The most accurate prophecy of all time.

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God-- having a form of godliness but denying its power.
Have nothing to do with them.

(2 Timothy 3:1-5 NIV)

I am not a religious person but this really seems to describe today's world. My favorite part has been bolded for dramatic purposes and it does seem like great advice. I can even see myself reflected in some of those tough words.

Do you agree this is the case? or is this prophecy too general/obvious to be considered accurate? Has evil increased or has human nature always been like this?

reply to post by Isawsomething


I think you are absolutely correct. I have seen it in myself over time. And I definitely see it in younger people nowadays. There has been a steady decline since the '60's I guess. I think we have always been selfish creatures, but it does seem to be coming to a head.

i would just say it is a clever man who thought up of some well worded but obvious thoughts on how those with money act. these days alot more people have money and even people on benefits live alot better than the average person did back then.

That prophecy, among others, is/are the reason/s I believe the end times are upon us. Are you ready?

I think you are correct as well.

I am a Christian - and this reading has always made me stop and think about the world today.

However, the Bible does say that times will be like they were in the days of Noah befor the end comes.

I think we have a bit more to fall, yet, before the end comes.

Thanks for your time in posting and keeping conversation flowing here on ATS.

~Matt

Personally, I think it's too vague. Just look at the supposed treatment of Jesus, we've always been cruel, abusive and so on. Look at the crusades, the world wars of old, the torture we regularly subjected individuals we disagreed with to. Granted, it still goes on, but to a lesser extent when you factor in the amount of people alive in comparison to those times.

The only difference I see nowadays, is that it's not only the ruling elite that have a love of money- by that I mean, in the past, because monarchies of antiquity were typically more oppressive, individuals, or paupers, were often not given any chance to be greedy, but the ruling elite/nobility obviously were (or at least the majority of them.)

Also, it's the fault of the system that we are lovers of money- money is not a luxury, it is needed because of our very system. You can't live without money, so it's not like humans have just become money obsessed over-night. I don't even think we've become more materialistic, the rich have always loved to endulge themselves, and I'm sure the poor would have loved to, as well, given the chance- again, due to credit facilities and so on, more of us now have the opportunity to endulge ourselves.

The only real thing that I think (I might be wrong) has gotten worse in comparison to times of old, is sexual perversion. You just have to look on google and you can see a variety of disgusting content/fetishes. I'm not a prude, I watch porn myself, but it's not hard to find beastiality, rape (which may or may not be real), S+M and, although obviously not as easy to find, no doubt there's plenty of paedophilia too. With the internet, clearly it's become exponentially easier to find this material. Although, I know some of those ancients enjoyed their orgies and occasional homosexual acts, and of course regularly raped individuals- so it's not like it's something totally new, just again, more widespread.

The ancients knew the power of money and easy living and it's effects on the weak willed but these predictions are nothing more than clever observations from people who live outside of cities. I heed their words despite not believing in their god.

Human beings are the same today as they always have been. We have the same desire, emotional response, motivation as our fore-fathers had.

Remember that the Apostles believed that they too were the last generation. Jesus says: "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfill" Matthew 24:34 KJV

I am not one that will select a single verse from the bible to prove my point, however for this discussion it is given so that YOU can read for yourself what comes before and after. Lets call it a Marker so you will know where to look.

However, It is good advice from Paul to chose the people in whom you associate Carefully.

Personally I think Daniel 9:25 is the most brilliant and elegant prophecy: 69 x 7 x 360 = 173,880 which happens to be the precise number of days from the start of the prophecy until the first coming of Jesus.

Biblical future prophecy relating to our present time is equally precise. We are given specifics as opposed to a general summary of the average norm.

reply to post by Isawsomething


Personally i think it could apply to any time in history, but it does indeed apply today. That's the tough thing with finding prophecies, some are so vague they can be made to fit.

reply to post by Isawsomething

Have nothing to do with them.

About 10 years ago I wiped all the dishonest people from my life.. which left me two real friends.

Four years ago I became so saddened by the vast majority of people that I chose to hermit most of the time instead of having to feel, see and interact with the dense cloud of darkness that exists anywhere human beings are found in large numbers.

