I have been thinking about the idea of changing the culture of the world for the better. My fundamental question is, How possible is this? I’d love some ideas and opinions.
I am wondering if it is even possible for us to make the world significantly better than it is at the moment. On the one hand it may seem obviously possible (and this is what gives us hope). But on the other hand, does the Bible almost prophecy that the world will always be rotten and it will get worse steadily and so, whatever we do, it will still be really bad? Does the Bible say the world will be in a terrible state when Jesus comes again? Does the Bible say most people will be bad?
Sorry I am unable to quote the relevant passages, because I don’t know them (which is why I’m posting here!); I’ve just heard bits and pieces over the years.
So yeah… hope that makes sense. Let me know if I can clarify things at all!
Thank you so much,
Clem
I’ll paste below a Catechism section that describes the ultimate rise of evil on earth, and the Church’s ultimate following of the Lord to the Cross. Prophesies can change, of course: a prophecy of judgment can change, if there is a repentance - i.e. Jonah chapter 3:
Jon 3:1 Then the word of the LORD came to Jonah the second time, saying,
Jon 3:2 “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.”
Jon 3:3 So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth.
Jon 3:4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he cried, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
Jon 3:5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them.
Jon 3:6 Then tidings reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, and covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
Jon 3:7 And he made proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed, or drink water,
Jon 3:8 but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them cry mightily to God; yea, let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence which is in his hands.
Jon 3:9 Who knows, God may yet repent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we perish not?”
Jon 3:10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God repented of the evil which he had said he would do to them; and he did not do it.
Here is the Catechism section on the last days:
The Church’s ultimate trial
675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers.<Cf. Lk 18:8; Mt 24:12> The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth<Cf. Lk 21:12; Jn 15:19-20> will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.<Cf. 2 Th 2:4-12; I Th 5:2-3; 2 Jn 7; I Jn 2:18, 22>
676 The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgement. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism,<Cf. DS 3839> especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism.<Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, condemning the “false mysticism” of this “counterfeit of the redemption of the lowly”; cf. GS 20-21>
677
The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection.<Cf. Rev 19:1-9>
The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven.<Cf Rev 13:8; 20:7-10; 21:2-4>
God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgement after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.<Cf. Rev 20:12 2 Pt 3:12-13>
