Interpersonal Interaction

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS; THE MANY DIMENSIONS OF THEM

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In the writing classes I have taken, there was always an emphasis on finding the “right” word when expressing a thought. Thoughts are very fuzzy things and often difficult to find good words to match the thought. What is a thought anyway? Perhaps more like a feeling, an idea, a concept, a value, an association or a viewpoint? Each of these would generally require a different word to express that thought. Then, it isn’t just the word, but the sentence that goes around it and introduces the thought. This can bring emphasis, frustration, excitement, disappointment, anger, joy, or many other responses. Perhaps we should say, words are an art form for expressing thoughts.

Use Of Words

Each generation, each culture, and each family have different ways of using words to communicate with one another. Past experiences are some of the ways we can put thoughts into context. Without a common association of words to thoughts communication loses a lot of its significance. We have word dictionaries to bring some common meaning to words, but those end up being updated frequently as the younger generation tends to put some twists and turns in the meaning of words they use. We all like to do a new thing. Even the media and the advertizing world thrives on create new words and meanings. Then we have the whole world of colloquial words used in various locations and professions. Ah yes, each profession has to develop new words to give them a more specific meaning especially in the technical field. Obviously new discoveries require new words! The world of words is ever changing.

Categories of Words

In the traditional multidimensional essay on words, we should consider the physical, psychological, and supernatural words. Physical words are those spoken or written, generally related to physical things or events happening around us and in our consciousness. Psychological words relate our emotions, feelings, and imaginations. They are more like fuzzy words because they cannot be related to physical things. Supernatural words are spiritual in nature; living, sharp, and powerful. God’s Words in the Bible are brought alive by the Holy Spirit. God used them to create everything in the Universe. The Scripture Reference section is full of them.

Vocabularies

Now we get down to the domain of vocabulary, the words we generally use, the words we know the meaning of, and the words we have to guess the meaning by the way they are used. So I did a simple thing, looked this up on Google, two articles given in Reference section. Basically we have an active vocabulary we use all the time, then there is a passive vocabulary of words we know a bit but not confident in using them. In part it depends upon one’s age, education, and profession. Further, it is not clear how one should count words; the base word or all of its variations, forms, and combinations along with nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs or prepositions?

 Average person in working class will probably have 20,000 active and 25,000 passive vocabularies.  Where as the College graduate active in writing and speaking will likely have 60,000 active and 74,000 passive vocabularies. This is counting headwords only not all their derivatives. Headwords are want one finds in the dictionary listing followed by the many endings, derivatives, prefixes, and suffixes. The active vocabulary is the one a person uses daily in their talking and writing. The additional words in the passive vocabulary are words they recognize and understand a general meaning, but not so well that they would normally used them.

Total Number Of Words

Total number of words in English language is in the range of a million or two with perhaps twice that number if one include the special professional and scientific words. There is no real agreement on the number of words because of the many ways of counting and classifying them.

Different Languages

From words we need to expand into language, the way we use words. There are many different languages in the world. It is a very fascinating subject. According to Ethnologue there are currently 6,809 distinct languages in the world. In Europe there are only 230 spoken in Europe while there are 2,197 used in Asia. One of the most diverse areas is Papua-New Guinea with an estimated 832 languages by a small population of 3.9 million, or an average of 4,500 speakers of a specific language group. It is interesting that in North America before there was any contract from Europe, there over 300 different languages, but about half of these have died off leaving only about 165 indigenous languages and some are becoming extent. When a language dies out, a world dies with it, in the sense that a community’s connection with its past, it traditions, and its basic knowledge are all lost as the vehicle linking people to that knowledge has been abandoned.

Language Translations

There is a lot of work in progress in the technology of translating from one language to another. From the Christian perspective the Bible has been translated into 2,197 languages in parts or total as of 1997. In the personal level, we traditionally use translators to go between two groups, however many people are fluent in many languages. There are many interested perspectives on the differences of language. One case in Asia, they use the same written characters but pronounce them so differently that they cannot understand each other when speaking. Another interesting feature is in dialects of a given language. The Serbo-Croatian language was used predominantly in Yugoslavia; a single language with different local dialects and writing systems. The Serbs used Cyrillic alphabet while the Croats used a Latin alphabet. Within a few years after the breakup, at least three different languages emerged; Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian, although the actual linguistic facts had not changed a bit.

Intelligibility Criterion

From an intelligibility criterion, it is generally assumed that if speaker of language “A” can understand speaker of language “B” without difficulty, they must have the same language. But this assumption fails in actual practice in the world. For instance Bulgarians consider Macedonians a dialect of Bulgarian, but Macedonians insist that theirs is distinct language. We also need to consider that there is a lot of statehood, economics, traditions, writing systems, and political issues in language, dialect, recognition, and compatibility.

Grammar Considerations

Another aspect is that of grammar used in languages with such things as the use of pronouns, where the negative appears in the sentence, where the adjective is place relative to the subject, where the verb is located relative to the subject. And this is further differentiated by style, formalism, and punctuation.

 Basic Elements of the Story

We need to go beyond just words, languages, and grammar by looking at the use of these as modes of communication. There are many different developments in this area. The old traditional one is the story. We seem to have a unique interest and ability to enjoy a good story. The basic story theory consists of a series of struggles between the protagonist and the antagonist in escalating levels of complexity, challenges, and counters until reaching a seeming impossible level when the protagonist surprisingly does the impossible and achieves final victory. This theory of human brain functioning was presented at a Christian Writers Conference I attended several years ago. Research has shown there is very unique interest and capability in the human brains to remember and enjoy the story. From the Christian perspective God created us with the ability understand, enjoy, and communicate with stories. When we consider the Bible it is basically a storybook, the real storybook! God’s story of the history of creation for people on Earth.

Communication Theory

We now need to take a different perspective of all these words, languages, and stories. From a communication systems perspective all languages are remarkably similar to each other in form and function. Human language differs from the communication behavior of every other known living life form in a number of fundamental ways all shared across languages. By comparisons with hearing techniques of gulls, honeybees, dolphins, and other non-human animals, language provides us with a system that is not stimulus bound and ranges over an infinity of possible distinct messages. This is achieved with a minimum of a small inventory of basic sounds to form messages that are individually meaningless. These are combined to make words that combine into phrases and sentences. The human language principles are largely common across languages. The human language is so different from any other known system in the nature world that the narrowly constrained ways of human grammar differences are insignificant.

The Morals And Ethics Of Language

For many reasons we need to be careful what we say. There are civil laws about the use of language. There are politically and socially incorrect words that cause emotional reactions. There are sexual and swear words that are not polite in public. Written materials have various forms of censoring depending upon the market for the product. Then there is a vast array of moral and ethical comments and restrictions on the use of words given in the Bible. The specific passages are given in the Scripture Reference section. Also there are some interesting wisdom thoughts such as: When you’re talking, you’re not learning. When you’re not learning, you’re not communicating. When you’re not communicating, there will be no intimacy in your relationships. Then there is an old Rabbinic saying, “The ears are open and out. They’re unguarded, but the tongue is behind ivory bars.”

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Language is a tool we use for communicating. It starts with sounds we make In our mouth and ears us use to pickup and translate those sounds into phonemes, the phonemes into syllables, the syllables into words, the words into sentences, and the sentences into thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Each people group has developed a slight different organization of the basic elements to form a specific language, but all the basic elements are the same. Then, in another step forward developing a written language, the communication then was by translating the sounds into symbols that could be used to make up words with formatting words into sentences, paragraphs, and writings. The writings are communicated by the eyes recognizing the individual symbols, then forming words, sentenced, and paragraphs. Some people can go direction from recognized writings into thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Other must internally verbalize the writing into sounds and then translate the sounds in the oral tradition. Obviously the latter are slower readers.

The approach used by this essay was to start with words and consider the many aspect (dimensions) of words used by humans. The human communication system is very different than any other animal. From an Evolutional perspective, this represents a major departure from other life forms. The very earliest forms of writings have been the picture forms in caves and the hieroglyphs carved in stone. One would assume some form of verbal communication would go with this symbols, but we only have the physical examples left.

Archaeological digs in Pakistan of the Harappan or Indus civilization found symbol writings 2,500 BC on pottery carbon dated in this time period. The writings probably also developed around this time also in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Earlier, Jiahu symbols carved on tortoise shells have been found in China dated back to 6,600 to 6,200 BC. The general consider development of picture writing systems, glyphs, probably began first as mnemonic: glyphs primarily as reminders, Second as pictography: directly represents objects or event. And third as ideography: glyphs representing ideas or situations,

One of the more fascinating sources was the Bible that had a great deal to say about our use of the tongue, words, and languages. Our words can be used to help people or to hurt them. Our words can be used to glorify God or blaspheme Him. Our words can bring people to a saving knowledge in God or send people away. By our words we find eternal life or are condemned to eternal death. Our words reveal the nature of our heart, our inner being. It is not what goes in our mouth, but what comes out of our mouth that reveals who we really are. The full text of these Bible passages are found in the Scripture Reference Section.

Internet reports on Word Wide Words, How Many Words Are There In The English Language, The Languages of the World, along with references to graphic presentations are included in the Word Reference section after the Scripture References.

