The notion that an incredible increase in the rate of travel and knowledge would be both the key that unlocked the meaning of the Book of Daniel, as well as a sure sign of the second coming of Christ, stems from the declaration made at the end of the aforementioned book of the Bible. It declares: “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” Dan. 12:4

It occurs to me that in just four generations of my heritage, starting with the birth of my great-grandfather in Kentucky in 1832, travel and knowledge have increased at break-neck speed. My heritage and life is not that different from almost any person in America my age outside of the fact that my prior three generations were born rather late in the life of their parent/s. These things show that Christ stands at the door ready to call His faithful home to heaven with Him.

“(Note)” It should be noted here that there is a difference between what one could call “the appearing” of Christ and “the return” of Christ. The “appearing” of Christ refers to His coming in the clouds and calling His people up to meet Him in the air. This is commonly called “The Rapture”. The “appearing” happens suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, without warning. Only those who have been waiting and watching for Him will see and hear Him at His appearing. Once He appears and the Rapture has happened He and the raptured saints will return to heaven to begin preparations for the Tribulation and His return. The “return” is a completely separate event from the “appearing”. At the end of the Tribulation all eyes on earth will see Him coming with His huge army of saints. At His return, He will be coming all the way back to earth to take the throne as King of kings. He will come back on a white horse to descend upon the earth with wrath and vengeance to defeat the rebellious armies of the world at Armageddon. Unlike “the appearing”, “the return of Christ” will not be instantaneous or come without warning. Its time will be easily predicted because it will come at the end of the seven-year Tribulation.

In just four generations major prophetic events and conditions have grown from nothing or embryonic to being fulfilled on a frenetic worldwide scale. In most ways, life for my great grandfather was much the same as it had been for Noah, Abraham, David, Jesus, Julius Caesar, Martin Luther and George Washington. Travel, education, communication and world politics were just beginning to change at my great-grandfather, John Wesley Myers’ birth in 1832. But just a mere three generations later, at the time of my birth, every sphere of human existence and social behavior had been radically altered and by it the end times prophecies enumerated by Jesus, Daniel and Revelation have become realities.

Nation has risen against nation, wars and rumors of war had come to overwhelm world peace and cost the lives of millions and millions of sons and daughters. Earthquakes and pestilence, perversion and social degeneracy, false predictions and bogus saviors now dominate the news and travel and knowledge have been greatly increased. Europe is united and the foundation of the Antichrist Empire has been laid. And last, but not least, the Jews were restored to their homeland in Israel for the first time in 2,000 years. This testimony shows how all the above grew and came about in just a period of four measly generations, how man’s life has been turned upside down by these things and how the world is speeding headlong toward the appearing and return of Jesus Christ.

Four generations is a unit of time, which God has long been using for the purposes of setting a time limit on prophecy. He said that he would visit the sins of the fathers on the third and fourth generation of their children. (Ex.20:5, 34.7/Num. 14:.8/Deut. 5:9) It was prophesied that Israel would be in bondage in Egypt for four generations. (Gen.15:16) And, God told a king named Jehu that as a reward for doing the right thing, He would allow four generations of his to reign as kings in Israel. (2 Kings 10:30)

In each case, the four generations was a unit of measure used to determine the length of a prophecy, but it was also connected with judgment. In the law, where its references are always about the individual, God’s mercy would fall on four generations of those that did well and His judgment would come unto four generations for those who sinned against Him. As a nation, Israel was destined to stay four generations in Egypt while the sins of the Amorites were allowed to come to their fullest. Even kings are judged by this unit of time. While the children of Jehu did sit on the throne for four generations their reign came to a halt because of their father’s and their own sin. Four generations is a span of time which God uses to let sin come to its fullest and have prophecy come to a fulfillment. (2 Kings 15.12) There are many alive today who could tell a similar story to the one I am about to tell. Just four generations removed, their great-grandfather, like mine, was living in a world untouched by the fulfillment of end-times prophecy, now we are living in a world bathed and overwhelmed by the speed of fulfilling prophecy.

