2timothy316 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 9:02 am
Skeptical wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 8:10 pm
2timothy316 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 12, 2023 8:58 am
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Replying to Skeptical in post #41]
Nostradamus made thousands of predictions and very few were near correct. Not from some prophetic knowledge but because of just shear chance. I could write out thousands of scenarios about the next 100 years and sure one or two will be right. Jesus, on the other made only one prediction about the fall of the Jewish system of things and it was correct.
As far as Carl Sagan, you're right, he is making an educated guess. Yet here is what was said about the days we live now in 2 Timothy 3:1-6. 2000 years before Carl.
"But know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal, having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, betrayers, headstrong, puffed up with pride, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having an appearance of godliness but proving false to its power; and from these turn away."
Today, is seems everything is a crisis. Divisions everywhere, no one wanting to agree on anything. People only lovers of themselves and what they want. People simply hate someone else just for being alive. People that shoot first and ask questions later. People are stubborn and prideful. Meanwhile those that say they are followers of God. Yet when faced with choosing what the Bible says to do and what they want to do, they prove through their actions they are just hypocrites.
Interesting... However, would that imply that those 2 Timothy 3:1-6 societal characteristic didn't exist prior to 2000 years ago?
So you're saying the things Carl Sagan pointed out, did those not exist prior to the 1950s? Is that what he was implying?
So, did you understand Carl Sagan's quote that I posted? Well, here it is again with new fonts:
“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority. . .
So, do you think that existed back in the 1950s, but on a lesser scale?
when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”
So, was American society becoming more advanced in the 1950s, or were they regressing and going backwards back then?
2timothy316 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 9:02 am
That is not what I got out of it. He was saying that those things would become worse and more widespread as time goes on.
I'm sorry, but no he wasn't.
2timothy316 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 14, 2023 9:02 am
The inspired writer of 2 Timothy was noting the same thing. He wasn't wrong. Even an atheist can see that people are losing their natural affection for others. Becoming more biased than ever, agreeing to nothing. Even looking to religion as new ones pop up every week. Religions wrap themselves up in politics, betray those that they once supported them or they betray one they once supported. They slander each other and bold face lie about themselves. Love of money has lead to denying things that the data shows ruins our planet. Facts are now 'alternative facts'. Did all of these things exist 2000 years ago? Yep. But they were not so intense, widespread, and deadly. If one can't see these things then they avoid the news and their head is in the sand. They say, "Why, from the day our forefathers fell asleep in death, all things are continuing exactly as they were from creation’s beginning.” 2 Peter 3:4
Do you know anything about how bad things were back in the first century Roman empire? Do you know what people were going through and why perhaps early Jesus followers thought that the end was upon them back then? (Acts 1:6) And a hint is: Not because life was a picnic back then.
