As I was driving in and around Malacca over the long holiday weekend, I had a Delirious CD playing in my car's music player, and one line of a chorus just echoed repeatedly in my head:
I've never known a time like this.....all this time....all this time....
Yeah, as I cross into the new decade, into new unprecedented territories, there indeed has never been a time as extraordinary as this in my life.
These are unprecedented times for mankind. Everything that was made possible at the turn of the millenium is now intensified in the second decade.
Unprecedented opportunities and possibilities. A vacant job these days, could go to someone in Calcutta, Beijing or Minnesota. A team from all these different places can communicate and work as if they're next to one another. They used to marvel that they could be in Tokyo and then London on the same day to attend meetings. Now we can be virtually anywhere in the world at anytime, or all at the same time! It's a borderless global marketplace, economy and audience. People are earning untold, unnumbered sums of money from unlimited number of customers over the web, in their pyjamas. Godly messengers are sowing kingdom seeds quite differently now from those from the last millenium. The Church is truly no longer limited to a four-walled building. And whatever I write in my blogs are read by unnamed global strangers, most of whom I'll never meet. Simply extraordinary!
Unprecedented challenges. It's a double-edged sword. Businesses face competitions from across a thousand miles and from different ethnics and cultures, just as much as from their neighbouring shops. We face targetless enemies from too many corners. Churches once attempted to protect their spiritual sheeps from wolves from other churches just down the road. Parents used to warn children not to speak to strangers in the streets, now they're fending off faceless fiends from the
virtual world of the Internet.
Unprecedented knowledge. The knowledge we have on the face of this earth right now has doubled from the last decade. And it's still growing at an exponential rate. Once, they used to carry a few heavy books in their bags, now we own and have access to whole libraries at the palms of our hands, literally! People are much better informed than before, but are they any wiser? Is information our slave or master? Do they free us or hold us hostage?
Unprecedented choices. Adults used to struggle in deciding on when to own their first mobile phone. Now, kids mull over which broadband plan to go with their multi-functional mobile device. The choice of expensive electronic products used to be between a few household brands, but now anything and everything can be customized. And everything can be copied and owned by anyone now at much lower prices. Do I buy from the highstreet mall or from the comfort and safety of my home via the Internet? People used to pay premium prices to see their favourite charismatic leader/guru speak 'live'. Now we can't decide which free e-newsletters of famous leaders to unsubscribe from our cluttered electronic mailboxes!
Unprecedented influences. Everything from the media, to the games, to the entertainment, businesses, and even spiritual are wrestling for our psychic energies. Whether conscious or unconsious, they're specially crafted to draw and engage us, slowly invading our supposedly limitless territories:
our minds. They infiltrate to influence your buying decisions, your processes of making choices, they capture your imagination, altering your reality, and then what you think is okay and what's not, what you feel safe and what's not, and ultimately what you know is right and what's wrong.
Unprecedented deception. The enemy crouches at every dark corner, waiting to pounce and devour us, but all
very subtly. If the Bible is true, there are many false prophets and teachers around, like wolves and sheeps' clothings in these last days. And they're already in places of worship. If we really really believe the Word is really of God, then should we be concerned as it said the false ones will (or has it already?) outnumber the true ones? Everyone is preaching the truth, but so was the crafty serpent in that Garden, and then again in the wilderness with the Saviour after His baptism.
This is the age when all our senses (spiritual and otherwise) are constantly bombarded, desensitized and numbed by everything and everyone around us. This is the time when we must especially sharpen our senses and minds. Leave nothing to chance. Test everything. Be prudent in judgement, before the final Judgement comes.
This is the time when people are lovers of themselves more than anytime in history. They think nothing for the greater good of others. Selfish desires reign. There is no king in their lives, even many believers.
Over the holiday weekend, I played the popular boardgame
RISK with some friends. Classical warfare are waged between countries and continents separated by boundary lines across the world map. What are the lines of modern warfare these days? Where are the battlefields?
Do you have a PLAN as you entered the new year, or did you just stumble into it?
I have a gameplan. I can't wait to play yet I'm still waiting. I drew some lines yet determined to erase others. I'm alive yet I still die.
All this time
Since the day that I was born
I've never known a time like this
I don't wanna let You down
-Delirious' All This Time
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