It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
I don’t pretend to know the future, but as a general rule, I don’t believe anything will really change, good or bad. People will continue to forsake the gospel, and new believers will continue to find Jesus. Whatever troubles will come, will come, and we don’t know what they are. Like in A Tale of Two Cities, huge waves of history will occur, as they always occur in every age. Everything will change and nothing will change.
The gospel will be preached by millennials in the language of millennials to millennials, and some millennials will hear and believe, others won’t. We have no control over this.
I cannot talk about the good or the bad separately. For every good I can think up, some contrary point arises:
Our generation is less restrictive and more accepting than the last; contrarily, our generation is known for shouting down dissenting voices and creating an intricate web of new taboos.
Our generation is more ready to listen to the gospel; Our generation has rejected the very concept of Truth anyway.
Our generation is one of the most educated in history; Our education has never been so cheap and meaningless.
Never before have we been so egalitarian; never before have the sexes been so divided.
In the end, I am reminded of another Quote:
(Northern vs. Southern, here express two extremes to which humanity can fall, in the story pictured as barrenness and swampiness, which represent a sort of Scientism vs. Spiritism, or intellect vs. emotion)
I take my own age to be predominantly Northern—it is two great ‘Northern’ powers that are tearing each other to pieces on the Don while I write. But the matter is complicated, for the rigid and ruthless system of the Nazis has ‘Southern’ and swamp-like elements at its centre; and when our age is ‘Southern’ at all, it is excessively so. D. H. Lawrence and the Surrealists have perhaps reached a point further ‘South’ than humanity ever reached before. And this is what one would expect. Opposite evils, far from balancing, aggravate each other. ‘The heresies that men leave are hated most’; widespread drunkenness is the father of Prohibition and Prohibition of widespread drunkenness. Nature, outraged by one extreme, avenges herself by flying to the other. One can even meet adult males who are not ashamed to attribute their own philosophy to ‘Reaction’ and do not think the philosophy thereby discredited.
I apologize for utilizing so many quotes here, but I fear to stand alone in this: We don’t know what the future will bring, but we do know that, fundamentally, nothing really changes anyway. I have abducted two authors of fiction to discus reality. Both were dealing with what hindsight shows as massive events in history, and both realized the dual nature of any age, or any extreme. A balance always remains.
I don’t believe that millennials will be any different from previous or future generations.
One final quote:
That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which it may be said,
“See, this is new”?
It has already been in ancient times before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come
By those who will come after.
Ecclesiastes 1:9-11
Tale Told 