@  Myles R. Berg  10/11/11

SCRIPTURE REFERENCES

— THE TONGUE

 His Word Is On My Tongue  (2 Samuel 23:2-4 NIV)

Using The Native Tongue  (Esther 2:21-22 NIV)

The Tongue Plots Destruction (Psalm 52:1-7 NIV)

 You Know The Word On My Tongue  (Psalm 139:1-6 NIV)

The Righteous Tongue (Proverbs 10:11-21 NIV)

Controlling The Tongue (Proverbs 15:1-9 NIV)

— GOD’S WORDS

 The Beginning God said  (Genesis 1: verses 1, 3, 6, 9, 11, 14-15, 20, 24, 26 NIV)

Using Words (Proverbs 17:27-28 NIV)

Live By God’s Words  (Matthew 4:4 NIV)

Faith In God’s Word  (Matthew 8:8 NIV)

Jesus Healed With A Word  (Matthew 8:16 NIV)

Unpardonable Words  (Matthew 12:32 NIV)

Judged By Our Words  (Matthew 12:36-37 NIV)

Scattering Of Seeds = Words  (Matthew 13:20-23 NIV)

The Word Became Flesh  (John 1:1-5, 14 NIV)

Believe My Words And Live  (John 5:24 NIV)

God-Breathed Words  (2 Timothy 3:16-17 NIV)

— LANGUAGE

The Tower of Babel  (Genesis 11:1-9 NIV)

Do You Believe The True Language?  (John 8:31-47 NIV)

The Plain Language  (John 16:25-28 NIV)

The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost  (Acts 2:1-12 NIV)

Worthy To Read The Scroll (Revelation 5:9 NIV)

Every Nation, Tribe, People, And Language  (Revelation 7:9-10 NIV)

Gospel Preached To All Nations  (Matthew 24:3-14 NIV)

The Eternal Gospel Proclaimed  (Revelation 14:6-7 NIV)

 WORD REFERENCES

 World Wide Words  (www.wouldwidewords.org)

How many in the language and how many does any one person know?

One of the more common questions that arrive for the Q&A section asks how many words there are in the English language. Almost as common are requests for the average size of a person’s vocabulary. These sound like easy questions; I have to tell you that they’re indeed easy to ask. But they’re almost impossible to answer satisfactorily, because it all depends what you mean by word and by vocabulary (or even English).

What we mean by word sounds obvious, but it’s not. Take a verb like climb. The rules of English allow you to generate the forms climbs, climbed, climbable, and climbing, the nouns climb and climber (and their plurals climbs and climbers), compounds such as climb-down and climbing frame, and phrasal verbs like climb on, climb over, and climb down. Now, here’s the question you’ve got to answer: are all these distinct words, or do you lump them all together under climb?

That this is not a trivial question can be proved by looking at half a dozen current dictionaries. You won’t find two that agree on what to list. Almost every word in the language has this fuzzy penumbra of inflected forms, separate senses and compounds, some to a much greater extent than climb. To take a famous case, the entry for set in the Oxford English Dictionary runs to 60,000 words. The noun alone has 47 separate senses listed. Are all these distinct words?

And in a wider sense, what do you include in your list of words? Do you count all the regional variations of English? Or slang? Dialect? Family or private language? Proper names and the names of places? And what about abbreviations? The biggest dictionary of them has more than 400,000 entries — do you count them all as words? And what about informal and formal names for living things? The wood louse is known in Britain by many local names — tiggy-hog, cheeselog, pill bug, chiggy pig, and rolypoly among others. Are these all to be counted as separate words? And, to take a more specialist example, is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the formal name for bread yeast, to be counted as a word (or perhaps two)? If you say yes, you’ve got to add another couple of million such names to the English-language word count. And what about medical terms, such as syncytiotrophoblastic or holoprosencephaly, that few of us ever encounter?

The other difficult term is vocabulary. What counts as a word that somebody knows? Is it one that a person uses regularly and accurately? Or perhaps one that will be correctly recognised — say in written text — but not used? Or perhaps one that will be understood in context but which the person may not easily be able to define? This distinction between what linguists call active and passive vocabularies is hard to measure, and it skews estimates.

The problem doesn’t stop there. English speakers not only know words, they know word-forming elements, such as the ending -phobia for some irrational fear. A journalist rushing to meet a deadline might take a word he knows, like Serb, and tack on the ending to make Serbophobia. He’s just added a word to the language (probably only temporarily), but can he really be said to have that word in his vocabulary? If nobody ever uses it again, can we legitimately count it? By reversing the coining process, a reader of the newspaper can easily work out the word’s origin and meaning. Has the reader also added a word to his vocabulary?

Can you now see why estimates of the total number of words in the English language and in a person’s vocabulary are so difficult to make, and why they vary so much one from another? David Crystal, in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, suggests that there must be at least a million words in the language. Tom McArthur, in the Oxford Companion to the English Language, comes up with a similar figure. David Crystal further says that if you allow all scientific terms the total could easily reach two million (this doesn’t count the formal names for organisms I spoke about earlier, just technical vocabulary).

Assessing the size of the vocabulary of an individual is at least as problematical. Take Shakespeare: you’d think it would be easy to assess his vocabulary. We have the plays and sonnets and we just have to count the words in them (according to the American Heritage Dictionary, there are 884,647 of them, made up of 29,066 distinct forms, including proper names). But estimates of Shakespeare’s vocabulary vary from about 18,000 to 25,000 in various books, because writers have different views about what constitutes a distinct word.

It’s common to see figures for vocabulary quoted such as 10,000-12,000 words for a 16-year-old, and 20,000-25,000 for a college graduate. These seem not to have much research to back them up. Usually they don’t make clear whether active or passive vocabulary is being quoted, and they don’t account for differences in lifestyle, profession and hobby interests between individuals.

David Crystal described a simple research project — using random pages from a dictionary — that suggests these figures are severe underestimates. He concludes that a better average for a college graduate might be 60,000 active words and 75,000 passive ones. But this method of assessing vocabulary counts dictionary headwords only; it would be possible to multiply it several-fold to include different senses, inflected forms, and compounds. Another assessment — of a million-word collection of American texts — identified about 38,000 headwords. Bearing in mind this was all general writing, this doesn’t sound so different from David Crystal’s estimates for graduate vocabularies.

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How many words are there in the English language?     (oxforddictionaries.com)

There is no single sensible answer to this question. It’s impossible to count the number of words in a language, because it’s so hard to decide what actually counts as a word. Is dog one word, or two (a noun meaning ‘a kind of animal’, and a verb meaning ‘to follow persistently’)? If we count it as two, then do we count inflections separately too (e.g. dogs = plural noun, dogs = present tense of the verb). Is dog-tired a word, or just two other words joined together? Is hot dog really two words, since it might also be written as hot-dog or even hotdog?

It’s also difficult to decide what counts as ‘English’. What about medical and scientific terms? Latin words used in law, French words used in cooking, German words used in academic writing, Japanese words used in martial arts? Do you count Scots dialect? Teenage slang? Abbreviations?

The Second Edition of the 20-volume  Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of exclamations, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. And these figures don’t take account of entries with senses for different word classes (such as noun and adjective).

This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.

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Languages of the World  (www.ling.gu.se/projekt)

It is difficult to give an exact figure of the number of languages that exist in the world, because it is not always easy to define what a language is. The difference between a language and a dialect is not always clear-cut. It has nothing to do with similarity of vocabulary, grammar, or pronunciation. Sometimes, the distinctions are based purely on geographical, political, or religious reasons. It is usually estimated that the number of languages in the world varies between 3,000 and 8,000.

There is a list of the world’s languages, called “Ethnologue” (Grimes 1996). There are 6,500 living languages listed. Of these, 6,000 have registered population figures. 52% of the 6,000 languages are spoken by less than 10,000 people, and 28% are spoken by less than 1,000 people. 83% of them are limited to single countries.

The ten largest languages in the world are the first languages for nearly half of the world’s population.

Here is a list of the top 10 languages in February 1999 according to Ethnologue:

1. Mandarin 885 million speakers
2. Spanish 332 million speakers
3. English 322 million speakers
4. Bengali 189 million speakers
5. Hindi 182 million speakers
6. Portuguese 170 million speakers
6. Russian 170 million speakers
8. Japanese 125 million speakers
9. German 98 million speakers
10. Wu 77 million speakers

The figures refer to the number of people who have the language as their first language. If those speakers who have learnt the language as a foreign language were to be included, English might be at the top of the list.
Arabic would be among the 10 most widely spoken languages, if it were to be counted as one language. Ethnologue lists ten variants of spoken Arabic among its top 100. The biggest of these is Egyptian Arabic with 42.5 million speakers. If they were to be counted as one and the same language, Arabic would come out sixth with 175 million speakers, and Wu would drop out of the top ten.
These figures are from 1999, so some languages may have shifted postions on the list for demographical reasons, and then particularly in positions 4 through 7, where also Arabic might turn up, see above.

The branch of linguistics which is called comparative philology, has classified the world’s languages into different families. All of the relationships within the families are not yet clear, and therefore the classification must be seen as preliminary.

The languages within a family usually share a common language, from which they developed. However, sometimes languages are considered to be related just because they happen to be geographically close to one another.

You can look at “Mark Rosenfelder’s maps of the world’s language families (in a new window, close it to get back here).

The Indo-European language family is the most researched of all the families. Languages, which belong to this family, are spoken in India, Pakistan, Iran, and nearly all of Europe. The Indo-European language family has been split into smaller language groups:

  •   The Indo-Iranian has about 600 million speakers and includes languages such as Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, and Punjabi. These languages are spoken in northern India and in Pakistan. The ancient Indian language, Sanskrit, has had enormous impact on the historical language research. The systematic similarities between Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek were observed as early as the 18th century,

Persian and Kurdish are also a part of the Indo-Iranian language group.

  •   The Romance language group developed from Latin and has about 600 million speakers in Europe and Latin America. Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian belong to this group.
  •   The Germanic language group has about 500 million speakers in Europe and North America. The Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese) belong to this group along with English, German, Dutch, Flemish (which is spoken in a part of Belgium), and Afrikaans (which is related to Dutch and is spoken in South Africa).
  •   The Slavic language group is mainly confined to Eastern Europe. It has 300 million speakers. The largest language in this group is Russian. Other Slavic languages are Belarusian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovakian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian.

The remaining language groups within the Indo-European language family are considerably smaller.

  •   The Baltic language group is represented by Latvian and Lithuanian.
  •   The Greek language group is made up of Modern Greek together with various older forms of Greek.
  •   The Celtic language group was once spoken all over Europe, but now it is only made up of small languages such as Breton, Irish Gaelic, Welsh, and Scottish Gaelic.

