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Is the World out of Control or Not?
- Thread starter Deeje
- Start date
I find the world of Noah's day was violent, but has today's immorality declined _________
Scripture does Not teach ' the sky is falling ' but that there is a new earth, or new earthly society coming.
What ends is 'a world of wickedness' because God will bring to ruin those ruining Earth as per Revelation 11:18 B
There is an old adage saying it is darkest before the dawn.
So, the coming great tribulation of Revelation 7:14 is the 'dark before the dawn', or the coming dawning light of Jesus' coming 1,000-year governmental rule over Earth when it begins.
Not wanting Earth to end, but that everyone should know we are all invited to pray the invitation of Revelation 22:20 for Jesus to come !
Come and bring the benefit of ' healing ' to earth's nations as described at Revelation 22:2 and Isaiah 35th chapter.
Unless, of course...
The hurricane you are predicting is a figment of your egotistical self delusions that you are a better meteorologist than trained professionals. And the people that believe you barricade themselves in their basements. And then the earthquake that has been predicted by people better educated than you are hits. And those people who believed you are buried under the rubble of their home and it catches fire.
Then it looks a lot more like delusions of grandeur, resulting in ugly deaths, than love.
That's what I see going on in the world right now. Religionists talking about a disaster that they've been predicting for centuries, but hasn't happened. While ignoring the looming catastrophe that really faces the human race.
I believe that a confluence of environmental degradation, resource depletion, population growth, and increasingly lethal weapons has created the likelihood that the human race will destroy life as we know it. But religious folks keep going on about Satan and ancient predictions, and ignoring the real problems. Teaching that there is a God who will save the people that agree with them about the right interpretation of the right Scripture.
BS
I see this all the time. People who teach useless religious answers to real issues aren't about love. They're egotistical as hell.
Tom
Yes, there is that.
But teaching others the way to develop strong relationships by revealing what real love is (1 Corinthians 13:4:8); how to show humility (Philippians 2:3-4); in fact, what true worship is really about (James 1:27); and the help we receive in so doing (Galatians 5:22-23)....it's not useless. Applying it makes us better people than we were before.
The biblical Last Days are now. Matthew 24:14 is being fulfilled, now. (Do you know what the "Good News of the Kingdom" is? You are not alone. Neither has Christendom, for centuries.) The prophecies of Daniel 12 are reaching a climax, today. Isaiah 2:2-4 is happening, now.
Are you aware how the world has drastically changed, since 1914? Many historians and world leaders have:
“Ever since 1914, everybody conscious of trends in the world has been deeply troubled by what has seemed like a fated and predetermined march toward ever greater disaster. Many serious people have come to feel that nothing can be done to avert the plunge towards ruin.”—Bertrand Russell, The New York Times Magazine, September 27, 1953.
The London Evening Star commented that the conflict “tore the whole world’s political setup apart. Nothing could ever be the same again. If we all get the nuclear madness out of our systems and the human race survives, some historian in the next century may well conclude that the day the world went mad was August 4, 1914.”–London Evening Star, quoted in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 5, 1960, and The Seattle Times, August 4, 1960, p. 5.
“Half a century has gone by, yet the mark that the tragedy of the Great War [World War I, which started in 1914] left on the body and soul of the nations has not faded . . . The physical and moral magnitude of this ordeal was such that nothing left was the same as before. Society in its entirety: systems of government, national borders, laws, armed forces, interstate relations, but also ideologies, family life, fortunes, positions, personal relations—everything was changed from top to bottom. . . . Humanity finally lost its balance, never to recover it to this day.”—General Charles de Gaulle, speaking in 1968 (Le Monde, Nov. 12, 1968, p. 9).
“The last completely ‘normal’ year in history was 1913, the year before World War I began.”—Editorial in the Times-Herald, Washington, D.C., March 13, 1949.
“Looking back from the vantage point of the present we see clearly today that the outbreak of World War I ushered in a twentieth-century ‘Time of Troubles’—in the expressive term of the British historian Arnold Toynbee—from which our civilization has by no means yet emerged. Directly or indirectly all the convulsions of the last half century stem back to 1914.”—The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order (New York, 1963), Edmond Taylor, p. 16.
No previous war in history compared with it. It was so different that historians of that time called it The Great War.
