General Articles

I’m Only Human :: By Robbie Robertson

Published on: by RR7

I was watching a YouTube video from Living Waters where Christian Evangelist Ray Comfort was having a chat with an old man who was around 86 years old.  When asking him if he had ever looked at a woman with lust, his reply was, of course, yes; I’m only Human…

Ray often starts sharing the Gospel by taking people through some of the 10 Commandments. He does this because, as Paul said in Romans 7:7, we would not understand our state as sinners without the law: “I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.”

There is an important purpose in helping others to understand their state as sinners: it causes them to understand their need for a Savior. We need to be warned that there are repercussions for our actions.

Even man has created for himself sets of worldly guidelines. Let us just have a look at some of the different types of rules and laws which apply to man:

Household rules: I always told my kids; “My house, my rules.”

In response, to avoid grounding, they’d rather obey the rules that I set in place.

School rules: Starting the New Year, kids are given a list of school rules which typically the parents must sign. Not complying could mean detention or even expulsion.

Rules at the workplace: If you fail to follow directions, you’ll quickly find your increase or bonus to be something of the past or face dismissal.

Country laws and legislation: Now these rules are not just but a few; they fill sets upon sets of books, in which you’d better abide by or face severe punishment, such as hefty fines or imprisonment.

You see the pattern here: those who break the laws and rules of this world face the appropriate punishment, but those consequences are temporary and can, in most cases, be eventually overcome.

God, as well, has laws that he gave to man. Ten simple commandments were given to Moses for the children of Israel, as written in Exodus 20:

Exodus 20:1-17 KJV – “And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it, thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.

“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

“Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.”

Those who don’t believe in God argue that they don’t fall under these laws, saying, “I’m myself, and I go about my own rules.” Some Christians even argue by saying these commandments were strictly meant for the Jews, “I’m not Jewish,” they say.

However, God’s laws are meant for all His creation as humans, and what makes them different from manmade laws and rules, is that the penalty for not obeying them is eternal death (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).

But how could God impose laws with such a strict penalty? Doesn’t He know that we are ‘only Human’?

The phrase, “I’m Only Human,” is a grossly overused response that is applied to excuse and shift the blame off of us when we make a mistake or sin. But who are we exactly shifting the blame onto when we make a statement like this? Was God the one who created us to be inevitably flawed and dead in our sin? Absolutely not.

God created Adam and Eve in bodies that were not corrupted or riddled with sin, bodies that were perfectly crafted, precision-made, not mass-produced out of China, but in the image of God Almighty Himself.

But Eve was deceived into believing that by acquiring the knowledge of good and evil that she and her husband would become like God (Genesis 3:5). In their disobedience, death and sin have been cast on every single one of us. God’s perfect image that He created us in was marred, and we were never further away from being like Him.

It is through the transgression of Adam that we, by nature, are all made sinners and, therefore, deserve the punishment of eternal death (Romans 5:12, Ephesians 2:3, Romans 2:23).

So we are faced with a problem; we are God’s image-bearers handcrafted in perfection, cursed to betray that image through the lusts of our flesh inherited by Adam.

But God…

But God sent Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, who intervened and paid the full penalty for our sins by shedding His precious blood on the cross at Calvary so that all who believe He is who He says He is, will have eternal life.

Imagine you are in a court of law, about to be sentenced for a crime that you are rightfully guilty of.  Would saying, “I’m only a criminal,” serve as a sufficient argument for you to avoid jail time? Of course not! But what if the judge allowed a man to come forward to serve your sentence in your place? That is what Jesus Christ did for every one of us. He took our penalty onto himself, because of His great love for us (Ephesians 2:4-5).

Isaiah 53:5-6 KJV – “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Once we have accepted that payment Jesus made on the cross, the Bible says that we become a new man and new creation in Christ (Ephesians 4:18-24).

Unfortunately, most Christians go about their daily lives as ‘the old man,’ living still as if they remain dead in their sins. We are called as Children of God to strive against sin daily and hate it like God does, knowing the cost of it. But for so many, it is much easier to say, “I’m Only Human.”

Romans 6:12, 17-18 KJV – “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof… But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.”

To truly honour our God and his image, we need to repent, putting off the works of darkness and putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. Then we can truly comprehend what a gift it is to be humans as He intended us to be, a reflection of Him.

Romans 13:11-14 KJV – “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.”

Robbie Robertson

https://harbingersdaily.com

Ripening Times #6 – World Urbanization: Part I :: By Wilfred Hahn

Published on: by RR7

We continue our series of “ripening trends” of prophetic significance. We live during a time of great and accelerating change in the world. Unfortunately, many do not see the significance of these many developments. They are caught in the maelstrom of worldly confusion. Bible-believing Christians, on the other hand, are charged to be “watching”; to be on the alert for “significant” world trends.

Why? Because the Bible instructs us to do so. We are expressly mandated to recognize the season and to “watch.” To recall, Jesus said: “[…] keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come” (Matthew 24:42). Therefore, let us keep watch. We know that the “last days” are treacherous and will close like a trap (Luke 21:34).

During the course of this series, we have periodically laid out the criteria for identifying such prophetically “significant” trends (most recently, in the November issue of Midnight Call). To date, we have described five such trends. In this column, we present the sixth—world urbanization.

Grasping for Prosperity

Economists and policymakers around the world have begun to realize that economic growth and prosperity will be leaner in the future.  Many of the causes and factors that contributed to the great global wealth explosion over the last century (accelerating during the post-WWII period) have waned, disappeared or reversed. This is attributable to an abrupt reversal of population growth trends. (In this series, we have already discussed the demographic development, which also qualifies as a “ripening trend.”)