I still see Beauty in nature, I still interact with animals who See me as I am and respond in kind, and I am still brought to tears of Joy by the happiness of the few people I see who shine. The rest of the time when I have to venture out amongst the maddening throngs I simply do what I have to, smile and shine, then head home to recharge the inner batteries in order to shift the dark-clouds that attach to me.

We are like sponges in that we absorb this negative cloud and so must cleanse ourselves of it daily in order to not become infected and adversly effected by it... otherwise we cannot hope to shine in that darkness.

My world is the Fringe, being in the world but not of it.. being balanced between the world of Form and Force.

Yes this is the end times. No doubt.

Humanity has been through this before. Our life spans blind us to the reality that we are as leaves on trees. We give ourselves too much credit because we don't know any better. Now we are entering another winter of human existence. We are past our prime and corrupted as we have been four times before.

It will get much worse.

I am amazed at how obsessed people can get over money and things. More money than things. It is morbid to me. I have things, tools mostly, and clothes. They rule my life and determine what I can and cannot do. I have had made bad financial decisions based on sentiment alone. Now I pay the price.

Being caught up in the trappings of this world can blind and stifle a person spiritually. Those in spirit know what is happening in life and common knowledge is that we are at the point of least fruition as a civilization. The balance has tipped to the material because that is all many of us can see. It is a very sad time because we sense something coming but we don't really have a clue as to what shape it will take. We offer conjecture. We falsely prophesy. We manifest fear and bring things that are bad into our lives and into the lives of others. We live perversely. To the Earth we function as parasites. We live in an age of deceptions and lies.

I'm not certain that we can help it or even redeem ourselves collectively.

I personally feel spiritually bankrupt at times. I believe in Jesus, but I can't believe in christians. I look at my circle of friends and influences and see them wanting and asleep. I look for freedom through the truth and find more lies. I pray but I am so isolated that I don't even know what to pray for.

This is the end times. I know redemption and safety comes through the Holy Spirit, but one has to cross a treacherous bridge from known materialism to the great mystery.

I don't know about you, but I feel a bit lost at this juncture of the journey.

reply to post by Isawsomething


It could apply today, but it also could apply to mankind at any point throughout history. There have always been good people, and there have always been greedy, evil people. That's just how humanity is, unfortunately.

I think part of the reason things seem especially bad these days is the globalization of news -- in the "old days," you really had no point of reference for how things were in the world, aside from what was happening in your own community. Now that news spreads in seconds and we can watch things unfolding around the world in real time, it intensifies everything.

I guess what I'm trying to say is -- I really don't know if things are getting worse, or we are just hearing more about the bad things than we have at any other point in history.

Im not religious either but that verse you quoted could describe almost any point in history.

Humans lust for power and wealth has been the constant of our civilisation for the past 4,000 years.

Four years ago I became so saddened by the vast majority of people that I chose to hermit most of the time instead of having to feel, see and interact with the dense cloud of darkness that exists anywhere human beings are found in large numbers.

I have pretty much done the same thing but within the last year or so. Somehow the people you love the most know just how to stick it to you, huh? I'd rather be home with my family and pets as it is safe and calm.

To the OP's topic, I feel that humans have always been the same in so far as being negative. History shows us that we are capable of atrocities and it is still going on today. I have no doubt there will be a WWIII, why not? We've had I and II, why shouldn't we have a third? I see nothing has changed to preclude it. The whole sex thing in the media and online makes me think that could be worse? People aren't shocked anymore by things we used to be; we are alot more accepting about same-sex couples/marriages and even different types of porn are alot more acceptable, though not all. If I worry about the "end times" it's the whole sex thing that causes me to raise my eyebrows simply because we are seemingly bombarded with sex and images on a daily basis. If God truly hates that sort of thing, then yeah, we could be nearing the end.

Originally posted by RighteousDude
Yes this is the end times. No doubt.

Well said, RighteousDude. It's the End Times alright. What will people do? Just watching them is both curious, and funny.

Humanity has been through this before. Our life spans blind us to the reality that we are as leaves on trees. We give ourselves too much credit because we don't know any better. Now we are entering another winter of human existence. We are past our prime and corrupted as we have been four times before.

