Signs Before the End of the Age

Viewing 20 posts - 61 through 80 (of 168 total)
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  • #803383
    Ed J
    Participant

    Hi Miia,

    Some are made kings others are made priests,
    I was made a priest of the most high God. (ref. Rev 1:6)
    Why would you think it funny that some “Communicate” “with spirit”

    #803487
    terraricca
    Participant

    Edj

    I was made a priest of the most high God. (ref. Rev 1:6)

    Rev 1:6 and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.

    are you serious ? this is a joke ,you may incline to believe that but I certainly do not for I can see your errors and untruths in scriptures ,

    this is the best way to differentiate the true and false believers for we have to test all spirits to see if they came either from God or from the other one ,

    and for your info ;you have to die first before getting any reward ;so you make a claim that is not legitim and true to scriptures teachings ,

    #803750
    Proclaimer
    Participant

    Why do we think that terrorism specifically is a sign of the end of this world? Terrorism kills almost no one, compared to homicide or war deaths or car accidents or just about anything. It does make the news. And in making the news, it fulfills its purpose–to create fear at minimal cost. The average person is infinitely more likely to die by slipping and falling on their kitchen floor or in a car accident.

    Terrorism is a style of war David. Wars are specifically mentioned as being a sign. God showed me this style of war would be prevalent.

    #804035
    AndrewAD
    Participant

    “Why do we think that terrorism specifically is a sign of the end of this world? Terrorism kills almost no one, compared to homicide or war deaths or car accidents or just about anything.”

    How flippant and ignorant that sounds! terrorism kills almost no one compared to homicide or war? Terrorism is homicide and war on a civilized society.How would the family members of terrorist victims respond to that-“terrorism kills almost no one”? How is almost no one killed by terrorism? many innocents are killed and tortured constantly by this barbarism.It’s not the same as dying naturally of disease or accidents. And it may not be a sign of the end of our planet but it is a sign of the end of our world of freedom if our governments and societies keep taking it lightly and acquiescing to it.

    And if barbarian terrorists obtain nuclear weapons it could lead to the end of our planet so yes it might well be a sign of the end of the world.

    #804037
    david
    Participant

    Homicide kills about 6.4/100,000 per year globally.

    War deaths kill about 1/100,000 per year globally.

    What do you think the terrorism numbers are?  The terrorism deaths are in the noise.  The tiniest fraction of these other things.

     

    War deaths per hundred thousand used to be about 300 per year during the Second World War.  They dropped to the teens around the 1990’s I believe.  And now it is at about 1/100,000.  And this number, this 1/100,000 is orders of magnitude larger than terrorism deaths.

     

    When I say terrorism kills almost no one, I mean compared to everything else.   The disproportion between the news coverage (which plays right into the hands of the terrorists) and the actual numbers of deaths is crazy.  People should look at numbers and stop watching the news businesses so much if they want to have a grasp on reality. 

    You can of course say that terrorism is homicide if you wish.  You could also say war deaths are if you wish.  You can say anything you like.  But for people that study violence, these things are broken down separately and terrorism kills almost no one compared to other forms of violence.

    #804038
    david
    Participant

    a part of the reason this irks me is because a lot of people pla fast and loose with Jesus words.  He was fairly specific.

    Great earthquakes.  Nation rising against nation.  Food shortages. Pestilence.

    These are fairly specific things.  Maybe there are things in reflection that could be taken to mean the world would be in fear or let’s say terror over these things.  But what I’m saying t8 is that Jesus outlined some fairly specific ideas.  The number of great ear quakes began to shoot up about 10 or 12 years ago.   The graph I straight and then it just climbs.  Pestilence or deadly I defections disease, although if you use absolute numbers you can make a case for the Spanish influenza and perhaps AIDS, if you use the rate of death these things pail in comparison it the Black Death for example (20-25%) or the Justinian plague (50%).  The Spanish flue was a few percent and AIDS has been about half of 1% of the world.

    Again, in line with Andrews comments, of course AIDS is horrible and kills many people.  It just is nothing at all though compared to the Black Death which made the entire world think it was the end.

    Pit just bothers me when people say that Jess predicted natural disasters or anything bad.  He was fairly specific.

    #804039
    david
    Participant

    “How would the family members of terrorist victims respond to that-“terrorism kills almost no one”?”–Andrew

    You seem to be using an appeal to emotion here.  I could similarly say that almost no one dies from drowning in bath tubs, or from bee stings, (but I actually think these numbers are higher than terrorism deaths if I recall) and then I could make the same appeal: how would a family member that had someone drown in a bathtub respond to “almost no one dies from drowning in bath tubs.”?

    Well it depends how reasonable they are, how emotional, and how mathematical, and how much they value evidence I suppose.

