“We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.”
Abraham Lincoln
Kinda reminds one of the Five Man Electrical Band
(or the remake by Telsa for you youngins), right? Well I’m not going to talk about the signs that tell us what we can or cannot do, No, I’m going to talk about the ‘Signs of the Times’.
What is a sign? According to several dictionaries it is:
An object, quality, or event whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else
Periodically throughout human history there are stories of apocalypse, Armageddon, destruction, turmoil, tribulation and the end of the world as we know it prophecies and predictions. These predictions increase in the eras where the indicators of these events appear to occur in rapid succession and or escalating frequency. This is a normal human trait or emotion to bad times. As our civilizations mature and develop more precise sciences, these predictions gather more validity. This validity raises flags of concern and caution in just about anyone with a lick of common sense.
“For those who would joyously march in rank and file,
they have already earned my contempt, for they were given a large brain by accident when a spinal chord would have sufficed.”
Albert Einstein
For just about as long as we humans have populated the earth, there have been ‘prophets’ and ‘fortune tellers’, ‘Oracles’, ‘soothsayers’, ‘mystics’ and ‘wizards’ going about attempting to predict the future and what it will hold. Most of these predictions have been wrong and a few dramatically correct.
Ever do a search on failed doomsday predictions? Well I can tell you the list is almost endless. Being raised a Christian, I tend go with the Bible when it says that ‘no one will know the exact day and time’ of His second coming, so therefore I feel assured that most of these dates are wrong. Don’t get me wrong here – I do feel we are seeing more and more signs and at increasing frequency. However I choose to live my life like my Creator is coming for me tomorrow, so I am always ready.
This does not stop me from being a Prepper. I am working to be as self-reliant as I possibly can be, to rely on me, my family and a few close capital ‘F’ Friends. I firmly believe that we humans are under soo many threats; that are coming from soo many sources, that we must always be prepared.
These threats can be large or small, quick or slow, obvious or subtle and all have the potential to be deadly; some are human caused, some natural, some just sheer luck (or bad luck) and some metaphysical or spiritual. Yet all have the potential to destroy MY world or at the very least, make it dangerously unpleasant.
“The more you depend on forces outside yourself,
the more you are dominated by them.”
Harold Sherman
Anyway we humans have many places to look for “reading the signs of the times”. Since the advent of modern science in the 18th century, the discovery of deep time and the age of the Earth, the concept of an "End of Days" has more or less, been replaced in sciences contemporary discourse, with questions about the ultimate fate of the universe. Most scientists believe that the "end time" will finally occur hundreds of billions of years from now with the heat death of the universe.
With all this science and all the instantaneousness of ‘news’ and ‘views’ it would seem that catastrophe is just around the corner. However, when we read history we can get a sense that with the increase of human population the occurrences are increasing proportionately. Add in what we humans can contribute to the ‘signs of times’ by creating crises almost by pure thought or out of thin air and we are indeed living in questionable times.
Read on for a look at all the 'signs' that failed to come true, to the 'signs' for here and now; and on to the 'signs' of the future.
I won't tell you what 'signs' to acknowledge or how to prepare for them, that is YOUR choice alone.
“To be prepared is to anticipate risk and to prudently act toward prevention.”
Wes Fessler
(born March 10, 1970 in Arcadia, California) is an American author.
TNT