Prophecy Update #740 – DigiGod

Christians are encouraged to look for “the blessed hope – the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). 

We look ahead to tomorrow, living with the awareness Jesus could come today.

One of the ways we look ahead to tomorrow is to consider the hundreds of unfulfilled prophecies in the Bible. We can expect the world to be moving in the direction predicted for the End Times.

We reserve a few minutes Sunday morning to suggest news, or trends, that seem to be predicted by our futurist reading of the Bible:

  • To avoid sensationalism, we are careful to use recognized, reliable sources for news.
  • We’re not saying the things we report are the fulfillment of prophecy. We’re saying that they are the things you’d expect to be happening in the build-up to the future seven year Time of Jacob’s Trouble.

There is an amazing prophecy in the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ that has defied our best guesses as to what it might be. 

That is, until now.

The passage I am about to read refers to a person called the second Beast. He is a false prophet who assists the man we commonly call the antichrist, whom the Bible calls the first Beast.

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 who was wounded by the sword and lived.

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.

Rev 13:16  He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads,

Rev 13:17  and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Let’s focus on the image of the first beast:

  • It is man-made, therefore inanimate. 
  • It will be given breath and become sentient.
  • It will speak on its own.  
  • It will have power to identify anyone on the planet who will not worship the antichrist. 
  • It will first exclude, then execute those it has identified.

Not too long ago, if you asked me what was being described, I’d have shrugged my shoulders. Not so today. A good guess is that what is being described is a type of Artificial Intelligence, AI for short.

Elon Musk is no stranger to AI. He has been on the cutting edge in its development. Which makes his most recent comments so heavy. He believes that certain individuals are moving too quickly, that we need safeguards before the AI we are creating gets to the point where it can overwhelm and overthrow our species. 

As an example, Musk pointed to GOOGLE co-founder Larry Page. He wants to create a super intelligent AI that he once called a ‘digital god.’ 

“I would talk to him late into the night about AI safety, and at least my perception was that Larry was not taking AI safety seriously enough,” Musk said, adding that Page wanted a “digital super-intelligence, basically a digital god, if you will, as soon as possible.”

In 2018, GOOGLE’s CEO told a digital summit, “AI is one of the most important things that humanity is working on. It’s more profound than, I don’t know, electricity or fire.” 

It is shaping up just like a classic SyFy movie.

Three stories from last week:

  1. Chinese researchers say an Artificial Intelligence machine was given temporary full control of a satellite in near-Earth orbit, in a landmark experiment to test the technology’s behavior in space. For 24 hours the Qimingxing 1, a small Earth observation satellite, was directed by a ground-based AI, without any human order, assignment or intervention, according to a paper published in the journal Geomatics and Information Science of Wuhan University.
  2. Samsung wants to release EX1, a human assistant robot, this year. 
  3. AI could lead to a ‘nuclear-level catastrophe’ according to a third of researchers, a new Stanford report finds. 

We know that artificial intelligence is not going to take over the world and annihilate mankind.

We have several hundred unfulfilled Bible prophecies, and the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, to tell us what is going to happen.

When we talk AI, it’s because it is the kind of development you expect from reading the Bible literally, as a futurist. We are not saying that AI is definitely what will animate the image of the beast, only that everything is falling into place for the final seven years before the Second Coming of Jesus.

The resurrection and rapture of the church are imminent. It could happen any moment; nothing needs to happen before it.

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!