We focus on Bible prophecy each week for about five-minutes, calling it a “Prophecy Update.”
We are considered futurists. We interpret the unfulfilled prophetic portions of the Book of the Revelation and the Book of Daniel, and all other unfulfilled prophecies, as yet future events in a literal, physical, apocalyptic, and global context.
We divide the Revelation into three sections, based on the outline the book gives itself in Revelation 1:19. There, the apostle John is instructed to “write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later.” Following this three-part outline:
Chapter one contains John’s vision of the risen Christ and represents the past (“what you have seen”).
Chapters 2 and 3, which contain the letters to the seven churches, describe the present (“what is now”).
Chapters 4-22 describe events in the future (“what will take place later”).
There are many reasons for being futurists, but I like to point out the most important one: Jesus was a futurist. When He gave His great discourse on prophecy in Matthew 24 & 25, He quoted from Daniel as if the events prophesied were yet future and literal.
In fact, whenever someone in the Bible read unfulfilled prophecies, they understood them to be future and literal.
I’ve been harping on this for some weeks now because so many Christians have abandoned future, literal reading of the Bible. They are instead making the remaining prophecies subject to their own private interpretation – something the Bible strictly warns us against.
If all the fulfilled Bible prophecies were future when uttered, and literal, why wouldn’t all the remaining future prophecies be literal?
I was sent an article titled, Elon Musk says Neuralink machine that connects human brain to computers ‘coming soon.’
(Elon Musk is lead designer of SpaceX; co-founder, CEO, and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; co-founder and CEO of Neuralink; co-founder and co-chairman of OpenAI; and co-founder of PayPal).
Excerpts:
Musk has frequently claimed the rapid rise of artificial intelligence poses an existential risk to humanity… an interface like Neuralink, he says, is essential if humans are to compete with such technology in the future.
At a technology conference in 2016, Musk said humans risked being treated like house pets by Artificial Intelligence (AI) machines if a brain-computer interface was not built.
“I don’t love the idea of being a house cat, but what’s the solution?” he said. “I think one of the solutions that seems maybe the best is to add an AI layer.”
Speaking last year on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Musk said Neuralink’s technology would allow humans to “effectively merge with AI.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/elon-musk-twitter-neuralink-brain-machine-interface-computer-ai-a8880911.html
Here are two reasons this interests us as futurists.
1 – The Book of Daniel has a prophecy that in the end times, “knowledge shall increase” (12:4). This has been interpreted as an exponential growth in knowledge leading to incredible technology. AI and neural linking certainly fits that prediction.
2 – A second reason I find this fascinating is that in the Revelation there is a prediction that a guy called “the false prophet will be, “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” (13:15). It may not be – but it sure sounds like Artificial Intelligence.
This kind of news is exactly what you expect from reading your Bible.
The times in which we are living are no time to spiritualize, or allegorize, the end times prophecies.
Jesus promised He’d return to rapture His church – which entails the resurrection of the dead in Christ of the Church Age, then the translation from earth to Heaven of all living believers.
It is presented in the Bible as an imminent (any-moment) event.
Are you ready for the rapture? If not, get ready, stay ready, and keep looking up. Ready or not, Jesus is coming!