Rev. David Holwick ZQ New Years Sunday
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
December 31, 2000
2 Timothy 3:1-5
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I. Prophetic science-fiction movie.
A. Apes cavorting around a large stone slab.
B. Space mission to Jupiter is sabotaged by unseen force.
1) Turns out it is Hal, the computer.
2) Humans disable Hal, survive but age rapidly.
C. What about the ape part? I'm told you have to read the book.
II. Predicting future trends.
A. This period has received a lot of attention.
1) New century (and millennium) any way you calculate it.
2) We feel something is going to happen.
B. Past predictions.
1) 100 years ago...
During the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, a group of social
analysts gazed 100 years into the future and tried
to forecast what the world would be like in 1993.
Some of their predictions were:
Many people will live to be 150.
The government will have grown more simple, as true
greatness tends always toward simplicity.
Prisons will decline, and divorce will be considered
unnecessary.
#18245
2) 50 years ago...
In 1949, half a century ago, Americans made some predictions
about the year 2000 and what they expected:
88% believed a cancer cure would be discovered.
82% thought there would be another world war.
70% said we would not have reached the Moon.
48% felt sure we would have a 30-hour workweek.
60% predicted we would not elect a woman president.
(U.S. News & World Report, 12-28-98, p. 74)
#7110
C. Most predictions don't pan out.
1) Everyone doesn't have a rocket car. (Jetsons)
2) Computers and robots don't rule.
3) Dictatorships are not gaining; freedom is.
4) Classic song "In The Year 2525" assumes we will be weak and
lethargic due to dependence on machines.
a) Also mentions test-tube babies - in year 6565.
b) Is God going to come by 7510, or has he given up on us?
D. Predicting trends in religion is just as precarious.
At least since time of Thomas Jefferson, intellectuals have
predicted traditional religion will pass away.
People will outgrow it.
The Christmas issue of NEWSWEEK magazine tries to give readers
"A Guide to the 21st Century."
It is full of predictions about what politics, economics,
technology, and even Americans themselves, will look like.
But, the folks at NEWSWEEK forgot something: the role that
faith and values will play in shaping the 21st century.
#5119
III. Current reality.
A. People are living longer, are healthier, around the world.
1) We are also using more resources.
2) Greenhouse effect in nature due to fossil fuels?
a) Can't tell this winter!
B. Computers have made big advances.
1) Instant communication everywhere.
2) Artificial intelligence being developed.
a) Develop a soul?
C. Genetics making huge inroads.
1) Plants can have insecticide, fertilizer built in.
2) But if they put a pig protein in a corn seed, and you are
allergic to pork, will a taco kill you?
D. Democracy is (temporarily?) popular.
1) Communism showed that humans aren't good at being God.
2) Average people want a say in their lives.
IV. The human soul is unchanged.
A. Mulitiple murderer in Wakefield, Massachusetts.
1) Couldn't kill man he wanted, so he took everyone else.
2) (news reports all mention he had a beard...)
a) Beard not his problem, but twisted soul.
B. Societies are torn by religious and ethnic divisions.
1) Christmas bombings by Muslims in Indonesia.
C. We can take good tools and make better weapons.
1) Picatinny Military Arsenal gets technology before you do.
D. On personal level, families are steadily dissolving.
V. My crystal ball.
A. Technology will not solve all our problems.
1) Not to sell it short - I expect awesome inventions to come.
2) But new technology will create new problems. Always does...
3) People will live longer, but will quality of life be
worthwhile?
a) Trends in designer babies and euthanasia.
B. Religion will decline but not disappear.
1) Growth of skepticism.
a) More competing ideas.
1> Gospel will be rejected as "tried & found wanting."
2> Negative criticism of Bible will intensify.
3> Pressure of technology.
A> More interest in SETI than God.
b) Church is intellectually stagnant.
1> Not raising hard questions.
2> "Who will stand in the gap?"
2) Growth of superstition.
a) Ancient paganism will flourish.
1> Druids are making a comeback in Europe, while church
is dying there. (40% of French are atheists)
2> Growth of witchcraft in America.
(A schoolgirl is being sued for casting a spell
on a principal and making him ill.)
b) People will yearn for simple spiritual experiences.
1> They won't care where they get them.
2> If it seems to work, it will be acceptable.
C. Christian Church will grow - overseas.
1) I see increasing apostasy in United States and Europe.
a) Liberal churches will continue to dwindle.
b) Even Evangelical churches will slide.
2) The power will be overseas in Africa and Asia.
D. Increasing tension with our culture.
1) Pressure to conform.
a) Political correctness.
b) Lack of holiness and zeal will hinder church.
c) Enforced tolerance.
1> Traditional Christians labeled "backward."
2) Compromise on moral principles.
a) We already conform to world's views on sex, money.
Dulling of materialism...
b) Morality will shift from biblical basis to secular.