Yep! At least 4 times. Once by collision, once by ice, once by fire, once by water. Earth has a Cycle, like everything does, and when it comes to the end of one, it begins to recreate on another. It is a never ending process. A School, if you will.
"How to Build and Run a Civilization Without Destroying it in the Process."
We have failed this test. Again.

It will get much worse.

Oh, you can most assuredly bank on that. A great deal worse. Look at what the prophets said? And the Bible? We are talking Human Will here. Humans want to have an Armageddon, and nothing is going to stop them from having what they want. The "good Christians" would simply love it if the entire Arab world would descend on Israel, that would mean their God is coming back!

We plainly do not have to do this, destroy the world, that is. We can save the world too.

I am amazed at how obsessed people can get over money and things. More money than things. It is morbid to me. I have things, tools mostly, and clothes. They rule my life and determine what I can and cannot do. I have had made bad financial decisions based on sentiment alone. Now I pay the price.

Yeah, more that a few of us are paying for bad decisions made about business, myself included. And people are obsessed with things. A few weeks ago I came out of a local Walgreen, and a young woman came out right after me. She turned and sat down by the soda machine. I thought, well, she is going to have a cigarette. No, she gets this I-Phone out, and begins this little ritual. I watched, fascinated. In just a few seconds, she was completely mesmerized by her little electronic toy.

On paydays, you go into a store for supplies, and you always see this. People walking around with blank stares, filling their carts with things they do not need. They do not see you, I walk with a cane, and get bumped into all the time, and sometimes get a dirty look for my trouble. Yesterday in old man cut me off to get a handicap parking place, I was headed in the right way, he was headed in the wrong way, against traffic, but he horned it in there anyway. I gave him the stink eye as i walked past. What kind of world is this becoming? The old man had a "Jesus Saves" sticker and a Jesus fish emblem on his car.

This is the end times. I know redemption and safety comes through the Holy Spirit, but one has to cross a treacherous bridge from known materialism to the great mystery.

Here is where we have to have a difference of opinion, friend. To you it is the "Holy Spirit" that "redeems," and "brings safety." I'm actually glad you didn't say the standard "saved" word that Christians throw around like a much sought for Baseball Card. Then you go on to talk about "treacherous bridge from known materialism to the great mystery" that has to be crossed. Friend, we have all, with very few exceptions, crossed that bridge before, many times, actually. And it is not really a mystery, some of us have remembered it, what is is like, but most deny this, and say it's just the brain misfiring at the moment of death. Several of us have postulated our remembrance of the Afterlife, I know I have, it is a Higher Dimension. It is only a city of Gold if you wish it to be, it can be something else too. I like to call it the Nexus. A better word I cannot yet find. The Nexus is an extra-dimensional realm, in which one's thoughts and desires shape reality. Inside the Nexus, time has no meaning, allowing one to visit any time and any place that one can imagine. One can, with practice and will, and daring, explore this Realm.
I had the good opportunity to get to see it firsthand once. I will never forget it.

I don't know about you, but I feel a bit lost at this juncture of the journey.

I think we are all feeling a little bit lost right now, with all that is going on, all that we can see that is happening, and the discovery of Ancient Knowledge is slowly but surely stripping away all the layers of paint spread on by the religious priests all though history. Take away the religious aspect, and look at a things, it makes a great deal more sense. The "Ones who Made Us" may be extraterrestrials, but that makes them no better than we are. We have eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, and have perfected our science to a degree never seen before. Now all we need to do is perfect our Spirits to a like degree, higher than ever before. Only then can we, as a People, Ascend. Then we have to attempt this little experiment again, folks. If at first you do not succeed, try and try again.

Thank you for the post, S&F for you. I recently read second Timothy, as part of my "Read the New Testament aloud" project, which I have just completed two days ago. Not merely in this bit, attributed to Paul, but many other places, similar sentiments are voiced.

I agree that many of these "end times" proclamations can be (and have been) applied to almost every period in the past, but one thing sort of stands out to me about the past 50 years or so, and it's buried in that prophecy, and many others.

This generation, my generation, the baby boomers, seems to be the first that has willfully and intentionally gone out of its way to diminish, almost eliminate, most deep connections with other people.

