Are We Living in the Most Barbaric Society in Human History?
In Second Timothy 3:3 and 4, Paul described what society will look like in the last of the last days.
People will become “without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.…” In this article, we will examining some of these words to see how they apply to those of us who are living in the last of the last days. Let’s start with the word “fierce” and the phrase “despisers of those that are good.”
The word “fierce” is a translation of the Greek word anemeros, which is formed from the word hemeros — a word which means civilized, cultivated, cultured, gentle, mild, polished, tame, or well-behaved. But when hemeros becomes anemeros — as Paul used it in Second Timothy 3:3 — it pictures a person or society that is cruel, fierce, harsh, savage, uncivilized, vicious, or violent.
When most of us think of barbaric practices in history, our minds are often riveted to some despotic ruler who was responsible for the torture and slaughter of thousands of people. Or we might think of a particular period of history, such as ancient Rome, when society as a whole embraced many monstrously barbaric practices.
I’ve traveled to many Roman stadiums and theaters where barbarism and atrocities occurred during the imperial period in the form of cruel entertainment that the population loved. The ancient Romans packed those venues, stomping their feet and cheering with glee as blood was spattered in the arenas below. It is hard to fathom the unimaginable tortures and religious persecution that took place in these locations, especially against early Christians who had come to believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Church was born in the midst of a pagan environment.
Throughout the empire, adoring crowds erupted with thrilled delight at the sight of the shedding of human blood. In fact, such bloody spectacles provided the most popular form of amusement of that time! Although the Romans claimed to be the great, sophisticated educators and “civilizers” of the world in their day, they were actually monstrously barbaric in many ways.
What about Us?
In Second Timothy 3:1-4, the Holy Spirit pointed His prophetic finger toward the future and prophesied that in the last of the last days, violence would become even more widespread and commonplace in society. And we are seeing this come to pass.
But in our own time — at a time in modern history when we seem to be so sophisticated — we have taken the barbaric behavior of the ancient world to a new, unprecedented level. We may seem to be more sophisticated. But in reality, we no longer have to visit stadiums and other venues to experience violence and bloodshed, because now we bring huge doses of violence directly into our homes through television, digital devices, and the Internet. Although the means by which we receive our entertainment may be more technologically sophisticated, this generation is as barbaric, or even more so, than previous generations. It is simply barbarism manifesting in a different form.
Even the strongest believer can be worn down by the constant onslaught of evil surroundings. This is the reason why God urges His people to “flee” from evil (see 2 Timothy 2:22). Current statistics prove that if a person watches enough violence on television, his sensitivity to violence will become dulled and he will become numbed to acts that would otherwise prick his conscience and vex his soul. The same statistics reveal that if a person watches enough pornography, in time that person will lose his sensitivity to the wrongness of this behavior; once again, he will become numb to it.
As society is more and more obsessed with images of violence, it is seeping into the mainstream. Anyone with spiritual eyes opened is aware that violence is on the increase.
But there is another way in which violence has escalated that is both shocking and alarming. I believe the following information illustrates perfectly how uncivilized society has become in our time. Stay with me, and I believe you’ll understand why I have chosen to make a point from the following subject.
Violence Against Society’s Most Defenseless Human Beings
Some years ago, the Holy Spirit impressed me to address the subject of abortion in our Moscow church. I had never spoken on that subject, yet I knew the Holy Spirit was compelling me and that this was a message my congregation needed to hear. When I began to study for this message, I came to understand why the Spirit had impressed it upon me so strongly.
Before I cover the statistics you are about to read, I want to say that if you have ever terminated the life of a child — or if you know someone who has done this — there is forgiveness in Jesus Christ. Just as there is forgiveness for every grievance against God, there is forgiveness for this wrong decision of aborting an unborn baby. If you will ask God from your heart to forgive you, you can be assured of His promised forgiveness (see 1 John 1:9). Because He loves you so deeply, He will forgive you, cleanse you from all unrighteousness, and heal every broken place in your soul so the enemy cannot use it against you.
But as painful as it is to state the enormity of the cost in lives and personal destinies that abortion has exacted upon mankind, I believe it is necessary. As believers, we can’t just hide our heads in the sand like ostriches and pretend this holocaust of human life hasn’t been an ongoing horror in our world over this past century right up to the present day.
