"How can it have come to pass, that in comparatively so short a time, it should be possible for all the world to be ready to yield an almost idolatrous obedience to one man?"
Unconsciously to himself his pace slackened, it was as though his mind had willed to have time to review things that should answer his question, before he should reach his rooms, and the consideration should be broken into.
"There was first," he mused "that gradual falling away from the Truth of God, for a full half of the nineteenth century—very gradual, very slow, and very subtle at first, but growing bolder each year, until, in the early part of the first decade of the twentieth century, men calling themselves Christians, taking the salaries of Christian ministers, openly denied every fundamental truth of the Bible—Sin, the Fall, The Atonement, The Resurrection, the Immaculate Birth of Christ, His Deity, the Personality of Satan, the Personality of The Holy Spirit, and everything else in God's word which clashed with the flesh of their unregenerate lives.
"Then there was the giving heed to seducing spirits and teachings of demons (demonology, called spiritism) 'forbidding to marry' (doctrine of Lust, known as 'Free Love.')
"Great forces were at work during the latter part of the nineteenth century, and more especially in the early part of the twentieth, all of which were preparing the way for the Anti-christ.
"What blinded intellects called 'Progress,' was really Apostasy. And Scientists, Materialists, and Humanists, and the world's teachers were all looking for some great outstanding genius, some super-man.
"The Believing Church, before the 'Rapture,' had its Hope, a Hope given by God of A Man who should head all things up in Himself, and clothe His Church with His own glory. And that Man came, the Man Christ Jesus, the Lord of Glory. And all the time the world had its hope, and just as Christ, the Hope of the Church, said 'I will come again,' so He also said, as regards the world's hope, 'Another shall come in his own name,' and now—"
George Bullen paused in his walking and looked back to where the laudatory shouts of the deluded multitude, still rose around Apleon.
"And now," he continued, "that other has come, come in his own name, and the world has received him. As late as nineteen hundred and eight, one of the world's so-called 'great thinkers,' a D.D., too, said:
"'We still wait for The Genius who shall state our fundamental faith in accordance with that insight which the modern man has gained.'