Rapture and End Times

At one time the whole earth had the same language and vocabulary. As people migrated from the east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let us make oven-fired bricks.” They used brick for stone and asphalt for mortar. And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:1-4)

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What will the world look like in 2030? As the world becomes increasingly connected, will technology free the human race and solve the age-old problems of the world? Or will it lead to chaos and misery? Utopia or Urban Nightmare – what’s it going to be?

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Utopia?

Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better World Economic Forum, November 10, 2016

Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city – or should I say, “our city”. I don’t own anything. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes.

It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much.

First communication became digitized and free to everyone. Then, when clean energy became free, things started to move quickly. Transportation dropped dramatically in price. It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes. We started transporting ourselves in a much more organized and coordinated way when public transport became easier, quicker and more convenient than the car. Now I can hardly believe that we accepted congestion and traffic jams, not to mention the air pollution from combustion engines. What were we thinking?

Sometimes I use my bike when I go to see some of my friends. I enjoy the exercise and the ride. It kind of gets the soul to come along on the journey. Funny how some things seem never seem to lose their excitement: walking, biking, cooking, drawing and growing plants. It makes perfect sense and reminds us of how our culture emerged out of a close relationship with nature.

“Environmental problems seem far away”

In our city we don’t pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.

Once in awhile, I will choose to cook for myself. It is easy – the necessary kitchen equipment is delivered at my door within minutes. Since transport became free, we stopped having all those things stuffed into our home. Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into our cupboards? We can just order them when we need them.

This also made the breakthrough of the circular economy easier. When products are turned into services, no one has an interest in things with a short life span. Everything is designed for durability, repairability and recyclability. The materials are flowing more quickly in our economy and can be transformed to new products pretty easily. Environmental problems seem far away, since we only use clean energy and clean production methods. The air is clean, the water is clean and nobody would dare to touch the protected areas of nature because they constitute such value to our well being. In the cities we have plenty of green space and plants and trees all over. I still do not understand why in the past we filled all free spots in the city with concrete.

The death of shopping

Shopping? I can’t really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now.

When AI and robots took over so much of our work, we suddenly had time to eat well, sleep well and spend time with other people. The concept of rush hour makes no sense anymore, since the work that we do can be done at any time. I don’t really know if I would call it work anymore. It is more like thinking-time, creation-time and development-time.

For a while, everything was turned into entertainment and people did not want to bother themselves with difficult issues. It was only at the last minute that we found out how to use all these new technologies for better purposes than just killing time.

“They live different kinds of lives outside of the city”

My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages.

Once in awhile I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. No where I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.

All in all, it is a good life. Much better than the path we were on, where it became so clear that we could not continue with the same model of growth. We had all these terrible things happening: lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest and unemployment. We lost way too many people before we realised that we could do things differently.

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Urban Nightmare?

Connected World 2030: Utopia or Dystopia? SMA, January 04 2017

Humanity has a way of messing things up. Every new societal and technology advancement seems to bring new problems. There is little doubt that emerging technologies will transform our world substantially by 2030, but it is possible that the misuse and abuse of those technologies will lead to disaster, looking something like the following – or the dystopian view.

Surveillance state: Every aspect of our lives will be monitored and there will be virtually no personal privacy (okay, some would argue we are there already). The machines around us will constantly be watching and recording everything happening on the planet while sending it all to the government’s big data complexes for analysis.

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Cyber nightmare: The connected digital world enables criminals, terrorists, and evil empires to steal, threaten, influence, and cause real damage to individuals, businesses, and governments. Bad actors are extremely sophisticated in manipulating techs like AI, big data, and the IoT for nefarious purposes.

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Machines run amok: Despite the best efforts of the designers and operators of intelligent machines, some will go haywire and inflict serious damage. Others will be able to think and create, leading to domination by the machines (The Terminator scenario).

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Bio-disasters: How many science fiction movies have we all seen where viruses sweep through the world like the plague? As we push the frontiers of genetics, biotechnology, bioprinting, and others, there will be an increased potential for human-caused bio-disasters.

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A jobless future: Leisure time sounds great with all the boring tasks taken over by machines. But it could lead to massive unemployment, which would exacerbate poverty and income equality and result in revolution and anarchy.

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“By 2030, six out of every ten people in the world are expected to reside in cities,” said Maimunah Mohd Sharif, Executive Director of UN-Habitat. “We need an urgent change in mindsets, policies, and approaches towards urbanisation to ensure nobody is left behind. We look forward to working with the World Economic Forum to advance the New Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goal 11 to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.”

The United Nations (“UN”) “unites” the governments of 193 countries of the world. Whilst the World Economic Forum (“WEF”) “unites” 1,000 of the world’s largest corporations. The two are joined by a strategic partnership to implement the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals of Agenda 2030. An agenda which aims to control every aspect of our lives.

