Truly, the “pangs of distress” Jesus foretold have become greater as the “last days” move toward their climax.

During and after World War II widespread food shortages added to the distress. Shortly after the war, Look magazine in its June 11, 1946, issue observed: “A fourth of the world is starving today. Tomorrow will even be worse. Famine over most of the world now is more terrible than most of us can imagine. . . . There are now more people hunting desperately for food than at any other time in history.”

More recently, the book entitled “Famine—1975!” by William and Paul Paddock said concerning today’s food shortages, on pages 52, 55 and 61: “Hunger is rampant throughout country after country, continent after continent around the undeveloped belt of the tropics and subtropics. Today’s crisis can move in only one direction—toward catastrophe. Today hungry nations; tomorrow starving nations. . . . By 1975 civil disorder, anarchy, military dictatorships, runaway inflation, transportation breakdowns and chaotic unrest will be the order of the day in many of the hungry nations.”

Jesus also foretold the “increasing of lawlessness” as a mark of the “last days.” (Matt. 24:12) And God inspired the apostle Paul to add: “In the last days . . . men will be lovers of themselves, . . . disobedient to parents, . . . without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, . . . lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, . . . wicked men and impostors will advance from bad to worse.” (2 Tim. 3:1-5, 13) These are the conditions that have developed at an explosive rate since 1914! You have seen them with your own eyes, have you not?

Just look around. Throughout the world lawlessness is running wild. Said one of Britain’s leading lawyers, Lord Shawcross: “Almost everywhere, including Soviet Russia, there appears to be an increase in crime, and particularly, alas, in juvenile crime. . . . Nor are our statistics exaggerated. On the contrary, the figure of crimes known to the police probably constitutes only a small proportion of those not discovered, or, for one reason or another, not reported to the police.”a

From nation after nation come reports such as the following: “A wave of crime and rioting is sweeping across the United States . . . In many cities, women are afraid to go out after dark. And they have good reason. Rapes, assaults, sadistic outbursts of senseless violence are on the rise. Crimes often seem to be committed out of sheer savagery . . . Respect for law and order is declining.”b

As another feature of the “last days,” Jesus spoke of great confusion and fear among the nations and their leaders. He foretold: “On the earth anguish of nations, not knowing the way out . . . men become faint out of fear and expectation of the things coming upon the inhabited earth.”—Luke 21:25, 26.

The fulfillment of this prophecy, too, is evident in the news of our time. U.S. News & World Report of November 27, 1967, page 62, said: “Is the world in greater tumult than before World War II? No doubt. Shooting troubles, on the average, erupt once a month. Counting out real wars like Korea and Vietnam, the record still shows over 300 revolutions, coups, uprisings, rebellions and insurrections world-wide since the end of World War II.”

Added to all these things is the fear of being destroyed by the huge supply of nuclear weapons some nations possess. Wrote the noted news editor David Lawrence: “The fact is that today the biggest single emotion which dominates our lives is fear. It is fear of war, fear of nuclear holocausts, and fear of surprise attack that may leave vast areas of the world devastated and strewn with tens of millions of dead.”c As former United States Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara said: “More than 120 million Americans would die in the event of a Soviet missile attack . . . If it were to include urban centers, . . . the death toll would be 149 million.”d It is just as Jesus foretold: mankind is fearful and the nations are in anguish.

All the foretold marks of the “last days,” are here. They prove beyond a doubt that we have been in the “last days” since 1914. Hence it was in that year that God’s heavenly kingdom came to power!—Rev. 11:17, 18.

It is true that in past generations there were periods marked by violence and much immoral conduct. The decline of the Roman Empire is an example. But never before in human history have all the conditions specified by Jesus been observed in the same generation. And never before have they existed at the same time in every nation of the earth. Today we live, not merely in the last days of one political empire, but in the “last days” of the entire wicked system controlled by Satan.

1914 a Marked Year

YEARS in advance Bible scholars realized that 1914 was to be a year of great significance. Bible chronology specifically points to that year,a and careful students of God’s Word knew that. They expected great changes to take place. In fact, they publicly pointed forward to the significance of the date 1914.

The August 30, 1914, issue of the secular publication called “The World” observed: “The terrific war outbreak in Europe has fulfilled an extraordinary prophecy. . . . ‘Look out for 1914!’ has been the cry of the hundreds of traveling evangelists who . . . have gone up and down the country enunciating the doctrine that ‘the Kingdom of God is at hand’.”

The facts of history confirm that 1914 was, indeed, a marked year. The London Evening Star of August 4, 1960, commented that World War I “tore the whole world’s political setup apart. Nothing could ever be the same again. . . . some historian in the next century may well conclude that the day the world went mad was August 4, 1914.”

In 1954, as the fortieth anniversary of that marked year approached, the historian H. R. Trevor-Roper said of the great change 1914 made: “It is instructive to