My mother’s people were farmers who came to America during the German and British immigrations of the 1700’s settling in Maryland and Kentucky before ending up in Missouri and Iowa. Her paternal grandfather, John Wesley Myers, was born in 1832 before his parents moved to Missouri. My great-grandfather had an adventurer’s spirit. He left his farm and struck off on his own to find excitement in the untamed western frontier. In 1849 at the age of 17 he felt the lure of the California gold rush and headed to the Sierra Nevadas, becoming one of thousands of forty-niners looking for that pot of gold down river from Sutter’s Mill.

After a few years of hardship, disappointment and poverty, he returned to the Midwest and the only life he knew. Eventually he returned to farming, got married and fathered eleven “farmhands” by two separate marriages. For the next 60 years, or so, until his death in 1914 the first year of World War I, he tried to make a go of it tilling the soil. Some years were better than others, but he barely eked out a living for himself and his family. He spent most of his life on rented or indentured soil, little more than a slave to it in the slave state Missouri.

My grandfather was number ten of eleven children and was born to my great-grandfather rather late in life, in 1887. I knew my grandfather, and as most little boys do, I held him in awe and with great admiration until his death in 1957. His tall lanky frame and jet-black hair made him seem to me a tower of strength and virtue. His nickname was “Chief”. Rumors that his mother was Native were never explained away. My grandfather became the typical country philosopher, a product of the late 19th Century cracker barrel society and mayor of a Missouri farm town, La Plata, for two terms. He was also the town’s barber, a trade he had learned while serving with Dwight D. Eisenhower’s regiment in Texas and Mexico in 1916-18. In his barbershop he cut his political teeth. Missouri, being a slave border-state where slavery was permitted by law, but despised by many, was a place of frontier justice, of right vs. wrong, the law, of wars and the Scots-Irish Bible belt.

The Bible was a prime topic of discussion at the barbershop throughout his lifetime. Like so many small town leaders of that by-gone era, Roy was well versed in politics, the Bible and the law. He believed strongly that every man was created equal before God. He had a Baptist upbringing, his life-long credo as my mother told it was ‘a man’s most important possession is his word’. He often quoted the Scriptures to his only child, my mother, in the context of real life and as part of the community in which he lived. He generally left the theology of the ministers confined to the walls where their pulpits spouted theory and judgment rather than providing real help.

My mother was born in 1926 and was of a similar ilk. Though many of her father’s older siblings were still involved in farming, her father was now a full-time barber and resident of the small commercial “city” of a couple hundred folk, which served as the center of community activity and the hub for marketing the crops of the surrounding farms. Roy had instilled in Eloise much of the Bible’s sayings, a hatred for prejudice and bigotry, and a love for the truth. But like her grandfather before her, she too had the adventurer’s spirit and left for the big city of St. Louis as soon as she graduated high school. She had a somewhat checkered life, bearing five children with two husbands until becoming born-again (not at a revival meeting or through a TV ministry, but by noticing marked passages in her father’s bible alone at night) at the age of 47. Since then she lived a life in Christ that had given her heightened adventure, but without its worldly instability.

I was the second of her children born to her in 1950.

As one might tell, I feel very closely connected to these four generations. Though the time between our births spans 118 years I feel as though I can reach out and touch them, feel their problems and fears – they are that close to me. Though I never met my great-grandfather I knew and loved my grandfather, the man who sat on the lap of the man who had walked in the fields and brought in the harvest with my great grandfather, born in 1832. My mother and I have shared much of our adult lives together because of the relationship we have with our Savior, Jesus Christ. My life and my spiritual, emotional existence are not far removed from that man who was born to a pioneering family in 1832. I knew and hugged the man who had been his son, who had worked on the farmhouse roof with him, who had held sheaves of wheat for him while he quickly tied them off as the thunder roared in the western sky heralding the coming rain. I had seen the lines of life on John Wesley Myers, pioneer and 49er, son’s face. I had heard the respect in people’s voices when they spoke about his son, Roy; seen clippings in the La Plata newspaper of people who still remembered the ‘excessive generosity’ of ole John Myers. Even if my hands did not touch John Myers through his son my heart could. He’s that close. It is only three generations away; so close you can still be moved by the passion of his life, his trip to California, the disappointment of finding nothing but hardship in his dream, his struggle to provide for his huge family, the loss of a child, the death of his first wife. Bible on the table.