     

    #804041
    david
    Participant

    This is all I’m really trying to say:

    “Since 9/11, foreign-inspired terrorism has claimed about two dozen lives in the United States. (Meanwhile, more than 100,000 have been killed in gun homicides and more than 400,000 in motor-vehicle accidents.) “–CNN

    #804044
    AndrewAD
    Participant

    Oh sure the numbers compared to the population of the entire world  may be small but does that mean you should make light of it? And yes i would rather my family or myself die of a bee sting or drowning in the bathtub than by terrorists.And I don’t believe your supposed numbers on that either.

    What about you,would you rather your family die by terrorists or of a bee-sting? yes it’s an emotional question.  Don’t worry I’m not making an appeal for the salvation of your “eternal” soul. I don’t care about that but only your mortal one.

     

    #804045
    david
    Participant

    I don’t remember making light of it.  I put it in its relative position.  Because of the availability heuristic cognitive illusion, people have a very disproportionate unrealistic view of how many people die from terrorism compared to other things.  This heuristic is a mental short cut for evaluating danger based on what is available in your mind (rather than facts or stats or the whole).  And what is available in your mind is the very visual and graphic images that the media business like to sell and make money off of– if it bleeds it leads.  Media businesses don’t make a lot of money by telling the much more common, rather usual boring story of an elderly man dying in his bed.  There are no news reporters in lands where there was once war but no longer is, standing on street corners saying: “this is the tenth year without war.”  They make money by telling the very unusual, very rare, very unlikely, dramatic, uncommon things.  News is about stuff that happens  not stuff that doesn’t happen.  So when Ebola killed a few people a year ago my on was terrified.  But this is illogical.  She is almost infinitely more likely to die from just about anything other than Ebola.  Yet that isn’t the way the mind works.

    I’d rather die whatever way is the least painless.  Likely not terrorism or Ebola or the Black Death.  But the point is, these things are extremely unlikely to happen to me.  Or you.

    #804046
    AndrewAD
    Participant

    When you put it all in numbers it makes it emotionless and the way you said it does appear to me as if you make light of it like -“it’s all numbers and of no consequence or care to me.’ Maybe you think you speak only the cold hard facts but in doing so you sound cold and hard yourself. But i hope you’re not that way.

    #804075
    david
    Participant

    So I didn’t make light of it.  I didn’t say it doesn’t matter.  I’m a imply familiar with the cognitive illusions people experience connected with this form of violence.

    2500 per year on average are victims of domestic terrorism and 400 on average of international terrorism. (2011 stats going back a few decades) These numbers are 2 orders of manitide lower than other forms of violence.   The fear is so disproportionate to the reality of statistically dying.  Of course it is bad and evil.  It’s just not something the average individual needs to fear as much as they do. Did you know people are more willing to pay for insurance against death terrorism as they are to pay of insurance against death by any kind.  This makes no sense as terrorism would be covered by the other one also.  People are terrified of terrorism. Which is exactly why it works.  But putting facts out there.  That the average person is more likely to die from ignition or melting of nightware than of terrorism,  puts things in perspective. Terrorism is about creating fear and fear through ignorance.

    People also don’t seem to understand that terrain has always existed.  It isn’t knew. It’s been around for centuries.  But after 9/11 the media camped it up.

     

    #804084
    david
    Participant

    Ton of spelling mistakes I that last post.  Sometimes I write very quickly while at work.  Did I lose my editing rights?

    #804085
    kerwin
    Participant

    David,

    My neighborhood has been going downward the last few years. Two nights ago I heard what sounded like fireworks and then a loud crash. I looked out the window to see a bunch of teens running off from the scene of the accident as everyone that could abandoned the two vehicles. It turns out the fireworks were shots and to men were hit. One was not serious and the other was fatal. I saw law enforcement pull him form the care and attempt to resuscitate him. That is the second murder in this neighborhood in two years. When we first over fifteen years ago the worse thing that occurred was vandalism and theft.

    I spoke to a law enforcement officer whose job it is to go around and interview witnesses after the incident. I mention that statistics show violence and he expressed disbelief in the statistics. I know enough about practices in gathering and calculating statistics that it is almost an art-form rather than a science since it really does not adapt to scientific methodology.

    #804086
    david
    Participant

    KErwin.  H .  The very first time I mentioned to someone a cbc report that crime was dropping in my city, a friend who lives in the most dangerous part of the city refused to believe it and gave me a personal anecdote.

    The thing about his anecdote is, I could equally provide my own that shows the opposite.

    A person who wants to paint violence or homicide as increasing might point to Venesuala or Latin America or parts of the middle east.  But of course other people could then point to the other +95% of the world where that isn’t the trend.

    We have to look at the whole if the world is what interests us.  I am interested in the whole world. Not Venesuala.  And not my friends neighborhood.  Or even yours.  Of ourselves it is bad when my friend lives in the worst part of my city and there is a murder next door.  His inability to believe is primed by his surroundings and lack of statistical knowledge.  Everything available to him is screaming that violence is bad and maybe getting worse.  But that’s his pocket of the world.  It isn’t the world.

