WHAT SHOULD WE LEARN FROM HISTORY? - WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM THE PAST?

Problems Without Precedent

In the entire history of mankind, never before has the whole earth been threatened by the combined forces of deforestation, soil erosion, desertification, massive extinction of plant and animal species, atmospheric ozone depletion, pollution, global warming, dying oceans, and an exploding population.

Another challenge facing modern societies is the sheer speed of change," says the book A Green History of the World. Ed Ayres, editor of World Watch magazine, writes:  "We are being confronted  by something so completely out side our collective experience that we don't really see it, even when the evidence is overwhelming.  For us, that 'something' is a blitz of enormous biological and physical alterations in the world that has been sustaining us."  

In view of these and related problems, historian Pardon E. Tillinghast states;  "The directions in which society is moving have become infinitely more complex, and for many of us the dilemmas are terrifying. What guidance can professional historians offer to confused people today? Not very much, it seems.

Professional historians may be at a loss as to what to do or what to advise, but surely that would not be true of our Creator.  In fact, he foretold in the Bible that in the last days, the world would experience "critical times hard to deal with."  (2 Timothy 3:1-5) But God has gone even further and done something historians are powerless to do-he has shown the way out, as we will see in the following article. 

Next time: The Bible AUTHENTIC HISTORY?

From the Awake! magazine