Beside the Indo-European languages there are also a few other language families represented in Europe. The two largest are the Turkic language group, spoken by about 40 million speakers in Turkey, and the Finno-Ugric language group. Finnish, Estonian, Saami, and Hungarian belong to the Finno-Ugric language group. Another interesting language in Europe is Basque, which is spoken in the Basque region in northern Spain and in a small part of southwestern France. Basque, as far as we know, has no known relatives. The languages in Africa are usually divided into four language families:

  •   The Niger-Congo language family is usually divided into ten sub-groups. Each sub-group includes several hundred languages. Nearly half of the Niger-Congo languages are made up of different Bantu languages. Bantu languages are spoken by about 200 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. Swahili is the most known and wide spread of the Bantu languages.
  •   The Khoisan language family is spoken by a couple of hundred thousand people in southern Africa, especially in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia and Botswana. The Khoisan language family is usually referred to as “click” languages, because of the exotic click sounds the speakers use. The Khoisan family is divided into three groups, North, Central, and South. Earlier, the family was only divided into two main groups: the Hottentots (cattle herders) and the Bushman (hunters and gatherers Ð nomads).
  •   The Afro-Asian language family is found in the northern and eastern parts of Africa from Mauritania in the west to Somalia in the east. This family is usually divided into five sub-groups. The Semitic is the most common and most understood, much thanks to the spread of Arabic, which is understood in the whole of North Africa. Arabic is understood by about 150 million people and is often the language of education. Other important Semitic languages are Amharic and Tigrinya, which are spoken by about 10 million people in Ethiopia. The long extinct Egyptian language, which is known for its hieroglyphics, is considered to have belonged to the Afro-Asian language family.
  •   The Nilo-Saharanlanguage family is all the languages that were “left over” when Africa’s language families were being established. The Nilo language group includes about 150 languages, spoken by approximately 8 million people in east Africa. The Saharan language group includes 10 languages with about 5 million speakers in Chad, Niger, and Libya.

Besides these four language families, several Indo-European languages are spoken in Africa, such as English, French, Portuguese, German, and Afrikaans.

The Indo-European languages are spoken by many people in Asia, especially in India, Pakistan, and the Middle East. The Afro-Asian languages are also well represented in the Middle East, especially Arabic.

The Sino-Tibetan language family has the largest number of speakers. This language family is estimated to have 1 billion speakers. Mandarin is the largest language within this family. It is spoken by about 700 million people in northern China. Other large languages in this family are Hakka, Wu, and Yue (Cantonese). These languages are spoken in China. Sometimes, they are called Chinese, but the people who speak these different languages can not understand one another. The reason why they are often lumped together as Chinese is due to the fact that they all share the same written language.

Other languages within the Sino-Tibetan language family are Burmese, Tibetan, and Taiwanese. The relationships between the languages of this family are unclear and disputed.

The Malayo-Polynesian language family is another large language family in Asia and Oceania. It has about 200 million speakers and covers a vast geographical area from Madagascar via Indonesia to Hawaii. After Indo-European, this is the most widespread language family in the world.

The largest languages within the Malayo-Polynesian language family are Javanese, Indonesian, Tagalog (found in the Philippines), and Malay. These belong to the Indonesian (West) branch of the Malayo-Polynesian language family.

The Polynesian (East) branch is usually divided up into Micronesian, Polynesian, and Melanesian languages. Among these you also find Fiji and Maori (the latter spoken in New Zealand).

The Dravidian language family is spoken by 160 million speakers in southern India. The largest languages in this family are Tamil and Telugu each have about 55 million speakers. The Australian language family is significantly smaller than the others. Its languages spoken by the Australian aborigines.

There are also a number of languages whose relationships have not been thoroughly investigated. The largest are Japanese (120 million speakers), Korean (60 million speakers), Vietnamese (50 million speakers), and Thai (40 million speakers). Thai and Vietnamese are considered distant relatives, but neither Japanese nor Korean have any known relatives.

The languages of New Guinea, which number about 700, are usually grouped into a Papuan language family, but only because of its geographic position. The relationships of the languages in the family are unclear.

Indo-European languages were the colonial languages in America, especially English and Spanish. Only a few of the languages that were spoken by the original inhabitants are still spoken. They are usually grouped together under the name American Indian languages. This term covers 20 different families with several languages in each. The largest languages are Quechua (spoken in Bolivia and Peru) and Guaraní (spoken in Paraguay). If you want to know more about where the different languages are spoken see the World Map.

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The Language Tree

(www.neatorama.com/2008/02/05/the-language-tree/)

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The Language Family Map (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_Language_Families_Map.PNG)

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Number of Languages (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Languages_by_number_of_native_speakers)

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How we interact with world

MULTIDIMENSIONAL HISTORY

History has value for the past, the present, and the future. Then there are the three domains of history, the physical, the psychological, and the supernatural. Most often these are all tangled up in one ball. So this essay will attempt to untangle this nine-dimensional view of history and a few additional thoughts on the use of history. It would seem logical and rational to first consider the physical, psychological, and supernatural each in the three domains, past, present, and future.

Major emphasis is given at the end for how God has, is, and will impacted our past, present, and future. As has been said many time History is His Story. This gets little coverage in the media.

The Physical Past

We obviously begin at the beginning, The Big Bang. This incredible horrendous point of energy has expanded and cooled into transformation of energy into matter via Einstein’s famous equation E = MC^2; energy equals mass time the square of the velocity of light. It can also work in reverse where matter is turned into energy such as in atomic bombs and especial the thermonuclear reaction in stars producing light and heat for planets.

When we think of the human body in the past, we are mostly consider buried bones and mummified bodies. Through physical anthropology research we have found many “steps” in the evolutionary trail, but this does not absolutely confirm Evolution Theory. The past history also help in understanding our genetic problems and related illnesses.

The Physical Present

With the present conditions on Earth, there is major concerned about the environment with global warming and extreme climate change as well as sufficient drinkable water resources, food supplies, renewable energy sources, extinction of species, and demographics—population going from 7 billion up to 9 billion by 2025.

From the human body perspective our children are generally taller then we are. In general we are living longer than our parents through better health care. Also, there are many organ transplants and artificial parts used in keeping our bodies going. There are many concerns about how we take care of our body and keep it healthy. This is very important for a long productive life.

The Physical Future

The earth will begin to run out of economical available resources so that advanced technologies and conservation will be required. Our sun will eventually be less stable but this is not a near term threat. Many earthquakes are over due in populated areas. Possible Earth impact from asteroids can cause major damage. We have one coming by in November 2011 inside the Moon’s orbit. Close by supernovas or gamma ray bursts may cause significant loss of life. There is then the possibility of increase storm intensity and destruction.

 For our body, we can predict 100% probability of death. We may be able to extend life a few years, but physical death is still our final destination. In general, no one wants to talk about it.

The Psychology Past

The older we are, the more we seem to be living in the past. The problem being we cannot keep up with the present. Thus we slowly dropout of the culture and seek peace, comfort, and security in our retirement community. Psychological living in the past can have both problems and successes. We most often focus on our successes, achievements, and awards.

 The Psychological Present

When we are very young it is day by day life with our parents providing all our needs, we are very dependent on others. Also, one day seems to be a very long time, so much is happening. Some peoples like living in the present from party to party seeking the fun and thrills of life. They have no concern about tomorrow and the results of their wild life. Their goal is to say, “I did it my way” day-by-day. It is also possible that our psychological problems are greater than our physical problems.

 The Psychological Future

In our schooling and working years we are looking ahead to the next steps in our life. We go from graduating from class to class and then to work with generally a family to raise. Our big goal is retirement. In these future years we have a feeling of being in control and having options on what we do, where we go, and how we do things. For the most part we feel self-sufficient. Occasionally there are a few accident or illnesses that require special help and support, but we look forward to being independent again and work hard to achieve it. Unfortunately this can also be a time of great depression where there seems no end of our failures, pain, and suffering.  The only thing we look forward to is our death and release from our ageing body.

 The Supernatural Past

In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth and all that is in them. Nothing was created that God did not create. We then face the problem that all have sinned and are condemned to death. In God’s great love, mercy and grace He send His Son, Jesus, to Earth to teach us how we should live and be a sacrifice for all our sins if we repent and believe in Him and accept Him as our Lord and Savior. Seldom do we consider our conception, birth, and consciousness to be a supernatural event in the past. It just seems normal and natural.

 The Supernatural Present

With our faith in God, He tells us not to worry about tomorrow. He will provide everything we need to follow His plans for our life. If we are concerned about tomorrow, it shows we do not have full faith in God. God will give us what we need for today and prepare us for the essentials of tomorrow. We are to life one day at a time. God does many supernatural things to prepare tomorrow for us with our limited abilities. We must do God’s work using God’s empowerment and spiritual gifts. Our spiritual problems can be as great or greater than our physical ones.

 The Supernatural Future

We look forward to the big promises of God in resurrection from the dead, a new eternal body, and life in Heaven with Him for eternity. For those who have not put their full faith in God, their destiny is eternal separation from God, a place call Hell were all the sinner from Satan, the fallen angels and all the other sinful people will reside. Many do not believe in life after death. We have no physical example in our present lifetime of people coming back from the dead. There have been many near-death experiences and even those who were told by angels their time is not yet; God has more for them to do on Earth. Further there are many stories about ghosts haunting houses and many other places. There are other religious believes in life after death such as Hindu with reincarnation and coming back as an animal or another person.

The Essentials Of History

From the Random Evolutionary process of life through Natural Selection Theory using survival of the fittest for the environment, there is no over all pattern, plan, or significance in the development of life’s History. However from a Biblical perspective, History is not a random chance occurrence independent of what was in the past and what is coming in the future. There is a purpose, plan, and control for everything that happens. The problem is that most do not believe this or see it in history. The significance only comes by seeing history from God’s perspective. We do have the concept that each generation builds upon the developments of the previous generation. Our education system is one way we transfer the past into the present and then the present into the future. There is the famous quotation, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” By George Santayana. There are many aspect of History to be considered in following paragraphs.

