Across Religions And Cultures Is Notion Linked To Prophecy That Time Has Sped Up

Does it seem to you like time has sped up -- accelerated? Does everything pass in a whirl lately? Does it seem like only yesterday you were putting out the weekly trash -- as you do it again today?

The hours, the days, the years seem to be flashing by -- the product, for many, of age.

As we get older, experts tell us, time seems to go faster, perhaps because much is repetition; we have seen it all. It's also a product of technology: We're surrounded by so much noise, distraction, and speed that it hurries everything along; clutter makes things seem to fly by!

But does it go beyond that? Is there something more at work in our own time? When asked if they felt time has sped up, the vast majority of hands in an audience recently flew upward -- and emphatically.

The young feel it too. There is not time to do all the work, to associate with friends, to read what we want to read. We hear such from mothers and teachers. It's like something has stepped into high gear (perhaps because, as one prophecy said, a "timetable has been set in motion").

Let us know what you think. We have covered this before. The hours and minutes and seconds seemed to have sped up, like the pangs of birth. It is as if we are in the midst of a curve that is exponential and fueled both by technology and population and a coming denouement.

"I arrived at work and a co-worker said 'something is alarming me these days and I don't know how to explain but seems to me that time is rushing by," wrote Jenny Mootie from Trinidad of a while ago. "It is as if  five minutes are no long five minutes or an hour not really sixty minutes. The weeks and months seem to fly by.' I was amazed because I myself have been completely mystified by the passage of time within recent years and even more so in the last couple months. In fact, in recent times I have been sitting with my 82-year-old father discussing the same thing, the extreme swiftness of the passage of time."

Interesting it is that Protestants have felt the same. In Jewish circles, Rabbi Daniel Lapin (known popularly as "America's Rabbi") has been quoted as stating that an historic upheaval is coming and "what is unquestionably crystal clear is that time and history are accelerating. Things happen more quickly now than ever before, so it is moving rapidly toward this event, whatever it will look like."

Such has even been uttered by Native Americans. Said one expert quoting Indian  prophecy way back in the 1980s: "At this time you're going to see that things will speed up, that people on the earth will move faster and faster. Grandchildren will not have time for grandparents. Parents will not have time for children. It will seem like time is going faster and faster. The elders advised us that, as things speed up, you yourself should slow down. The faster things go, the slower you go.  Because there's going to come a time when the earth is going to be shaken."

Of course, one has to be unusually cautious with prophecy from those who were steeped (as Indians were) in paganism. Is there truth in it? Does it cross not just denominations but religions?

A Catholic woman who had a near-death brush in 1950 "floated" out of her body during a coma and saw a strange clock. "I saw Jesus and Blessed Mother. They love me, but told me it is not my time to be with them yet. I must go back to do work. The clock said five minutes to twelve. I had the most difficult time getting people to understand that the 'clock said five minutes to twelve. In fact, for forty years, I didn’t know the significance of the 'clock' until I read an encounter by another woman who realized that five to twelve is the symbol for the final harvest of God’s people. And for me, that meant that I was to help Him in any way I can to save souls."

"God is busy building a race of men who know how to love," wrote a psychiatrist, Dr. George Ritchie, who also had a near-death experience. "I believe that the fate of the earth itself depends on the progress we make -- and that the time now is very short."

Let us view things from the Christian perspective. And let us note Scripture: "Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short," says Matthew 24:22.

Does prophecy have to do with this feeling that time has accelerated? How about specific times -- the many who report waking at three a.m. or seeing the same number (one mentioned in 11:11) on their clocks? This too is reported across denominations.

Has it sped up for you? Do the days whizz by? Is it related to a feeling of something imminent?

Imagine what the world would be like without watches, without clocks, without the constraints of tight schedules, without time.

We would all live in the moment.

As the world spins faster -- or seems to -- maybe this is the lesson, for the time being.

[see also: Of signs, coincidence, and time speeding up]

10/29/07