Roy’s head must have been spinning at his father’s death, his wonder and trepidation at traveling to Texas, for he never left Missoura’ other than the time when he went to Chicago for treatment of Leukemia, where he met his Maker. People didn’t travel much out of their home town in my grandfather’s day. But technology and knowledge were beginning to change the world that all the Myers from Europe and America before him had ever known.

The awe he must have felt at seeing the first armored divisions that were preparing to turn war into a new mechanized kind of horror. I can hear the determination in his voice when he went toe-to-toe against the big power company that was trying to get him to sell out his own people and do away with the town-owned light plant. I see the triumph when he helped persuade the Santa Fe railroad to come through town by letting them have access to the town lake for water for their steam locomotives, and thereby helped lead every farmer in the county into the new mechanized age and help get their crops to market. Four generations is not that far removed from one another. The time is short, its goes quick. It is almost as yesterday that I took two pennies from the hand of my grandfather to go buy a fistful of candy at the drugstore on Main St in LaPlata.

What is incredible is how much prophecy has been fulfilled in the short amount of time between these four people’s births, how quickly prophecy flies, how knowledge, machinery, science, inventions, humanities, travel, technology, communications and exploration have changed our world beyond comprehension – powerfully pointing to and directly forecasting the steady march of the coming of Jesus Christ.

The following summary is a sampling of how things have generally gone in the generations of families over the last two centuries of world history, especially in the industrialized nations that were leading the world to the place in which the globe sits now as a village connected by supersonic all-pervasive travel and knowledge brought about by the previously unimaginable machinery employing technology inconceivable to generations that have ever come before.

IN 1832…

Great-grandfather John’s world was rough and uncivilized by modern standards. When he was born in 1832 all of the signs of the end times that were to come cascading down were unimaginable or in their first moments of infancy. Most men were still traveling on foot, the back of a beast, or by a horse or ox drawn cart or wagon. No one had ever heard of an automobile and few, except city dwellers, had even heard the pat-pat-pat of a steam engine or set their eyes on a primitive railroad system.

Native tribes still communicated by smoke signal. The cavalry used mirrors to send messages. The minting of the first U.S. postal stamp was still fifteen years away. The pony express mail system was further still. Travel and knowledge was much the same it had been for thousands of years. The elite rich were the only ones who could afford an education. John Myers would be past school age and in his twenties before the federal law making it mandatory for children to attend school was instituted by the Congress of the United States.

Europe had just been torn apart by the Napoleonic Wars and the ensuing chaos would bring about revolutions that toppled many of Europe’s oldest reigning monarchies. Europe, master of the world, instead of being unified, was being set up for the two Great World Wars of the Twentieth Century. Europe’s problems were not pestilence and earthquakes, for those rarely happened, but it was social strife and political upheaval. Unity was a laughable idea. It would take a war and Bismarck to unify Germany in the 1870’s.

The false sciences of Psychology and Evolution and the silly romanticism of Communism, so influential in the deterioration of morals and biblical standards of conduct have been major contributors to fulfilling the prophecies about the social perversions in the last days. The fact that we have been warned that ‘Iniquity Shall Abound’ in the last days and that a long list of social evils called ‘perilous times’ are reported in 2 Timothy 2 gives us due cause to know that the world is floundering through a desperate freefall in the chasmic decline of faith, virtue and good.

And as far as Zionism and the Jews and their return to Palestine goes, it had not even been considered, let alone believed it would ever take place. It still lay dormant, lost under the heavyweight of thousands of years of history, forgotten totally by the Church and the world. There was a smattering of revival of prophetic things in England and across America that was cropping up around the year 1832 but the only one who had not forgotten the prophecies about it or abandoned hope for its fulfillment, especially the return of the Jews to Israel, was God Himself. This was the basic prophetic condition of the world when John Myers came into it. But in the course of his lifetime it gradually and dramatically changed.