     

    People should never use anecdotes when trying to understand reality as a whole.

     

    The other thing I first encountered when I started showing people government numbers on crime is the idea that you can’t trust the government.  But if you like you can also look at hospital stats.  Number of gun shot victims. Number that died. Of course numbers can be played with but when I started looking at the trends of everything else, things that I know once existed and now have vanished, and then started looking at the reasoning as to why the past would have had and did have more danger and threat of violence, it became harder and harder for me to ignore the mounting piles of evidence.

    When people don’t want to believe something they simply assert that the 3vidence isn’t valid.

    But given all the cognitive illusions and biases people suffer from,  I think it’s bad thinking to dismiss evidence, especially when we are emotionally involved in the outcome.

    #804087
    kerwin
    Participant

    David,

    There has never been a study of violence in the whole world and it is extremely difficult to get statistics of any kind from developing nations. There is also questions about statistics in the developed nations though I am not surprised violence is said to have been higher during the middle ages when there was less accountability for crimes.

    #804089
    david
    Participant

    Less accountability?  People chopped off hands for theft.  Death sentence for petty crimes.  10 minute trial and then slow torture to death.

    one reason there was more violence is because crimes ad punishment were not calibrated.  If a person is going to be torn apart slowly or have their organs burned in front of them, whether they steel a wagon or murder someone, they might as well also murder the person who owned the wagon.  Calibrating the punishment meant that if you raped a women you had reason not to kill her.

    Another reason was lack of material wealth.  If your crop doesn’t come I and you and your family are going to die from starvation because there is no 7-11 or Walmart, you may just decide to kill the person a mile away and take their stuff.  And being that forensics wasn’t what it is now, if there was no witnesses, what could be done?  So just kill the witnesses.

    Another reason was lack of education and literacy.  People viewed others as mess human. Other tribes or other peoples weren’t so much people. But once you start thinking more abstractly (see Flynn effect) you start to be able to put yourself in the other person shoes and stop valuing yourself over others.

    The truth is, the further back you go the worse things get on the whole.  Criminal death torture punishment was once acceptable and common.  Today it has to be practiced in a clandestine manner and not talked about.  Slavery was legal and common and then it was made illegal in state after state.  It still exists in different forms but in the shadows.  This is a huge change.   Human sacrifice was universal almost, and then one by one, civilizations thought the better of it.   Burning babies alive for example just stopped making sense.  Viewing women as property and being able to beat and rape them was once just how things were when women had no rights at all essentially.  Children, same thing.  Animals.  You used to legally be able to torture animals to death until recently, and in the Middle Ages you spoke of, a few of the countries had a practice of burning cats alive while in a sack that was lowered into the fire. This lasted a long time.  It was entertainment for all–kids and kings.  As were public torture executions.   These are things we don’t need stats for.  We just don’t burn witches as much as we used to.  Or burn heretics as much as we used to. (It still happens in the shadows)  The beating of slaves evolved into the lynching of blacks which went away but hate crimes still exit, but only fractionally compared to lynchings and even hate crime deaths have gone down to almost nothing, as racist attitudes changed.  Action follows belief.  People stopped believing in their gods that demanded human blood and animal blood.  The racist attitudes that allowed white men to lynch so many black men have truly changed.  While you can reject stats, there are numerous trends that can’t be rejected.

     

    When I think of the devoping nations, I tend to think those countries with lack of food and turmoil are generally what the past was like.   Higher infant mortality.  Lower education.

    We can also look at the tribes that are isolated from society today.  These tend to have very high homicide rates.

    yes, there is no global graph for “violence.”  I’m just saying when looking at anything (war deaths, homicide, Etc) we should look at as large a number as possible and not use anecdotes or only focus on one country   We must use as large a data set as available.

     

    #804090
    david
    Participant

    Kerwin

     

    I would say that in the Middle Ages you were less likely to be caught for a crime.  But if you were caught or just suspected (of witchcraft or heresy or anything really) and determined to be guilty, you would have suffered sadistic painful slow deaths.

    Capital punishmnt itself can also be considered a form of violence   Today we say a capital punishment is botched if the criminal suffers.  We have protesters saying how I humane it is.  Do we understand how crazy this is?  500 years before we went to great efforts to make it as painful and long as possible.  Now it’s considered wrong(in almost all states and even a lot,of the U.S.).   We don’t need stats for major world trends and changes in attitude showing respect for life.

    If someone magically transported me to the Middle Ages, I might just instantly kill myself.  But I would hope to not just injure myself as I also dislike the lack of pain medication and medical care.

    #804933
    NickHassan
    Participant

    Hi david,

    You would kill yourself?

    Surely only the godless would consider that option?

    #804942
    david
    Participant

    Yes.  I’d maybe kill myself.  And you would maybe be tied to a large wheel for your beliefs and then beaten on the wheel until your body resembled a flailing puppet, with sinues  of flesh and bits of bone protruding from every part of your body.

     

     

     

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