cuddles^.^

The best reason to study prophecy? Revelation 19 says that the spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus. Reading prophecy is a way of better understanding the testimony of Jesus. I think a lot of people get confused with prophecy because they think of it as a book separate from what Jesus taught in the gospels. For example, there is the Mark of the beast, which is described as a means of control via buying and selling. If people want to buy or sell, they must take the AC's Mark. Since most of the world believes they would die without money, "buying and selling" makes the perfect tool for turning people away from God. However, Jesus also talked about this concept in several places. The most notable was his admonishment that we cannot work for God and mammon (money and the things money can buy) at the same time without cheating on one or the other. He said that God wants us to work for a new motivation now, and that motivation is called the kingdom of Heaven, where people help each other just because they want to and not because they are afraid of what will happen to them if they don't charge for their love. This is the answer to the Mark of the Beast. People who work for love may use the system of buying and selling for a while, but they are not dependent on it or controlled by it like people who will see no other choice but to take the Mark.

hmm, what a wonderful response. "The lost will not anguish over their sins". I wonder, if from God's perspective, there is no particular black or white, but rather, a huge spectrum of infinite grays in between, where he alone is able to determine where a person's exact location is on the spectrum and to judge them on that basis.

Hmm, I think there are plenty of college level jobs out there, just as there are plenty of "low level, dirty" jobs, too. The difference is that you appeared to be willing to help the pharmacy guy do the work just because he needed the help, and not because you were expecting payment (based on the way you told the story). College kids can do the same thing if they wanted to. There is no shortage of people in the world who need help. It's not more money that we need, or even more work, it's a new motivation for why we work.