Happy Birthday, Rene.  It's my birthday too.
 
On our birthdate, Aug. 15, in 1945 the War in the Pacific ended.  The headlines screamed "War Ends!"  Soldiers were returning home.  It was a day of great rejoicing all around the world.  The War in Europe and the Mediterranean had ended earlier and this was the last of the War Theaters to be closed down.  WE thought we had defeated evil.  Mankind would now be getting better and better.  Everyone thought peace would reign supreme.  I think we have been in the Last Days for the past 60plus years.  Sure we had little blimps on the radar screen - Korea for example.
 
That is what I was taught as a child.  The world was getting better.  People were getting better.  Technology was going to usher in a new era of goodness.  I remember as a child thinking this would be wonderful.  The world was going to be perfect.
 
Yeah, right.  Then came Vietnam and evil seemed to tumble out to infest the whole world in the 60s.
 
I enjoy studying history.  From the historical viewpoint, the situation in the world has been like a circle of events but every circle has been smaller than the previous.  I am sure the mathematicians and scientists have a very scientific term for it.  But as the circles became smaller, the events (war, storms, famine, drought, plagues, etc.) have come closer and closer together.  And now we find ourselves in a world in which everything is happening at the same time.  We have extreme weather (storms, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, drought, extreme cold) happening at the same time as plagues ( AIDS, Ebola, Typhoid, TB, etc. - diseases we thought had been eradicated) and wars and rumors of wars (Russia missiles targeting radar in Georgia, the encircling of Israel by her enemies, Venezuela and the US, Russia in the Mediterranean and under the North Pole, etc.).  Look at the immorality - mass abortions, homosexuality and even parades honoring it, pork spending (for those in the USA), graft and corruption in our governments and in the UN.  The list goes on and on.  My mind cannot get itself around it all.  It is just too  much to comprehend.
 
And yet there are doubters who do not believe we are living in the End of Days as prophesied.  There are Christians who do not want to even think about leaving this world because they are content with the things of the world and comfortable in it.  They are like Lot's wife and my heart is heavy for them.  There are those who do not know God and worship other gods - the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Muslim, New Age, and others.  Our hearts should be heavy and burdened for them.
 
My daughter is getting married this week.  Among our wedding guests will be a Muslim family and a Hindu family.  Pray that the Christian message touches their hearts as we celebrate a simple joining together of two Christian young people.
 
Thanks for all your posts.  I need my daily Five Doves moments to assure myself there are others of like mind in the world.
 
In Christ