Of it, an encyclopedia states: “World War I took the lives of twice as many men as all major wars from 1790 to 1913 put together.” It noted that total military casualties were over 37,000,000, and added: “The number of civilian deaths in areas of actual war totaled about 5,000,000. Starvation, disease, and exposure accounted for about 80 of every 100 of these civilian deaths. Spanish influenza, which some persons blamed on the war, caused tens of millions of other deaths.–The World Book Encyclopedia, 1966, Vol. 20, p. 377.
World War! Pestilences! Food shortages!
“Everything would get better and better. This was the world I was born in. . . . Suddenly, unexpectedly, one morning in 1914 the whole thing came to an end.”—British statesman Harold Macmillan, The New York Times, November 23, 1980.
“Increasingly, the 75-year period from 1914 to 1989, covering two world wars and the cold war, is being seen by historians as a single, discrete epoch, a time apart in which much of the world was fighting war, recovering from war or preparing for war.”—The New York Times, May 7, 1995.
“The whole world really blew up about World War I and we still don’t know why. Before then, men thought that utopia was in sight. There was peace and prosperity. Then everything blew up. We’ve been in a state of suspended animation ever since . . . More people have been killed in this century than in all of history.”—Dr. Walker Percy, American Medical News, November 21, 1977.
“It is indeed the year 1914 rather than that of Hiroshima which marks the turning point in our time, for by now we can see that . . . it was the first world war that ushered in the era of confused transition in the midst of which we are floundering.”—Dr. René Albrecht-Carrié, Barnard College, The Scientific Monthly, July 1951.
“In 1914 the world lost a coherence which it has not managed to recapture since. . . . This has been a time of extraordinary disorder and violence, both across national frontiers and within them.”—The Economist, London, August 4, 1979.
“World War I and its aftermath led to the greatest economic depression in history during the early 1930’s. The consequences of the war and the problems of adjustment to peace led to unrest in almost every nation.”–The World Book Encyclopedia (1966, Vol. 20) on page 379 under its heading “World War I”
Author Maurice Genevoix, who was a military officer during that war, said of it: “Everyone agrees in recognizing that in the whole history of mankind, few dates have had the importance of August 2, 1914. First Europe and soon after almost all humanity found themselves plunged into a dreadful event. Conventions, agreements, moral laws, all the foundations shook; from one day to the next, everything was called into question. The event was to exceed both instinctive forebodings and reasonable anticipations. Enormous, chaotic, monstrous, it still drags us in its wake.”—Maurice Genevoix, member of the Académie Française, quoted in the book Promise of Greatness (1968).
“The modern era . . . began in 1914, and no one knows when or how it will end. . . . It could end in mass annihilation.”—The Seattle Times, January 1, 1959.
“In its scope, its violence, and above all, in its totality, it established a precedent. World War I ushered in the century of Total War, of—in the first full sense of the term—global war. . . .Never before 1914-1918 had a war absorbed so much of the total resources of so many combatants and covered so large a part of the earth. Never had so many nations been involved. Never had the slaughter been so comprehensive and indiscriminate.”–World War I, by H.W. Baldwin, pages 1,2
The World Book Encyclopedia noted that the number of soldiers killed and wounded was over 37,000,000, and added:
“The number of civilian deaths in areas of actual war totaled about 5,000,000. Starvation, disease, and exposure accounted for about 80 of every 100 of these civilian deaths. Spanish influenza, which some persons blamed on the war, caused tens of millions of other deaths.”—1966 edition, Vol. 20, p. 377.
More than 50 years after 1914, German statesman Konrad Adenauer wrote: “Security and quiet have disappeared from the lives of men since 1914.”—The West Parker, Cleveland, Ohio, January 20, 1966.
“Some historians believe that the 20th century will be seen as a time of unparalleled savagery,” notes The New York Times.
An article in The Washington Post concurs: “Our 20th-century wars have been ‘total wars’ against combatants and civilians alike,” it says. “The casualties, including the genocide of the Jews, are measured in the tens of millions. The barbarian wars of centuries past were alley fights in comparison.” Civil insurrections have added to the carnage. How many have died? “The ‘megadeaths’ since 1914, by an estimate of Zbigniew Brzezinski, have totaled 197 million, ‘the equivalent of more than one in ten of the total world population in 1900,’” says the Post. It adds that it is an “indisputable fact that terrorism and wanton killing are embedded deeply in the culture of this century” and that “no political or economic system has so far in this century pacified or satisfied the restless millions.”
