"the time they were carried away to Babylon" - Not Material Civilization but Mercy of God

Tokyo

Not Material Civilization but Mercy of God

The trend of the human civilization can be first observed from the trend of energy use, because human civilization depends on energy.


https://ourfiniteworld.com/2012/03/12/world-energy-consumption-since-1820-in-charts/

Civilization destroys, changes, and utilizes the nature, although it has not yet ability to modify natural environment according to its will; for example, the mankind cannot change the climate or increase/decrease ambient temperature as it wants.  Destroying power of civilization against the nature can be seen in trend of deforestration.

Longer term, the outlook is even worse. If humanity continues its pattern of endless consumption, their research indicates that less than one-fifth of Asia and Latin America's forest cover may remain by 2200.

https://www.thecoli.com/threads/studies-highlight-deforestation-risk-in-the-21st-century-and-beyond.351057/ 

It is well worried that temperature increase in the global ambient air might cause grave damage on peoples.  However, use of energy in whatever form would discharge used energy into the air, thus increasing temperature.  CO2 emission cannot be the only cause of temperature increase.  However, if forest areas in the world dwindle, a less amount of CO2 is absorbed and a less amount of O2 is discharged into the air.

It is also important how much development of civilization has contributed to increase of global human  population.

Then, what about production of cereal crops in the world?


http://www.jiid.or.jp/ardec/ardec46/ard46_food.html
(The upper dark-green broken line is the total amount (in million tons) of cereal crops produced globally; the lower light-green broken line shows the yield amount per unit area of farm land (tons/ha).)

So, population is rapidly increasing; accordingly energy use and food production are also increasing while the natural environment is globally being destroyed.  Future of the mankind or civilization cannot be rosy.

However, the leading country, the US, still has plenty of lands for agriculture and residence as well as natural resources.  No Americans are afraid that their civilization will face a catastrophic crisis in decades or during this century if outer world should suffer any.

However, this global civilization is based on economy supported by high technology and financial systems.  It cannot be thought that catastrophic change will never occur in or will never be generated by high technology and financial systems even in the US.

  https://ourworldindata.org/technological-progress

The functional chips, that is the microprocessors,  used at the core of high-tech products have been ever increasing its density or complexity.  This trend is not expected to cease soon.  More products, including cars and phones, will be equipped with AI.  And power of computation and communications will go on expanding in various sectors of human lives.  And even financial transactions will be further upgraded along with this technical trend.

 

 In January 1900 the DJIA had a value of 66 points, and in December 2017 (the time of writing) a value of 24,651.
http://stockmarketalmanac.co.uk/2017/12/long-term-trend-of-the-dow-jones-industrial-average/

Generally speaking, as seen in the above figure of Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), the US is getting richer, over some economic crises, all through the 20th century onward although the gap between the poor and the rich is expanding.

If advanced technologies continue to solve problems related to food production, disaster prevention, human health, social safety and security, expansion of trade and economy and so on, the earth is finite.  And the mankind cannot control the natural environment 100%, for example, such as prevention of dangerous global warming and occurrence of other great natural disasters.  And development of technologies itself is based on commercialism-based economy.  In other words, human desire-driven economy supports development of technologies.  It is not respect or good-will for humanity that is driving civilization but desire of people.  There is no assurance that this civilization will never encounter catastrophic events of any kind to the degree so that existence of the mankind will be at risk.

This material civilization might continue further for a few centuries without decisive catastrophes.  However, it is difficult that the mankind will survive and prosper further for 1000 years in the increasing trends of those various factors of the civilization.  For example, robots with super AI might take over.  And there will be nobody who will remember the mankind.

So it is said that everything goes by but the word of God is forever.

For the mankind to have true civilization that can continue for 2000 years or more, from now on, we have to set our civilization on true religion, specifically true Judaism, true Christianity, true Islam, etc. since salvation of minds and spirits of people should not come from development of material civilization but realized by mercy of God. 



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Mat 1:11 And Josias begat Jechonias and his brethren, about the time they were carried away to Babylon:
Mat 1:12 And after they were brought to Babylon, Jechonias begat Salathiel; and Salathiel begat Zorobabel;