The More Things Change...

...the more they stay the same.

Here is Betty McDonald (the author of "The Egg and I") on the Depression of the 1930s:

Her employer’s business is clearly failing, but MacDonald feels she shouldn’t leave her boss, Mr. Chalmers, in the lurch. She intends to stay until the end. “And I did,” we read, “in spite of Mr. Chalmers’ telling me many times that the Depression was all my fault, the direct result of inferior people like me wearing silk stockings and thinking they were as good as people like him.” Again, this blame-the-victim language recalls some of the rhetoric of today’s subprime mortgage crisis.
http://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/betty-macdonald-and-i/


We start on the Book of Isaiah once again in the mid week meetings this week.  One of my favourite books.  Full of some of the greatest poetry ever written - after all it was inspired by the Creator of language and poetry.   And with amazing prophecy - history written in advance

Under inspiration, Isaiah actually named Cyrus as the one who would free the Jews from Babylonian captivity.   This is from the Isaiah commentary, published by The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society:

"In Isaiah’s inspired restoration prophecy concerning Jerusalem and its temple, this Persian ruler had been named as the one appointed by Jehovah God to effect the overthrow of Babylon and the release of the Jews who would be exiled there. (Isa 44:26–45:7) Although this prophecy had been recorded well over one and a half centuries before Cyrus’ rise to power and though the desolation of Judah evidently took place before Cyrus was even born, still Jehovah declared that Cyrus would act as His “shepherd” on behalf of the Jewish people. (Isa 44:28; compare Ro 4:17.) By virtue of this advance appointment, Cyrus was called Jehovah’s “anointed one” (a form of the Hebrew ma·shiʹach, messiah, and the Greek khri·stosʹ, christ). (Isa 45:1) God’s ‘calling him by his name’ (Isa 45:4) at that early date does not imply that He gave Cyrus his name at birth, but means that Jehovah foreknew that such a man by that name would arise and that Jehovah’s call to him would be, not anonymous, but direct, specific, by name."