The End Times is the End of Term

 Demographers estimate that 109 billion people have lived on the Earth over the last 192,000 years, that being the date at which humans are seen as becoming properly human in the sense we now understand that designation. If you add to that figure the number of people alive today you get a total of 117 billion humans which means that 7% of people who ever lived are living now. It is thought that around 9 billion lived before the Agricultural Revolution in about 10,000 BC and that at that time there were around 5 million humans in the world, but since the Industrial Revolution the number has climbed dramatically with the global population hitting 1 billion around 1800 and then shooting up to where we are now. If you consider that up until relatively recently almost half the population died in childhood our present situation seems even more remarkable.

Obviously, the figures before recent times are highly speculative. But they are not based on nothing and the numbers and general trends they indicate are probably accurate enough. My question is does this mean anything from the spiritual point of view, from the evolution of souls point of view, or is it just a result of technological advances, medicine, agriculture etc? It certainly is a result of that but is that all there is to it?

I don't think so. In my book Earth is a School I said that this world is a training ground for the soul. Part of the mechanism for this training is reincarnation which, in the way I envisage it, involves an infant soul returning to a particular environment in order to develop its inchoate capacities, mental, moral, creative and so on. It is also required to make a choice in a world in which that choice can go either way for the reality of God is not a given here as it would be in the spiritual worlds. Here there is just enough material data to support either the acceptance or rejection of God so the inbuilt orientation of the soul, whether it is aligned to God or to self, is brought into play. Predominantly aligned, I mean, for both tendencies are always present in the soul as a result of free will.

The need for this choice has alway been present but what is happening now is that everything is being brought to a head. This is why there is such a large population and is yet another indication we are in that period known as the End Times. Extending the school analogy, this is the time of graduation. No doubt some souls have already graduated (though I personally think that only a few have) but now is the final exam for many with the choices becoming more marked. We live during a period when religion has lost its power so the choice we make is necessarily more of an individual one. It even has to go against the flow which makes it more personal and a truer test of our inner self. Those that pass will progress to higher spiritual worlds while those that don't make the grade will have to continue on lower levels of being with, no doubt, fresh opportunities further down the line but they will have missed an important cut-off point.