“Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing” (1984, George Orwell).

It is no overstatement to say that we stand on the brink of a technological revolution that is going to change our world forever. This technological transformation is happening right now, and we will see significant change occur, not over the next couple of decades, but within the next couple of years. Very few people in today’s busy world are aware of just how much their lives are about to change, and how unavoidable and irrevocable this change is going to be.

The technological innovations described in this article are widely believed to be those that will occur in only the next five years, mostly by 2022.

By the end of this year, 2018, it is estimated that up to 90% of all people in western countries will have truly unlimited and free mass data storage. Deleting files to make room for more because you lack storage capacity is a thing of the past. This is because hard drive costs per gigabyte continue to fall. This means more data than ever is now being created, and will be kept in perpetuity. Indeed, according to experts, 90% of all the data that has ever been created has been created in just the last two years.

By 2021, the first robotic pharmacists will arrive in the US. AI and robotics will soon begin routinely taking over huge swathes of western domestic job markets, leaving mass unemployment as a by-product. In the short term, robotics and AI are going to decimate all service-oriented industries. Millions of people from all spheres of society will lose their jobs in the coming few years, all because of increased automation powered by ever more sophisticated Artificial Intelligence systems.

Artificial Intelligence is no longer limited to just the assembly lines. Very soon, it is highly likely that all types of telemarketers, bookkeeping clerks, compensation and benefit managers, receptionists, couriers of all types, proofreaders, computer support assistants, marketing research analysts, salesmen and women, and drivers of all descriptions, are going to lose their jobs to automation augmented by AI.

A workplace revolution is coming that none of us can escape from. Even in my own profession of teaching, it is widely believed that AI may replace qualified teachers in the coming decade or shortly thereafter. We are all going to be affected by the emergence of AI.

So significant an impact will AI have on worldwide labour markets that Elon Musk, the CEO of Space-X and Tesla, believes that the only way to mitigate against the massive impact this will inevitably have, is for governments to provide a realistic living wage for every adult in society. Richard Branson agrees with him. The alternative, they argue, of millions of workers losing their jobs and with it any prospect of reemployment, all within the next decade or so, will be riots and even a breakdown in basic societal order.

It is therefore essential, so their argument goes, that governments plan to mitigate against this approaching mass unemployment with a basic, universal living wage for all.

By 2022, it is estimated that 1 trillion sensors from all across the globe will be connected to the internet. The world really is getting smaller and smaller, and our place to hide in it has almost disappeared. From the clothes that we all wear even down the ground that we walk on, it is all going to be connected to the internet, and soon. Developers argue that this will allow users to “fully perceive their environments.” However, this also means that these same users will have every single facet of their lives, down to the frequency of brush strokes they use when they brush their teeth with their internet enabled toothbrushes, monitored, recorded and endlessly analyzed remotely.

By 2022, it is estimated that fully 10% of the clothes we wear will be connected to the internet, from watches, rings and jewelry to the running shoes we work out in. All reporting on our movements, our activities and our lifestyles. Everything we wear, use and come into contact with will eventually be sending back information, via the internet, to a third party.

By 2023, between 10-20% of reading glasses will be connected, in real time, to the internet. In theory, whoever is connected to these glasses will literally be able to see what you see, and be where you are. This will have a big impact in changing the way users interact with the world around them. Potentially it will allow users to access the internet at any time, and to call upon internet applications which would be optimized for enhanced or augmented reality-type experiences.

3D printing is going to revolutionize our society. 3D printers are becoming increasingly common, much more sophisticated and exceedingly powerful. Already a process used by many car companies, soon 3D printing will be used by almost everybody else, all of the time. Even guns are now being produced using 3D printing technology.

Yet the impact of 3D printing technology will not be confined to the industrial sector; medicine will be transformed by 3D printing technology. The first transplant using a 3D printed liver is predicted to take place by the year 2024, and things like human bones, tissue and organs will be produced as a matter of normal practice via 3D printing within the next decade. Even horrific, life ending injuries will very soon be able to be treated using this type of rapidly advancing technology.

Censuses are also coming to an end. It is not going to be necessary for our governments to collect information on us in the traditional way, using governmental records, as in the past. Our vast array of social media profiles and the plethora of growing information available on each of us via the internet will tell our governments everything they need to know about us and more.

