In the 1990s if you wanted to play a online RPG, one would have to access a bulletin board in order to play a text based game, the only graphics was a small icon of the creature or beast you have encountered to the side of the text.. With dial up as the only access it would take between 5 to 10 minutes for these message boards to upload to a point you could access the game. Once you were online the game only gave you limited access (around 30 minutes) with you having to wait for the next day’s upload to continue play. Today there are countless online RPGs that allow you to enter a fantasy world seeing sights and sound unimagined just a few decades ago each offering unlimited game play.
Articles online estimate that the internet is doubling in size and information every year, with thousands of pages added daily. Those of us born prior to the computer age remember that the only source of information was either the encyclopedia or the local library. Even 50 years ago most libraries were filled with so much information one could not read and understand all the volumes located in even a modest size branch.
During the 1700s there was a man named Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz who many believed to be the last man on earth to understand everything. Just the 200 years between his time and ours there has been a explosion of information that no one could possibly learn it all even if they lived several lifetimes.
Yet this is the very condition God talks about in our sign today when He said:
But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end:many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
Daniel 12:4
This condition has been noticed by the secularists as shown in this article
How Fast Is Knowledge Doubling? – Lodestar Solutions
Advances in technology that once took decades or hundreds of years to increase are now taking only months or even weeks. Some believe that the advent of the computer has aided these advances, others believe it is because information is more freely available. Either way we can see advances in knowledge on all fronts of human understanding.
Despite all these advances God states that we are no closer to the truth than we were at the beginning when He said
Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
2 Timothy 3:7
This week take some time to review all the “knowledge” you have acquired in your life and ask if that information brings you closer to or drives you further away from God. It may be time to do a data dump of the useless and keep only the helpful.
Father,
Over the years I’ve filled my head with the trivia and the arcane. Most of what I’ve learned is useless outside of the game of Trivia Pursuit. Lord this vast array of information has clouded my spiritual eyes from seeing You and Your Glory, leading to life that varies little from the world around me. I pray that you’ll guide me in retaining only the necessary and profitable removing the damaging to restore me to the purity and joy of my salvation and love I had for Jesus.
Amen
Teaching the End of Wickedness 