without the oppressive burdens of the present profit-seeking system, the survivors will then be able to build truly beautiful homes in God's new order. So what can be said? This: that God's word does not tell us exactly what these houses will look like, how big they will be and whether they will be simple or ostentatious. We find nothing about this in God's word. Why not? Because it does not promote materialistic desires, but emphasizes other things to which we should primarily give our attention. For example, consider the beautiful words used in Psalm 85:10-13 to describe the effects that God's favor and blessing can have on a land and its people. It states:"As for loving-kindness and truthfulness, they have met together; righteousness and peace - they have kissed each other. Truthfulness, it will sprout on the earth itself, and righteousness, it will look down from the heavens themselves. Jehovah also will give in his turn what is good, and our own land will give its yield. Righteousness itself will go before him, and it will make his footsteps a path."
This description is so beautiful because it emphasizes spiritual blessings above all, while material ones are only briefly mentioned in connection with the "yield" of the land. We should desire God's new order because of the spiritual blessings. Because of these things, we should be willing to work, sacrifice, even die to live in God's new order, for these spiritual things the present system has never given us, nor will it ever give them to us. Instead of practicing "loving kindness", the present order is cold and greedy; it needs a person only as long as he serves its purposes, then it pushes him aside as belonging to the old iron, and he is soon forgotten. Instead of truthfulness, this order is dominated by falsehood, hypocrisy, lies and deceit. Justice and peace have certainly not "kissed" each other in it. In God's new order, however, these spiritual blessings will be felt all over the earth, for they will work together wonderfully so that it will be a joy to live for all those who love righteousness with all their hearts. The old order offers some people - in some countries there are even many - the opportunity to own a large house or a villa and to eat well. But the loving kindness, truthfulness, peace and justice that will characterize God's new order are not to be found in it.
To prepare ourselves for life in the approaching new order, we must therefore look at the promised blessings from the right point of view; we must always attach the greatest importance to spiritual things. Then, when the storm of Armageddon has finally subsided, when calm has returned and the earth is no longer shaken by the violent expressions of divine wrath against the nations, yes, then we will emerge from wherever God may have kept us alive and rejoice at the dawn of a new day, at the dawn of God's new order. Perhaps then, when we look around us, we will see nothing but rubble and ruins, but that should be a beautiful sight for us. Why? Because we will then be able to say with the deepest conviction: "Thank God that the old order with its wickedness, its cruelty and its rebellion against God has finally disappeared for all time! Now justice will dwell on earth." If we do not allow material things to displace spiritual things from our lives and exert a greater attraction on us, we prove that we are already thinking this way.
