Does History Repeat Itself? (4 Thoughts)

Are you wearing a watch? Is there a wall clock near by? Do you have a calendar app on your phone…or a calendar that actually hangs on the wall with pages and ink…do they still make those?

If you are looking at an analog clock (one with hands), and you look at it long enough, you see that time repeats itself…same thing with a calendar.

• Our hours are made up of a repeated series of minutes.
• Our days are made up of a repeated series of hours.
• Our months and years are made up of a repeated series of days.
• We go through decades, centuries, and millennia…each again and again.

1) The very nature of time is repetitive…or as some call it: circular.

I believe most of my audience is people of Western Civilization where we tend to think of time more like a line than a circle: a beginning point and an end. However, other cultures and societies have seen time as repetitive…including the people of God in scripture.

Before we get ahead of ourselves reflect on what I wrote above regarding an analog clock. That with its repeated seconds (sets of 60), minutes (sets of 60), and hours (sets of 12 or 24), along with our months (sets of 12 making a year) we see repetition.

I want to posit to you that God created time with such a function and then begin to show why this is actually a very practical piece of information.

2) God’s design

In the Fourth Commandment found in Exodus we get an insight into the first week of God’s creation:

Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God…For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.

Exodus 20:8-11

In holy scripture we find a God given pattern to how we live based on God’s design within creation. God created time to be threaded by this repetition of seven-day-weeks. Later in Leviticus He would command the celebration of annual feasts. The same events would be repeated year after year. Yet we further see God’s design in a more tangible way.

Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall…repeat

This is my favorite time of year as summer fades into the fall. I grew up playing soccer. When the heat of the deep south began to fade I knew soccer was right around the corner. We all do this. We look forward flowers in the spring after a harsh upper-midwest winter. Children look forward to summer break. We live in the reality of seasons coming and seasons going. The repetition stares us in the face. It is in the very fabric of creation.

But this also impacts how we think about life lived within this creation.

3) Repetition of Events

He makes nations great, and he destroys them; he enlarges nations, and leads them away.

Job 12:23

Life consists of the same events occurring over and over and over again:

• birth and death, planting and harvesting,
• war and peace, tears and laughter,
• weddings and funerals, building and destroying (see Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).

Nature and scripture show us the receptive character of time. If time is circular in nature, with the events of it (i.e. kingdoms rising and falling), what can we learn from the past to prepare for the future.

4) How Should We Then Live?

I just finished a book that each of my children will read before they graduate high school: How Should We Then Live by (theologian, teacher, and philosopher) Francis Schaeffer. In it Schaefer flies over the history of “the rise and decline of western thought and culture” from 10,000 feet starting with Rome and coming all the way to present day. For any reader who is mildly aware of the national events of his day (regardless of his nationality), he will see parallel after parallel from his own day with numerous past events in the history of western civilization. In this we better understand our own days, and where we are likely headed. I cannot commend it to you, my reader, enough. Why? Allow me to pass on a little of what I have read…next time.

Until then, I would feel silly recommending that you read a book that I have not yet commented on in more detail but should you wish to check it out here is a link: How Should We Then Live?

Also, if you prefer video…Schaeffer did a series of videos that you can find on Youtube…pardon the poor video quality…the content is well worth it.