I’ve been having a deep sense of foreboding these past few
weeks; not about anything personal, but the general state and psyche of
mankind, especially in our society. That uneasiness has forced me into
some sort of deep spiritual inquiry for more insights of the sayings and
prophecies of the Quran, the Bible, as well as the words of Nostradamus
(that great French astrologer).
And I ask myself: Is the world really coming to an end? It’s a question I’ve pondered on for days now, because you see, I sincerely can’t make sense of the news trend these days. Note: not just news, but a trend. A trend. It means it happens most of the time or dominates the news space.
You know, typically, over the years we’ve grown accustomed to waking up every day to
news of different shades and magnitude, from crimes to politics to technology to sports and then the occasional odd and ridiculous stories. For many of us, it’s a daily menu with potentials to affect or influence our mood, to make us happy or laugh, or at the other divide, make us feel sad or angry.
At other times, the news item nudges us to sympathize or empathize with the victim. We could shed a tear or two in our privacy and say a silent prayer for them. Or on the other hand, we feel a sense of satisfaction and justice being done to the malefactor.
That has been by and large the nature of news as we knew it — the good, the bad and the ones somewhere in-between, depending on your perspective or how you relate to the characters in the story.
But the queerness about news nowadays makes me shudder with deep fright and a haunting dread of the unknown. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it too. No, I take that back. I know or think you must have observed it too and been wondering as well.
Yes, there’s a spooky pattern to most news these days, in particular the ones from our shores. Not that news that border on the bizarre and surreal – even inconceivable — is not part of the news menu ‘naturally,’ but when the bulk of the news every day is coloured by a certain ghostly or diabolical element, you know something is not right.
Or maybe it’s not entirely a new phenomenon and it is just that the Internet and social media in particular makes new break and spread quicker than wild fire in harmattan. Or maybe we’ve simply become generally ice cold and fast losing the last strands of conscience still left in some of us. Maybe we have finally lost our humanity.
Or how do you explain a man of humble means such as a Jumia delivery man in Port Harcourt and father of four being hacked to death by his supposed customers – a group of thoughtless, juvenile delinquents and hippies – and thrown into a septic tank? Over an item – an inanimate, non-living item. Yes, an IPhone; but an item still. Just like that! The images still make me cringe, and I still can’t wrap my head around it.
That was in March, the same month a man in Bauchi raped his 7-month old stepdaughter, leaving the baby battling for her life in the hospital. This particular new low of sickening pedophilia totally drained me of all energy. I’m beyond dumbfounded.
How about the 61-year-old landlord that beheaded a lady who had come to him for spiritual cleansing in Badagry, Lagos? And – wait for it—that was the second time he was slaughtering humans like cows and dismembering them for their vital parts! It means at the first time, he was not caught in his ritual killing and the family of the victim probably gave up hope after a long while of searching fruitlessly for their loved one. Someone once joked that even the devil will be shocked at some people’s level of wickedness. Oh dear!
Then there was the young man who killed his octogenarian uncle over a land dispute, and then blamed the devil as usual. Again, in the new spirit of the bizarre and diabolical culture of this generation, he tied him with a rope, left him to die a painful death and buried him five days later!
And still in March, pretty Maranatha was kidnapped by suspected ritualists after she had boarded a bike. The ‘okada man’ asked to urinate and Maranatha courteously waited at a side, backing him and going through her phone to kill time. In the next few moments, a car with three men pulled up. They exchanged pleasantries with the unsuspecting lady and asked for directions to “Tionsha.” She turned to describe the place, and that was all she could remember.
The next time she regained consciousness, she found herself in a certain room, her hands, legs and mouth tied like a sacrificial ram, along with three other ladies. Somehow and miraculously, after four days without food or water, Maranatha was deemed ‘unfit’ and ‘unacceptable’ by the blood-thirsty deity and then released. The three other ladies were not so lucky. Who knows what their fates are as Maranatha cannot even locate the place.
And have you noticed that these days too, some men have virtually removed the sacred cloak around a married woman and extended their sexual conquest beyond singles to women with a husband at home! This in particular used to be such an abomination in our society, almost a sacrilege, that the punishment for the man is instantaneous both by man and Divinity.
But I know you’ve read all the stories already, and no need to bore you with details. Like I said earlier on, all these chaos made me go digging deeper and trying to get a God or – if you like — Universe angle to it. What does the Quran or the Bible say about the end of the world? How do the predictions of that famous astrologer, Nostradamus play out here? Are the the ‘last days,’ as been rung for centuries and decades, finally here?
In the Quran, it says the Last Day as given by the Prophet (saas) in the Hadiths will be symbolised by the rising of the sun in the west “When the sky is ripped apart,” “When the seas are set ablaze,” “When the mountains are plucked up by their roots and scattered,” “When the sun is extinguished.”……The fear, panic and amazement with which people will witness these extraordinary events is described vividly; they will find no place to hide, there will be no escape and no one will be able to protect themselves from the agony of this time.
In the Bible, one of the signs of the end of the world is that “there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.”
And according to analysts, one of the things Nostradamus predicted (which is often cryptic and open to personal interpretations) about 2017 is that: “For forty years the rainbow will not be seen. For forty years it will be seen every day. The dry earth will grow more parched, and there will be great floods when it is seen.”
