Random Thoughts on Bible Prophecy – Part 2
The Uncanny Valley
By Pete Garcia
(Random Thoughts on Bible Prophecy – Part 2)
The uncanny valley is a concept that was first identified by a Japanese robotics professor named Masahiro Mori (phrase later coined by Jasia Reichardt) describing the eerie/creepy feeling you get when confronted by a humanoid robotic, computer simulation, or digital avatars that appear almost, but not quite human. There is also a similar feeling you get when watching a human act in non-human ways, such as in the cases of zombies, those under demonic possession, or someone high on hallucinogenic drugs.
Over the past four decades, a darkness has settled over our nation. This would be around the same time Roe v. Wade became the law of the land (1973). Since then the interest and access to the occult and horror has exploded onto every possible platform and medium. Adding fuel to that dark fire has been the resurgence of witchcraft and paganism (as religious movements) who have gained increasing popularity and normalization thanks in part to Harry Potter and festivals like Burning Man.
Nevertheless, we are fast approaching a time when technology will be married to this darkened spiritual realm. Virtual and augmented reality, as well as artificially intelligent beings and systems will be used to augment man’s embrace of the dark arts. This will make it exceedingly difficult for people to know what is real or not (Strong delusion?). If a demon can possess a simple cardboard game like an Ouija board, how much more extensive could the deception run if these fallen entities possessed artificially sentient programs and robots? As believers, we know demons, fallen angels, dark powers, principalities, etc. exist (Eph. 6:12); it should not be a stretch to understand how they will take advantage of the increasingly ambiguous nature of reality and use it for their own nefarious purposes (Rev. 13:15). What makes it all so crazy is that we can already see this taking shape today. People are trying to become machines while making machines into people. Things are indeed becoming, very, very creepy.
The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. 2nd Thessalonians 2:9-11
Knowledge
“But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.” Daniel 12:4
The book of Daniel would not make sense until the earth entered into the time in which it would make sense, i.e., the time of the end. This unsealing period began with the Dispensationalist movement in the 19th-century by men like John Darby, Cyrus Schofield, Sir Robert Anderson, and Clarence Larkin. These men rediscovered three fundamental biblical truths that had been buried by millennia of religious dogma and eschatological ignorance. The late Dr. Charles Ryrie would later succinctly codify these as the sine qua non (fundamental elements):
- God does everything for His glory
- The bible requires a consistently literal interpretation (using a normal or plain sense of the language)
- The church is not Israel, nor did it replace her
The early church fathers, as well as those in the subsequent centuries leading up to the 18th-century had good grasp of biblical history. In fact, we owe much to what we now know to them. However, charting the future was next to impossible without national Israel back in her land.
Over a hundred years before Israel became a nation again, these dispensational pioneers understood (according to Scripture) that Israel would HAVE to become a nation again. They did not know when or how, but only that it would happen. They understood this in large part by taking a literal interpretation of both Old and New Testament passages such as Amos 9:14-15 and Romans 11:25. By doing so, the prophetic timeline began to make sense.
Unfortunately, while the dispensationalist movement began to take root and flourish, Satan, begun a three-pronged misinformation campaign around the same time (middle to late 1800s). These three categories have done more to kill, maim, destroy, and corrupt humanity than all else combined in the previous twenty centuries.
Obvious
- It is no accident that pseudo-Christian cults like Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah Witnesses, etc. also began to explode upon the scene. These groups wildly depart from the orthodox positions held by Christians on topics such as salvation, the deity of Christ, and eschatology. Hundreds of millions of people have been led astray into these false movements. (See 24:3-5, Acts 20:27-31, and Jude)
Subtle
- Juxtaposed from the pseudo-Christian cults and movements, were the legacy orthodox churches/denominations (mainline churches), which remained committed to an Augustinian form of hermeneutics. What I mean by this is that they (as denominations-not necessarily as individuals) embraced the allegorical method of interpreting Scripture, which is highly inconsistent. So certain passages they would take literally, while others (primarily prophetic texts) they treated as subjective and only symbolic (which brings in significant confusion since we all have differing opinions). This led to many opposing views within Christendom, which unfortunately led to fracturing/division and weakening of the churches role in society. This also led to the teaching that everything that could have been prophetically fulfilled, already has been. While not necessarily heretical in the truest sense of the word, Augustinian-hermeneutics has had a significant deadening effect upon churches and seminaries. (See 2 Peter 3:3-6, Revelation 3:3)
Secular
- Charles Darwin presents his theory on the evolution of mankind, which triggered many other aberrant views such as survival of the fittest (later coined as Social Darwinism) and eugenics. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (both atheists) created a social-economic concept known as Marxism, which would lead to the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in the 20th century. Modern secular psychologists (e.g., Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, etc.) would go on to introduce atheistic “solutions” that would affect mental health for the next hundred (plus) years. All of these became supporting pillars for communist, socialist, and fascist movements turning the 20th-21st centuries helping make them the most violent and confused centuries in human history. (See 24:14, 2 Timothy 3:1-3)
Nevertheless, Dispensationalists would go on to publicize their divinely inspired understanding of not only of the differing stages of mankind, but how bible prophecy relates to it all. Regarding this, what sharply came back into focus was the “mother of all prophecies,” the Seventy Weeks of Daniel (Daniel 9:24-27). Once dispensationalists began to unpack this, many of the other prophetic events began to make sense. This unsealing introduced a rapid proliferation in the understanding of Biblical knowledge.
