Modern Conditions Were Foretold in Scripture Many Centuries Ago
Bible prophecy has foretold a number of circumstances that have been realized
or made possible only in modern times. Among these are:
Mass transportation and knowledge explosion.
Daniel 12:4 says that in "the time of the end . . . many shall run to
and fro, and knowledge shall increase." This obviously does not refer to
the pace of travel and learning in Daniel's day. It denotes a marked departure
from what the world at that time was accustomed to. This did not come until
modern science and industrialization gave birth to rapid mass transportation
and the knowledge explosion of our current information age.
Instant mass communications.
Revelation 11:8-9 says of God's end-time two witnesses: "And their dead
bodies will lie in the street of the great city [ Jerusalem] . . . Then
those from the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations will see their dead
bodies threeand-a-half days." For all the earth's peoples to witness this
requires such modern technologies as satellite television, the Internet
or some other electronic communication medium, all unimaginable in the
first century when this prophecy was written.
The population explosion.
Revelation 9:16 mentions a massive army of 200 million. This is a staggering
figure even today-though possible given the world population. Yet
when this prophecy was written in the first century, the entire global
population was "about 300 million. For a very long time the world population
did not grow significantly . . . It took more than 1600 years for the world
population to double to 600 million" (United Nations, The World at
Six Billion, 1998). So the idea of a 200-million-man army was inconceivable-except
to Bible prophecy, which foresaw it.
Mass destruction and the possibility of human extinction.
