Photos of the Millennium Beacon at Burnham-on-Crouch
Fourteen-and-a-half years ago there was a great celebration
marking the end of the second millennium AD and the beginning of the third.
Strictly speaking the anniversary should have been celebrated on the first day
of January, 2001, because there was no year naught.
So what was the point of celebrating the passing of two millennia
and the beginning of a third? An examination of Internet archives would suggest
that it was a celebration for the sake of making a global celebration - a
unified expression of thankfulness for the past, and of good tidings and hope
for the future.
There was relief all round when the Millennium Bug did not
cause a meltdown of computers throughout the world. Tony Blaire, UK Prime
Minister at the time, said that there was ‘confidence and optimism’ for the
future. The United Nations declared that the year 2000 would be the
International Year for the Culture of Peace, and to that end, strategic
initiatives were set up, including a collection of 75 million signatures endorsing a culture
of peace, a Manifesto 2000 Project, organised by UNESCO, and a Culture of Peace
News Network, (CPNN), i.e., a network of websites promoting
peace.
Pope John Paul 11 at an unprecedented address on New Year’s
Eve to an estimated 120,000 people in St Peter’s Square wished them a year, ‘filled
with serenity and happiness’ and ‘a new millennium filled with joy’.
Since the time of the Millennium 2000 celebrations, there
have been ten major conflicts between peoples that continue to this day,
resulting in at least 2,316,000 deaths, plus thousands of injured, and in
Afghanistan alone there have been a minimum of 1,405,000 deaths.*
*List of ongoing conflicts
Romans 3:10, 12 ‘There
is no one righteous, no, not one; there is no one who understands; there is no
one who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become
unprofitable; there is no one who does good, no, not one.’
Links
2000: World Celebrates New Millennium
2000
The difference between the Millennium and the Year 2000
Gregorian calendar
International Year for the Culture of Peace
Peace is in Our Hands
Culture of Peace News Network
Culture of Peace News Network
Biography of Tony Blair
Pope’s Plea for 2000 Peace
Beacons blaze across UK
What is the Millennium Bug?
No comments:
Post a Comment