Posted on 10/20/2013 10:47:58 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
The twentieth century was the start of the age of high technology. The technological advances of our age have eclipsed all previous generations.
It was the nineteenth century that evoked an unprecedented spirit of human optimism. The Enlightenment concluded that man no longer needed the God-hypothesis to explain his origins and purpose. An optimistic humanism was born that promised a coming utopia. Education, science, and technology would produce the acme of evolutionary development. Peace would prevail and poverty, disease, crime, and war would be banished by the modern techniques of government, economics, and education.
World War I temporarily burst the bubble until it was decreed to be The War to End All Wars. Somebody forgot to tell that to the sons of Lamech: Mussolini, Tojo, Stalin, Mao, and the corporal from Bavaria. The twentieth century brought a new horror to world history, the phenomenon of global war.
We cannot blame this on technology. It is not the instruments that are culpable; the root cause is the users of the instruments. The same scalpel that is used to save a life in surgery is now used to hack into pieces millions of unborn babies. The same atomic energy that supplies power for living is harnessed for weapons of incalculable destruction.
Coram Deo
Pray for God to reveal the root causes of your problems, bad habits, or recurring sins.
Passages for Further Study
Psalm 28:3 Psalm 31:17 Psalm 101:3
(Excerpt) Read more at ligonier.org ...
Interesting take here. In fact it deserves to be consummately interesting.
Coram Deo — heart of God. Well yes there is a problem and it’s with our love life. Agape love life, that is. Other loves are fueled from agape, eddies of agape as it were, and they go wrong and embrace Satan’s hate in various degrees as the agape we once gladly received from the Lord is replaced with self pride. Lamech is mentioned... he’s a guy who bragged on how he avenged himself. We’d be liars if we did not say there is something in our souls that clamors for this and calls it justice. A result of the Fall.
I don’t choose to get into wrangles over details over reformed theology... this is a pan-Christian concern. Christians have the love of Christ that illuminates the world in a way the unsaved world can’t see.
Yet while we regret the loss to our “world and culture” we have to be careful, each of us, not to turn these into idols. The method of God continues to work just like clockwork, in which growth opportunities appear in the form of trials. Satan is really hosed 8 ways from Sunday here, though if we listen to his guff, we’d never know it. And the true battleground remains spiritual (Eph 6) and in love we would wish all our fellow humans to share in triumph over Satan if they would only be willing. And arguments over predestination aside, we don’t know a priori who’s willing and so we do not do evil to pitch the gospel energetically to all.
Yes. While our American culture degenerates, the Church is growing rapidly in South America and Asia. Christianity, dying in Europe for centuries, was replaced by a vibrant church in the USA.
We are now faced with a deteriorating base of faith while God chooses other lands from which to bring forth his Word.
And even yet, America is not an a priori “impossible” territory for more revival. God never asked us to try to improve our act in a worldly way before He’d open His door to us.
However revival if and when it comes will be revolutionary. America is no longer at the point it could be (pardon the term) evolutionary.
Let’s not try to be SO “discerning” that we discern away God’s ability to do the seemingly impossible, and cut our gospel witness off at the knees. Darker world means the gospel is more visible when it does shine. Satan has a losing game here. All he can do is to try to con us into nodding along with him.
I put the start of the technological era as 1440 and the invention of the printing press.
I don’t believe that that is true. I believe Christianity is being assaulted on all fronts and now even from within with the new Pope.
Today’s government wants people to worship them and not something they can’t control.
And it’s going to get worse, wait until the U.S starts leading global political efforts for pro abortion, pro gay, pro immigrant. I mean real efforts ... like calls for economic and political sanctions very much like Apartheid South Africa.
How are these ‘emerging nations’ going to emerge if their under the philosophical thumb of the New World Order.
Yes, I believe Guttenberg was chosen by Time magazine’s panel as the most influential person of the last 1,000 years (1,001 AD to 2000 AD) because of his moveable type printing press—it is responsible for the dissemination of knowledge to millions.
I think Time’s panel made a pretty good choice then.
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