We reserve a few minutes Sunday morning to suggest news, or trends, that seem to be predicted by a literal, futurist reading of the Bible.
We are careful to use recognized, reliable sources for news. There is a lot of sensationalism surrounding unfulfilled Bible prophecy, and we don’t want to add to it.
We’re not saying the things we report are the definite fulfillment of prophecy – only that they are the things you’d expect by holding a Bible in one hand, and a newspaper in the other.
One of the most outrageous predictions found in the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ has to do with an “image” that “comes to life.” I best read it to you, but first we need to meet two people:
In the Revelation, the world leader we commonly call the antichrist is called the Beast. In the passage I’m going to read, he is the First Beast.
The antichrist has an associate who is a false prophet capable of doing signs and wonder. He is called the Second Beast.
Rev 13:11 Then I saw [a second] beast coming up out of the earth…
Rev 13:12 And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence, and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast…
Rev 13:13 He performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.
Rev 13:14 And he deceives those who dwell on the earth – by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast…
Rev 13:15 He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed.
Until very recently, futurists had almost no idea what this image might be, or how it could be given breath, or how it kill anyone who won’t worship it.
Today it isn’t so difficult to see this as a form of advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI). By “advanced” I mean sentient.
Here are a few excerpts from the latest postings by AI News.
Chess robot breaks child’s finger after premature move.
Arobot went rogue at a Moscow chess tournament and broke a kid’s finger after he made a move prematurely.
The robot, which uses AI to play three chess games at once, grabbed and pinched the child’s finger. Unfortunately, despite several people rushing to help, the robot broke the kid’s finger.
There are certain safety rules and the child, apparently, violated them. When he made his move, he did not realize he first had to wait.
A study in 2015 found that one person is killed each year by an industrial robot in the US alone.
As robots become ever more prevalent in our work and personal lives; that number is likely to increase.
US federal court upholds ruling that AIs can patent inventions.
Dr. Stephen Thaler, the founder of Imagination Engines, created a device called DABUS that consists of neural networks. DABUS was used to invent an emergency warning light, a food container that improves grip and heat transfer, and more.
In August 2021, a federal court in Australia ruled that AI systems can be credited as inventors under patent law. (Another court reversed the decision; the fight continues).
OpenAI’s GPT-3 is a convincing philosopher.
GPT-3 is a powerful autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text. Eric Schwitzgebel, Anna Strasser, and Matthew Crosby set out to find out whether GPT-3 can replicate a human philosopher.
GPT-3 [was] able to convince most people – including experts in around half or more cases – that it’s a human philosopher.
“We might be approaching a future in which machine outputs are sufficiently humanlike that ordinary people start to attribute real sentience to machines,” theorizes Schwitzgebel.
AI learns how to play Minecraft by watching videos.
Video PreTraining (VPT) paves the path toward allowing agents to learn to act by watching the vast numbers of videos on the internet.
https://www.artificialintelligence-news.com/artificial-intelligence-news/
Then there is this: The ‘Bartending Robot for Interactive Long-Lasting Operations,’ also known as BRILLO, has been developed by AI researchers at the University of Naples. In addition to recognizing customers and their beverage of choice by their face biometrics and speaking like a person, BRILLO can make small talk, ask questions based on what customers say, and even repeat jokes.
BRILLO mixes cocktails and pour drinks with two mechanical arms.
Biometric bartender can tell if you want to talk about the weather or just be left alone
AI is everywhere. It’s getting faster, smarter, indistinguishable from humans, and (maybe) sentient.
There is a small, overlooked detail in the passage from the Revelation. It says that the Second Beast will tell, “those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast.”
AI learns by interacting with humans. You could say that humans make AI what it is.
I’m not saying that AI will definitely power the image. I’m saying this is the kind of tech advance you expect from reading the Bible.
We believe the resurrection and rapture of the church is imminent. It could happen any moment; nothing needs to happen before it. It will happen before the Tribulation.
Jesus will come, in the clouds, and raise the dead believers of the Church Age. He will transform the bodies of living believers to glorified, resurrection bodies. We will join Him in Heaven while the earth endures one final seven-year campaign of severe evangelism.
Are you ready for the rapture? If not, Get ready; Stay ready; Keep looking up.
Ready or not, Jesus is coming!