Perceptive of the Future
Jonathan Edwards (1703-58), described as one of America’s greatest thinkers ever, was gifted with a significant sense of what God would do in in future generations. I was reminded earlier in perusing the Preface to Iain H Murray’s Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (page xiii) of these words:
[Edwards] would not have been surprised had he known of the great advances of the kingdom of Christ in the two centuries which have followed his death. Few Christians have looked to the future with brighter hope than Edwards. He believed, for example, that the age of scientific discovery was only in its beginnings and that there would come new and ‘better contrivances for assisting one another through the whole earth by more expedite, easy, and safe communication between distant regions than now’. The vast distances separating the nations of the eighteenth century would disappear, ‘the distant extremes of the world shall shake hands together’, and this progress would be God-given towards the day when ‘the whole earth may be as one community, one body in Christ’.
Edwards did not speak directly of the specifics of what he imagined people would achieve. Yet I love to think that the things we enjoy today–ease of international travel, rapid communication by electronic means whether in text or VOIP, capability of making speedy financial transactions, and the transportation of items expeditiously around the globe–are in measure the fruit of his sanctified imagination.
Think About This…
• Do you utilize the power of the Internet for good?
• Do you use your resources efficiently and strategically for the advance of Christ’s kingdom?
• Are you on the lookout for new and effective means of harnessing the power of technology to live life more efficiently in the service of Him who lived and died and rose again for sinners?
• Suggest three ways in which your life has been significantly transformed by technology in the last two years.
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