History Outline/Sketch From A Biblical Perspective
Cain slew Abel (A sort of king slew priest spirit? Early ruling partnerships were king/priest). This early act seems to portray the - political - history of nations, as a constant competition for dominance. History of the peoples may be a completely different story, and likely is.
About 2000 years of ‘prehistory’.
Then man built the first tower, Babel Tower in Mesopotamia, land of red clay, in order to reach to the stars. “Nothing will be beyond them” God said.. reaching a culmination so early on? So he confused the languages and humanity spread to the Nile Valley, the Danube River Valley, the Indus Valley of India, called “fertile crescents” (along with Mesopotamia) and eventually over all the Earth.
Almost 2000 years later is when the Great Pyramids of Egypt were built, and beginning portions of the Great Wall of China. The Indus Valley Civilization was flourishing, as was the Norte Chico civilization in Peru, oldest civilization of the Americas.
It wasn’t for another 500 years or so that God called Abraham - later grandfather of the twelve tribes of Israel - out of Babylon. This was around the time of Stonehenge.
The twelve tribes became slaves in Egypt for four hundred years. Then was “the Exodus” via the parting of the Red Sea and Israel moved into Canaan. But instead of thoroughly delivering the lands from the barbaric practice of child and infant sacrifice to Baal-Molech (by burning alive) eventually Israel fell under its sway. Even after building a rather elaborate tent, and then a temple for Yahweh (Most High God).
Iron is first forged in the Nok Culture in what is today Nigeria.
The First King of Israel - 1,000 BCE. Israel requested a king, but Yhwh (Yahweh) had tried to discourage it “do as they ask” he said, “but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign-over them will claim as his rights." (1 Samuel 8:9)
Assyria and Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and carried many of the people first off to Assyria, then off to Babylon. This included the Prophet Daniel, who prophesied of Alexander the Great (Dan.8:8) among others. This was about the time of the travels and teachings of “the Buddha” in India, and Confucius in China.
But after seventy years, the temple was rebuilt, while to the west, Greece and Athens were having a golden age.
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.. (A famous student of Aristotle was Alexander the great.)
Rome grew dominant but the language commonly spoken, and the culture, was Greek.
221 BCE, Imperial China begins. By 212 (BCE) the walls of China join, forming the Great Wall as a defense against the fierce Mongols to the north.
The Arab trade routes and the “Silk Road” from China bring spice, incense and other luxuries to the west.
Hail Augustus Caesar, nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar, and the first Roman emperor. Rome, from a republic, is now an empire. (27 BC )
Jesus is born 6 BC to 1 AD and is crucified 27-33 AD, and says “if he is lifted up” (executed on a Roman cross) “he will draw all” (Jn.12:32).
Christian martyrdom begins, the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life are written, Paul, pursuer, jailer and even killer of Christians, turns believer and writes most of the rest of the New Testament as letters written to groups of early believers he had a large role in establishing. And John, only disciple not executed, receives “from Jesus” the Book of Revelation vision which shows main elements that progress through the latter age (the year’s of our Lord, AD/CE).
In a dramatic scene Jesus unrolls the Revelation scroll which is sealed with seven seals (presumedly wax seals). As he breaks each seal off the scroll, and unfurls it, at the first four breakings, out come riding one of what is called the four horsemen of the apocalypse. So called because their rides, becoming gallops(?) continue growing and progressing until ‘the end’. They are (1) a rider on a white horse, riding forth conquering. This is the gospel, the “good news for all”. (Most eschatology belief sort of places this rider last, according to history that is. The Seals, so called, do escalate or become magnified towards the conclusion.) Next (2) is a red horse and rider, wars. Man’s unwanted but persistent companion. Then (3) a black horse.. inequity and shortages a product of wars, along with (4) a pale rider and horse, pandemics, pestilences, plagues, including chemical as with WW2, for after this rider “follows the grave”. Including the mass grave.
He breaks open the fifth seal and we see symbolized martyrdom continuing through the age, and next the breaking open of the sixth seal shows something HUGE occurring.. Or perhaps it especially seems that way because the seal events are described - here at the beginning of the vision - as their FULL effects from their first to their last. War “was given a very long, or great sword” Rev.6:12-17; 13:13 (6:4).
“After this” John says, “I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth holding back its four winds so that no wind would blow, harming land, or sea, or any tree” Rev.7:1 and 3. It seems obvious, interruption of this holding back of 7:1 will see world events escalate towards the culmination (of mankind’s choices and doings, and of this unavoidable learning of good from evil, which is also life from death, true from not true). John dies an old man full of years.
Golden age of the Han Dynasty in China - 206 B.C. to 220 A.D.
In 313, Roman Emperor Constantine declares the empire ‘Christian’ and the “bishop of Rome” in retrospect, is first called pope. (Sort of a new king-priest line to rule the lands.)
The Roman Empire, at its borders, fought with European northern barbaric (so called uncivilized) tribes like the Saxons, Goths (Visigoths and Ostrogoths), Franks, Vandals, Huns, for many years until Rome itself was sacked, bringing about what has been called the dark ages (and was the early Middle Ages, early European medieval times) from 476 to about 800 (or 1000 according to other reckoning).
Plague of Justinian killed up to 10,000 people a day, 561 CE.