The Events In Human History

There are two interwoven trails in History. One is the physical materialistic history of the Universe and on Earth and its development. The other is the development of life on Earth and the impact it has had on each succeeding generation. The Earth had its fiery beginning around 4.5 Billion years ago and slowly cooled down to an environment that would support life. First life began as bacteria in the oceans about 3 billion years ago. This was essential to purify the ocean waters so larger life forms could develop and survive. Then there was the process of cleaning up the air and ground with bacteria and plants so that land animals could survive. In the Precambrian era about 80% of the existing life forms were created. The Homo Erectus species dates back about 1 million years. There are many events to consider the beginning of human History. Thus we have cave men, Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal, and finally Homo sapiens sapiens (humans) beginning about 150,000 to 100,000 years ago. Genetics is having a big impact on developing the human tree of life. In general history, there was the hunter-gathers nomadic age, then the agriculture and animal herding became necessary to support larger people groups in a location, then into the industrial revolution leading into mass production and technology, followed by the electronics revolution with radio, TV, and computers, and now into the information age of the Internet. Each of these steps created major sociological changes in how people lived and worked. Each of these stages had elements of passing along the experience and education from one generation to the next. This was promoted by the development of specialization.

The History Found In Stories.

In a very primitive way, history is what we remember. It is in the stories we tell, we listen to, and we even read about. There is something very powerful about stories, they are far easier to remember that basic facts and figures. Just consider the way God communicates to us in His words in the Bible. These are all in story format. Stories tell about humans and what they do, think, and feel. We even project stories on animals, trees, steams, and mountains. Stories seem to give value and significance to events, conditions, and happenings. In part stories reveal aspects about our memory. By memory, I also include the ability to recall names, places, and dates along with the stories. Analysis of memory has shown that an emotional content increases about ability to recall. Other aspects such as people, places and things allow us associate with other entries in our multidimensional memory. Thus when we talk about history memory is very important.

The History Can Be Considered Basic Information

The analysis, evaluation, and conclusions derived from information are one of the unique abilities of the human brain. It is the way we find meaning, significance, and truth. Our basic mode of operation is to use the past to predict the future. By definition, this relies on the information from the past, be it in theories, laws, or stories.

 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

When considering History, which would be more significant, our version of History or God’s version of History? My general answer is that studying human History does not give much help in understanding God’s History. But God’s History can give a basis for our understanding human History. Human History does provide the path of development and discovery from one era to another and from one generation to another. But it does not give insight to the plan, purpose, and goal of life and why things happen like they do. God has even given us prophecies about what will happen in the future. Our human projections are not very good. Many see the hand of a master designer in what has been created but do not connect this to God. Evolutionists just say that is all in the process of Natural Selection. Thus the emphasis here will be in His Story.

The History Is His Story

God as planned, created, and controlled the events of the world from beginning to the end. I also believe God is the source of our creative ides, theories, and inventions. Perhaps it time to consider what God has done, is doing, and will do; God is in control of the past, present, and future. God is all knowing, active, and guiding everything; nothing happens without His review and permission. History therefore reveals to us God’s mission, plan, and power for our Universe and more specifically, our life on Earth.

 Basic Elements of the Story

Basic story theory consists of a series of struggles between the protagonist and the antagonist in escalating levels of complexity, challenges, and counters until reaching a seeming impossible level when the protagonist essentially does the impossible and achieves final victory. This theory of human brain functioning was presented at a Christian Writers Conference I went to several years ago. Research has shown there is very unique interest in the human brains to the story. When we consider the Bible it is basically a storybook, the real storybook! Therefore, the Scripture revelations highlight History and His Story given below.

 SCRIPTURE REFERENCES FOR HISTORY AND HIS STORY

 Warnings From Israel’s History  (1 Corinthians 10:1-13 NIV)

To An Unknown God  (Acts 17:22-34 NIV)

To King Artaxerxes  (Ezra 4:11-24 NIV)

The Fall  (Genesis 3:1-19 NIV)

All the Days Ordained For Me  (Psalm 139:13-16 NIV)

Noah And The Great Flood  (Genesis 6:9-21 NIV)

The Tower of Babel  (Genesis 11:1-9 NIV)

Lord Rescues His People  (Exodus 3:4-10 NIV)

 Parting The Red Sea  (Exodus 14:1-28 NIV)

 The Promised Land  (Numbers 14:20-35 NIV)

The LORD Appears to Solomon  (2 Chronicles 7:11-14 NIV)

Jesus Is Tested in the Wilderness  (Matthew 4:1-11 NIV)

Made Alive in Christ  (Ephesians 2:1-10 NIV)

The Armor of God  (Ephesians 6:10-18 NIV)

End Times  (Matthew 24:3-22 NIV)

The Judgment of the Dead  (Revelation 20:11-15 NIV)

A New Heaven and a New Earth  (Revelation 21:1-4 NIV)

 AND NOW THE QUESTIONS

 Why Did God Create A Universe That Took 14.7 Billion Years?

If God is God He could have done it a just a few days! We are bound to live in time and space. God “lives” in Eternity; He had no beginning and has no ending. This is impossible in our time and space. Thus we say God “transcends” time and space; He lives in another domain. Scripture note, “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” (2 Peter 3:8 NIV) It really makes not difference if we say a year is like a billion years, the point being God does not reside in time and space.

The same thing goes for the size of the Universe; one light year is 5.8 trillion miles. Thus 14.7 billion light years are 83.6 billion trillion miles (85.3 X10^21 miles). These are dimensions beyond our imagination. Now further we need to consider the very small scale of subatomic particles, which have essentially even larger ratio compared to our size as does our Universe have. So if we are concerned about the large size of the Universe, then we should also be concerned about the small size of subatomic particles. Thus, we are about in the “middle” between the vast Universe and subatomic particles.

We must remember that God is doing all these creations and not us; we do not create; we design, develop, and build out of what has already been created. Things grow, but we have no part in their growing. We can trim, nurture, or remove them. Life and growth are God things. We read in Genesis 1 that after God spoke things into existence, He said they were good, and in total, very good. From my perspective I think God was very happy and pleased with His Creation. It is a display of His Glory. If it were something we could design and build, we would not give God the Glory for His Creation. Too often we may consider ourselves being in competition with God, that would never do, it would be a sinful thing. God enjoys all the little details including watching us and the decisions we make. Judgment on what we have done with our life comes at the End.

The Evolution Of Life Seems Too Natural and Simple

What is so great about Evolution? Life can be interpreted as a very natural process of mutations and natural selection based on the survival of the fittest; that which procreated the fastest and can adapt to the changing environment. It all started from a single cell that was able to reproduce. Then through a series of mutations and time has ended up created humans. Just to show how very simple this all is in nature, microbiologist are working very hard in the laboratory to try to create single cell life; they are not there yet. The assumption is if one gets the atoms, molecules, and proteins in just the right formation, life will occur automatically. From my perspective we really do not know the secret of life.

Our present research and analysis is uncovering tremendous complexity of living cell design far beyond our ability to understand. We are also discovering a very complex system of coding with error detection and correction in the genome. Each life form is unique and especially adapted to its environment, but also has great commonality such that it posses the essential proteins that we need for food, medicines, and other things important for our life.

Where Is Heaven And What Is Spirit?

From Scripture we identify that we are body, soul, and spirit. These are each separate domains with their multiple dimensions. Science has worked very hard in searching out other possible dimensions besides our nature three-dimensional space. It turns out that Standard Physics and Quantum Mechanics cannot fit into the same three dimensions, the physical relationships are very different operation with different laws and theories. String Theory with eleven different dimensions was one possible solution, but the problem was that there was no possible way of testing it. Thus, it would seem most likely that the soul has its separate domain and dimensions as does the spiritual domain and dimensions. This area of study has been covered by many of my previous essays. So now we wait until the Rapture and Jesus’ Second Coming to see how this will all work out.

Why Can’t We See God?

The first concern is that we are spiritual blind; we cannot see spiritual things without God giving us this ability. The same is true of feeling spiritual beings around us, although many including myself have experienced spiritual presence; all I can describe it as feeling sense of power. We note in Scripture that Adam and Eve had no problem of seeing God in the Garden and talking to Him; but then the Fall. There are a number of passages where people have had spiritual experiences including being lifted up to Heaven. Scriptures also note that no one can see God’s face and life because of our sinful nature. Note Exodus 33:18-20, Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” I think of this being close and looking at the Sun; we would burn up.

How we interact with world

THE ADVENTURES OF LIFE

Would we take a trip without planning and preparing for it? Only if it was unexpected! Therefore, do we pay any attention to possibilities, predictions, and prophecy? But there are more “speculations” about the future then we can handle. We have terrorism, earthquakes, major climate change, economic melt-down, cyber attacks, identity thefts, heart attacks, major accidents, and even predictions about the End of Time just to name a few. What are we to do? In our retirement home we have several deaths every month, but does that motivate us or just depress us? Before we moved into our retirement home, death of a friend was a very rare thing, maybe once a year for our older friends. Death was not in the current event status and easily put aside. It was not my turn, or I am not ready yet!

The older I get, the less able I can adapt to changes and the more I live from one day to the next. Planning ahead just means considering tomorrow’s possibilities. That does not mean I may actually do something to prepare for it! We can just let tomorrow take care of it’s self. Life is much easier and simpler if we can do that. Why should we use up today just to prepare for tomorrow? If we do that, how can we enjoy today?