The Book of Daniel tells us that God sealed up the meaning of its end times prophecies until the last days when “travel and knowledge would be increased”. In 1832, the year of John Myers’ birth, a three-year expedition left Missouri to explore the uncharted Rocky Mountains. Seven years earlier the first steam passenger service had been launched in England. In the same decade the first railroad was opened in lower Manhattan using horses and sails as its mean of power. No president had ever ridden on a train. It was six years after John’s birth that President Martin Van Buren became this country’s first chief executive to experience a ride on a train. That was just during his early childhood, during his lifetime the travel and knowledge of the world was increased exponentially.

By 1840 a trip from New York to Philadelphia took six and half hours by train down from three days in 1817. But still men lived, for the most part, as they had since the invention of the wheel, in a three-mile an hour world. But things were on the fast track to a global village.

A steam ship could carry a passenger from Boston to New York in a day, down from half a week or more at the turn of the century. In the first decade of John’s life more that 300 railroad companies sprung up in America laying down 2,816 miles of track. 

In the United Kingdom there were 1,331 miles of track and mainland Europe was beginning its railway boom as well. At the age of 18 when John left St. Joe, Missouri for California the trip was by wagon and could take as much as four months or longer depending on the weather and Indians. 

Less than two decades later when the transcontinental railroad was joined at Promontory Point, Utah the trip from New York from San Francisco, which once took as long and nine months, now only took eight days. That’s a difference of less than a day for every month.

By the time John Myers was 50 years-old things had changed from the Rocky Mountains not even having been explored to being able to leave his home in Missouri and go anywhere in the continental United States, including over the Rockies, in under five days.

Advances in communication and the transfer of knowledge were meteoric as well. The innovation with the greatest impact at that time proved to be the telegraph. In 1844 Samuel F.B. Morse transmitted the first telegraph message “What hath God wrought!” from the Supreme Court Building in Washington D.C. to a B&O Railroad station in Baltimore. Within four years there was a telegraph line between Chicago and New York. Companies began to spring up around this new invention that was unlike anything man had ever dreamed of. Instantly people and communities could be linked together through hills and mountains and over rivers and, shortly oceans would be surfed in a second by Morse Code. In 1856 Western Union was formed and within ten years it had become the first great American corporate monolith, helping to form the first American Stock Exchanges. By the end of the civil war in 1864 more than 75,000 miles of wire had been strung across the continent.

News of the birth of John’s children would have passed by word of mouth and by slow delivery of newspapers. But now news of Roy’s birth in 1887 went to Kentucky, Maryland, overseas if need be, just as soon as someone could get to the telegraph station. Information of every sort was delivered in an instant to anywhere that had a telegraph pole and a wire hanging on it. It became a federal offense to tamper with wires or messages. The news of Thomas Jefferson’s death in 1826 probably did not reach many Americans for weeks – even months. The news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1856 was received by the nation within hours. America had become a nation of alcoholics because the road system was so bad and it was so difficult to get grain to market before it spoiled that it was better to preserve them as ‘spirits’ so they could get to market. John Myers was rumored to be among those army of alcoholics that gave rise to the suffrage movement before his death. The railroads helped change that dilemma so that fresh produce could get to market, though alcoholism was too deeply ingrained in the American lifestyle to be eradicated or much affected. But the changes in travel and communication through knowledge had effected the world’s mode of life drastically during his life.

At the time of John’s death in 1914 many other major prophetic factors of the end-times still loomed on the horizon albeit in a state of dormancy. Europe was three years away from its first world war, but these would be the fulfillment of “nation rising against nation” as foretold by Jesus. As he read his Bible the prophecies about the Jews and their return to Palestine must have still seemed far-fetched. The Zionist movement had only begun, and in such an obscure way that it could have escaped his attention altogether.

In 1887…

When Roy was born in 1887 end-time prophecy was about to explode, especially in the travel and knowledge paradigm. The German-born inventor Gottlieb Daimler had just introduced the first combustion engine driven automobile. The German leader, Bismarck, warned Europe against a global conflagration between the colonial empires. And the first calculator was introduced by a French engineering student. Individuals now had the freedom to travel quickly and on their own time-schedule. It was mandatory that the community provide an education for the individual. Colleges and universities were springing up every year in every state of the Union. Travel and knowledge was greatly increased with public libraries springing up in hamlets and towns across the country; technology was gearing up, economy was working full force for technology and knowledge’s purposes. The two-and-a-half thousand year prophecy was now on fire.

