Violence

Also in Matthew 24, in verse 37, Jesus prophesied that "as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days just before He returns." Well, how were things in the days of Noah?

"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the Earth, & that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Earth also was corrupt before God, & the Earth was filled with violence" (Genesis 6:5,11).

In the U.S. a teenager shoots his father because he wants to enjoy watching someone bleed to death. In Britain 2 ten year old boys kidnap & brutally murder a toddler.

In today's world such horror is becoming common-place. It's hard to imagine that even "the days of Noah" were as violence-filled as those in which we are now living!

Vietnam! Americans mourn the death of 58,000 of their young men in 8-1/2 years of fighting...But the casualty rate on U.S. city streets is now four times as high.

The F.B.I. reports that 24,530 people were murdered in the US in 1994 alone. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that a whopping 1.1 million violent crimes were committed with guns in 1992. MANY of the victims are teenagers killed by other teenagers who seem to have no concept of the value of life. Society wrings its hands & agonizes why?

Behavioral scientists have concluded that one of the main culprits is TV!--By the time the average American child is 15 years old, he will have witnessed the violent destruction of more than 35,000 human beings on television, as well as 200,000 other brutal acts of violence!

Violence is glorified in America, where the national icons from Sylvester Stalone to Arnold Swartzenegger tend to be men who excel at violence. Movies such as the "Rambo" and "Terminator" series, which have grossed millions of dollars worldwide, illustrate how voracious the appetite for violence is in today's world.

Children's cartoons today also contain all kinds of sickening violence. Eclipsing "The Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles" and "The Simpsons", MTV's "Beavis and Butthead" has become a children's favorite. A far cry from the Disney cartoons of a generation ago, Beavis and Butthead routinely torture animals, set fire to furniture and engage in all kinds of abhorrent juvenile behavior.

Then there's horror movies. Many pre-teens today watch this type of movie at "gross-out" parties with their friends. Video shops report that horror movies are especially popular among 11-to-15-year olds.

Also there's rock music videos, many of which romanticize violence, sexual assaults and murder. Between the 7th and 12th grades, the average American teenager will listen to and watch 11,000 hours of rock music more than twice the time they will spend in class.

The fruit of all this is that the rock 'n' roll era has seen violent crime increase among young people by over 10,000%. Today In the U.S. alone a violent crime is committed every 25 seconds. Every 9 seconds a home is burglarized. A woman is raped every six minutes. Every 25 minutes someone is murdered.

The only comfort in this terrible tide of rising violence is that, according to Bible prophecy, it is yet another unquestionable sign that points to the 2nd Coming of Jesus Christ, when all senseless violence and cruelty will be stopped, and war itself will be abolished!