Technology

The past few weeks I have been reading my favorite series of books. They're called the Tennis Shoes Adventure Series. There are 11 total so far.  The series revolves around a family of Latter-day Saints and the adventures they share and how it brings them closer to the Lord and helps them grow in the Gospel.
I was reading through them and in the 7th book in the series, I read something that I just thought was really interesting and I wanted to share it.
The book is called The Golden Crown and it's written by Chris Heimerdinger.
The prologue reads:
 

    "The two worlds weren't so very different, you know. That is, the world of our Savior in the first century, and the world of Joseph Smith in the nineteenth. . .
      It's actually astonishing how similar the two time periods were. Though separated by eighteen hundred years, the technology was almost identical. The daily lives and routines of the people were, for all practical purposes, mirror images of each other. Both depended on horse, carriage, and foot for transportation. Houses were heated by wood, coal, and dung. Water was fetched from wells, unless, like for certain wealthy Romans, it was piped into your home from the local aqueduct. Both had stock markets, and international postal service, and their populations whiled away the hours reading the world's great books--many of which had exactly the same titles.
     By the 1800s, the treatment of disease was still much the same as it had been in the days of Galen, the old Roman physician. many doctors still used his textbooks. Even where technological advances were obvious, like the printing press or gunpowder, Roman superiority in civil engineering more than balanced it out. The truth is, when Joseph Smith was born, the world had been struggling to reacquaint itself with Roman technology for three hundred years. By 1830, they were just about there.
     And then suddenly, overnight, technology exploded: Railroads and steam engines. Telegraphs and telephones. Automobiles and airplanes. Computers and cosmonauts. All in a little over a hundred and fifty years.
     The coincidence seems undeniable. As the Lord poured out spiritual knowledge upon the Latter-day Saints, He poured out every other kind of knowledge upon all the nations of the earth. The tow worked hand in hand, inseparable. One led to the other. After all, this is the dispensation of the fulness of times. Knowledge is knowledge. Truth is truth. . ."

So, I think that's a pretty awesome passage. My mom always told me the same thing, but I really like the way that the author writes this. It makes it all seem so sure, and so true. If you want to read the books, the series name is at the top, and they're really a good series.