When Roy was but four years old a Jewish journalist, Theodor Herzl, became appalled by the anti-Semitic sentiments at the famous Dreyfus trial in France. The Jewish officer was wrongly accused, convicted and sentenced for treason. In a short time Herzl had mustered enough support to call attention to his desires for a homeland for Jews. When Roy was ten years-old the first World Zionist Congress was held at Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897 and the Zionist Movement was officially born.

The invention of dynamite by a Zionist Jew during the First World War caused the British government to agree to support a Jewish homeland in Palestine (known as the Balfour Declaration) in return for the formula. This gave the movement the impetus it needed to push for an Israeli nation. As Roy’s life progressed there were rumblings and questions being asked in the Church about the possibility and propriety of the ancient prophecies of the Jews being restored to Palestine and if they might be literally fulfilled. Nine years before his death these unlikely prophecies concerning the Jews had been unbelievably fulfilled. Roy had seen two World Wars and witnessed how they were used by God to make the return of the Jews to Palestine a reality. The unthinkable, the unimaginable had come to pass. In 1948 the United States recognized the nation of Israel and a government of Jews was set up in the Promised Land for the first time in two and a half millennia.

Dramatic occurrences in the eight basic categories of the Travel and Knowledge paradigm of end-times prophecy are far too many to list here, let alone give them their due for the immeasurable effects they have had on bringing the world together and unifying man to the state in which the world finds itself today. However, just a small list can help get an idea of the scope of the changes that took place in the first half of the 20th Century and the life of my grandfather Roy Myers.

In travel: On October 4, 1957, the last year of Roy’s life, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first man-made object to orbit the Earth. In a single stroke, this 184-pound object brought into question the United States’ pre-eminence in science, industry, and military power and further ignited the world competition in technology for trying to advance travel, exploration of the universe and, without knowing, laying the groundwork for advancements that would have enormous effects on communications in our time.

In health and medicine: At the University of Toronto founded in 1827, the hormone insulin which is produced in the pancreas was discovered to be dramatically useful in saving lives of diabetics. The hormone was isolated in 1922 by a group of scientists led by Dr. Frederick Banting. Banting was subsequently knighted by the king in 1934. This writer is one whose life has been saved by this advance in medical knowledge, an affliction that had been known to take its toll on lives since 1,000 B.C., and probably earlier.

In Aviation: On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, N.C., when Roy was just 15, Wilbur Wright made the first manned flight of a powered, heavier than air aeroplane.  The original Wright brothers aeroplane ushered in the era of man-made flight that would have unprecedented, groundbreaking changes on warfare, commercial enterprises, food availability, exploration and, above all, global mobility.

In Communication: After decades of development by scientists from diverse nations, Guglielmo Marconi received, in Roy’s 21st year, the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun for contributions to radio sciences. Marconi’s demonstrations of the use of radio for wireless communications, equipping ships with life-saving wireless communications, establishing the first transatlantic radio service, and building the first stations for the British shortwave service, have marked his place in history as the man most responsible for radio. An innovation that brought the world ever closer together than it had been in its thousands of years of history.

These are just of few of the groundbreaking changes among all the paradigms of change that gushed forth with annual regularity during the 70 year life of Roy Myers.

In 1926…

In the year Eloise was born to Roy the pace was already picking up. Airplanes were beginning to dot the skies. Instead of horses, cars filled the streets. Movies were about to start talking to their audiences. Eloise’s mother was in the midst of a forty year career working for Ma Bell. The world was being drawn closer and closer together. What took six days of travel now took one day. What took six hours took one hour. Before she was a year old Charles Lindbergh had made the first solo flight across the Atlantic. Mail was no longer being delivered by pony express but airmail stamps were now being issued by the United States Post Office. The first liquid fuel rocket was launched in Auburn, MA by Robert Goddard. Goddard told the newspapers, “Now it is possible for man to travel to the moon.” Eloise would see man plant a flag on the moon before her fiftieth birthday. The year of her birth saw Scottish inventor John L. Baird give the first successful demonstration of a new medium called television. Now you could not only hear a person instantly, you could see them not on film but instantly through the air waves. All of these were mega revolutions that would change the daily and momentary lives of the rich and poor, knowledgeable and ignorant, male or female people in every corner of the earth and all points in between.

