Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Valerie Cullers 25 Comments

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When I think of change, David Bowie’s song “Changes “comes to mind. The chorus is especially catchy and is expressive of time and the changes we all experience. Which generation would you say has experienced the most technological change throughout history? When I think about it, I believe it is the generation that was born at the beginning of the twentieth century. 

Before the dawn of the twentieth century, men primarily travelled on horseback. They may or may have not had indoor plumbing and they had few machines to help them in their daily lives. Life was still very labor intensive, for both men and women, and their lifespan was considerably shorter than it is today. They were old by the time they reached sixty, if they made it that far at all.

Think about the changes the generation born around 1900 saw during their lifetimes: automobiles, airplanes, indoor plumbing, electricity, washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, the atomic bomb, telephones, jets, rockets, satellites, televisions, computers, the lunar landing, and list goes on. They spent their lives adapting to more and more change and by the time they shuffled off this mortal coil, they had adapted to several stages of the burgeoning technological revolution.

When they looked back to what life was like when they were children or even young adults, they must have shaken their heads at what they had seen and experienced. Little did they know that the time they were living in had been predicted in the Bible. The prophet Daniel had several visions and was given prophecies concerning the end times, but he was told by an angel to “shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro and knowledge would increase.”

If that isn’t an apt description of the last one hundred and twenty years, I don’t know what is. The technological revolution has brought about an ability to travel to any part of the earth in a matter of hours. In 2017, there were 102,465 flights per day in the world; think about how many more there are today. Knowledge has increased and continues to increase at an exponential rate. What’s interesting about the knowledge explosion are the statistics. To quote David Russell Schilling, When “Buckminster Fuller created the Knowledge Doubling Curve; he noticed that until 1900 human knowledge doubled approximately every century. By the end of World War II, knowledge was doubling every 25 years. Today things are not as simple as different types of knowledge have different rates of growth. For example, nanotechnology knowledge is doubling every two years and clinical knowledge every 18 months. But on the average human knowledge is doubling every 13 months. According to IBM, the build out of the “internet of things” will lead to knowledge doubling every 12 hours.”

When I read the angel’s description of the time of the end, I would say we are definitely living in the end times. How does that strike you?

25 thoughts on “Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes”

  4. And I’ll bet you used technology to Google those facts you shared with us. I was just thinking of that the other day, how we had to look things up in an encyclopedia, and get a new set of books each year with the update info. Wow! Things have changed!

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  5. Wow, Valerie, I had not noticed that tiny part of the prophecy in Daniel. But when you apply it to today’s knowledge, there is no doubt about it. We are approaching the end. May we pray for many others to see Christ and turn to Him before it’s too late!

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    • In the Bible, the prophets speak of a time on the earth before the Lord returns. There will be catastrophic judgments on the earth…hence the name Tribulation. That is a seven year period of sorrow and suffering on the earth. The times leading up to that specific time are called the end times. There has been a societal shift in the past seventy years and a technological shift in the past one hundred and twenty years. There will be a new era when Christ will rule and reign on the earth, but before that there will be catastrophic judgments on the earth.

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      • Hello Valerie, thank you for your comprehensive explanation. I recall these excerpts from the bible (a long time ago). It was more a rhetorical question I was posing. Last Days – not meaning the ‘end’ for us (humanity), but as you iterate, the end of this era and the beginning of a new era. It seems my understanding of ‘end days’ was more a literal one. I appreciate your openness.

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      • Thank you so much for your thoughts on the matter! I don’t claim to know everything, I just give you my opinion from how I see it through my study of the Word. Blessings to you

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  8. Although we may differ on our views of eschatology, I believe we can all echo the words of Revelation 22:20 “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” One thing is for certain, every day is a day closer to our Lord’s return!

    Maranatha!
    ❤️carmen

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  10. The Lord is using this technology and much of that collected knowledge in these last days to get out his gospel message to the ends of the earth, too. Such as, when I write out my devotions each day, I can use Biblegateway.com to get the passage of scripture and all I have to do is cut and paste. I can use biblehub.com to look at the Greek to English translation of the individual words in scripture, and I can look at what various commentators thought the scriptures were saying, too.

    And, I can do word searches in the Bible if I want to find other verses with similar messages, or I can Google words to a scripture verse that I remember parts of and it finds it for me. Or, if a song is in my head (one is every day), and it is not one the Lord has given me to write, I can Google the lyrics or look the song up on YouTube so I can link to it, too, so that people can hear it. And, there are dictionaries and thesauruses I can use so that I make sure I use the correct words or so that I don’t keep saying the same words over and over again, but I can find other words that say the same thing.

    And, I can read the news and see what they are reporting is going on in the world so that I am up to date on world events. And, I can read articles by other authors and other blogs which help me to get a broader perspective on various subjects, as well as we can get statistics, too. So, much of this vastness of knowledge is being put to good use to get the gospel to the ends of the earth, which needs to happen first, and then the end will come, says scripture.

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    • I agree with you. Technology has made it easier to research the Word and use it to spread the gospel. People groups are receiving it in their native languages as we speak. Technology is making it possible to preach the gospel throughout the world. We are blessed that we can live in this generation, perhaps the terminal generation, at this time! Thank you for your input!

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      • Oh, yes! That is awesome that people can get on the internet and it will translate the words to their native language so that, even if we write in English, people from all over the world can read it in their own language. Awesome! Thanks!! That is kind of like the day of Pentecost when they all heard the preaching in their own languages.

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