What a beautiful insightful reply Deeje! We are the ones shouting ‘I did it MY way”. Enter WW1 and WW2. And we say we don’t need God’s ways. Enter drug addiction, suicide, domestic violence, rape, pollution, dictatorships, oppression, crime levels through the roof, - but we are doing just fine - disease, overpopulation, skyrocketing of depression and mental illnesses but yep, we have this wonderful glorious material civilisation full of consumerism and unemployment and poverty. Terrorism and gun violence rampant. Not to mention racism and its riots burning cities and in sport and universal corruption in governments worldwide, But we still know better don’t we?
For us Paul's words ring true....
"If, in fact, the good news we declare is veiled, it is veiled among those who are perishing, 4 among whom the god of this system of things has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, so that the illumination of the glorious good news about the Christ, who is the image of God, might not shine through."
Its a special kind of blindness, isn't it? One that blinds the mind, not allowing anything from the senses to be processed. We believe that the god of this world was identified by Jesus. (1 John 5:19) The one who masqueraded as the serpent in Eden wanted to be worshipped as a god himself. He even tried to get Jesus to worship him.....but he was a loser from the beginning because the true God was going to give him, and all who followed him "enough rope"......can you see the gallows?
I believe any person with a shred of common sense can see clearly that our ways are only bringing more misery upon ourselves and what you have so intelligently pointed out is pure truth, yet we will continue to go our own way until it becomes so unbearable that I believe the pendulum will fully swing back to God and a virtuous unselfish society will be born. But God has left us alone to learn this lesson for ourselves the hard way because we refused to put our trust in Him but believed we could do it better. Have we?
Unfortunately, this is not how the story ends according to the Bible. The world was robbed of God's rulership by the disobedience of our first parents, and nothing done by man will ever get it back. Man has proven beyond a shadow of doubt that he lacks the ability to solve the problems that he himself has created. God will step in and actively remove from existence all who deny him and his son in their wise choice to allow mankind to prove who and what they are with no interference from him. At the end of this system of things, the wicked are forcibly removed to make way for a "new world of righteousness".....man will not in any way be involved in that eviction...Jesus and his angelic forces will do the job.
Matthew 25:31-33...
“When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit down on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 And he will put the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left.
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right: ‘Come, you who have been blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the founding of the world. . . . .“Then he will say to those on his left: ‘Go away from me, you who have been cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels."
The 'sheep and the goats' come to a dramatic parting of the ways, and this was prophesied in the book of Daniel as a result of God's Kingdom "crushing" all other kingdoms out of existence and replacing them as the world's only ruling authority. (Daniel 2:44)
All those in opposition to God's Kingdom will have no part in it. It will re-establish God's rulership over the earth and bring us back to what we lost in Eden. (Isaiah 55:11) The future then will be beyond our wildest imagination. We have never experienced that kind of rule by God. It will be truly awe inspiring to have the earth and creation back to what God intended at the start.