Looking back over the history of humanity, there have been, both in business and in other pursuits, a history of well documented blunders. Stepping past the suspect stories of Julius Caesar’s wife telling him not to go to the center on the Ides of March, there are some documented mistakes that the UK newspaper called “The Telegraph” picked up some time ago. They reminded: •The Coca Cola Company made a series of errors in the early 20th century, when its biggest rival, Pepsi, struggled to avoid bankruptcy. On at least three occasions Coca Cola was offered the chance to buy the company – but never did. The companies have vied for supremacy in the cola market ever since. •It took 177 years to build, but the Pisa’s famous tower began to lean less than a decade after construction began. The enormous project was planned on unstable soil, and had a shallow three meter foundation which couldn’t support the structure’s weight. After extensive renovations, the tower has now stopped moving for the first time in its history. •This image depicts a triumphant Christopher Columbus landing in America in 1492. However, the fortuitous discovery which allowed Spain to colonize America was little more than a mistake. Columbus had been hoping to reach China and India, and believed that they could be reached by sailing west across the Atlantic. This is why, of course, he called the indigenous population Indians. •Captain George Custer had always wanted fame, but the disastrous Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876 ensured him a reputation only for arrogance and miscalculation. He had estimated only a small number of Native Americans would fight his troops, but his entire company was killed by an army of thousands. •Remember the moment in ET when Elliot lures the little extra-terrestrial into his house with a sweet called Reese’s Pieces? Well, you may only know of that particular treat because of of it. Spielberg had tried to get Mars to let M&Ms be featured in the film, but was turned down. After the film was released, sales of Reese’s Pieces rocketed by more than 65 per cent. •RMS Titanic, the largest passenger steamship in the world, was popularly believed to be unsinkable. The huge loss of life that occurred when it crashed into an iceberg in 1912 was due partly to an inadequate supply of lifeboats, and partly to design flaws – including an unreliable system of watertight compartments, and poor quality rivets in the ship’s hull. After the ship sank, a number of safety improvements were introduced to boat design. •In 1961, Decca Records auditioned a small Liverpool band in their London studios. Eventually, however, they decided that the group wasn’t sellable. Not long after, they signed with EMI. The group’s name? The Beatles. •His name is now synonymous with genius, but Albert Einstein was so unsuccessful at school that his teachers believed he had had learning difficulties. •“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” So said Western Union, the company with a monopoly on the telegraph system, when offered the patent for Alexander Graham Bell’s new invention in 1876. Two years later, they offered $25 million for it, but were turned down. •If only all our mistakes resulted in medical breakthroughs. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin when he mistakenly left a Petri dish open. The blue-green mould which grew in the dish had released a substance which killed the bacteria around it. It was the beginning of modern antibiotics. -For the whole article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatpicturegalleries/7079567/Historys-great-mistakes.html). The history of the world is riddled with such blunders. When we open the last page of the Bible, we see that some errors have much more catastrophic consequences than the slanting of a “campanile” or bell tower, and certainly carry greater import than the loss of soda pop revenues. In fact, the Bible closes with a response to the very errors that began with the introduction of sin to the human race back in Genesis 3.

07-15-12
Senior Pastor: Dr. Randall D. Smith
Series: Revelation: The End of The World
Scripture: Revelation 22