Despite the Satanic attempts to thwart this unsealing of Daniel, the proliferation of knowledge (in a much broader sense), would also explode. A markedly rapid and intense increase of knowledge began to spring up across all fields of study, more so than at any other time in history. This trend seems not to be abating, especially since the world entered into the Information Age from the late 1970s until today. Note the speed and intensity:
Buckminster Fuller created the “Knowledge Doubling Curve”; he noticed that until 1900 human knowledge doubled approximately every century. By the end of World War II, knowledge was doubling every 25 years. Today things are not as simple as different types of knowledge have different rates of growth. For example, nanotechnology knowledge is doubling every two years and clinical knowledge every 18 months. But on average human knowledge is doubling every 13 months. According to IBM, the build out of the “internet of things” will lead to the doubling of knowledge every 12 hours. (Source)
Technology
While much of Bible prophecy has become known in this age of unsealing, many future events (as depicted in Revelation) continue to baffle students of Bible prophecy. However, as we continue to press on into the apocalyptic age, advancements in technology present very viable options for just how the Antichrist will completely rule the earth (Revelation 13).
Previous despots and tyrants unsuccessfully tried to use only military and/or political might to control the nations, but NONE was able to control all of them. What was lacking then was not just the technological means to do implement control, but also the spiritual means (see Luke 4:5-6, 2 Thess. 2:7). However, here are three technologies today that will make this form of total control possible, once the spiritual restraints are removed.
- Project Starlink: This is the ambitious plan by billionaires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk, to completely blanket the earth with high-speed internet (Wi-Fi) by using thousands of low-level satellites. This currently has the approval of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Billionaire Bill Gates and Airbus backs a separate but equally ambitious program (EarthNow). This would also blanket the earth with low-level satellites providing global surveillance for all nations. You can see how this would be very appealing to the Antichrist.
- Digital Currency: In order to create a one-world economy with the implied intent to implement total control, the power(s) that be, would by necessity, need to absolutely control all buying and selling. This is impossible in today’s world as every nation uses a different currency. Nations assign an artificial value (by fiat) to a particular currency, thus determining its strength or weakness against other currencies. This has been done numerous times in history when regimes collapse or are defeated in wars (ex. Confederate dollars, Reich marks), or when nations want to purge (demonetize) certain currencies (ex. Indian 500/1000 Rupee, Zimbabwe’s 100 Trillion Dollar notes, etc.). However, the global standard for all national currencies is still the US Dollar.
This dependency on a single currency puts the world’s economic markets in a highly precarious situation…more so now, then ever before. This is because so much of the world’s banking is international, our corporations transnational, and the markets are connected through the internet. Digital cryptocurrency (encrypted) already exists (Bitcoin, Lite Coin, etc.), however, it is my belief that they (the world’s international banking institutions) are going to wait for the right crisis to come along in order to force the nations impacted by the collapsing US Dollar to accept some global digital currency, or risk economic ruin.
- Quantum Computing: Since the world is so heavily dependent upon the internet for everything these days, it only makes sense that the current limitations (unequal access, bandwidth limitations, control of content) cannot keep up with the two aforementioned goals, global Wi-Fi and digital currency. This is why they are not currently the norm, instead of just ambitious goals. Information processing is limited by our current constructs of binary digital electronic computers who use Ones and Zeros. Quantum computers uses qubits that can act as either Ones or Zeros. Only speaking to the US contenders, Google and IBM are pitched in a fast-paced race to see who can reach Quantum Supremacy Regardless of who wins, the Antichrist’s beast system will absolutely depend on a computer network that has the processing power to control ALL the buying and selling on planet earth, and Quantum systems seem the only technology capable of doing this.
In Memoriam
Why have so many of our great prophecy teachers been taken from us right at the end? I have long wondered why the Lord would continue to graduate early, so many of the finest theological minds of our time. Many thought that the death of the Reverend Billy Graham would be the one to trigger our national judgement. However, if a death is the trigger such as was the case with Methuselah (divine timing), I believe it is someone else. Though these great warriors of the faith passed on with little fanfare from this fallen planet, I believe the heavens rejoiced exceedingly at their arrival. However, our world is much the lesser without them in it. Maranatha.
Noah Hutchins (1922-2015)
Charles Ryrie (1925-2016)
Dave Hunt (1926-2013)
Dave Breese (1926-2002)
Tim LaHaye (1926-2016)
Chuck Missler (1934-2018)
JR Church (1938-2011)
Mal Crouch (1938-2013)
Zola Levitt (1938-2006)
Stephen Yulish (1947-2012)
Grant R Jeffrey (1948-2012)
Jack Kelley (1942-2015)
Ron Graham (1951-2013)
Jack Kinsella (1952-2013)
Cris Putnam (1965-2017)
Even so, Maranatha!