Knowledge and Travel Will Increase

 I'm guessing that most of my readers are pretty excited thinking about the possible soon return of Jesus.  What could be more exciting than thinking WE might be the generation that Paul spoke of who will never see death but will hear the trumpet and get transformed in the twinkling of an eye!  Then we will meet Jesus our savior and bridegroom in the clouds!  What??  He then tells us to "encourage each other" with the knowledge of this.

Gabriel told Daniel that in the days leading up to the return of Christ that knowledge and travel will increase.  For 6000 years of human history the horse was the fastest mode of transportation.  Then in the blink of an eye we went from horseback to landing a man on the moon.  We went from telephone to super-computer cell phones in a few decades.

Twenty-six hundred years ago, God provided the prophet Daniel with a number of visions concerning the future. In one of these visions, God revealed several events set to take place just prior to the Second Coming. But an angel told Daniel to seal up his vision until the end times, "when travel and knowledge will increase" (Daniel 12:4). 

That means one of the clearest indications of the end times (and thus, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ) is a general worldwide increase in travel and knowledge.

As we survey the world today, do we see such an increase in travel and knowledge? Absolutely. In fact, we see a dramatic and undeniable increase in travel and knowledge. It's so dramatic, it's best described as exponential. Why? Because from the time of Daniel (6th Century B.C.) to around A.D. 1800, we didn't see any noticeable increase in either. 

Then, something happened. The speed and frequency of travel started to pick up, and the pace of change continues to this day. And human knowledge? It took off as well, and it shows no sign of slowing down. The pace of change has been so rapid and consistent, people take it for granted. But if you take a moment to reflect on where we've been, where we are now, and where we're going, I promise you one thing - it will astound you.

In the days of Daniel, most people traveled less than 50 miles from where they were born - not in the course of a year, but in the course of a lifetime. As a slave carried away into captivity hundreds of miles from where he was born, Daniel was the exception not the rule. 

After arriving in Babylon, he spent the remainder of his years in and around the city. In the ancient world, routine travel from one part of an empire to another was not commonplace. It was extremely rare. And sometimes these trips took months if not years.

In Daniel's time, a horse was the fastest way to travel over land. This remained true for over two thousand years. During all those centuries, the speed of human travel didn't change in any noticeable way. In the year 1800, the fastest land-based mode of transportation was... still a horse. The War of 1812 offers an excellent example to illustrate just how slow early 19th Century travel was. 

The Treaty of Ghent ended the war on December 24, 1814. The famous American victory at the Battle of New Orleans occurred on January 8, 1815 - fifteen days later. Travel was so slow, it took weeks for news of the treaty to reach the United States. But this shows something important - in terms of travel, things stayed relatively unchanged from the days of Daniel to the Battle of New Orleans.

Then, it all changed. Human travel exploded, and the change was both swift and dramatic. What caused this change? The Industrial Revolution. In the 19th Century, the Industrial Revolution gave birth to the steam locomotive. This revolutionized the speed of travel. While the average horse galloped at 30 mph, by 1900, trains routinely traveled twice that speed. 

Then, in the early 20th Century, the horseless carriage (the car) took the world by storm. In 1908, the Ford Motor Company produced the first Model T - a car with a top speed of 40 mph. By the 1920's, race cars topped 100 mph. 

For thousands of years, the horse dominated land-based travel. Yet within the span of a single century, trains and cars completely replaced horses as the dominant mode of travel. And the speed and power of human travel continued to increase throughout the 20th Century and right up to our present day. Similar advances took place in both water and air travel.

For instance, in 1952, the ocean liner Blue Riband crossed the Atlantic in less than four days - a voyage that took Christopher Columbus and his crew five weeks. In 1998, that record fell. A passenger ship crossed the Atlantic in under three days.

And air travel? No other mode of travel better illustrates Daniel's long ago foretold increase in travel and knowledge. For several thousand years, men dreamed of controlled flight. But for centuries, that's all it was. A dream. Then, in 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright put together an airplane that flew for 12 seconds and traveled 120 feet. Just 66 years later, Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. Do you think that qualifies as a notable increase in travel and knowledge?

Here;  https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=4358

There is no doubt that WE are the first generation that are "seeing all these things" in regards to what Jesus and the prophets told us to watch for.  We are the generation that should be lifting up our heads and looking to the sky for the promised return of Jesus.

If this thought doesn't occupy your brain from time to time, maybe it should?  Maybe if we understood how little time we actually have left it would spur us on to be even more involved in Kingdom Work.

Even so, come Lord Jesus!