The eighteenth century was a century of progress but also decline into pseudo science and straight out lunacy. Ideologies and psychology, all kinds of
racial theories, so the theory-part not so good, but on the practical side, important technological breakthroughs. Set your mind to 1812 then look up
your bible at Revelation 6:12 onwards, and pay close attention to the details. There are devastating wars in the East and the West, and earthquakes
and eclipses:
“Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath
has come, and who can stand?”
Just a few decades after the French Revolution, Napoleon marched with 678,000 soldiers into Russia and
invaded Moscow in 1812, but was surprised by the Russians who torched their own city
and fled into hiding, and Napoleon would then be further surprised by the devastating Russian winter. Utter disaster for the French, and 400,000 of
Napoleon’s soldiers died.
Also in 1812, the greatest earthquake in recorded history happened, the
New
Madrid Quake. There also were
two solar eclipses, one
ring-shaped (annular) and one total solar eclipses with two accompanying
total
lunar eclipses, so called blood moons which has gained prominence here at ATS lately refering to the “blood moon tetrad”. The world also saw
the
US-British 1812 Patriotic War, and nationalism and decadence flourished, with land after
land forming constitutions around this time.
In the years to come the evangelical movement would continue to spark new awakenings and further spread their
“
Great Awakening” and people came to the churches by the millions, especially in USA, like
stars fallen from grace attempting to return to Heaven through zealousy and waving their hands in the air in extacy. Sermons went from being
theologically based to become emotional and psychological. In this verse Jesus refers to one of his parables, of the fig tree, “the end is
nigh!”:
Compare:
Revelation 6:13f: “…and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like
a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.”
With:
Luke 21:29ff: “Look at the fig tree, and all the trees. As soon as they come out in leaf, you […] know that the kingdom of God is near […]
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
The 1800s were also the century when race theory and the analysis and diagnosis based on anatomical features &c bloomed and European
Jews were renamed catalogued and registered, checked phrenologically and
categorised. And later so were the rest of Europe. Racial hygiene is one of those words that gives me the shivers. All lined up in gigantic archives
according to facial proportions like distance between eyes, bumps on the skull or measuring proportions of the arms compared to the legs &c.
The 19th century was the century of BS in many ways, but many technological achievements were made, electricity, telephony, radio, internal combustion
engines, and most notably, the flying machine. However we also saw the dawn of dynamite, TNT and other explosives, and great war ships and war
machines were developed, and it was just a question of time before pilots would start tossing bombs out of their planes, but the technology wasn't
refined enough quite yet.
edit on 2-9-2014 by Utnapisjtim because: Edited intro and fixed a sentence, edited a couple words