Alfred Hitchcock's Mrs. Froy and Vanishing Mankind
A commentary by Randy Stiver
United Church of God Pastor, Columbus and Cambridge, Ohio
Posted October 15, 2009
 I
just finished watching Alfred Hitchcock's humorous thriller "The
Lady Vanishes."
Set in the late 1930s, the plot features Mrs. Froy, a spry little old
British lady spy who tries to get her secret message back to the Foreign
Office.
She enlists the assistance of two young, engaging countrymen, Iris
and Gilbert, as they travel by train from the remote Balkan enclave
of Bandrika. On the train, Mrs. Froy vanishes.
Could mankind also simply vanish?
The recession is bad, but we're okay…right?
Well, maybe! But consider these similarities between the 1930s and
today.
They had the Great Depression. We have a worldwide recession.
Many hope it won't match the Depression in severity. Recently
the government reports our economy is "turning around."
Maybe! Maybe not! The crash of Great Depression launched in the fall
of 1928. The full weight of the stock market crisis didn't hit
until 1932.
Maybe we shouldn't count our eggs just yet!
Furthermore, the Great Depression led to other serious international
problems.
Forms of government now in flux
During the Depression the "two great democracies"—as
Sir Winston Churchill dubbed Britain and America—suffered challenging
political attacks from within. Unwisely, some in the working class were
attracted to Joseph Stalin's pie crust rhetoric about Soviet communism. "Pie
crust" because that form of government actively employed the principle
that promises are like pie crusts, made to be broken.
Next, Adolf Hitler launched his fascist dictatorship in 1933. As that
decade aged, a predictably gullible element of the Anglo-Saxon intelligentsia
hailed Der Führer as a sort of governmental messiah.
Then in 1937, the same year that Hitchcock's film was made, these
two frighteningly similar, yet politically opposing forms of government
faced off—literally—across the parkway in front of the Eiffel
Tower in Paris at the International Exposition. The Soviet and the Nazi
pavilions were designed for each to trumpet the vast superiority of
their respective governmental systems, Communism and National Socialism.
Political steadiness—or instability?
You'd have to live in a sound-proof room to not hear the aggressive
liberal versus conservative political debate during this past year in
the United States (and elsewhere)! In the United States these two factions
are faced off over the future form and shape of the American government
and society.
This heated debate threatens to abdicate the stability
of the decades old mushroom-cloud dynamic in world politics.
Couple this with the constantly increasing, running battle of America
and Europe against the brazen guerilla forces of radical Islam. The
dust of the Twin Towers falling in New York City on September 11 eight
years ago still swirls in the minds of all involved in this terrorist-centered
conflict.
With economic, political and military instability on a worldwide scale—the
end of the 21st century's first decade and the 1930s appear to
be eerily similar!
The Great Depression's baby
What did the "bad economy" give birth to at the end of
the 1930s?
The depressing answer: World War II, with casualty estimates as high
as 70 million men, women and children.
Could World War II have been any worse? Oh yes, it could have been
fought with thermal nuclear and chemical-biological weapons from start
to finish!
Thankfully, nobody knew how to do that in the 1930s.
Fat cities
What if our "bad economy" ignites the modern fireworks
of another world war?
Our world is considerably more urbanized than the largely rural 1930s.
Our cities are much fatter targets. So casualty rates from nuclear or
bio-chemical warfare in the 21st century would be enormous. They would
far surpass the 70 million who vanished by the time the Nagasaki fallout
exacted its toll in 1945.
These depressing possibilities are at stake in today's national
and international problems!
Has hope vanished?
Can the U.S., European and other governments find a way to exit our
modern economic, political and military crises peacefully? How well
did they do in the past?
We need a happy parallel with Hitchcock's spritely spy in "The
Vanishing Lady." She was rescued and reappeared at the British
Foreign Office with her secret message.
Mercifully, we have somebody powerful who can prevent mankind from
vanishing. Jesus Christ has forecast His own intervention in humanity's
mess: "And except those days were shortened, no flesh would be
saved; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened" (Matthew
24:22).
Mankind will suffer, but not vanish.
  Word
to the wise: you need to find out who those "elect" are.
The quickest, surest way to do that is to download, read online or request
two of our free booklets, The
Church Jesus Built and God's
Holy Day Plan: The Promise of Hope for All Mankind.
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