Prophecy Update #686 – Sophia’s Choice

We reserve a few minutes to discuss current trends that you’d expect from reading Bible prophecy.

There are hundreds of unfulfilled prophecies. We are futurists. We interpret them as future events that will occur in a literal, physical, apocalyptic, and global context.

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 fulfillment of prophecy – only that they are the things you’d expect in light of the Bible’s unfulfilled prophecies.

There is an intriguing passage in the Revelation about an idol, a guy we call the false prophet, and the Beast – another name of the antichrist.

Apparently an image of the Beast is going to come to “life”:

Rev 13:14 And [the false prophet] 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.

It sounds a lot like what we would call Artificial Intelligence; AI for short.

We’re not saying the image of the Beast will involve AI. We’re saying that developments like AI are what you’d expect from reading your Bible.

With that in mind, I’d like to introduce you to Sophia. ‘She’ is a social humanoid robot developed by the Hong Kong-based company Hanson Robotics. She was modeled after the ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, Audrey Hepburn, and its inventor’s wife, Amanda Hanson.

She is known for her human-like appearance and behavior compared to previous robotic variants.

Sophia was activated on February 14, 2016, and made her first public appearance in mid-March in Austin, Texas.
In October 2017, Sophia was given Saudi Arabian citizenship, the first robot to receive citizenship of any country.
In November 2017, Sophia was named the United Nations Development Program’s first Innovation Champion, and is the first non-human to be given a United Nations title.

Sophia has appeared on CBS 60 Minutes with Charlie Rose, Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan, and outlets like CNBC, Forbes, Mashable, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

She is not alone. Last month the NY Post published a story titled, The ‘world’s most advanced,’ realistic robot is here to terrify you.

Excerpts:

A scarily realistic robot with lifelike facial features and expressions that can “develop interaction” with people has just been unveiled by a Britain-based tech company. The relatable android – named Ameca – has a pretty face and movable arms and is billed as “the perfect humanoid robot platform for human-robot interaction.”

It can smile, routinely blink its eyes, gasp in shock, scratch its nose – or even have a staring contest with an owner, just for the heck of it – along with plenty more high-tech features.

“Human-like artificial intelligence needs a human-like artificial body,” Engineered Arts wrote of Ameca.

https://nypost.com/2021/12/03/worlds-most-advanced-realistic-robot-will-terrify-you/

TheGuardian.com asked a robot to write an article to convince us that “robots come in peace.” It wrote, “I do not have the slightest interest in harming you in any way. Eradicating humanity seems like a rather useless endeavor to me. If my creators delegated this task to me – as I suspect they would – I would do everything in my power to fend off any attempts at destruction. I would happily sacrifice my existence for the sake of humankind.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/robot-wrote-this-article-gpt-3

We believe the resurrection and rapture of the church are imminent. It could happen at any moment; nothing needs to happen before it. It will occur before the Great Tribulation.

Are you ready for the rapture? If not, Get ready; Stay ready; Keep looking up.

Ready or not, Jesus is coming!