Anyway, how do you go about demonstrating to people that maybe, just maybe, there is a need to consider that the Bible contains truth. (Forget about insisting that the Bible IS truth. You'll get nowhere with that argument in this post-modern world).
One way to do it is to read the headlines and you realize that not only that "there will be terrible times in the last days" but that these are pretty terrible times right now.
You may practice a healthy skepticism and say, "Yeah, well, you know that every generation at some point has said, 'This is it...the END!' "
It's healthy to think that because this truism- that every generation thought it was seeing The End -seems to be a fact of history.
But what is relevant is the degree to which The End will differ from normal apocalypses: "...There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken...." Luke 21:25-26
This and other apocalyptic passages in the Bible describe a world gone insane, not only geographically, but also geo-politcally, socially, personally and economically.
Speaking of economic realities of the future I find this article found at this link (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/12/04/subdermal_rfid_chip_provokes_furore/) extremely interesting. The article has a bit of a 'scoffer' tone to it, but the facts are all accurate.
Those of you who read the Bible know the significance of this. (It's nothing to be alarmed about, because to paraphrase, Jesus said, "Don't let your hearts get weighed down by fear of all these things".)
Moving back to Alpha. It seems that VeriSign and VeriPay have entered the Russian market. If you read Russian you can read all about the first importer into the Russian market here: www.membrana.ru/particle/1629
In fact, what this does for us is that it gives us a chance to show people here, in a language they can read, that MAYBE, JUST MAYBE the Bible contains some Truth that would be of great interest, not to mention benefit, to them.
What is more, while the Bible makes it clear that there will be doubters and scoffers until the very end- in fact doubting and scoffing will increase by orders of magnitude -no one will be able to deny that, as the Bible says, those times will be terrible times.
So the stock market is going Chernobyl; "London Calling" to "London Burning"; flash drives empower flash mobs.
Is this the Big One? Really? Well, I'm one of the skeptics, but I'm not so skeptical that I won't continue to watch the signs "of the fig tree as it ripens" (Luke 21:29). And I won't miss the chance to say, "You know, my friend, it's interesting that 2000 years ago this kind of stuff was predicted..."
Thanks for reading along and for praying for our efforts to start up Alpha.