Gone are the days when you talked to your neighbours, now you're odd if you even know who they are. We live in crowded apartment buildings, where the hallway is the only social contact you might have, and we live in suburban "mini mansions" whose missing front porches and privacy fences intentionally blockade us from interaction.

Gone are the days when your family was an almost constant presence in your life. Few are the families that aren't scattered over a continent. Reunions were once gala affairs that brought together missing cousins and aunts with green jello salads. Now, we need them to see our sister, our brother, our grandchildren.

Gone are the days when we found a job, and stuck with it, and it stuck with us. Our coworkers were our friends, who we aged with, played with, laughed and cried with. Now, in our short tenure in place of employment, coworkers are competitors, who might edge us out of an advancement. They are unfortunates whose gossip feeds our slavish desires for normalcy, because I might be in a bad place, but I'm surely not as bad off as this fellow over here.

I could go on, of course, because the "upwardly mobile" society is really more about being mobile to stay the same, akin to treading water. But the bottom line is that we've become cogs in the machine, whether the machine of business, religion, society or anything else you'd care to name. We've accepted the marketing that told us that a big tv was of more merit than a neighbour you could trust, or a mother who you could visit for Sunday dinner every week.

Instead, we substitute online personas, which may or may not truly reflect who we are, and build relationships with other personas, who may or may not reflect reality. Our "community", while global, and embracing in a way that the local sewing circle or Elks Club could never be, is a fundamentally imagined culture, where people, knowledge, and reality are what we want them to be, not what they actually are.

That may not speak of the end of the world, but it surely speaks to the end of something significant. May God save us, because we're certainly not going to do it on our own.

"Christianity(?), I think it's great. When are they going to put it into practice?" - J. F.

Most of the honest, kind, loving, virtuous, honorable people I've ever met, have searched throughout religion, yet had nothing to do with it in the end, even if holding themselves to the philosophies, tenets and natural values of them. With very little research and life experience, it becomes woefully obvious that money is the root of all ill will in the world. It removes people's natural compassion and empathy (even the parts of the brain producing them over time), and turns them into the lizard-people we hear of in the OP, of which almost none are immune to its infection. Ironically, and seemingly poetically, money doesn't give a second thought to killing everything we've ever held truly dear to our hearts, and it won't quit until every human being and natural resource is...spent.

The Truth No One Wants To Hear - The Universe and its Natural Law provide their own justice, thus we all abide by Karma, whether we are aware of it, or whether we want to or not. "Cha-Ching!!!"

Here is where we have to have a difference of opinion, friend. To you it is the "Holy Spirit" that "redeems," and "brings safety." I'm actually glad you didn't say the standard "saved" word that Christians throw around like a much sought for Baseball Card. Then you go on to talk about "treacherous bridge from known materialism to the great mystery" that has to be crossed. Friend, we have all, with very few exceptions, crossed that bridge before, many times, actually. And it is not really a mystery, some of us have remembered it, what is is like, but most deny this, and say it's just the brain misfiring at the moment of death. Several of us have postulated our remembrance of the Afterlife, I know I have, it is a Higher Dimension. It is only a city of Gold if you wish it to be, it can be something else too. I like to call it the Nexus. A better word I cannot yet find. The Nexus is an extra-dimensional realm, in which one's thoughts and desires shape reality. Inside the Nexus, time has no meaning, allowing one to visit any time and any place that one can imagine. One can, with practice and will, and daring, explore this Realm.
I had the good opportunity to get to see it firsthand once. I will never forget it.

I have no difference of opinion here. I defaulted to my christian roots all too easily. You describe a keystone of Buddhism that I acknowledge and that's good. I usually seek out Native American spirituality for comfort. I guess I don't want to hear about reincarnation because this place has kinda beat me up these past two years and when my ticket is punched I would prefer a world that is a little less confining. This joint is over the top with everyday/everyman pitfalls. Like I said before, it is stifling here at the end of time and we can be so easily blinded.

Your allusion to an NDE piqued my curiosity. Care to thread up and elaborate, or is that asking way too much?

reply to post by wtbengineer


Your right about the decline, more around the 50's I would say. I always said as a kid that I would rather have lived in the 50's when people had better morals and values. There are stories about that actually, aparently there is a reason for the losing of our moral compass during that time, actually there is a reason for everything.