The increasingly sophisticated way it can be collected, managed and understood using “big data,” means that governments will soon start to use developing “big data” technologies to gather information on its citizens in a much more informal, and some would argue, underhand way, without ever the need to contact you in person.

Experts in this field believe that the first governments will begin replacing censuses with big data technology gathering techniques as soon as 2023. By that point, governments won’t need censuses to tell them everything they need to know about you. Your records, online presence and your general interconnectivity to the internet will give them much more real time information on you than any census ever could.

By 2023, scientists and sociologists believe that 80% of all the people on this planet will have some form of a digital presence, largely as a consequence of drastically increasing internet connectivity. According to a recently published report, “digital life is becoming inextricably linked with a person’s physical life.” So important is this digital online life that it is widely accepted that very soon a person in the very short term future will not be able to buy or sell if they do not have even a basic digital presence. They believe that this threshold may be reached at some point within the next five short years, by 2022.

Cryptocurrencies and digital currency formats are also going to replace and make obsolete all hard cash. Cash in your pockets is a thing of the past. These digital currencies, which are based on mechanisms called block chains for their transactions, will likely be used by some western governments for the first time to collect taxes by 2022.

Block chain technologies, essentially continually updated ledgers, will likely soon be expanded out to encompass and incorporate other very large government databases, like titles to lands and other forms of deeds, medical or criminal records and a plethora of other such data. Even phone records, emails and intercepted communications will be amalgamated to this data. The NASDAQ is about to begin using block chain technology to record its trading in securities companies.

Block chain technologies will give anybody who wants to know anything about you access to almost any record regarding you and your life that they may wish for. And there will be no way to change or erase the data once it is uploaded to the continually updating and disseminated block chain.

By 2023, 90% of the population will have a supercomputer in their back pockets. People now use their smartphones more than they use their laptops. In poorer, developing countries it is this ease of communication, brought about through cheaper and more accessible mobile phones, that is also accounting for increased access to the internet.

Access to the internet itself is increasingly being seen as a basic human right, and this trend will only continue. Universal access to the internet is the holy grail. Big tech companies like Facebook and Google are racing to find the solution that will rapidly connect the other 4 billion potential users who will not have consistent access to the internet by this point.

Very, very soon the whole world really will be as one digitally. Nobody will escape from it.

I have written before about our increasing proximity to the Tribulation period: (1). Amazing change is going to occur within just the next half decade. We are now reaching a point in human history where almost everything we do, our habits, our preferences and biases, down to our associates, families, the properties we live in – all records about us anywhere and everywhere are going to be amalgamated, centralized and kept forever.

Collectively we are creating every day more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data. That amount is set to rise exponentially over the next decade. At present much of that data is “dark data,” meaning that it exists, but it is not being analyzed because it is too decentralized. Soon though, the means to analyze that data will become more widely available, and it will begin to be used against you. Of that there is no doubt. Big data analyzing technology will enable governments to take all the disparate and unintegrated systems and the data that currently exists on you with them, and standardize all that data into one single place for analysis and interpretation.

Mass data technology means that we can never escape from what we have written, posted, emailed, what we have bought and from where, our loans, debts and paychecks, what we have messaged or WhatsApp’d. Every single piece of data that exists “out there” on us can and will soon be brought to bear against us. There is nowhere to hide.

I could literally go on and on. All of this information, and myriads more still to come that you will carry on creating, give a very revealing picture of “you,” and of who “you” really are. The governments of this world won’t have to arrest you and bring you in for detailed questioning if you concern them, because the information about you will already be right there, stored and ready for analysis. It will tell them more than they would ever need to know about your motivations, your loves and loyalties, and ultimately, how they can or cannot trust you. Or whether you pose a threat to them.

We know that it will be just these same types of technologies that the coming antichrist will bring to bear so effectively against all opposition, ultimately enslaving the whole world through them.

I have said before that the technology revealed in Revelation is the technology of now. It is not the technology of circa 2040.

The Tribulation isn’t going to be in twenty years’ time. The Tribulation is going to be soon. Really soon. We are about to reach a technological tipping point, one that nobody on this earth is going to escape from.