What do these words and prophesies mean in the context of happenings today? Are these really the last days? Is the world coming to an end, or it’s the same world as we have known it? What are your thoughts?
Credit: http://leadership.ng/
And I ask myself: Is the world really coming to an end? It’s a question I’ve pondered on for days now, because you see, I sincerely can’t make sense of the news trend these days. Note: not just news, but a trend. A trend. It means it happens most of the time or dominates the news space.
You know, typically, over the years we’ve grown accustomed to waking up every day to
news of different shades and magnitude, from crimes to politics to technology to sports and then the occasional odd and ridiculous stories. For many of us, it’s a daily menu with potentials to affect or influence our mood, to make us happy or laugh, or at the other divide, make us feel sad or angry.
At other times, the news item nudges us to sympathize or empathize with the victim. We could shed a tear or two in our privacy and say a silent prayer for them. Or on the other hand, we feel a sense of satisfaction and justice being done to the malefactor.
That has been by and large the nature of news as we knew it — the good, the bad and the ones somewhere in-between, depending on your perspective or how you relate to the characters in the story.
But the queerness about news nowadays makes me shudder with deep fright and a haunting dread of the unknown. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it too. No, I take that back. I know or think you must have observed it too and been wondering as well.
Yes, there’s a spooky pattern to most news these days, in particular the ones from our shores. Not that news that border on the bizarre and surreal – even inconceivable — is not part of the news menu ‘naturally,’ but when the bulk of the news every day is coloured by a certain ghostly or diabolical element, you know something is not right.
Or maybe it’s not entirely a new phenomenon and it is just that the Internet and social media in particular makes new break and spread quicker than wild fire in harmattan. Or maybe we’ve simply become generally ice cold and fast losing the last strands of conscience still left in some of us. Maybe we have finally lost our humanity.
Or how do you explain a man of humble means such as a Jumia delivery man in Port Harcourt and father of four being hacked to death by his supposed customers – a group of thoughtless, juvenile delinquents and hippies – and thrown into a septic tank? Over an item – an inanimate, non-living item. Yes, an IPhone; but an item still. Just like that! The images still make me cringe, and I still can’t wrap my head around it.
That was in March, the same month a man in Bauchi raped his 7-month old stepdaughter, leaving the baby battling for her life in the hospital. This particular new low of sickening pedophilia totally drained me of all energy. I’m beyond dumbfounded.
How about the 61-year-old landlord that beheaded a lady who had come to him for spiritual cleansing in Badagry, Lagos? And – wait for it—that was the second time he was slaughtering humans like cows and dismembering them for their vital parts! It means at the first time, he was not caught in his ritual killing and the family of the victim probably gave up hope after a long while of searching fruitlessly for their loved one. Someone once joked that even the devil will be shocked at some people’s level of wickedness. Oh dear!
Then there was the young man who killed his octogenarian uncle over a land dispute, and then blamed the devil as usual. Again, in the new spirit of the bizarre and diabolical culture of this generation, he tied him with a rope, left him to die a painful death and buried him five days later!
And still in March, pretty Maranatha was kidnapped by suspected ritualists after she had boarded a bike. The ‘okada man’ asked to urinate and Maranatha courteously waited at a side, backing him and going through her phone to kill time. In the next few moments, a car with three men pulled up. They exchanged pleasantries with the unsuspecting lady and asked for directions to “Tionsha.” She turned to describe the place, and that was all she could remember.
The next time she regained consciousness, she found herself in a certain room, her hands, legs and mouth tied like a sacrificial ram, along with three other ladies. Somehow and miraculously, after four days without food or water, Maranatha was deemed ‘unfit’ and ‘unacceptable’ by the blood-thirsty deity and then released. The three other ladies were not so lucky. Who knows what their fates are as Maranatha cannot even locate the place.
And have you noticed that these days too, some men have virtually removed the sacred cloak around a married woman and extended their sexual conquest beyond singles to women with a husband at home! This in particular used to be such an abomination in our society, almost a sacrilege, that the punishment for the man is instantaneous both by man and Divinity.
But I know you’ve read all the stories already, and no need to bore you with details. Like I said earlier on, all these chaos made me go digging deeper and trying to get a God or – if you like — Universe angle to it. What does the Quran or the Bible say about the end of the world? How do the predictions of that famous astrologer, Nostradamus play out here? Are the the ‘last days,’ as been rung for centuries and decades, finally here?
In the Quran, it says the Last Day as given by the Prophet (saas) in the Hadiths will be symbolised by the rising of the sun in the west “When the sky is ripped apart,” “When the seas are set ablaze,” “When the mountains are plucked up by their roots and scattered,” “When the sun is extinguished.”……The fear, panic and amazement with which people will witness these extraordinary events is described vividly; they will find no place to hide, there will be no escape and no one will be able to protect themselves from the agony of this time.
In the Bible, one of the signs of the end of the world is that “there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.”
And according to analysts, one of the things Nostradamus predicted (which is often cryptic and open to personal interpretations) about 2017 is that: “For forty years the rainbow will not be seen. For forty years it will be seen every day. The dry earth will grow more parched, and there will be great floods when it is seen.”
What do these words and prophesies mean in the context of happenings today? Are these really the last days? Is the world coming to an end, or it’s the same world as we have known it? What are your thoughts?
Credit: http://leadership.ng/
No comments:
Post a Comment