World News and Trends: Riots erupt across the globe
This may be the year of the riot.
Anarchists across the world have united in street conflagrations. Annual May Day celebrations deteriorated into fistfights. Macedonian Slavs rioted over NATO peace deals. On the island of Jamaica 23 died in riots. Violent protesters marred the EU summit in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Anticapitalist radicals tried to ruin the G8 meetings in Genoa. Three former mill towns in Lancashire, England, sustained three nights of race-inspired rioting. Riots occurred on the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus. In Belfast 23 police officers were hurt in riots.
Much has been written about the human right to protest peacefully, but what begins as a peaceful demonstration often winds up as an old-fashioned riot, sometimes with severe injuries to rioters and police. Professional troublemakers travel the globe to protest against capitalism and other imagined evils.
A British journalist remarked on the enjoyment rioters seem to gain from bloody confrontations. Obviously, human nature has a violent downside. It had become so pronounced in the pre-Flood world of Noah that "the earth was filled with violence" (Genesis 6:11, 13). Much later Jesus Christ said that, just as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man (Matthew 24:37). Are our crimes and violence signs that we may be in the end time? (Sources: The Times, The Observer [London].)
An Article from:
Good News Magazine: September - October 2001
Course Content
John Ross Schroeder
John died on March 8, 2014, in Oxford, England, four days after suffering cardiac arrest while returning home from a press event in London. John was 77 and still going strong.
Some of John's work for The Good News appeared under his byline, but much didn't. He wrote more than a thousand articles over the years, but also wrote the Questions and Answers section of the magazine, compiled our Letters From Our Readers, and wrote many of the items in the Current Events and Trends section. He also contributed greatly to a number of our study guides and Bible Study Course lessons. His writing has touched the lives of literally millions of people over the years.
John traveled widely over the years as an accredited journalist, especially in Europe. His knowledge of European and Middle East history added a great deal to his articles on history and Bible prophecy.
In his later years he also pastored congregations in Northern Ireland and East Sussex, and that experience added another dimension to his writing. He and his wife Jan were an effective team in our British Isles office near their home.
John was a humble servant who dedicated his life to sharing the gospel—the good news—of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God to all the world, and his work was known to readers in nearly every country of the world.
Melvin Rhodes
Melvin Rhodes is a member of the United Church of God congregation in Lansing, Michigan.
