The Twentieth Century - The worst century so far

Writing at a time when the cold-blooded killer of television presenter Jill Dando is still at large, when a man has recently been arrested for planting bombs designed to kill at random and when we receive daily reports of bombing, refugees and ethnic cleansing from the Balkans, one recognises the danger of making a jaundiced assessment of the century soon to be completed.

Murder, violence and war have characterised every century; is this century worse than any other? It is a question worth pondering. Not being tied to a particular millennial view but seeking to believe only what conforms to Scripture I am prepared to argue that this is the worst century the world has ever known and we have no reason to suppose that things will get any better in the next one.

Let me remind you of some of the things that have happened in this century.

• Think of some of the wars that have gone on. The Boer War (1899-1902), Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), The Balkan Wars (1912-13), World War I (1914-18) in which 126,000 died, The Sino-Japanese War (1931-45), The Abyssinian War (1935-36), The Spanish Civil War (1936-39), World War II (1939-45), The Korean War (1950-53), The Algerian War (1956-62), The Vietnam Wars (1946-54, 1964-75), The Falklands War (1982), Arab-Israeli wars (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973).

That is not to mention other wars such as those in Angola, Biafra, Congo, Cuba, East Timor, Ireland, The Lebanon, Liberia, Mexico, Rwanda, the Sudan, Zaire, Zimbabwe, Desert Storm and the various conflicts in Yugoslavia, etc.

• Think of some of the dictators and tyrants of this century. There are obvious ones such as Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy,  Stalin in the former USSR, Mao Zedong in The People's Republic of China and Pol Pot in Cambodia. In each case these men are responsible for over a million deaths.

Think too of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania, Idi Amin Dada, responsible for 90,000 deaths in Uganda, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Enver Hoxha in Albania, who presided over the world's 'First Atheist State'. Not to mention Franco in Spain, Kim Il-Sung in North Korea, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, General Pinochet in Chile and Erich Honneker in East Germany.

• Think of the guerilla warfare and the terrorism that has also been characteristic of the century. Think of organisations such as The Red Brigade, IRA, ANC, PLO, ETA, Hammas, Islamic Jihad, etc, and the violence they and others have been responsible for.
• Think of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of World War II, killing as many as 200,000. Think of the six million who died in the Holocaust. Think of other cases of genocide in this century.
• Think of words such as fascism, communism, national socialism, apartheid and nationalism and the bloodshed and other wickednesses they have spawned. Think of 20th century words like napalm, semtex, atom bomb, hydrogen bomb, chemical warfare, ethnic cleansing, genocide, terrorism and of the violence and mayhem these bring to mind.
• Think of the way abortion and euthanasia have become more and more acceptable in so-called civilised nations.
• Think of the violence, the murder, the rape, the incest, the sexual and physical abuse, the slavery, the torture, the intimidation of minorities that goes on around the world and has gone on over the century. 
• Persecution of Christians has been another aspect of the violence.  Christians were persecuted, sometimes to the point of genocide, by various states, including the Ottomans and their successors (who perpetrated the Hamidian massacres, the Armenian genocide, the Assyrian genocide and the Greek genocide) and by officially atheist states such as the former Soviet Union, Albania, China and North Korea.
• Think of the poverty and the deprivation, the drug abuse and the alcoholism, the prostitution, the prevalence of paedophilia, the militancy of homosexuals and their supporters - all part of every day life for vast numbers of people.
• Whether earthquakes, volcanoes, famines, floods, epidemics of disease, and other such disasters, manmade or not, are increasing is debatable. There certainly seems no evidence to suggest that they are becoming less frequent.
• Finally, the prevalence of lukewarm and nominal Christianity, the false teaching that is found all over the world should surely also give pause.

Would a perusal of Scripture lead us to expect this latest century to be the worst? Many would say 'Yes'. Others are less sure. Obviously in any given situation there is an ebb and flow. Decline is not uniform. We are talking about the general trend, which is surely downwards. But that is what Scripture would lead us to expect. Evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse warns Paul (2 Timothy 3:13) a little yeast eventually works through the whole batch of dough. Even in Paul's day the secret power of lawlessness was already at work. Surely it has continued to advance.

This is only half the story I know but it needs to be said. Many, including Christians, began this century full of false optimism. Even with the coming of The Great War the optimism continued with some - the war to end all wars it was called - for a time. We would be very foolish to enter the next millennium with the same false optimism. In a world of nuclear bombs, growing practical atheism, militant antinomianism and growing wickedness, how unwise that would be.

This article first appeared in Grace Magazine in 1999