In less than a decade before her birth a World Organization to promote world unity and bring about world peace had been created at the end of World War I through the League of Nations. While it fell apart because of WWII it laid the groundwork for today’s United Nations. Since that time organization after organization has spawned new hope in Europe for a united European Community. From a time when all of Europe was at each other’s throats Eloise ultimately witnessed the coming of European unity in the Common Market. It was a miracle thought impossible during the generations of her grandfather and father right after the war.

The European parliament, World Court and Common Market have slowly made way for the unity of Europe, which is all but fully realized today. The EU or European Union has broken down its borders and barriers and share common economic and political goals. Today they are able to routinely put forward a common front when faced with crisis from within or from without. They share a common currency. They have a president. Europe is essentially one as a machine, though not yet one in assent in every matter of international politics and economy.

Since 1950…

As for the fourth generation; I was born in the exact middle of the 20th Century right after the two world wars that had so troubled the earth costing 100 million deaths, numberless injuries and unfathomable suffering and countless economic loss.

The hydrogen bomb and advances in mechanized warfare demanded innovation and scientific advances to deal with the threat. At the same time it gave scientists confidence that they could use nuclear power and their ability to create inventions and make discoveries in science that could ultimately build a utopia on earth for all mankind.

Technology at Mach Speed. Since my birth in 1950 the changes in travel and communication have progressed to a point where they would be utterly mind-boggling to my great-grandfather, even my grandfather – even my mother who could not keep pace with the fast moving times. She was the old lady at the checkout counter still writing a check for her groceries. Computers, heart transplants, electronic money, cell phones, genetic engineering, community colleges, GEDs and CDs, tech schools, digital cameras, recording devices, e-mail and Blackberries, jets and helicopters, atom smashers, satellite TV, nuclear power, microwave ovens and Cialis  – what next?  She had seen and heard things about the speed of the end times and experienced how her father had been stupefied by the speed of things. But our eyes cannot keep pace with the speed of things; we cannot turn our heads quick enough to see the new thing going by. Though she had witnessed the race as it heated up in the 20th Century, she could not keep pace as the 21st Century turned the corner.

Jerusalem became the capital of Israel after the war in 1973. The Jews celebrated the 50th anniversary of Israel in 1998. The world wants a peace accord with them according to the prophecies of the Antichrist spoken of in Daniel. The only part of the prophecy yet to be fulfilled is that of the Antichrist’s covenant with them and the seven year period of the Tribulation (See chapters 9, 11 & 12 of Daniel and Revelation 6-13)

Europe is unified. After the war years, which Jesus said would happen, the countries of Europe are of one mind and one spirit and have a resolve now to do things together. Even age-old divisions have come tumbling down with the fall of Communism, the dissolving of the iron curtain and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. The way for the Antichrist is very nearly prepared, his power base almost established. All we await is his installation as Europe’s head.

Earthquakes and other natural disasters are on the rise. My forefathers had little inconvenience with these things, but now the world is being bombarded by them (See Matthew 24, Luke 21 and Mark 13)

The strangest, most bizarre and unspeakably evil things are happening on a daily and regular basis. When mass murders, senseless crime and vandalism used to be an unusual thing in my mother’s day it has become the “norm” of a society that has fulfilled the scripture THAT SAYS, “In the last of my days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” 2 Tim. 3.1-5

All of these things were forecast by prophecy. For centuries, Bible-believing Christians were told that when they began to see these things happen it would indicate that the appearing and return of Christ was close at hand. In just four generations, little more than one hundred years, these unimaginable things have all blossomed into reality. With increasing intensity and velocity these signs continue to affect the world and herald the return of Christ. Take a look at the newspaper tomorrow, I guarantee you will see evidence of these signs of the times and the nearness of Christ’s appearing.

Such an increase of Travel and Knowledge in just four Generations