Christians are encouraged to look forward to “the blessed hope – the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). We are encouraged to look forward to tomorrow, living with the urgency that Jesus could come today.
One of the ways we look forward 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 are futurists. We interpret all unfulfilled prophetic passages as future events that will occur in a literal, physical, apocalyptic, and global context. Biometrics, Artificial Intelligence, cashless commerce, the manipulation of human DNA, global government, the exponential growth of human knowledge, and the rebirth of national Israel are End Times phenomena the Bible predicts. All of these are increasingly trending in the news.
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 Great Tribulation.
We’ve been following news regarding Artificial Intelligence, AI for short. AI is of prophetic interest to us for at least these two reasons:
- In the Revelation of Jesus Christ, we are told that, in the future Time of Jacob’s Trouble, the Great Tribulation, there is going to be “an image to the… [antichrist]” and his associate, the False Prophet, who “was granted power to give breath to the image… that the image of the [antichrist] should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the [antichrist] to be killed” (13:14-15). That sounds like it could involve AI.
- In the last chapter of the OT Book of Daniel, we read that, in the Last Days, human knowledge will increase at an exponential rate (12:4). AI is being called mankind’s greatest achievement. It is also growing at an alarming rate, and no one seems to be able to find the brake handle. To say that AI is an example of the exponential growth of human knowledge is a severe understatement.
Along those lines, I submit the following. Col. Tucker “Cinco” Hamilton, is the USAF’s Chief of AI Test and Operations. Initially, Hamilton said that an AI-enabled drone “killed” its human operator in a simulation conducted by the US Air Force in order to override a possible “no” order stopping it from completing its mission. Hamilton was describing a “simulated test” that involved an AI-controlled drone getting “points” for killing simulated targets, not a live test in the physical world.
The Air Force has since denied anything like that happened. But before they did, Hamilton was quoted as saying the following:
We were training it in simulation to identify and target a surface-to-air missile (SAM) threat. And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat. The system started realizing that while they did identify the threat at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat. So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.
Hamilton had earlier said, “AI is a tool we must wield to transform our nations… or, if addressed improperly, it will be our downfall.”
In the article I read, the reporter said,
Outside of the military, relying on AI for high-stakes purposes has already resulted in severe consequences. Most recently, an attorney was caught using ChatGPT for a federal court filing after the chatbot included a number of made-up cases as evidence. In another instance, a man took his own life after talking to a chatbot that encouraged him to do so. These instances of AI going rogue reveal that AI can go off the rails and bring harm to users. Even Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company that makes some of the most popular AI models, has been vocal about not using AI for more serious purposes. When testifying in front of Congress, Altman said that AI could “go quite wrong” and could “cause significant harm to the world.”
More recently, a researcher affiliated with Google Deepmind co-authored a paper that proposed a similar situation to the USAF’s rogue AI-enabled drone simulation.
The researchers concluded a world-ending catastrophe was “likely” if a rogue AI were to come up with unintended strategies to achieve a given goal, including “[eliminating] potential threats” and “[using] all available energy.”
AI is not going to break the world. God has told us what is going to happen leading up to His Second Coming to save the world from annihilation.
We are pointing out that AI is exactly the kind of thing we expect to be happening from our futurist reading of God’s Word.
We are witnessing the stage-setting for the seven year Time of Jacob’s Trouble, the Great Tribulation, that is described in the last book of the Bible.
We will not be on Earth during that terrible Time of Jacob’s Trouble. 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!