Bill and Melinda Gates are philanthropists. Through their foundation they use their extreme wealth to support causes that will improve the lives of some of the poorest people on earth. They are good human moralists, and in many ways to be admired. However, Bill and Melinda Gates think that the world is actually getting better. They have published a plethora of charts to “prove it.” Four areas of special interest to them are as follows:
1). That the polio vaccine has lowered infection rates to near zero with fewer than 40 new cases logged worldwide per year. Only four countries have yet to eradicate it.
2). Contraceptive use is higher than it has ever been, empowering women to work and look after their families and helping the economy. Roughly 300 million women in the 69 poorest countries used some form of birth control in 2016 — a jump of 30 million from 2012.
3). Calling it the most beautiful chart in the world, Bill Gates, said that some 122 million kids’ lives have been saved over the last 20 years. Since 1990, the number of kids dying before their 5th birthday has been cut in half, from 12.1 million down to 5.8 million, in 2015. This is largely due to advances and investments in simple, inexpensive measures in developing countries, including bed nets to prevent malaria and drilling wells for access to clean water.
4). Extreme poverty is slowly going extinct. Extreme poverty is defined as living on less than $1.90 a day, and for about 150 years (between 1820 and 1970) the number of people in extreme poverty continued to rise. By the end of the 1970s more than 2 billion people could be classified as extremely poor. Now it has shrunk to 705 million.
The optimism of the Gates foundation actually runs counter to the Bible. While there are certainly some good things happening in our world, such as malaria control projects, clean water projects, and the eradication of polio, the scriptures predict another outcome all together. Their suggestion that humanity can solve its own problems is problematic and doesn’t take into account the following prediction about the end time.
“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.” 2 Timothy 3:13.
Nor does it take into account the words of Jesus that as it was in the days of Noe and Lot, so it will be now as we approach the end of time. See Luke 17:26-30.
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