1> Homosexual marriage, euthanasia...
Charles Colson notes that novelist Tom Wolfe wrote an essay in
1996 called, "Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died."
In it Wolfe said philosopher Frederic Nietzsche was right in his
prediction that humanity would muddle through the 20th century
by living off the 'mere pittance' of the morality it had
inherited from Christianity.
But that inheritance is now overdrawn, spent.
At the dawn of the 21st century we can envision unbelievable
technological advances.
But morally we are exhausted and bankrupted.
#5119
VI. Your personal future.
A. Bible is pessimistic about the future in the short term.
1) Wars, rumors of wars.
a) Situation will get worse, not better.
b) When it seems to get better, it is due to Antichrist.
1> Universal control based on supernatural power.
2) Human nature is warped. 2 Tim 3:1-5
a) We cannot educate the evil out of us.
b) we cannot legislate the evil out of us.
c) We cannot even pray the evil out of us.
1> "having a form of godliness..."
d) Only God can transform us.
B. The Bible is optimistic about our ultimate future.
1) Return of Jesus.
2) Renewal of earth into a paradise.
C. What about your future?
1) Jesus promises to save you.
2) We can have confidence about our future.
3) Future begins now (Eternal life begins moment you believe.)
4) Confused? Just read the Book...
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
# 5119 "What Really Will Matter In The 21st Century," by Charles Colson,
Breakpoint Commentary, 10/3/2000.
# 7110 "Foreseeing the Future," by Phil Sanders, Daily Bread for
May 17, 1999; collected by Roddy Chestnut.
#18245 "Predicting the Future," by DCM in Daily Bread (date unknown);
collected by Rev. Nick Lica.
These and 17,500 others are part of a database that can be downloaded,
absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
=========================================================================
HOLWICK'S ILLUSTRATION COLLECTION Number: 7568
TOPICS: Future, Predictions
SOURCE: The FAX of Life (122699)
ILLUSTRATION:
"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to find oil? You're
crazy!" Employees to Edwin L. Drake before his first successful oil well
near Titusville, Penn., 1859.
"Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over
wires and that were it possible to do so, it would be of no practical
value." Boston Post, 1865.
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." Lord Kelvin,
physicist and mathematician, former president of the Royal Society,
1897.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." Charles H. Duell,
U.S. Commissioner of Patents, 1899.
"The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a
fad." A president of Michigan Savings Bank advising against investing
in Ford Motor Co., 1903.
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
Irving Fisher, professor of economics, Yale University, Oct. 17, 1929.
"A rocket will never be able to leave earth's atmosphere." New York
Times, 1936.
"I have no political ambitions for myself or my children." Joseph P.
Kennedy, 1936.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." Thomas
Watson, President of IBM, 1943.
"Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the
first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box
every night." Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, 1946.
"You ain't going nowhere son. You ought to go back to driving a truck."
Grand Ole Opry's Jim Denny to Elvis Presley, 1954.
"For the majority of people, the use of tobacco has a beneficial
effect." Dr. Ian G. MacDonald, Los Angeles surgeon, quoted in Newsweek,
Nov. 18, 1963.
"There is no need for any individual to have a computer in their home."
Ken Olson, president of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977.
"640k ought to be enough [computer memory] for anybody." Bill Gates,
founder of Microsoft, 1981.
*
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HOLWICK'S ILLUSTRATION COLLECTION Number: 7500
TOPICS: Future, Predictions, Prophecy, Prophets
SOURCE: Internet
ILLUSTRATION:
<< GREAT PREDICTIONS by EXPERTS
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 15 tons."
--Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949
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"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
--Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM,1943
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"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with
the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that
won't last out the year."
--The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957
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"But what ... is it good for?"
--Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM,
1968,commenting on the microchip.
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"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
--Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp.,
1977
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"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered
as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to
us."
--Western Union internal memo, 1876.
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"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would
pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
--David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment
in the radio in the 1920s.
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"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better
than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."
--A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's
paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to
found Federal Express Corp.)
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Who the [heck] wants to hear actors talk?"
--Harry M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
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"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not
Gary Cooper."
--Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With
The Wind."
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"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say
America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make."
--Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting her company, Mrs. Fields'
Cookies.
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"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
--Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
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"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
--Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
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"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The
literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
--Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives or 3-M
"Post-It" Notepads.
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"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even
built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us?
Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll
come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-
Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you; you haven't got through
college yet.'"
--Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and
H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.
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"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and
reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against
which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in
high schools."
--1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary
rocket work.
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-"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all
of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just
have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable
condition of weight training."
--Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by
inventing Nautilus.
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"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?
You're crazy."
--Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill
for oil in 1859.
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"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
--Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
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"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
--Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de
Guerre.
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"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
--Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.
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"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction".
--Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
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"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the
intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon".
--Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-
Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873.
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"640K [of computer memory] ought to be enough for anybody."
--Bill Gates, 1981
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