Now this approach to life has some problems and risks. If we have goals, ambitions, or objectives, preparation is essential for accomplishments. Of what value is life if we just “drift” through it taking events as they happen? Are we really living or just existing? Problems represent opportunities. Ideas represent possibilities.  Planning represents changes. And adventures represent insights. What is the purpose for life, for human life, where we were created in the Image of God? Does God just sit back and watch and listen to see what happens on Earth like we would watch a movie? I don’t think so! So what does God do and what does He want us to do?

There are two ways of preparing for the Adventures of Life. One is the Worldly Way with its many advisors and consultants the other is God’s Way. The basic difference from the planning perspective is that the Worldly Way can only guess at what the future holds, where as God has predestined everything, He planned our life before the beginning of time. In which source of information would one chose? Well, it really depends upon how strong is the belief, faith, and relationship with God, His promises, and following His directions for our life. This is one of those “you bet your life” things. I have been following God’s path for essentially all my life as best I am able, now is not the time to change.

God’s Blessings (see Scripture references below)

I enjoy and accept God’s blessings through prayer for our daily needs and emphasis not to worry. To worry is to deny God and His blessing of His Children. Then we have Jesus Christ sacrifice on The Cross to pay for our sins, such a major act of love! Further, God has great plans for our future in Heaven. How can we not accept all He has promised us for our faith in following Him. Without the promise of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we cannot live the spiritual life, doing the work God has given us, and stand firm in the attacks of Satan.

God’s Commands  (see Scripture references below)

First we have the Great Command, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” Then we have the Great Commission, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Then we have John 14:15, If you love me, keep my commands.” How can we not love Jesus considering all He has done for us.

God’s Judgement  (see Scripture references below)

God’s love, righteousness, and justice requires the judgement of all people. This is done to some extent all through our lives, occasionally very dramatically, but the final judgment at the End of Time is rewards for our work for the Kingdom and for believers to Heaven as God’s Children for eternity and for unbelievers to Hell, which is the separation of God and His love. If we did not love God and follow His commandments during our life, how could we accept Him and His requirements after our life on Earth

We each have Free Will to chose our own direction for the Adventures in Life. Some like the “Do it my way” at the beginning and assume all ends at death. Others choose to do the hard work first to enjoy the rewards latter in eternal life in Heaven after death. This all ends with the question,

@  Myles R. Berg    09/25/11

SCRIPTURE REFERENCES

GOD’S BLESSINGS

Prayer  (Matthew 6:5-15 NIV)

Do Not Worry  (Matthew 6:25-34 NIV)

Jesus Comforts His Disciples  (John 14:1-4 NIV)

Jesus the Way to the Father (John 14:5-7 NIV)

Made Alive in Christ  (Ephesians 2:1-10 NIV)

Jesus Promises the Holy Spirit  (John 14:15-21 NIV)

Life by the Spirit (Galatians 5:13-25 NIV)

The Resurrection Body  (1 Corinthians 15:35-58 NIV)

A New Heaven and a New Earth  (Revelation 21:1-4 NIV)

GOD’S COMMANDMENTS

Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good And Evil  (Genesis 2:15-17 NIV)

Treasures in Heaven  (Matthew 6:19-24 NIV)

The Greatest Commandment  (Matthew 22:34-40 NIV)

The Great Commission  (Matthew 28:16-20 NIV)

The Signs of the End Times  (Matthew 24:1-14 NIV)

The Sign Of The Son Of Man  (Matthew 24:29-31 NIV)

The Day and Hour Unknown  (Matthew 24:36-41 NIV)

GOD’S JUDGMENTS

 The Fall  (Genesis 3:4-7, 11-19 NIV)

The Wickedness on Earth  (Genesis 6:5-8 NIV)

Who Do You Say That I Am?  (Matthew 16:13-19 NIV)

God’s Wrath Against Sinful Humanity  (Romans 1:18-32 NIV)

Condemned  (John 3:16-21 NIV)

All have sinned  (Romans 5:12, 18-21 NIV)

Unpardoned Sin  (Matthew 12:30-32 NIV)

The Judgment of the Dead  (Revelation 20:11-15 NIV)

How we interact with world, Interpersonal Interaction

Multidimensional Education

Recently I was at a K-12 presentation by the Hoover Institution Task Force. The primary focus was on how to make the present public system better. In discussions before the presentation I asked if they had considered the purpose of education. It seemed to me, if one wanted to improve education, it might be worthwhile to consider the purpose of education. It is obvious that the purpose of education has changed a lot over time. In the very early days the children would basically grow up doing the same thing as the parents in earning their livelihood. Then for many, there was the special emphasis on the church and teaching children to learn to read and understand the Bible. Now the Bible is a totally different domain of learning; the spiritual domain. The third domain is the social domain, how do we get along with other people. This was all part of the family social times such as birthday parties, Christmas events, and various local gatherings. Then we get to governments which are interested in getting people to support overall national objectives and be aware of the current events in the world. In this way they can be supporters of their government. The dictator type governments were more concerned about telling people what to think, what to do, and how to do it. Some degree of education is required to follow the government system, which may be enforced by rewards and penalties. The use of law and order is another aspect of education. Last but not least are the businesses out looking for employees and also using advertizing to get people to buy their products. These all require some degree of education. As our civilization becomes more complex and technical, the level of education must expand to incorporate these advances. One result of this is that several nations are considering public college education essential for the continued growth of their country. So what should we be doing in education?

The Basic Education – The Three R’s: Reading, (w)Riting, (a)Rithmatic

The technology has changed quite a bit over time but the basic are still the same. This is the primary way information, data, and concepts are passed from one generation to another. We are not born with these abilities, so they are a basic key to education. For example, how can one think or write about something without having it’s “name”? That name must have a definition of what the word means. Unfortunately, a word may have a number of definitions such as the word “love”.

The Socialization Education – How to get along with people

We are very social beings and like to be with people. This however, is not a totally natural, peaceful, or reciprocal process. We generally begin self-centered, and sometimes even very controlling. This does not bring peace and comfort to a group. It is very hard to learn to put other people first. We often are very quick to judge people; they are good or bad, friendly or hostile, intelligent or uninformed (dumb), motivating or discouraging, and probably a few others I haven’t thought of. In general it is assumed that most of our socialization occurs in our family setting as we grow up, but with the high percentage of broken families this socialization is not occurring and thus this falls upon the schools. This has resulted in a number of problems. It often is related to ADD, ADHD, autism, and other handicap disorder that make it hard for a child to adapt. With the “no child left behind” program this puts a big load on schools and teachers.

The Law and Order Education – rules and regulations imposed by government

When the education and training process in socialization does not meet all the requirements or has limitations, it then comes into the domain of government control. To maintain stability and general peace and order, the government must enforce the “laws of the land”. This is part of the “stick and carrot” motivation for people to change their behavior that is socially unacceptable. Teaching is one thing, but enforcement of teaching is another. The government is very interest in informing (educating) the public on how they are expected to obey.

The United States Constitution Education – rules and regulations imposed upon government

Government is not free to do what ever they please, but dictators, Kings, and tyrants generally pay not attention to the people or a constitution; they are the ultimate authority. Thus we have the saying from Lord Acton, “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.” There is socialization also required of government and its people so they do not become oppressive and want to control everything.

The Business Education – the engine that motivates and produces progress

There are two parts of this process, the businesses and the consumers. It is important to keep a balance between these two as they can easily get out of control. The education process is something like business educating people on what they need and consumers educating business on what the want. This is often referred to the law of supply and demand. In our high technology world this can become very important.

The Technology Education – moving forward faster and faster than ever

If we do not keep up with technology, we generally drop out of the advancing society. Education is an important part of keeping up and being involved in the technology generation. The way we do things is changing along with the things we use to do them. In part, our early education did not prepare us for this time of rapid change so now we are in the catch-up position. It is hard work to keep up with technology and do we have the motivation to do it? If not, we fall behind and generally out of touch with the new generation.

The Conflicts in Education – many different groups and organizations want to control what is taught in schools

In the olden times parents had a major say in what was taught in school. But now the unions, state and government have many requirements that all compete for the teaching time. One major area is government testing of students, which is used to rank schools and effects government funding. Many schools depend upon parents for additional support. Then there are private and charter schools that provide some choices in education. Then also there are on-line Internet classes for special focus and alternatives in education. Further, there is home schooling.

Preparing for Eternity – God is in control from the Beginning to the End of Universe and what happens to us

Now we are in the world of spiritual education. Some consider it of very high important, other say it is a total waste of time and effort. If we accept there was a beginning, shouldn’t we possibly be considering there may be an end? If there is life after death, then it is very important to know what this is all about. So what is God’s education plan? See Scripture below.

 

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The general purpose of education is to preserve and enhance our knowledge and development of character within our culture to best prepare an individual for personal growth and contribution to the national growth. There are many aspects to education include information, data, application, training, experience, travel, evaluation, wisdom, and integration into our lives and activities. The ultimate goal is to find truth and freedom.

Each generation today seems to have a different perspective on life. This perspective is continuously having an impact on education. This is further impacted by technology and financial issues in how education is provided and the emphasis of subjects. The present Postmodernism is having a major impact on ethics, morals, and values. Such as considerations of individual truths, pluralism, multiculturalism, and search for pleasure, wealth, recognition, and power are major driving forces in present culture.

There is a major differences between the secular and religious education and it is up to the individual how or if they pursue the religious education and integrate it into their lives. The secular education is generally mandated for all children up to the High School level with some countries going further to include college education necessary in our present high technology environment in order to be part of the workforce.