As regards economic consequences, Ashby Bladen, a senior vice president of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, writes: “Before 1914 the monetary and the financial systems were compatible. . . . If one takes August 1914 as marking the dividing line between them, the contrasts between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries are striking. In many aspects of human affairs there has been a complete reversal of trend. . . . One major reason was the severance of the linkage between the financial system and money with intrinsic value that began in 1914. . . . The breaking of the linkage was a momentous event. . . . 1914 marked a radical, and in the end catastrophic, transformation of that system.”
“The 19th century—defined as a set of beliefs, assumptions, attitudes and morals—did not end on Jan. 1, 1901,” wrote columnist Charley Reese. “It ended in 1914. That’s also when the 20th century, defined the same way, began.”
Reese explained: “Virtually all of the conflicts that we have been concerned with all of our lives stemmed from that [first world] war. . . . It destroyed 19th century optimism and created the 20th century versions of hedonism, cynicism, anxiety, angst and nihilism.”
-- Source: Heaven.net reply to 1914
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Cherry picking is not a wise strategy. You forgot the part of Matthew 24 that tell us that this is a failed prophecy:
"34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled."
osgart
Nothing my eye, Something for sure
Spin the wheel, and guess right about Scripture or else doom awaits. Hahaha! Lol.
Its not exactly simple arithmetic 2+2 stuff trying to figure out Bible.
It takes diligence. Diligence or doom.
Simple honesty i thought would suffice.
But we are to study to see if these things are so. Know archaeology, history, science true, and compare scripture with scripture. And take the bible as literal history, and then salvation is at your door, and saying yes to Jesus averts the doom.
And everyone who missed the message will get their opportunity with it. But those unbelieving that its even real having known of Scripture, doom awaits.
Is that about right?
Its not exactly simple arithmetic 2+2 stuff trying to figure out Bible.
It takes diligence. Diligence or doom.
Simple honesty i thought would suffice.
But we are to study to see if these things are so. Know archaeology, history, science true, and compare scripture with scripture. And take the bible as literal history, and then salvation is at your door, and saying yes to Jesus averts the doom.
And everyone who missed the message will get their opportunity with it. But those unbelieving that its even real having known of Scripture, doom awaits.
Is that about right?
What generation? Certainly not his.
Taking a verse out of context, is not a wise strategy, either.
Do you understand the significance of verse 3, the prelude to Jesus' prophecy? What is His "parousia"?
If it's His 'coming', wouldn't people just see him? Why are "signs" needed?
You answer these questions accurately, then maybe I'll discuss it with you....though I really doubt you're interested. It's quite evident that you don't think there's anything to learn.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Of course his. Read it in context.
Cooky
Veteran Member
Exactly. The Catholic Church sees these things as already having been completed at the destruction of the second temple. The rebellion started during the year 60, but events led up to it, which matches "that generation's lifetime".
...Now, as far as the end. We are left with this:
Matthew 25:13
~and~
1 Thessalonians 5:2
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Cooky
Veteran Member
You know what's funny to me..? Is that the humans have only existed for 200,000 years. That's a blink of an eye!
In comparison, dinosaurs were on Earth for between 165 and 177 million years... Chew on that for a minute!
...I think we have a very, very, very, very, very, very long time to go. And we will evolve. And we will likely live longer than the dinosaurs did.
In comparison, dinosaurs were on Earth for between 165 and 177 million years... Chew on that for a minute!
...I think we have a very, very, very, very, very, very long time to go. And we will evolve. And we will likely live longer than the dinosaurs did.
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Well, that is how long dinosaurs as a class were around. But that is more comparable to the class of mammals. Individual dinosaur species didn't last nearly that long, nor do individual species of mammals.
Mammal species average only a couple million years in duration, although some last longer (and many last shorter). The species leading up to humans don't seem to hit that average, though, with the average for them closer to 1 million years.
So, if humans last the near-term average of our ancestors, we might expect another 800,000 years. But, of course, we could be one of those species with a shorter lifetime.
Cooky
Veteran Member
Even if that's true, we haven't even broken past the halfway point. Also, with our intelligence, it is possible that we could live much longer.
...All we need to do is learn to control our environment, rather than our environment controlling us. And in time, we will do that.
In the end, we may be the longest living species. And we have enough time to go extra-terrestrial.
When was the world in control?
