Is The Dawn of Armageddon Upon Us?
Darren Stansbury
September 25, 2005
In light of the destruction wrought by the Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita tag team, a Yahoo group member rhetorically asked in a group e-mail whether the world is coming to an end. I'm not sure I believe that current events signal that Armageddon is approaching. Evil and calamity have always existed--even in Heaven, according to the Biblical story of the archangel Lucifer leading a rebellion against God.
The world has never had a shortage of tyranny, wars, plagues, famine, calamity, riots, hatred, persecution, crime, inhumanity, adultery, greed, depravity, occultism, barbarism and every other baneful thing you can name. For ages hanging, drowning, burning, stoning and decapitation were common methods of execution. In many ways, the world of today is actually better and safer than it was long ago. Those who think The End is near should consider the following:
The world has never had a shortage of tyranny, wars, plagues, famine, calamity, riots, hatred, persecution, crime, inhumanity, adultery, greed, depravity, occultism, barbarism and every other baneful thing you can name. For ages hanging, drowning, burning, stoning and decapitation were common methods of execution. In many ways, the world of today is actually better and safer than it was long ago. Those who think The End is near should consider the following:
- Murdering someone's relative to avenge his
murder of yours, in compliance
with the Code of Hammurabi
- City-states warring against each other
- Expanionism and imperialism
- Conquerors invading countries then raping,
killing, torching and looting therein
- Being sick or injured without the
availability of modern medicine
- Being banished, tortured or killed for your
religious or spiritual beliefs or lack
thereof
- Blood sacrifices
- Puritanism
- The Puritans' Salem witch trials
- Slavery here and elsewhere
- The 3/5 Compromise
- The American Civil War
- Riots
- Racial murders, lynchings and bombings
- The Tuskegee Experiment
- The high divorce rate--in the 1950s
- Vigilante justice
- "Jim Crow" laws
- Segregation
- Separate and unequal facilities
- Being denied hospital admission because of
your race
- Being conscribed to poverty and menial work
by a social caste system
- So many tyrants--King Herod (ordered every
newborn child murdered after hearing of
Christ's birth, ordered murders to follow
his death so people would mourn instead of
celebrate after he died), Nebuchadnezzar
(and his "Fiery Furnace"), Tiberius (swam
nude and had children he called "minnows"
nibble on him), Caligula, Pol Pot, Ivan The
Terrible, Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, etc.
Vlad The Impaler, the inspiration for
Dracula who killed people, drank their
blood and impaled their heads on stakes,
and also nailed a hat onto the head of a
visitor who dared to enter his home
without removing it
- The French Reign of Terror
- The Holy Crusades
- Marquis de Sade
- Lizzie Borden
- Molly Hatchet
- Ed Gein, the inspiration for Psycho.
- Jack the Ripper
- The medieval and early Renaissance plague
epidemics
- Ancient Rome's gladiators killing each
other in arenas as a spectator sport
- Being dinner for some ruler's lions
- The eruption of Mount Vesuvius that
destroyed ancient Rome
- The Holocaust
- The Japanese army's atrocities against the
Chinese and Koreans in World War II
- The development and use of the atomic bomb
- When the United States had sweat shops and
little or no worker rights
- That Satan is no more powerful than he
ever was.
I'm sure others can think of many other ways the world is better today. Earlier times likely seemed like Armageddon to people then. Considering bad behavior, I have to wonder whether we're more civilized now or just subject to more or better laws. How would many behave even in today's United States if they legally could? Also, is the past really that?
The clergy say God is on allegorical time--not the watch, clock or calendar time (chronological time). In His view eons can count as one day. So, maybe what we consider "the past" is actually the present. God doesn't follow chronological time and nor does human nature.
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