To most Americans that couldn’t be clearer. On Sunday night October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock opened fire during an outdoor country music festival in Las Vegas killing at least 59 people and injuring more than 500 others. This senseless shooting has caused many to say, “The world is going to Hell in a handbasket”. This act of terrorism has caused some to ask: Where was God? Why did God allow this to happen? It doesn’t help at all that some preachers are quick to tell us why God either caused or allowed this tragedy to happen. Pat Robertson led the way by saying that the shooting was divine retribution for the widespread disrespect of authority and for President Trump in America. This belief comes from a broken theology that says that God is in control of everything that happens on earth. When something as horrible as the shooting in Las Vegas takes place, we try to make sense of it. God is often blamed for the horrendous and willful acts of violence that people carry out. I have addressed this in recent post, so I will not take the space to repeat it here. I encourage you to click on the following links:
https://dellyoung.net/2017/09/05/hurricane-harvey-jesus-and-the-wrath-of-god/
https://dellyoung.net/2016/11/21/god-is-not-in-control/
Is The World Getting Worse and Worse?
Most of us who have attended church have been taught that the world will get worse and worse. This pessimistic view is so widely and commonly believed, it seems absurd to question it. But is it true? Does the Bible say that the world itself will become worse? During most of church history, leaders held a victorious and optimistic view of eschatology. It was not until the Twentieth Century that Christians became pessimistic of the end-times. As America faced the challenges of the Depression, followed by World War I, World War II, Korean War, and the Vietnam War, people embraced a negative and pessimistic view of the future. Preachers who ascribed to this view became more focused on preaching about the coming Anti-Christ than the coming Christ. They preached more about the increase of evil than on the increase of Christ’s Kingdom and Glory.
Our Eschatology is Robbing us of our Legacy
We need to shift our Eschatology because your view of the future effects everything in your life. In 1970, Hale Lindsey wrote a book called, “The Late Great Planet Earth”. His message was the end of the world is near instead of the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. The church became more concerned with knowing about the “mark of the beast” instead of the mark of a believer. This fatalistic view lead to an escape mentality, the rescue rapture. Let me tell you this, Jesus is coming back for a pick-up after we have completed His mission, not for a rescue of the beat-up. Just three short years after Hale Lindsey’s book was published, Roe verses Wade passed the US Supreme Court and it became legal in this country to kill the unborn. You may ask, “what was the church doing during those hearings?” Waiting on the heavenly helicopter to rescue them with the rapture.
What about the world getting worse? Is that what the Bible really teaches? The Bible says men will grow worse, not the world.
2 Timothy 3:13 (NKJV) 13 But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.
According to a recent survey, 71% of people think the world is getting worse and only 5% believe it is getting better (source). Many Christians believe that violence, crime, disease, and poverty are all on the increase. Many believe and preach that we are descending rapidly toward destruction, that the days of economic prosperity and blessing are things of the past. But despite what we may believe about the condition of the world, the reality is strikingly different. For example, 95% of Americans are wrong about extreme poverty. Most Americans when asked stated they believed extreme poverty is getting worse. However, over the past 20 years, it hasn’t doubled or stayed the same, but instead has decreased by more than half. The world has never been better fed, since 1961 the average daily food supply has increased by 38% in developing nations and 24% worldwide. Conditions in the world have never been better than they are today. As bad as things are, there is less hunger, less violence, less war, less ignorance, less disease, less poverty, less injustice, and less human suffering today than at any time in recorded history. There has never been a better time to be alive. Indeed, instead of reporting on humanity’s amazing progress, we had rather report on what’s wrong, rather than on what’s right. We report on the 10% unemployed, instead of saying we have 90% working. The progress which has accelerated in recent decades, is the most ignored and the least appreciated story in human history.
In a book called, “Getting Better All The Time: 100 greatest trends in the last 100 years”, we are offered these facts: Concerning Health, many diseases have been wiped out, i.e., smallpox, polio, tuberculosis, are ancient history, these diseases used to wipe out entire civilizations. Our Life expectancy used to be thirty, it is now seventy-seven in US and sixty-seven worldwide. Infant mortality dropped 75%, it used to be 1 out of 5 infants died before their first birthday, now only 1 in 17 dies. Concerning pollution, in 1972 only 36% of US lakes were deemed safe for fishing and swimming, today 91% are declared safe. Despite pro-choice pressures, abortions have declined 25% in last 15 years in US. That means in 2005 they were 400,000 fewer babies aborted in US than in 1990. Regarding Civil Rights, let me ask you a question: Is the world worse today for women or better? We forget that until August 26, 1920 women in America could not vote. Is the world worse today for African Americans? I’m not saying there are no problems or no racism, I’m just saying things are better for African Americans today than they were 100 years ago. Things are far better today than they were in the 1960’s. We have watched President Obama be elected twice to the highest office in this land. Are Russian’s worse off today than they were 100 years ago under Communism? Is Germany worse off, now that there is no Berlin Wall of separation? Are you going to try and say that Iraq was better with Saddam Hussein in power?
Where Are the Good Old Days?
The Bible reveals that this view that the ‘good-old-days’ were better is not a proper view. This pessimistic eschatology of defeat existed in Israel 3,000 years ago as well. “Do not say, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this,” says the writer of Ecclesiastes (Ecc. 7:10). The claim that our best days are behind us is contrary to truth of God’s Word. As a New Testament believer, we should be the most peaceful and hopeful people on the planet. We shouldn’t be spending our money and time building bunkers, storing baked-beans, and buying ammo, we should be building and planting churches and telling people the Good-News of Jesus Christ.
We live in amazing times. By all objective standards humanity lives better today than ever before. Things are not getting worse. They’re getting better at an accelerating rate. We are on the precipice of such great discoveries and cures for diseases. Through gene-editing we see now the possibility of editing out of our DNA diseases like cancer. The best days of the church are not behind her, but are in front of her.
I can just hear people saying, “but what about ISIS? What about global warming? What about the Zika virus? What about (insert name of the politician you fear the most)?” Now in this time as always, there are no shortage of things to fear. The point I’m trying to make is not that the world is perfect, or that there aren’t legitimate things to be concerned about in our world, but rather that overall, conditions in the world are better than they have ever been, not worse.
The next time something bad happens and the preachers of doom and gloom start declaring the end of the world and that things are getting worse and worse, don’t listen to them. If you are being filled with fear, this is not the good-news of God’s Kingdom. Don’t join the crowd of pessimists, crying over the loss of supposedly better days and expecting the world to get worse and worse. Rather, let us rejoice in the wonderful work God is doing in the world, let us give thanks for the blessings around us, and let us look confidently and optimistically toward the future.
Amen Pastor Dell, and it is so amazing that anyone, even in most every country, can look at a computer or phone and hear or read the word of God. Who would have ever thought that a few years ago. It’s an amazing time we live in and we should put fear aside and be more hopeful of our future. Thank you for the insight.