As I prepared to minister to my congregation, my research began with the actual number of abortions that had occurred in the world since the earlier years of the Twentieth Century. Because I was speaking to my own congregation in Moscow when I first delivered this message, I decided to start my research with a study of how many abortions had occurred in the Soviet Union.
Because accurate numbers of abortions were not kept in the Soviet Union before 1957, I started counting from 1957 to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In those 34 years, I found that approximately 306,457,000 abortions were performed in the Soviet Union. This number is larger than the entire population of the USSR when the USSR dissolved in 1991.
Then I turned my attention to China to see how many abortions have been performed there. However, because records for the numbers of abortions performed in China before 1970 were unavailable, my research had to begin with 1971, when the best information became available. Those records revealed that from 1971 to 2020 — a span of nearly 50 years — 489,936,650 abortions were carried out in China.
Let me help you comprehend that number. The current population of the United States is approximately 328 million. This means from 1971 to 2020, China aborted the equivalent of the entire population of the United States — and nearly 162 million more. That second number is almost equivalent to the entire populations of Canada and Mexico combined! So if you add the 328 million and 162 million abortions carried out in China, the total number of infants killed in the womb during that time period is actually approaching the equivalent of the entire human population from the Arctic to the southern border of Mexico! That is the magnitude of the number of babies who were aborted in China in an almost 50-year span of time.
Then I turned my attention to the United States to see how many babies had been aborted since 1973 when abortion was legalized by the Supreme Court in the famous case of Roe v. Wade. Since 1973, nearly 62 million abortions have been performed in the United States!
But hold on — the most solid information shows that the worldwide number of abortions over the last 40 years (1980-2020) is estimated to be close to 2 billion. Think of that horrifying landmark number modern society has reached — 2 billion abortions carried out globally in a span of 40 years!
To help you grasp that number, try to imagine this: If all the people were killed who are currently living in North America, Central America, and South America — plus all of Europe, Russia, and Australia! — the total number of deaths still would not amount to the number of babies who have been aborted worldwide in the last 40 years!
Although these statistics are already mind-boggling, by the time you read this, they will be outdated, because 125,000 abortions are carried out every day worldwide.
Although some contend that the world today is technologically more advanced and more sophisticated, this slaughter of nearly 2 billion babies shows that we are not more civilized; rather, barbarism is escalating on an unthinkable scale. Infants are routinely brutally burned to death by chemicals injected into a mother’s womb or torn to pieces in the womb by medical forceps.
Almost every minute of every day in sterilized hospitals and clinics around the world, this barbaric act occurs. This is worldwide savagery of the worst kind that makes all other holocausts and genocides pale in comparison. This is murder on a scale so massive that no fiction writer could have ever imagined it. Yet this is reality in our present-day age.
So although we may think the mass killings that occurred at the hands of Nero, Domitian, Hitler, Stalin, or other tyrannous leaders were barbaric and cruel — a fact that no one would argue with — those barbaric times do not come close to the magnitude of the horrific cost of lives that abortion providers as a whole are responsible for — murdering nearly 2 billion babies through the act of abortion. This is the mass annihilation of those who cannot scream, who cannot be heard, who cannot defend themselves, and whose mutilated bodies are thrown into garbage cans, sold for parts to the highest bidder, or recycled to be used in shampoos or cosmetics.
When godly advocates raise their voices against this genocide, those who are pro-choice often portray them to be narrow-minded, right-wing fanatics. These advocates for life are attacked with a vengeance by the pro-choice faction that wants to intimidate, silence, and render powerless the opposition and retain the legal right to terminate the life of a child.
Make no mistake — this present generation is tainted with the blood of innocent children. And one could argue that this generation as a whole is largely guilty of the most heinous and barbaric behavior perhaps in the entire history of mankind because of the murder of these 2 billion unborn children.
In Second Timothy 3:3 and 4, Paul stated that society in the last days will become “fierce,” translated from the Greek word anemeros, which I tell you again pictures a person or society that has become cruel, fierce, harsh, savage, uncivilized, vicious, or violent.
Just as the Holy Spirit prophesied, a last-days society has developed a great fascination with violence and, as a result, is possibly becoming the most violent generation to ever live on the earth.
