Ancient culture

I remember learning about, or rather trying to learn about, ancient culture in Jr High and High School. The teacher explaining about life of the cave dwellers based on the drawings made on the cave walls. It isn’t like the neanderthal had an iPad and could write what his life was like. Venturing out of the cave to hunt for his food using rudamentary tools like spears or flint knives. Fire must have been to him what a stove and heater are to us today, used for warmth, light and cooking. Even todays man, while camping, will gather around a campfire in the evening. Camping in the wilderness is the closest we can get to connecting with ancient man. This time is well before ancient Egypt where the builders of the pyramids actually new math. Many structures made over 3000 years ago or more still stand today. Archaeologist have even found remnants of chariots at the bottom of the red sea. As a student, it was hard to imagine what life was like because we see history with experiences of our lives. Ancient man, even men 2000 years ago would be confused if they tried to learn about us. Even us, in 1970’s could not imagine carrying a computer small enough to fit in our shirt pocket with more computing power than was used to send astronauts into space. Let alone a phone that was also a calculator, camera, tape recorder, video recorder and email device. Heck, email in the 1970’s was for government scientists. A whole library stored in our cell phones. And yet man still has the spark of ancient man in us. The need for light, heat, shelter, food and water and a yearning for knowledge, and even the selfish desire for revenge based on selfishness. Even with the prevelence of cell phones, there are many cultures that still live similarly like they did hundreds of years ago. Examples of this are in the middle east where men still live in caves and tents as well as high rise buildings. They travel by camels and by trucks and you can find high priced Italian sports cars and camels within a mile of each other. Hollywood can paint a picture of what they think life was like in almost any era. I remember as a young boy enthralled with Raquel Welch in a fur bikini in One Million Years B.C. My mom still makes fun of me saying she was my first crush. (Who could blame me?) I doubt that women that lived in caves back then, maybe not a million years ago, but still…did not wear an animal fur bikini. And of course, I really don’t think Moses spoke American english like Charlton Heston did in The Ten Commandments, but those movies, albeit Hollywood fiction, helps paint a picture of what we think life was like. Now, the closer we get to out current time, the easier it is to imagine life. When we read about WWII, we still have some people that were alive back then that can tell us their stories. And we have photographs of Abraham Lincoln and diaries of soldiers from the Civil War to help us understand part of our countries history.

As I watch the news of the fires in Lahina, Hawaii and near Los Angeles, California, I compare it to the news of earthquakes (I have lived through a few of those), floods of North Carolina, hurricanes off the Florida coast and into Houston, Texas. I watch the BLM riots of 2020 and the conflict of the nation of Israel who is just trying to survive against all odds and I wonder, what would it look like to someone 2000 years ago? John is the only deciple of Jesus of Nazareth that died of natural causes (old age, living in a cave on the island of Patmos when God gave him a vision of the future). What if he were given a vision of these fires, earthquakes, floods and riots? How could he, living 2000 years ago understand them? How would he convey what he was seeing not having the perspective of life like we do?

To us, living in the ‘now’, we are used to it. Like the frog in the pot of water slowly being increased, we are used to the violence, wild fires, earthquakes and hurricanes. But what if you had never seen an airplane before? How would you describe a plane crash? Or, living on a secluded island (a prison sentance) how would you describe a tornado or flooding caused by a hurricane? How would you try to convey watching people throwing frozen water bottles at police in full riot gear with police cars over turned and set on fire? Would people of his time think he were crazy? How would you describe Hamas paratroopers silently gliding through the sky with machine guns killing, raping and burning Jewish citizens like they did in October 7, 2023? Even a hundred years ago, could you believe such things if you read them in the book of Revelations? I see them on the news now and have a hard time believing that good people are allowing this to happen today.

So the lesson is this, that when you read the book of Revelation, just because you don’t understand the visions that God revealed to John so long ago remember that he was trying to describe what he saw in those visions and maybe, just maybe, he was watching the visions of societal decay that we are living in now. Do you have a relationship with the one true God? Do you know Jesus of Nazareth? Has the Holy Spirit baptised you? Are you ready for the visions of the book of Revelations to come true before your eyes? Well…?