THE MULTIDIMENSIONAL EDUCATIONAL MAP

World Educational Process                                                            Spiritual Educational Process

Conditional Observations             Conditional Purpose                        Eternal Truth                      Eternal Prophecies

Developed Truth                         Developed Good                        Transcendent Word             Transcendent Love

Natural Sciences,                        Arts, Humanities,                         Bible, Holy Spirit            God             God the Father and Son

Arithmetic & Logic                        & Rhetoric                                    Prayer & Meditation            Compassion & Promises

Integrated into our Knowledge Base                           Integrated into our Faith Base

History, Philosophy, Politics, The Unknown                                    Prophecies, Prayer & Spiritual Warfare

Relationships                                                                                    Relationships

Communications & Social Sciences                                                Indwelling of Holy Spirit

Family, Friends & Government                                                            Children of God & Church

Fundamental Realm of Meaning                                    Fundamental Realm of Meaning

Morals, Ethics, Values                                                            God is omniscient, omnipotent

Evolution, Technology                                                            Repentance, Forgiveness, Love &

Birth, Life & Death                                                            Eternal Life in Heaven for believers

Ultimate Free Will Choice

Who Is Jesus Christ? God’s Son or just a Man?

All are condemned to Hell without Faith in Jesus

@   Myles R Berg    09/20/11

SCRIPTURE REFERENCES

Obedience Commanded  (Deuteronomy 4:1-14 NIV)

Teach Your Children  (Deuteronomy 11:18-21 NIV)

Sermon on the Mount — The Beatitudes  (Matthew 5:1-11 NIV)

Dispute Over Jesus’ Testimony  (John 8:12-20 NIV)

Instructions on Worship  (1 Timothy 2:1-7 NIV)

Teaching Scripture  (2 Timothy 3:16-17 NIV)

The Truth Will Set You Free  (John 8:31-47 NIV)

Worship In The Spirit and Truth   (John 4:23-24 NIV)

Indwelling Of The Holy Spirit  (John 14:15-21 NIV)

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Some bits and pieces from Google.

Purpose of Education (David Warlick)

Education is about:

  • Covering all the standards
  • Improving performance on government tests
  • Meeting AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress)
  • Producing a competitive workforce

“The purpose of education is to appropriately prepare our children for their future.”  

There are some implied, but essential questions in that answer:

  • What will their future hold?  What will they need to know?
  • What are appropriate method, materials, environment, activity?
  • Who are these children?  What is their frame of reference?

Today, I have a new answer.  My old one is still good.  I’ll continue to use it.  But if you ask me, “What is the purpose of education?” today, I’ll say, The purpose of education is to make the world a better place!“

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Thomas Jefferson declared, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 stated “Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the people . . . [are] necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties.” The Ordinance of 1787, wherein the state of Virginia ceded the land northwest of the Ohio River to the United States, Article III states “Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

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“Don’t let school get in the way of your education.”   Mark Twain

How we interact with world

ARE WE READY FOR THE END TIMES?

With all the wars, rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes in various places we seem to be entering the description of the beginning of the End Times; note Matthew 24:6-8 full text in reference. We are just missing the false Messiah but we do have a very strong liberal contingency in seminaries, denominations, and churches. However many are predicting the date for the beginning of the end times. Now in many countries Christians and Jews are being persecuted and put to death because of our beliefs which is given in Matthew 24:9-12 along with increase of false prophets and wickedness. The key event given is the abomination that causes desolation in the holy place. This is also given in Daniel 12:11-12 full text in reference section at the end. This starts the “clock timing” and in Daniel 12 the beginning of the Great Tribulation lasts for 1290 days.

Another key event in the End Times in the Rapture where people are raised from the dead and the living believers are resurrected into their eternal bodies to meet the Messiah in the air. This has been popularized by the “Left Behind” series of movies and books. There are many interpretations if this occurs before the Tribulation Period, during the Tribulation, or just before Jesus Second Coming and His Thousand Year reign in a reformed Earth. There are various passages that discuss this event are underlined: Matthew 24:30-31, Matthew 24:39b-42, 1 Corinthians 15:52, and 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17. The key point in these passages is the trumpet is the series of sevens in Revelation 8:6-13, 9:1-4, 13-16, and 10:15-18.

We have the Wedding of the Lamb in Revelation 19:6-10. This is followed by Jesus Christ Second Coming and His reign with an iron rod for one thousand years in Revelation 20:4-6. Then the return of Satan and the final war. This is followed by the Judgment of the Dead in revelation 20:11-15 and then the New Heaven and Earth along with the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21:1-5.

There is a interesting passage in Matthew 24:42, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.” The point with this is that we have each been given a job to do and God expects us to do that job continuously and not stop to wait for Him to come. Note the judgment in verse 50-51, “The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” This is a strong warning about not trying to determine the day or the hour the Lord will return. This same warning is given for The Ten Virgins in Matthew 25:1-13; full text for all these passages found in reference.

@    Myles R. Berg      09/13/11

Today’s Devotional Reference

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Love Worth Finding

Adrian Rogers

September 13

The Rapture of the Church

“For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.” 1 Thessalonians 4:16

I believe there will be seven years of terrible tribulation. It will be a time of tyranny and persecution. It will be a time when all nature will be out of joint and when demon spirits will infest the world. It will be a time when the Anti-Christ will rule and reign.

But before the tribulation comes, the Church is going to be raptured out. You might find it interesting to note that the word “rapture” is not found in the Bible, but the word “caught up” is, and that’s literally what the word “rapture” means. We will be “caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

Do your loved ones know what the rapture means? Why not ask them what they think this next week and open the door for a candid discussion about the future?

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SCRIPTURE REFERENCES

The Sign of the Time  (Matthew 24:3-35 NIV)

The Day or the Hour  (Matthew 24:36-51 NIV; related Ten Virgins Matt. 25:1-13)

The Rapture  (1 Corinthians 15:50-58 NIV, resurrection 1 Cor. 15:35-49)

Believers Who Have Died  (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 NIV)

The Trumpet Will Sound  (Revelation 8:6-13, 9:1-4, 13-16, 11:15-18 NIV)
The Lamb and the 144,000  (Revelation 14:1-5 NIV)
The Wedding of the Lamb  (Revelation 19:6-10 NIV)
The Thousand Years Reign  (Revelation 20:4-6 NIV)
The Judgment of the Dead  (Revelation 20:11-15 NIV)
A New Heaven and a New Earth  (Revelation 21:1-5 NIV)
The End Times  (Daniel 12:1-12 NIV)
How we interact with world

MULTIDIMENSIONAL TRANSFORMATION

It is time we consider some of the big stuff and what life is all about. Life is all about transformations. There are physical (body), psychological (soul), and supernatural (spiritual) transformations. Let us consider each of these different dimensions one at a time.

Physically we begin as a tiny baby, and transform into an adolescent, then to an adult, followed by old age then and perhaps resurrection. The physical body is a very impressive biological machine. Even though bodies have been around for a long, long time, we still do not fully understand how they work and function. We have made great strides forward using microbiology technology but mysteries still exist regarding what life is all about and how it really works. How is life produced from lifeless atoms and molecules? That being, if we really understood the whole process, we could make all sorts of replacement parts, rather then having to take them from other bodies, typically from ones that have died early. Secondly, we would eliminate all diseases, viruses, bacterial, and all sorts of other pathogens. We have made progress in cloning, but creating life in the lab is further into the future. Can one imagine what sort of animals we might create? A lot of work has gone into human robots, but so far not very practical, but they are coming. These are the sources of physical transformations.

Now we get to the psychological part. It something like the computer software programs and data base systems that developed and stored the information in the brain and associated neurons and synapses. The brain is connected to the body through massive sensor systems for sight, hearing, tasting, smelling, and many aspects of touch, temperature, and trouble. The software system processes the sensor data for recognition, reaction, and recording. The resulting processes information is sent to the consciousness system for determination of our higher order communications. We are not directly wired to the “outside” physical world such as light switches, radios or TV that directly present the “raw” data. We have an intelligent control and response system. This is where our personality, character, and passions carefully manage our actions and reactions. This is considered to be the essence of our being, or theologically, our soul. This gives us our human nature so we are not just mechanical machines. These are the sources of the psychological transformations.

Last but not least are our supernatural interconnections. In that they are not considered a “natural” part of the physical and psychological domains of our body, the descriptions are more ethereal in terms of super-consciousness, intuitions, and out-of-the-body experiences of powers, domains, and kingdoms not of this world or universe. What we may normally call spiritual communications. They can be more “real” than our physical realities and more powerful than the forces of nature once one has experienced them. But most often they are a persistent force in the background gently leading us if we will accept them. There is both love from God our Father, or evil from Satan with temptations and deceptions from the dark side. These are the sources of the supernatural transformations.

What is the purpose and goal of these Multidimensional Transformations?

From an Evolutional Perspective the purpose and goal is all found the in the process of Natural Selection; the classic survival of the fittest. The species continues to mutate in various ways in order to better survive changes in the environment and procreate creating the following generations. The mutations and natural selection provide the physical transformation.

From a Political and Governmental Perspective the purpose and goal of government is to build a stronger and more progressive nation that will expand and take over the world. The “take over” can be economical, cultural, philosophical, or military. So far these have all been tried, but none have achieved world dominance.

From a Religious Perspective God will come down in glory and power judging the world and changing everything to be renewed with no more pain, suffering, and death. This generally requires the people to be dedicated to changing and informing the world to be ready for God’s coming. This is possibly achieved through supernatural forces of Islam’s Allah, the Antichrist, or the direct power of the Christian God depending upon the beliefs of the people.

Why do we need Multidimensional Transformation?

Nothing seems to work well with the present people we have on Earth. There is immorality, corruption, violence, wars, and rejecting God. Consider reference 1* Romans 1:18-32 that describes the wickedness, godlessness, and suppression of the truth. Also gives a long list of the depravity of mankind. Then there are further charges in reference 2* Romans 3:9-20 that no one is righteous and they are worthless.

We are spiritually dead and not able to overcome our present sinful nature and the attacks of Satan. Note reference 3* Made Alive in Christ, that Jesus died for our sins on the Cross and paid the penalty of our sins. It is by God’s grace that we have been saved. Further in reference 4* Born Again it mentions we were first born of water, and for transformation we must be born of the Spirit.

