History Repeats Itself

             Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking.  I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.

Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. (II Peter 3:1-7)

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  (George Santayana)

History repeats itself but in such cunning disguise that we never detect the resemblance until the damage is done. (Sydney J. Harris)

It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible. (Mark Twain)

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. (Karl Marx)

Each time history repeats itself, the price goes up. (Ronald Wright)

History repeats itself because nobody listens the first time. (Erik Qualman)

History is never antiquated, because humanity is always fundamentally the same. (Walter Rauschenbusch)

 

One of the arguments the Jews use against Jesus as the Messiah is that He didn’t fulfill all the prophecies. One of the arguments secularists make against the Bible is the fact that not every prophecy made in Scripture has been fulfilled. If Christ is going to return, where is He? If the world is going to be judged, where the apocalypse? And since they’re told by “experts” that there’s not sufficient evidence to believe any of what Scripture says. There was no worldwide flood, they say. There has been no judgment. Everything is as it has been for billions of years. Except for the Zanclean flood, supposedly 6 million years ago, and the Missoula Megafloods that supposedly happened in North American 15,500 to 18,000 years ago, and the mega-tsunami supposedly caused by the Storegga Slide off Norway around 6200 BC. And then there’s the fact that many cultures have a story involving worldwide floods, but that can’t mean that there was one, or that the dates given for some of these events might possibly be wrong. So since they deny that the past happened, history can’t repeat itself - or since what is predicted hasn’t happened yet, it can’t.

I can understand this - I have repeatedly lived through the history of believing that the way things are is the way they will continue to be. And then the way things are changed.