They were pleasant. However, nice people naively handing you a piece of spoiled meat doesn't somehow make the meat healthy. The point was that are they selling God based on love, or fear? If it's selling God on fear, then it isn't ultimately healthy.
First of all, doom and gloom exist around every corner, to those who are focused on that. Religious folks throughout the ages have seen the apocalypse right around the corner in each generation spanning thousands of years. They too read all the signs, saw all the warnings, signalled the alarms, called the faithful to the ark, and life went on anyway.
My point is, that is not the focus, except for those who are fearful of life and seeking escape. Seeking escape, is not finding Truth. It's avoiding it, and hiding it behind reading the signs of the time, hoping the end will come quickly and they will not have to face the true fear which is what lays in their heart.
This is just a justification for being preoccupied with fear. Their crying the sky is falling, is a personal project to avoid facing Truth. Trying to save others, is itself a projected avoidance of dealing with one's own stuff. "If I can save them, then I did the right thing and I'm saved."
Think of it in terms of someone going to therapy who learns a few things about how things work in themselves, and they get a little help for themselves and feel better now. Now they have a little bit of knowledge they didn't before, and suddenly, they see how everyone else needs to be fixed and off they go being the world's savior, holding in their minds that they are now enlightened, they've been fixed and now can fix others. What all this is however, is a form of subtle avoidance of doing the real work that lays yet ahead for them in fully surrendering all their dark corners of their shadow selves.
In other words, their "love" in trying to save others, is not truly genuine. It may seem like being compassionate, on the surface, but it truly isn't about helping others, yet. When it does become about others, truly, then it's not fear that you sell to save them. It's simple, unspoken, Love, which does. And a simple flower in the field speaks that, without words, and without fear.
You do realize people have claimed these are being fulfilled in their time they lived over the past 2000 years? What makes you believing this any different than say you saying this in the year 1326?
And what is that appropriate action? Be specific.
Cooky
Veteran Member
Some people look back to the uptight 30's, 40's and 50's, and think that's how it always was. But actually, that 30 year period was the exception in human history.
...We've returned to our normal selves since then.
But even then, we see all the atrocities that occurred with our obsessions over 'control'. A holocaust even occurred within that time of mass control, along with communist manifestos and genocides galore!
Since there is both a ' minor ' and a MAJOR fulfillment to Matthew 24:21-22, then who is it that forgot about verse 21 because the ' great tribulation ' of Revelation 7:14 did Not happen in the first century.
Today is the day, or time frame of Luke 17:28 being fulfilled in front of our eyes.
Matthew 24:27 did Not happen in the first century, but Revelation chapter 6 is for our day.
Thus, the ' modern ' tribulation - Matthew 24:29 - bridges from a long period of time since Jesus' day.
The ' immediately ' of verse 29 is meaning immediate in connection to Matthew 24:21 and Revelation 7:14.
Also, Matthew 25:31-33,37,40's coming ' time of separating ' is Not a failed prophecy.
I find ' doom ' is for the wicked - Psalms 92:7. ' Doom ' for those bringing ruin to Earth - Revelation 11:18 B.
So, as Adam and Eve rebelled against what they knew, doom (everlasting destruction) awaited them.
Mankind has his ' doom-and-gloom ' Doom's Day Clock with its hands set close to striking the dark midnight hour.
Whereas, Scripture has a Millennial New Day dawning to soon begin, as per Revelation 22:2.
So, people choose to be figurative humble ' sheep ' or haughty ' goats ' as found at Matthew 25:31-33,37,40.
If you saw someone's house on fire warning them is healthy.
In a sense this world is on ' fire ' and people need to be warned or forearmed about a 'great tribulation' coming.
Man warns with ' fear ' with his use of his 'doom-and-gloom' Doom's Day Clock nearing the dark midnight hour.
Whereas, Scripture teaches to ' endure ' as per Matthew 24:13-14. ( verse 14 is appropriate action, - Acts 1:8 )
Endure in being a good neighborly Samaritan in showing practical love to even strangers at their time of distress.
Wrong claims never makes the Bible as wrong, but merely makes the wrong claims as being wrong.
The fulfillment of Revelation chapter 6 is connected to our day.
We see three (3) literal things happening or increasing as per Revelation 6:8
1) the sword
2) the hunger
3) the attacks by wild animals
All of this leading up to the 'great tribulation' of Revelation 7:14.
Thankfully there is a great amount of people from 'all nations' saved/delivered/rescued as per Revelation 7:9-10