Once we are born of the Spirit, we now must live by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that empower us as given in reference 5* Jesus Promise of the Holy Spirit. Further we are to produce the fruit of the spirit, in reference 6* Live by the Spirit. Then we are also able to protect ourselves with reference 7* The Armor of God. We are in the middle of a spiritual battle with the devil and his demons.

This is all good and progressive but we still have a decaying body in a decaying world. We need a transformation of our selves and the world. See references 7* The Resurrection of the Body and reference 8* A new Heaven and a New Earth. All things are made new and those who have chosen Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior can now be adopted as God’s Children and spend Eternity with Him in Heaven.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Our world is going through physical changes with earthquakes, volcano eruptions, forest fires, pollution, and extreme weather conditions. But this is not the kind of transformation we want.

Our physical bodies having grown to maturity, are now passing into decay with pain, suffering, and death. Again not the transformations we want.

Our psychological conditions have become more depressing and uncertain on one side and more hostile and violent on the other. We search for peace now and in the future but do not find it. Not the kind of transformations we want.

Our interests are becoming more self-centered and desire more government support and control with the general rejection of God and the supernatural. Again not the transformations that we want to bring a full life and productive life.

Our supernatural world is being taken over and transformed by science and technology. We delight in the power of computer and information age along with the new theories in science, but they bring us many or more problems then they solving. Not the transformation we need but the one we seem to want.

Our dependence on God, His kingdom, and His love is continually decreasing. We look for other ways to find our purpose, joy, and fullness in life. This is not the transformation God has promised us. This is the way to His wrath and judgment.

God’s transformations are very different as they come from a totally different perspective. It is we the people that need to be transformed. Our sinful nature has corrupted the world, ourselves, and all we do.

Human Transformational Plan:

If things are not going well, change the people in charge. If this does not work, go do it all yourself. If things still go wrong, blame someone else.

God’s Transformational Plan:

We are spiritual dead. Therefore we must realize that we need a spiritual rebirth transformation.

With our repentance and commitment to have Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior we will receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit will give us the guidance and empowerment to be transformed in order to receive the spiritual life.

We need to overcome our sinful nature and the attacks of Satan by following the transformation to spiritual life.

We need the transformation of our decaying and dyeing body into an immortal eternal body.

We need a transformation of our old Heaven and Earth so there will be no more pain, suffering, or death. This also includes that we become God’s Children and live with Him for eternity.

@    Myles R. Berg     08/22/11

 

SCRIPTURE REFERENCES

1* God’s Wrath Against Sinful Humanity  (Romans 1:18-32 NIV)
2* No One Is Righteous  (Romans 3:9-20 NIV)
3* Made Alive in Christ  (Ephesians 2:1-10 NIV)
4* Born Again  (John 3:1-6 NIV)
5* Jesus Promises the Holy Spirit  (John 14:15-21 NIV)
6* Life by the Spirit  (Galatians 5:13-25 NIV)
7* The Armor of God  (Ephesians 6:10-18 NIV)
8* The Resurrection Body  (1 Corinthians 15:35-57 NIV)
9* A New Heaven and a New Earth  (Revelation 21:1-5a NIV)

How we interact with world, Interpersonal Interaction

WHO IS THIS THAT MAKES JUDGMENTS?

We go about making judgments all the time! By what authority do we make these judgments? That was the thought that starting me thinking. Well, if it is something personal such as what I eat, wear, say, do, or think; I am over 21 years old thus an official adult and responsible and accountable for my actions. If I am judging myself, that is one thing. However, if I am judging others, organizations, businesses, governments, or even God’s creations or His Word, that is something totally different. Actually I generally do not think about it and just make my judgments anyway. However, I am careful about what I do with my judgments when others are around. There is a problem however because God is around all the time and is very concerned about our judgments, and even going as far inside to our thoughts.

We can easily rationalize our habit of making judgments saying they are only opinions, thoughts, feelings, preferences or other such things, but they often carry the same weight as if they were judgments. For example, we are told not to discriminate, but I do it all the time. We are told to accept multiculturalism, but I do not feel comfortable in other cultures. We are constantly bombarded to be politically correct, but that is not my nature. So if I am not to judge others, why are others judging me? Who judged who first? Shouldn’t I judge those who judge me? We can get wrapped up in a very tight ball over this whole issue.

So, we look for a source of authority for making our judgments. There are many sources of authority all around us. Such as what my parents told me, what my teacher said, what my boss ordered me to do, or perhaps even what the pastor of our church said. Then we have all sorts of personal authorities, I went to college, I worked in these areas, I wrote a book, I was awarded special recognition for all I have done. Then perhaps we would even be tempted to say God told me. When in need, we search for any authority we can find to support our judgments. The overall question should be, are our judgments fare, true, just, and based on all the information. Seldom is this the case, we just do not know everything past, present and future. How then can we make any responsible judgments?

Let us go to the Scriptures and see what God’s Word says about all this. A brief summary is given below of selected passages with the full text linked in the Scripture Reference Section.

1* Do not Judge Others, “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Matthew 7:1-5)

2* You Condemn Yourself, “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.” (Romans 2:1-4)

 3* Judging Others, “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.” (Romans 14:1-23)

 4* Why do you Judge Me? “I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself.” (1 Corinthians 4:1-5)

5* Believers freedom, “For why is my freedom being judged by another’s conscience?” (1 Corinthians 10:23-33)

6* Those inside the Church, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.” (1 Corinthians 5:9-13)

 7* One Lawgiver and Judge, “Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it.” (James 4:11-12)

8* Sin in the Church, “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.” (Matthew 18:15-17 NIV)

9* Ungodly Judgments, “Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead, one brother takes another to court—and this in front of unbelievers!” (1 Corinthians 6:1-6)

 10* Motives in Judging, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” (Luke 12:13-21)

11* In Judgment do no take Revenge, “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.” (Romans 12:14-21 NIV)

12* Authority, “Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him. “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.” (John 5:16-30)

13* Saved from judgment, “For I (Jesus) did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.” (John 12:44-50)

14* God’s judgment, “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.” (Romans 1:18-25)

15* Judgment of the Seven Churches, “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.” Other similar (Revelation 2:1-3:21)

16* Judgment of Satan, “And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” (Revelation 20:7-10)

17* Judgment of the Dead, “The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. … Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.” (Revelation 20:11-15)

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

The Scriptures present a very different perspective of judgment than is generally present in our world. Not only do we consider judgment, but also revenge. We are swift to do evil. We need to be very careful in the way we use and apply judgment. A significant distinction is made between judging those inside the church versus those outside the Church. God is responsible for judging those outside the Church. There is enough work just keeping the Church following God’s Word and not drifting off. We are to be carefully judging the sins within the Church. Three steps are given; Directly talk to the sinner so they will repent, If not bring together witnesses to verify the charges, and If that does not work, treat them as an unbelievers and sinner so that they will leave the Church or repent.

As we judge, we are also condemning ourselves as we do the same type of things; we are being hypocrites. We need to carefully follow God’s command to love our neighbor as ourselves.

In Jesus Christ believers have freedom to do many things as we are not bound by the traditional Jewish Laws. But we are not to use our freedom to judge others, but accept their choices and limits. Such an example is drinking wine with dinner, which I like—that is my freedom. But others consider any alcohol to be evil. We are not to judge or condemn them for their beliefs. There are many other such examples in our culture.

From time to time God makes major judgments such as occurred with the Great Flood, the fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah, the Tower of Babel, and the coming Great Tribulation. There are many smaller miracles God does each and every day. Just consider what Jesus did when He was on Earth, healing people, raising the dead, walking on water, and many more. Daily we need to commit our path to following the Lord.

There are a number of very serious judgments that affect our eternal destiny. Accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior is one of them. We need to follow God’s commandments, to not greave the Holy Spirit, and to stay close to God our Father so we can become His Children. We need His blessings, guidance and empowerment to do the work He has called us to do. There is a final judgment at the End of Time where we receive our rewards and become His Children in Heaven. All people at this time will be judged including Satan. Those not in the Book of Life go to Hell for eternity.

@   Myles R. Berg     08/18/11

SCRIPTURE REFERENCES ON JUDGMENTS

1* Do Not Judge Others  (Matthew 7:1-5 NIV)
2* You Condemn Yourself (Romans 2:1-4 NIV)
3* Judging Others  (Romans 14:1-23 NIV)
4* Why Do You Judge Me?  (1 Corinthians 4:1-5 NIV)
5* Believer’s Freedom  (1 Corinthians 10:23-33 NIV)
6* Those Inside The Church  (1 Corinthians 5:9-13 NIV)
7* Sin In The Church  (Matthew 18:15-17 NIV)
8* Ungodly Judgments  (1 Corinthians 6:1-6 NIV)
9* Motives In Judging  (Luke 12:13-21 NIV)
10* Authority  (John 5:16-30 NIV)
11* Saved From Judgment  (John 12:44-50 NIV)
12* God’s Judgment Against Sinful Humanity  (Romans 1:18-25 NIV)
13* In Judgment Do Not Take Revenge  (Romans 12:14-21 NIV)
14* One Lawgiver And Judge  (James 4:11-12 NIV)
15* Judgment Of The Seven Churches
— Church in Ephesus  (Revelation 2:1-7 NIV)
— Church in Smyrna  (Revelation 2:8-11 NIV)
— Church in Pergamum  (Revelation 2:12-17 NIV)
— Church in Thyatira  (Revelation 2:18-29 NIV)
— Church in Sardis  (Revelation 3:1-6 NIV)
— Church in Philadelphia  (Revelation 3:7-13 NIV)
— Church in Laodicea  (Revelation 3:14-22 NIV)
16* Judgment Of Satan   (Revelation 20:7-10 NIV)
17* Judgment Of The Dead  (Revelation 20:11-15 NIV)
How we interact with world

ENVIRONMENTALISM — “SAVE THE EARTH!”