Policymakers ponder, just how can global prosperity then be boosted? A main source of hope (among a few other factors) is this: accelerating world urbanization. Many international organizations and economic thinktanks, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a host of others, all identify this development as an engine of economic hope.

What is urbanization? Wikipedia says: “[Urbanization] refers to the population shift from rural areas to urban areas, the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas, and the ways in which each society adapts to this change. It is predominantly the process by which towns and cities are formed and become larger as more people begin living and working in central areas.”1

The biggest contributor to prosperity is population growth (everything else being equal). To the modern humanist, this may sound like an old-fashioned notion. Yet, this is an inviolable fact of economics. Why? Economics is about “humans.” It couldn’t be any other way. The slower the population growth, the slower the economic expansion. The maximum wealth and prosperity that can exist in the world is mostly defined by total labor output. And, as reviewed in this series, population growth rates are collapsing around the world.

Therefore, policymakers encourage urbanization, because it stands to boost economic growth. The more people living in cities, the more the need for infrastructure … roads, mass transit systems, bridges, etc. Moreover, activities in cities tend to attract higher wages, consumer spending and housing values.

Given that world population growth is waning, policymakers hope that by concentrating the world’s population into cities, the negative impact upon economies can be offset somewhat.

 

The Rapidity of City Life

We therefore observe that an ever greater share of the world population is moving from rural areas to urban ones … to the city life. Today, more people live in urban areas than in rural, with 55 percent of the world’s population residing in urban areas in 2018. By contrast, in 1950, only 30 percent of the world’s population was urban.

According to UNPD (United Nations Population Division) forecasts, by 2050, 68 percent of the world’s population is projected to be urban. As such, some 13% of the world’s population will move to a city over the next 30 years. Assuming this forecast is correct, more than two-thirds of the world’s population (or 6.3 billion people) will then be living in cities.

Readers will note the rapidity of spreading urbanization and the growth of large cities. But, how was it in the distant past? Looking over history, it was more the norm to have lived in rural areas. To be sure, urbanization has an ancient history, beginning quite early in Mesopotamia (4300-3100 BC).

Crucially, however, it was not until the early 1800s that urbanization truly began accelerating. Then, the world urbanization ratio was only 7.3% (for the US at that time, only 6.07%). It has soared rapidly ever since. Given this speed and that it is a phenomenon that has occurred so recently in the timeline of humans on earth (basically, within only two centuries), we are alerted to the possibility that urbanization is a “significant trend.”

 

The Boom of Large Cities

The outgrowth of increasing urbanization of course is more cities … and specifically, big cities. That means greater agglomerations of people. While there were only 18 urban agglomerations with an excess of 5 million people in the world in 1970 (Tokyo, New York, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Paris, Bombay, Calcutta, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seoul and more), there are 67 or so today. The UNPD forecasts that there will be 109 cities with a population of 5 million or more by 2030. Most names of these large cities will likely be unfamiliar to the Westerner; for example, Ningbo, Abuja, Harbin, Belo Horizonte, Jinan, Shandong, Luanda, Douala … and many more.

Most cities mentioned in the Bible would likely have had less than 3,000 inhabitants. Cities were historically filthy and unhealthy places to live, given that there were usually no adequate sewage systems. The incidence of disease was high. This was generally not the case with the Hebrews, as their strict Levitical laws served to avoid such risks.

A few large cities are mentioned in the Bible, among these Nineveh, said to be 120,000 in population and to be a “very large city” (Jonah 3:3); Babylon, which would have even been larger; and most certainly, the ancient metropolis of Babel. Compare this to city sizes of 25 million and more in our time today. (Tokyo has the largest population—37.5 million, twice that of New York-Newark.)

As cities become larger and more dense, the logistics of administrating them become ever more challenging. Consider the traffic systems. These must be well planned … and, far in advance. It is well documented that even though modern-day automobiles can drive at speeds of 200 KPH and more, the average speed in large cities and major interstate highways has become ever slower. For example, the average highway speed in Los Angeles during rush hour is now 17 MPH (Hwy 101).

Similar challenges are evident in other large cities. For example, in Dhaka (capital of Bangladesh) according to the World Bank, the average traffic speed fell from 12 kilometers per hour in 2008 to 7 kph in 2018. It is one of the densest populated cities in the world. It now has no choice but to ban rickshaws.

 

The Trouble with Big Cities

How large was Babel’s population? No one knows. Yet it stands as an example of an agglomeration of people of which God did not approve. Was it the size of Babel’s population that caused God to disperse this city? Not likely for that fact alone. Rather, what incensed the Lord was susceptibility to immorality and, the emergence of the humanist spirit … the brazen attitude of self-determination that prevailed in Babel.

According to the Bible, the inhabitants said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:4).

We note that the people had built Babel expressly so that they would not be “scattered over the face of the earth.” But, to recall, originally God had commanded otherwise.

God said to Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). This human mandate was again confirmed with Noah. “As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it” (Genesis 9:7).

As a result of Babel’s waywardness, God intervened: He dispersed the people of Babel “over all the earth” (Genesis 11:8) with a confusion of languages. In the end, they were all thrust to rural life.

In the next issue, we will complete our examination of this prophetically significant world trend of urbanization.

Wilfred J. Hahn is a global economist/strategist. Formerly a top-ranked global analyst, research director for a major Wall Street investment bank, and head of Canada’s largest global investment operation, his writings focus on the endtime roles of money, economics and globalization. He has been quoted around the world and his writings reproduced in numerous other publications and languages. His 2002 book The Endtime Money Snare: How to live free accurately anticipated and prepared its readers for the Global Financial Crisis. A following book, Global Financial Apocalypse Prophesied: Preserving true riches in an age of deception and trouble, looks further into the prophetic future.

Contact Wilfred at: staff@eternalvalue.com

 

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization