IMAGE TO TEH BEAST

AN IMAGE TO THE BEAST

                Anthony Levandowski is a Silicon Valley whiz kid who was involved with Otto, a self- driving car. He aims to put a fleet of self-driving cars on the market through Uber (a taxi service) and he also envisions building a fleet of self-driven Semi Trucks to haul freight on America’s highways.

                As a former Over the Road truck driver I find myself wondering who is going to have money to buy the products that trucks haul. Who is going to need a taxi or say a UPS driver, if everyone’s jobs are replaced by artificially intelligent robots? I was once hauling freight to a Saturn factory. It was a vast operation that builds cars from start to finish. But I was amazed when I went into the plant and there were no humans, except for a hand full of computer guys in a small office on one side. The rest of the factory was all being run by robots.

                To me, business people seem rather short sighted. They save money by having machines do all the work on one end, while losing customers on the other end because they no longer have jobs. Now I realize that it has not gotten to that point yet, but it could. The AI business is burgeoning right now as actual artificial intelligence is being perfected, but I digress.

                Anthony Levandowski has now set out to create an artificially intelligent god and he is even starting up a religion to worship that god called “The Way of the Future.”  He claims that all of the attributes that we would normally attribute to God or a god, can be handled by a computer controlled robot that could be billions of times smarter than any one human being. He could literally rule the world and do so more efficiently than the swamp we call politics today.

                Worshipping an all-intelligent Robot is not as big of a leap as we would think, mostly because New Agers (Or whatever they call themselves now) already more or less worship what they call the collective consciousness of man. In other words, whatever thing they may think of as being all-wise is not a Person as the Bible would describe Him, but rather a pool of collective consciousness that we can all tap into through meditation or spirit guides or whatever.

                So if you were able to take a quantum computer that was able to embrace all of the collective wisdom and information on this planet and to become sentient would not that computer or robot be able to rule our planet better than any one of us could?

                Strangely enough the book of Revelation deals with this subject as it talks about the satanic trinity that will rule the world globally during the Tribulation period. The trinity is made up of the Dragon (Satan), the Beast (The Global government as ruled by one of the 7 heads) and the False Prophet (A religious leader that causes the whole world to worship the Beast.

                But there is another character working with this trinity. As it turns out in Rev. 13:14 one of the seven heads has been wounded, but recovers and comes to life, but in verse 15 it says: “And there was given to him to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast might even speak and cause as many as do not worship the image of the beast to be killed. Who or what is this image? An image would normally be thought of as not being alive, but this one is made to be alive.

                We know from verse 16 that it is the image that causes all, the small and the great and the rich and poor and the freemen and the slaves to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead and he provides that no one should be able to buy or to sell except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.” Rev. 13:16-17.

                So this image is no small actor in the last days. It is given a personal pronoun being addressed in verse 16 as “he” so this image is considered to be a living entity.  Interestingly enough Saudi Arabia has just granted citizenship to Sophie, an AI robot.

                However, Elon Musk warned against putting an artificially intelligent robot in control saying that to summon such a robot would be to summon a demon, and those who have been tracking the work at CERN such as Anthony Patch already know that demons and fallen angels are interfacing with our quantum computers. In other words, highly complex questions are being asked and sent into another dimension and answers come back that are advancing our technology into areas that we would have thought supernatural just a few years ago.

                In other words, fallen angels are helping mankind to push our technology into realms heretofore unheard of and these technologies will in time rule our world with heartless efficiency. They will have no problem with reducing earth’s population to more “sustainable” levels, or to replace our work force with robots to save costs, or to reduce carbon emissions, or to save our oceans etc.  

                Whatever this image to the beast is, John described it by saying that it would be given breath so that it might even speak and cause everyone to worship the Beast. In a sense the Beast itself is a non-person. It is really the global system, or government that will control the world in the last days. The lawless man we know as the antichrist will actually be one of the heads of the beast. It is known in Daniel 7:8 as the little horn, and in Revelation as one of the seven heads that is wounded but recovers.

                We are already being plugged into the system that will control everything. With our smart phones, our computers, our debit cards and smart cards, our GPSs and all of the electronic Gadgetry in our homes, we are already connected in more ways than we know. So if you add to that the surveillance cameras that now blanket our cities, the satellites that orbit our earth and a host of things we don’t even know about, we are much closer than we think.

                John had no way to describe much of what he saw in his visions on Patmos. He had to liken all of these things to that which he knew in the first century  and we can either stay with him in the first century, or we can begin to look around and see if he was maybe describing today’s technologies with first century language.

                Just this last Sunday when we arrived at the church to make quilts for the holocaust survivors, we found two Sheriff's cars in our parking lot where one of our church safety officers had been summoned to play back our surveillance footage. The small store next door to the church had been robbed at gunpoint and the Sheriff had come to ask if our cameras had captured anything.

                It was almost funny because the robber, thinking to avoid the store’s surveillance cameras had parked in the church parking lot behind the store. So our HD cameras caught the car, the license plate and even recorded the robber putting on his ski mask and running in and then out and making his getaway. They now have plenty of evidence to make an arrest.

                Unless we watch certain cop movies or happen to be at the scene of a robbery, we live largely unaware of how much we are being tracked. In fact, the AI computers coming on line now, combine all of our information. Our GPS tells us everywhere we go as well as where we have been.  Our smart phones tell us everyone we talk to, our debit cards tell them everything we buy. Our health cards tell them our whole medical history. Our appliances tell them when we are awake, or asleep, what hours of the day we use electricity or watch TV, or log onto our computers and what we watch and what we write and who our Facebook friends are and every conversation we hold with them and on and on it goes.

                I am told that even our LED lightbulbs are now senders and receivers and though I have not done so yet, they say that you can read this right on the packaging of the LED bulbs, so I am going to check in on that the next time I am at a store.

                The new 5G network that is about to come on line will be able to assemble all of this information in real time, thus building a moment by moment account of our every move.

                Well, in response to all of this, we have two choices.

1.       We can get all paranoid, go off the grid and hide in a bunker somewhere or

2.       We can do what God called us to do and let the chips fall where they will.

                An NSA member who happens to be sympathetic to Christians told Paul Begley that they are looking for better ways to track individuals. It seems that certain Christians cannot be read by their current equipment.  In any given crowd of Christians there are some certain ones that show up as blank.

                Could it be that the Holy Spirit protects those who have on the full armor of God? Could it be that those who genuinely have the Holy Spirit are protected in some way? If so, this would give new meaning to Psalms 3.

                “O Lord, my adversaries have increased! Many are rising up against me. Many are saying of my soul, “There is no deliverance for him in God.” But Thou, O Lord, art a shield about me, my glory and the One who lifts my head. I was crying to the Lord with my voice and He answered me from His holy mountain. I lay down and slept; I awoke, for the Lord sustains me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me round about.  Arise, O Lord; save me, O my God! For Thou hast smitten all my enemies on the cheek; Thou hast shattered the teeth of the wicked. Salvation belongs to the Lord; Thy blessings be upon Thy people.” Ps. 3:1-8.

                We can also look with new eyes at Psalm 91 where we are promised that if we dwell in the secret place of the Most High we will abide under the shadow of the Almighty. “I will say to the Lord,       “My refuge and my fortress, My God in whom I trust! For it is He who delivers you from the snare of the trapper. You will only look on with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked, for you have made the Lord, my refuge, even the Most High your dwelling place. No evil will befall you, nor will any plague come near your dwelling.”” Ps. 91:1-3, 8-10.

                We really do need to practice the art of staying in His presence at all times. Praying without ceasing can be seen, not as a religious thing, but as an awareness of His constant presence. He can be your confidant throughout the day, your Consultant, your Teacher, your Comforter and Guide.

Bonnie and I are learning to talk to God about everything… to lay our plans at His feet… to seek His will… to listen for His voice in His Word, in our friends, in our hearts. God is speaking to us all the time. He never stops speaking to us. Our only problem is that we block Him out with a thousand distractions. Our spirits are buried under many layers of flesh because we feed the flesh and starve the spirit. We absolutely must turn this around.

                What is more important in this world? Is it the things we can see, or the invisible God who made them? Is it the visible things that we can see and touch and feel, or is it the unseen things out of which they are made?  When the invisible things of God become more real to us than the things we can see, then our reality will literally change. God is with those who by faith see into His realm… who walk by faith and not by sight. It’s amazing how that some of these abstract ideas are becoming literal as we near the end.

                “Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Heb. 11:6.

                We can belong to the right church and have the right doctrine and that is important, but in the long run, those who become fully human are those who walk and talk with God, who have learned how to function with God on board even as we were created to function. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. It is high time to fully comprehend what that means.