Jesus must literally be standing right at the door.

“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name” (Revelation 13:16-17).

1. https://www.raptureready.com/ 2015/06/10/proximity- tribulation-matt-ward/

wardmatt1977@gmail.com

 

Replacement Theology

Following the May 14^th US Embassy transfer to Jerusalem, and the subsequent Palestinian provocations at the Israeli-Gaza border, Israel has been under intense worldwide scrutiny, and has suffered exceptionally harsh criticism for essentially defending her borders and her innocent communities within. This criticism has come, as expected, from a wide cross section in the Muslim and Arab world, but also and especially in the West, from those within the mainstream of the Christian church.

These seem to be men and women who have bought wholly into the false doctrine of replacement theology, and they are quite cynically using this recent crisis to further their ultimate goal of delegitimizing Israel.

This is an essential issue because there are many that stand on the fringes of Christianity who are confused and unsure over where they should stand on this issue. To be clear, as a Christian, where you stand on Israel is, I believe, an absolutely pivotal issue.

In my opinion, this is not even an issue about the Jews and whose land it actually is; it is much more important than that. At its heart, this is an issue that pertains to the integrity of God Himself.

At its core, this is an issue about trust; can we as Christians trust and take God at His word, or not? Simply put, does God lie? If the answer to that question is “no, God does not lie,” then one has to seriously ponder some of the positions professing Christians and Christian leaders have taken over the last week regarding Israel.

Israel is besieged all about, literally and metaphorically. Current issues over Israel’s recent use of force, and the perceived rights or wrongs of a US Embassy switch to Jerusalem, are now being used deceitfully and mixed up with replacement theology to further a clear anti-Israel agenda. To a great extent, this has always been so. But it should not be like this within the church.

Replacement theology is growing exponentially within our churches today. It the wholly unbiblical belief that the nation God once called the “apple of my eye” (Zechariah 2:8) has been replaced by the Church and that the current “entity” in the Middle East known as Israel is an unlawful, terrorist usurper of the innocent Palestinian people.

It is a lie spawned in the pit of hell. It is unbiblical; it’s demonstrably false and it is wrong.

I have actually read articles over the last week on mainstream Christian websites, not only bemoaning Israel generally but also openly questioning her legitimacy as a nation state. Tied into this, always subtly, is an insinuation that modern Christian advocates and supporters of Israel have to varying degrees “got it wrong” about Israel and her place in God’s order.

Some have even gone so far as to strongly suggest that the reason for God’s rejection of modern-day Israel is because of Israel’s past disobedience to God, and because of their rejection of Jesus Christ. This argument has been the classic basis of all true anti-Semitism for the last two thousand years, and has led to countless massacres, pogroms and holocausts because of it. Shamefully, we now find it commonplace in the mainstream Christian church.

If this is true, that Israel has been rejected because of her past disobedience and rejection of Jesus, then I say woe to the Church of today. Does our church today really look like an obedient one to you? Apostasy is rampant, as is compromise in all areas of life and seemingly at all levels of leadership, with one or two very notable exceptions. The Jesus taught in many pulpits today is a “different Jesus” (2 Corinthians 11:4) from the one originally taught by the apostles of Our Lord.

My question here is a simple one: If God so readily abandoned Israel for disobedience, then why today do we believe that God will not also abandon us for our own rampant corporate disobedience? Why will God not just raise up another people for Himself who will be obedient, as they preach that He has done with Israel?

I want to be clear. If you are a Christian, then the very basis of your faith should be the words of God Himself, as recorded in scripture. There should be no other basis for revelation outside the Bible. If this is the case, and we are being intellectually honest, then the only conclusion you can draw regarding Israel is an unequivocal one. The land currently occupied by Israel belongs to them alone.

But the Bible goes further. It also states that the land due to Israel extends far, far beyond her present borders, deep into Egypt and out into present-day Iraq.

The Bible clearly teaches that “God does not change” (Malachi 3:6). In preaching, or subtly suggesting that God has essentially abandoned Israel for the Church, the church of today has robbed itself of its own assurance of its own eternal security in God. If God abandoned Israel because of sin and disobedience, then we in the church are doomed because God is an impartial God “who does not change.” The same standards He applied to Israel will be applied to us also.