The Agenda is “a codename for a master plan at the United Nations to change the political and economic system of the world to one of collectivism. And in order to do that people must not be allowed to have independence. They must be dependent on the state otherwise they won’t be easily controlled by the state. That means they can’t have private property. They can’t have land of their own. They have to live in, preferably, high-rise apartments that are provided to them by the state as a benefit, so to speak,” says G. Edward Griffin, “in order to control mankind you have to get them all into the big cities. You have to get them dependent on the state for food, shelter, electrical power, their water. everything.” That’s the dirty secret behind the Agenda.

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The Millennium

Sometimes we are so focused on what is happening now – all the End Times signs and the environmental “birth-pains” – that we lose sight of what will happen afterward.

After the 7 year Tribulation is the Millennium. This is the literal thousand years, during which Christ will reign on the earth. 

“But when these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is near!” (Luke 21:28)

The Bible tells us that when Christ returns to the earth He will establish Himself as king in Jerusalem, sitting on the throne of David:

He will be great
and will be called the Son of the Most High,
and the Lord God will give Him
the throne of His father David.
He will reign over the house of Jacob forever,
and His kingdom will have no end. (Luke 1:32–33)

The unconditional covenants demand a literal, physical return of Christ to establish the kingdom. The Abrahamic Covenant promised Israel a land, a posterity and ruler, and a spiritual blessing:

The Lord said to Abram:

Go out from your land,
your relatives,
and your father’s house
to the land that I will show you.
I will make you into a great nation,
I will bless you,
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
I will curse those who treat you with contempt,
and all the peoples on earth
will be blessed through you. (Genesis 12:1–3)

The Palestinian Covenant promised Israel a restoration to the land and occupation of the land:

“When all these things happen to you—the blessings and curses I have set before you—and you come to your senses while you are in all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, and you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey Him with all your heart and all your soul by doing everything I am giving you today, then He will restore your fortunes, have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. Even if your exiles are at the ends of the earth, He will gather you and bring you back from there. The Lord your God will bring you into the land your fathers possessed, and you will take possession of it. He will cause you to prosper and multiply you more than He did your fathers. (Deuteronomy 30:1–5)

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The Davidic Covenant promised Israel a king from David’s line who would rule forever—giving the nation rest from all their enemies:

I will establish a place for My people Israel and plant them, so that they may live there and not be disturbed again. Evildoers will not afflict them as they have done ever since the day I ordered judges to be over My people Israel. I will give you rest from all your enemies.

“‘The Lord declares to you: The Lord Himself will make a house for you. When your time comes and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up after you your descendant, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He will build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. (2 Samuel 7:10–13).

The Bible speaks of the conditions during the millennium as a perfect environment physically and spiritually. The Lord will renew the earth from the devastation of the Tribulation period.

It will be a time of peace, joy, and comfort:

…and many nations will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us about His ways
so we may walk in His paths.”
For instruction will go out of Zion
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He will settle disputes among many peoples
and provide arbitration for strong nations
that are far away.
They will beat their swords into plows,
and their spears into pruning knives.
Nation will not take up the sword against nation,
and they will never again train for war.
But each man will sit under his grapevine
and under his fig tree
with no one to frighten him.
For the mouth of the Lord of Hosts
has promised this. (Micah 4:2–4)

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The Lord’s Millennium will be the true Utopia:

Then a shoot will grow from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch from his roots will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him—
a Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
a Spirit of counsel and strength,
a Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.
His delight will be in the fear of the Lord.
He will not judge
by what He sees with His eyes,
He will not execute justice
by what He hears with His ears,
but He will judge the poor righteously
and execute justice for the oppressed of the land.
He will strike the land
with discipline from His mouth,
and He will kill the wicked
with a command from His lips.
Righteousness will be a belt around His loins;
faithfulness will be a belt around His waist.

The wolf will live with the lamb,
and the leopard will lie down with the goat.
The calf, the young lion, and the fatling will be together,
and a child will lead them.
The cow and the bear will graze,
their young ones will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
An infant will play beside the cobra’s pit,
and a toddler will put his hand into a snake’s den.
None will harm or destroy another
on My entire holy mountain,
for the land will be as full
of the knowledge of the Lord
as the sea is filled with water. (Isaiah 11:1–10)

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If you are not sure that you are saved, you can accept Christ into your life right now, by praying:

“Lord Jesus, I believe you are the Son of God. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins.  Please forgive my sins and give me the gift of eternal life.  I ask you in to my life and heart to be my Lord and Savior.”

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Reader Comments:

It’s only utopia for the elitists who own and control everything. They get the gold mine and WE GET THE SHAFT!!!

mailmandan, October 23, 2022

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There are so many CRAZY SciFi movies. It’s like Satan is programming people to accept the bizarre.

Jack, October 23, 2022

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Human Technology will not cause this world we’re living in, to be a utopia. It’s YHWH God working through his only begotten Son Jesus and who YHWH God has made king of the Messianic kingdom is how this planet will become a paradise. So it’s the true God and his heavenly kingdom is how this planet will become a paradise.

BARNEY BRIGHT, October 23, 2022

Global warming will destroy most safe places to live by 2030.

devin553344, October 23, 2022

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