622, Muhammad (the more accurate spelling) begins the first Islamic state.. and the Muslim conquest from the Nile Valley to the fertile crescent in the Middle East.
The Arab slave trade of East African people around the Indian Ocean and the Sahara began.
Meanwhile, through the age there are so many wars we can barely count them. Universities and Cathedrals are built, as well as London Bridge and Tower of London.
The first inquisition (by ‘authorities’ not the people) was set up in 1184 and inquisitions continued for about 700 years. But burning ‘heretics’ at the stake began earlier (yesteryear’s Rev.13:13?)
In 1299 the Ottoman Empire was founded, a caliphate that controlled a lot of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa up to 1923.
Wars continue, the Magna Charter, of (some) individual rights vs. the King and rulers, was written in 1215. The Renaissance began around 1300. Ming Dynasty, China..
The Bubonic Plague or Black Death, deadliest pandemic recorded in history, resulted in the deaths of up to 75–200 million people in Eurasia and North Africa, from 1346 to 1353.
The printing press was invented in 1440, and the industrial revolution began in 1760, forty years after a portion of Christianity, “with wings like eagles” sailed to “the new world” and grew to overpower three (European) nations laying claim to that world (Rev.12:14; Dan.7:8). Meant to live in peace with, and learn from the indigenous peoples, and they in turn learn from them? Well. It certainly could have been a potential ..and maybe was for a year or two. Until “government” was big on the scene. (Is it any wonder biblical prophecy calls human governings, beasts? The prophesied last one being global, and man’s last great idol to replace God Most High.)
An age of European colonialism - of the exploration and conquest of many lands - began about 1500. This followed the discovery of a sea route around Africa's southern peninsula in 1488, and the discovery of America in 1492.
1519 sees the beginning of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, also known as the Conquest of Mexico. It was a main event in the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
The Portuguese, in 1526, completed the first transatlantic slave voyage (to Brazil) and other European nations soon followed suit. South America (especially Brazil) became the home of millions of African South Americans.
Napolean rose to power during the french revolution and declared himself emperor in 1804, and in 1806 brought about the fall of the Holy Roman Empire.
In 1848 Marx (and Engels) published “The Communist Manifesto”. In 1859 Charles Darwin published His theory in his book “On The Origins Of Species”. [These two becoming the modern king and ‘priest’ (rule) of ‘last days’?]
Imperialism, alliances of nations, and the independence dispute of Serbian nations situated between Ottoman expansion (gone into decline) and western interests, all mixed to become WW1. ..Which began with a terrorist act, and resulted in huge losses of life (1914-1918).
In 1917 Lenin transformed the failing Russian Empire into “the Soviet State”, called the Soviet Union.. From a monarchy to a Socialist state. (Famous Lenin quotes: The goal of socialism is communism; Fascism is capitalism in decay; Sometimes history needs a push; A lie told often enough becomes the truth; Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.)
The Spanish flu, also known as the 1918 flu pandemic, and H1N1 influenza A, was an unusually deadly pandemic from February 1918 to April 1920, and infected 500 million people (about a third of the world's population at the time) and caused 50 million deaths.
1918, Hitler joined the German Workers Party, rose to power by playing on and stirring up the frustrations of post war Germans. He is voted Chancellor of Germany in 1933.
Oil was discovered and drilled in the U.S. then in the Middle East and elsewhere. Certain technological advances occurred, and soon oil became the preferred energy source for electric lighting and the automobile. By 1919, oil was powering ships, trucks, tanks, and military planes in WW2, and by now was a great geopolitical prize, which has resulted in opposing alliances concerning the world’s oil reserves and its marketing.
Five million people died of starvation in the Soviet Union, under “Father Stalin” between 1931 and 1934. About a hundred thousand more died in his “great purge” 1936-1938.
WW2 was fought from September 1, 1939 to September 2, 1945, causing 70 to 85 million deaths, including 11 million during “the holocaust” from 1941 to 1945. It saw the hugely impacting development of thermonuclear weaponry when the U.S. detonated two nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August of 1945 (with the consent of the United Kingdom, as required by “the Quebec Agreement”).
In October of 1945 the United Nations was formed, sort of a rebirth of the League of Nations which hadn’t lasted long. And because a number of countries in Europe and Asia adopted communist governments in the late 1940s, the “cold war” meant to prevent communist expansion began.
Mahatma Gandhi was leader of India’s non-violent independence movement against British colonial rule, via peaceful forms of civil disobedience and organized boycotts. He inspired others like Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, and still influences the world today. He was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic, who disapproved of his tolerance toward Muslims, in 1948.
China became a communist state in 1949, Vietnam in 1945 - U.S. President Truman had said “we’ll help any country battle communism” known as the Truman Doctrine - Cuba, became a communist state in 1959, and Lao in 1975.
The theory of Socialism is the state, on behalf of the people, controls production. In Communism the state controls both production and consumption [distribution? sharing..] and private property is not allowed.
Why are we allowed to do all this? Confucius say, “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand” ...?
[Note: the whole matter being(?) Just HOW do you have genuinely able to think and reason beings, aNd, keep paradise/perfection intact?]
PART 2 (?) Two Ages/The Lord’s Long Second Advent, Follows This Common Era - Good News For All