The reality is that God has not abandoned Israel at all, just like He will not abandon us. Instead, God has allowed Israel to “…experience a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in.” (Romans 11:25). God has not forgotten about Israel. He is currently dealing with the Gentile world, and the signs all around us indicate strongly that this Gentile dispensation is about to come to an end.

After this, God will once again turn His full attention to dealing with the remnant of Israel, then finally “…all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26).

Israel’s future is irrevocably bound up in the character of God. When Christians question the future of Israel in God’s plans, believing God to have abandoned his once “holy inheritance,” they are actually bringing into question the integrity of God Himself. They are calling God a liar and exposing Him to public shame, because God promised the children of Israel,

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:6).

This issue, at its core, is a question about honesty. Is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob a God of integrity or not? Is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ true to his word or is He not? Essentially, is God a liar?

In Romans, the apostle Paul, who was taught through revelation by Jesus Christ Himself, wrote to his own people, the Jews, and addressed this question head on, “I say then, has God cast away his people?” (Romans 11:1). This exact statement has been suggested many times this past week.

Paul immediately and emphatically answers his own question in the very next sentence, “Certainly not!” The Greek translation of this term implies that this notion is so unthinkable and so unimaginable that it should not be something that even enters into our minds!

God has not finished with Israel, and yet has a great future for her. He made solemn, irrevocable covenants with Israel to back this up.

The Covenants

God has instituted no less than four separate Covenants with His people throughout time; The Abrahamic Covenant; the Land Covenant found in Deuteronomy; the Davidic Covenant and the New Covenant, inaugurated by God’s son, Jesus. God keeps His covenants, and He made them expressly so that we who follow Him can know with certainty that we can trust Him.

Jesus Himself testifies to this truth,

“For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5:18).

The Abrahamic Covenant

Still in effect today, the Abrahamic Covenant was conferred on Abraham, Isaac and then onto Jacob, whose name God changed into Israel. On Israel’s deathbed, God subsequently conferred this covenant, and confirmed it, with each of Israel’s twelve children, who would later go on to become the twelve tribes of Israel.

There are two types of covenants in the Bible: conditional covenants and unconditional covenants. A conditional covenant is an agreement dependent on both parties for its fulfillment. If either party fails to meet its obligations, then the covenant is cancelled.

The Abrahamic covenant is not a conditional covenant. It is an unconditional covenant. An unconditional covenant is an agreement between two parties where only one of the parties has to do something. The Abrahamic Covenant is not dependent upon Abraham, but on God. Abraham had to do nothing to ensure its fulfillment; the obligation and responsibility rests alone with God.

The ceremony performed in Genesis 15 indicates the unconditional nature of this covenant. In Genesis 15, Abraham halved some dead animals; and God Himself, and alone, moved between the dead animals laid out on the floor. The smoking furnace and the flaming torch represent God, and God Himself put Abraham into a sleep so deep that he could not physically pass between the animals.

God was binding Himself to this agreement with Abraham. In effect, God was saying “…if I do not fulfill the exact terms of this agreement, then let what has happened to these dead animals happen to me!” God was staking His own life on its exact fulfillment.

This is one of the main reasons why Satan hates Israel and the Jews so much. If Satan can destroy the Jews and modern-day Israel, then he can prove God to be a covenant breaker. God, because of this covenant, would then be obliged by His own standards of holiness and justice to reap the consequences of this broken covenant.

In the Abrahamic Covenant, still in force today, God promised Abraham three main things: the land, descendants after him who would make a “great nation,” and the promise of blessings and ultimate redemption.

This covenant will receive its ultimate fulfillment in the Messianic Kingdom (Gen 12:1-3; 12:7; 13:14-17; 15:1-21; 17:1-21; 22:15-18). All other covenants in the Bible are based on the foundations laid by this one unconditional covenant.

The Land Covenant (found in Deuteronomy)

This covenant is crucial because it ensures Israel’s inheritance, despite their potential future unfaithfulness. This covenant guarantees Israel’s repentance and future restoration to the land in the millennial reign of the Messiah, a time now fast approaching (Deuteronomy 30:1-10).