“As The World Turns” From My Perspective

It is claimed these days we are having extremes in our environment. Many leaders say they have the solution, but their solutions are all different. In theory, we have a physical and financial model for the Earth and what it takes to maintain acceptable living condition for humankind. So if this is a reasonable model why do we have the following problems?

The present big issue is Global Warming, which is also referred to as Extreme Climate Change. Many are claiming this is cause by our burning fossil fuel and producing tons and tons of CO2 thus adding to the Greenhouse effect thus resulting in the Global Warming. This is causing melting of the glaciers at the North and South poles and the rising of the sea level. But there are many, many other weather related environmental issues also occurring such as the Ozone Holes over the poles with an increase of ultra violet radiation coming in and the increase in volcano eruptions and earthquakes. We also have many areas in the world where there use to be forest and are now deserts and even the rain forests are now being removed for agriculture use. There is little effective effort to replace these forests that are also related to climate change.

The significant new concerns are over the available water supply. Many areas are having major droughts with a few areas have major flooding. In addition to water availability, there are concerns about major pollution of waters in the lakes, rivers, and oceans. The droughts have been blamed for major forest fires during the hot dry weather. In other forested area the fuel supply is so great the forest fires are impossible to fight, they must just burn out; part of poor forest management.

Then there is air pollution. Reasonable success as been achieved in reducing air pollution in the major industrialized nations but this remains a serious problem in developing and poor nations. China is an interesting example of industrial growth going wild with little environmental concern. This has caused major health problems that need to be brought under control.

It is not that the environmentalists have been doing nothing; they have been very active promoting many different programs. The questions come in terms of are they affordable, practical, and sustainable? The third world countries are not able to respond to these changes and many of the developing nations do not have the environment as a priority.

Another form of environmental concern is “The Population Bomb”.  How can the Earth provide the food, water, and living space for all the people we are producing; we are at 7 billion now and rapidly growing to 9 billion. When considering the demographics and population problems, the major birth rates and over population occur mostly in third world countries where there are not the resources to support all the people.

Economics has a big impact to what we do in controlling the environment and the world debt is a big part of this problem. Many industrial countries have a national debt that is a significant fraction of their GDP. Some such as the USA, and several European counties the debt is essentially the size of the GDP. Thus the governments do not have the resources to develop and implement the technologies to bring their environmental conditions under control.

Then we have the governments and the people to consider. Many countries have deep corruption in government with little law and order such that the things that should be done are not done. We have the people emotionally bouncing back and forth between greed and fear – who will promise them the good life? They are only thinking about themselves not others or their country. There is great unrest and violence in many countries resulting in suffering and reduced life expectancies.

Further there is our spiritual condition of turning away from God, not following His commandment to manage His created world for the good of all, and even attacking His Church both from outside aggression and destruction and from the inside with hypocrisy and liberalism denying the truth of His Word. How can this not make God angry and bring His wrath. He did bring the Flood and only Noah and his family along with the animals survived in the ark; perhaps now the Tribulation?

I find it amusing that there is also a significant effort in astronomy to find another planet that could support life. Surely, among all the billions and billions of planets, there must be some that are stable and have all the essentials to support human life. Such a find would provide a place to go when our Earth becomes no longer able to support life. Long distance space travel is not yet a developed technology. We are now thinking about sending people to Mars, not other galaxies.

Can there be a purpose behind all that is happening in our World?

There are so many different things happening, at such a rapid rate, over a wide range of problems, covering so many people and countries that there must be some reasonable and logical explanation! From my perspective, yes there is a reason. All this is happening because we were never designed and created to be self-sufficient. We do not have the technology, knowledge, wisdom, and foresight to effectively manage people and the world. God created us to be dependent upon Him for everything we do. When we do not listen to God and follow His directions things begin falling apart and are pushed along aggressively by Satan and his followers. So we have the old saying, “The World is going to Hell in a hand-basket”.

Summary of God’s Word and Commandments

— The purpose of mankind is to “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (1* Genesis 1:26-28)

— God cares for us, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” (2* Psalm 8:1-9)

— The Lord is in control of all. “The LORD has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.” (3* Psalm 103:19-22)

— You are not to become great. “Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,” (4* Matthew 20:25-28)

— Government; “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.” (5* Romans 13:1-7)

— Do not worry, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (6* Matthew 6:31-34)

— Put your treasures in Heaven. “You cannot serve both God and money.” (7* Matthew 6:19-21, 24)

— Do not boast. “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” (8* James 4:13-15)

— Indwelling of the Holy Spirit, “If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth.” (9* John 14:15-21)

— Life through the Holy Spirit, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” (10* Romans 8:1-8)

 God’s Solution to Environmentalism – Summary Of The Great Tribulation (Scripture linked in Reference Section)

— Seven Seals

Peace was removed from the Earth and men battled each other. This caused the cost of food to increase as things became scarce. There were more killings, famines and plagues. There was a great earthquake and the mountains and islands were removed from their place. The people hid in caves to escape from the wrath of God that has come upon them.

— Seven Trumpets

And things got worse. Hail, fire, and blood rained down. A huge asteroid fell into the ocean turning 1/3 to blood along with 1/3 of the rivers. A great abyss opened with smoke rising and locusts-scorpions came out to sting people who did not have the seal. Another angel kills 1/3 of mankind. Finally the kingdom of the World has become the Kingdom of our Lord.

— Seven Bowls

Painful and ugly sores broke out on people who had the mark of the beast. The sea turned to blood and every living thing died. Sun became hot and scorched people with fire and they cursed God. The throne of the beast and his kingdom was thrown into darkness. The Euphrates River dried up. And with the 7th bowl a loud voice said, “It is done!” A tremendous earthquake came and destroyed the cities, flattened the land and hundred pound hail fell on the men.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

We have a God-sized problem and I do not foresee a man-made solution. What path could world leaders take that would achieve success with all our present problems? There is a drive for one world government that would handle everything, but that goal does not seem achievable, even with Islam taking over the world. Therefore, I have turn to another solution.

As we check out the seven seals of the Tribulation, we find we are already in the third seal. The main question to consider is why does prophecy have the Great Tribulation before the Second Coming of Jesus? Can it be that we have made such a mess of the Earth that it is going to take some real transformation to bring it back to a condition like the Garden of Eden for Jesus’ Second Coming? Consider 11* Romans 8:18-25, “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” Then we have End Times in 12* Matthew 24:3-51, “For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.” We do not know the time or the date when all this will happen, it will happen all of a sudden when people least expect it “as in the days of Noah.” After the Great Tribulation we have the Second Coming of Christ and the 1,000-year rule with an iron rod. General interpretation is that the resurrected saints will join Jesus in helping Him run the reformed Earth.

There is an alternative to consider, 2 Chronicles 7:14, “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” So what do we chose Repentance or Tribulation?               

©  Myles R. Berg   08/15/11

 

SCRIPTURE REFERENCES

1* The Purpose if Mankind  (Genesis 1:26-28 NIV)

2* The Lord Rules  (Psalm 8:1-9 NIV)

3* His Kingdom Rule Over All  (Psalm 103:19-22 NIV)

4* The Gentile Rulers  (Matthew 20:25-28 NIV)

5* Submission to Governing Authorities  (Romans 13:1-7 NIV)

6* Seek First God’s Kingdom  (Matthew 6:31-34 NIV)

7* Treasures in Heaven  (Matthew 6:19-21, 24 NIV)

8* Boasting About Tomorrow  (James 4:13-15 NIV)

9* Jesus Promises the Holy Spirit  (John 14:15-21 NIV)

10* Life Through the Spirit  (Romans 8:1-8 NIV)

11* Present Suffering and Future Glory  (Romans 8:18-24 NIV)

12* Signs of the End Times (Matthew 24:3-25, 26-35, 36-51 NIV)

Physical Effects on the Earth and People

This section of prophecies concentrates on the physical effects on Earth from the series of seven seals, trumpets, and bowls which are spread out from Revelation 6 to 11. There are, however, many other subjects and issues also brought up in this portion of Revelations, which will not be covered in this study.

 Seals

— 1st Seal “Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.”

— 2nd Seal “Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword.”

— 3rd Seal “Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!”

— 4th Seal “Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.”

— 5th Seal “They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.”

— 6th Seal “There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.”

— Reaction (“Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?”)

Preparation (“’Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.’ Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel.”)

— 7th Seal “the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake.”

Trumpets

— 1st Trumpet “there came hail and fire mixed with blood, and it was hurled down upon the earth. A third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.”

— 2nd Trumpet “something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.”

— 3rd Trumpet “a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water— the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.”

— 4th Trumpet “a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them turned dark. A third of the day was without light, and also a third of the night.”

— 5th Trumpet “a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the shaft of the Abyss. When he opened the Abyss, smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. And out of the smoke locusts came down upon the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any plant or tree, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were not given power to kill them, but only to torture them for five months. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes a man. During those days men will seek death, but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will elude them.”

— Reaction (“The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. They had tails and stings like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon.”)

— 6th Trumpet “And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind.”

— Reaction (The number of the mounted troops was two hundred million. I heard their number. The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur. A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths. The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury. The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk. Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality or their thefts.”)

— 7th Trumpet “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.

— Reaction (And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying: ‘We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign. The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great–and for destroying those who destroy the earth.’ Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a great hailstorm.”)

Bowls

— 1st Bowl “poured out his bowl on the land, and ugly and painful sores broke out on the people who had the mark of the beast and worshiped his image.”

— 2nd Bowl “poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died.”

— 3rd Bowl “poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood.”

— 4th Bowl “poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was given power to scorch people with fire. They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him.”

— 5th Bowl “poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was plunged into darkness. Men gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done.”

— 6th Bowl “poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East.”

— 7th Bowl “poured out his bowl into the air, and out of the temple came a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘It is done!’”

— Reaction (“Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake. The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. God remembered Babylon the Great and gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath. Every island fled away and the mountains could not be found. From the sky huge hailstones of about a hundred pounds each fell upon men. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible.”)

Writings of Myles Berg