The Davidic Covenant

The Davidic Covenant (2 Samuel 7:8-16) is also an eternal covenant. It guarantees Israel an eternal King who will rule from David’s throne forever. Every Christian in the world today, including those who subscribe to replacement theology, prays for the fulfillment of this Davidic Covenant from their very first experiences in Christianity, most without recognizing it.

In Our Lord’s Prayer, the line “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven…”(Matt 6:10) is a direct and explicit reference from Jesus Christ of the time yet future when a descendant of David will sit on David’s throne and rule Israel and the world from Jerusalem. This did not happen during Christ’s first incarnation – in fact the opposite. Jesus was rejected and despised by Israel.

A time is coming soon when Jesus, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, will fulfill this statement. He will not come in meekness and humility like the first time, but in majesty and awesome power to sit on David’s throne where he will rule all the nations of this earth from Jerusalem. At this time, the name of Jerusalem itself will be even changed to “the throne of the Lord” (Jeremiah 3:7), reflecting the worldwide eminence of this great Jewish city.

Jesus, it also needs to be pointed out, when he returns will be returning as a racial King – a Jewish King, and he will rule all with a “rod of iron” from an eternal Jewish capital city. We Christians testify to this truth each and every Christmas when we send simple Christmas cards to one another inscribed with the famous biblical story,

“But the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favour with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end’” (Luke 1:30-33).

This part of the verse never happened during Jesus’ first ministry. Its fulfillment relates to the time yet future when the Davidic Covenant, which is predicated upon the Land Covenant and in turn the Abrahamic Covenant, will be fulfilled.

A Jewish King ruling the world from a Jewish country. He is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Messiah and the eternal King, Jesus.

The New Covenant

We all look forward to the time when,

“The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them” (Isaiah 11:6).

This prophecy will become a reality in the millennial reign of Christ. The New Covenant, ushered in by the Son of God Himself, is crucial to the fulfillment of the other Covenants that find their own ultimate fulfillments in the Messianic Kingdom.

It is because of the New Covenant, paid for in the blood of Jesus Christ spilt on the Cross, that the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant, The Land Covenant and the Davidic Covenant are all possible. It all hinges upon God’s son, Jesus.

It is through this New Covenant and the blood shed by God’s Son that provision is made for Israel’s national forgiveness of sin, for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and complete regeneration based on the perfect substitutionary work of the Messiah who was slain for sin, (Lev 17:11; Jer 31:31-37; Ezek 36:24 – 28).

It is the same blood that brings us individually into relationship with God that will also bring the nation of Israel into relationship with the very same God we look too. The blood of Jesus saves all that look to Him for forgiveness, and Israel will soon look to their Messiah in repentance and faith,

“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son” (Zechariah 12:10).

Our own salvation is intimately bound up with the salvation of Israel. It is the same blood that we claim as a propitiation for our own sins that will also provide the atonement for Israel’s national sin. To reject Israel’s future salvation is to therefore bring our own into doubt.

Our God is a faithful God, and He has sworn over and over again to deliver Israel, physically and spiritually. The attacks upon Israel’s legitimacy, intensifying over the last week, are essentially attacks upon the very nature and integrity of God.

God made an eternal covenant with Israel, and He staked His own life on fulfilling that covenant to Israel,

“I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God” (Genesis 17:7).

God does not change His mind, or revoke covenants because of disobedience:

“…the Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man that He should change His mind” (1 Samuel 15:29).

God loves Israel:

“…and in this way all Israel will be saved. As it is written:

‘The deliverer will come from Zion;
he will turn godlessness away from Jacob.
 And this is my covenant with them
when I take away their sins.’

“As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable” (Romans 11:26-29).

Do not believe the growing lie taught in many churches that modern-day Israel is of no consequence to God. It is a deception. The time is approaching when there will be no more confusion in anybody’s mind as to how important and beloved Israel really is to God.

But first, God declares that,

“I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves” (Zechariah 12:2-3).

The beginnings of this process are clearly upon us right now. God is soon once again going to deal with His “holy inheritance.” Time is short, so be about the Lord’s business whilst you still can.

wardmatt1977@gmail.com