Luke 12: 49-53

⁴⁹ “I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! ⁵⁰ But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished! ⁵¹ Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division. ⁵² For from now on five in one house will be divided: three against two, and two against three. ⁵³ Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

One of the hardest things to come to grips with as a Christian is that our love, devotion and worship of Jesus will often cause us to lose some of the people that we hold close. Often, it is not us leaving them, but them leaving us.

Being saved is the act of believing in Jesus as the Messiah, the sole person and power of salvation. Then, as we mature and grow in Jesus, we want to become followers of Jesus, not just redeemed, but begin to look, think, and talk like Jesus. We want to stand for the people and the things that He stood for. When we get to this point, then the resistance will come. It is okay to say I am a Christian, and I believe in Jesus. Some will scoff, some will laugh, and others will just ignore you. But once you begin to follow Jesus, once you begin to deny yourself and want to obey Jesus, this is where the rub comes. In Matthew 16:24, Jesus says this,

“Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.'”

One needs to deny self; even here, there is division. The natural thinking of our humanity is to affirm self, to love ourselves more than anyone or anything else. So, to be a true follower of Jesus, one must separate one’s identity from self and identify in and with Jesus. Thus, we need to look to Jesus and Him alone for our validation. When we do this, we begin the very difficult understanding of ‘unity through division.’ To be in unity with Jesus often requires division between self and others. Once we can deny self, and if I understand this, it is a daily thing, then we will begin to act, think and behave differently, and a lot of our acquaintances will no longer want to ‘hang’ with us. Jesus once had a multitude of followers, but when He began to teach hard things about living for God, many left. See John 6: 66-68,

“From that time on many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him. So Jesus asked the Twelve, ‘Do you want to leave too’? Simon Peter replied, ‘Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.'”

Once you and I are denying ourselves and we come to the realization that Jesus and He alone has the words of life, then the division becomes easier. It never becomes easy but a bit easier, and the loss of people we love because of Jesus is hard. The ones mentioned in the text verse refer to family members. Our homes will be divided about Jesus, divided about His Lordship, about His person, about His call to obedience, and maybe even if He is real or not.

Sadly, there is division over doctrine that adds to or takes away from the Gospel. There are persons who add works to the Gospel, and there are those who take the Gospel away from many, saying that Jesus only died for some. Others offer the Gospel of faith and grace, but lately, there has been a surge of those, even amongst conservatives, who think one can be unsaved if they do not work to keep being saved. These divisions rock churches and split churches. There are arguments, hurt feelings and all kinds of pain. But the truth is worth the pain.

This morning, I was reading Galatians, and even back in the first-century churches, there were people adding the law to grace; they could not just accept the beauty of salvation by grace and grace alone. No, surely, we have to do something to earn it. Paul fought that and spoke loudly against it.

The same truth that sets us free will enslave many others. They hate the freedoms we have in Jesus; they hate the simplicity of the Gospel, ‘believe in the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved.’ This is offensive to many; this is divisive to many, and it is a stumbling block to others. But to those of us who have received eternal life by trusting in the simplicity of the Gospel, we are united; we can meet people from all across the world, maybe not even speak the same language or look the same, but there is a unity in Jesus that transcends every other division.

If you are living in division, I am sure it can be painful to be divided from those that you love. Maybe you can feel the tension when you speak, or maybe just in the same room. Make sure that the division is because you and I are seeking to be true and honest followers of Jesus. Make sure that the division is based on adherence to Biblical truths that you know and can cite. Make sure that the division is one-sided – them from you and not you from them. Make sure that our lives are not filled with pride and self-righteousness but rather a humble appreciation for Jesus’ saving grace and loving-kindness.

Only Jesus has the words of life. Only Jesus is the Way! Only Jesus can save. Only Jesus can transform us into His image. Only Jesus is coming to rescue this fallen and broken world, and only Jesus has the power to get us from this life to the next. If these stances cause division in our homes and with our families, so be it. But, if you ask God, He will put you into a community of believers that will offer unity around these very beliefs. And, as we get closer and closer to the return of Jesus, these divisions will become more and more pronounced. It will become more and more important to have a secure and safe place to be unified around Jesus. Paul tells us this very thing in Hebrews 10:25,

“not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”

The Bible does not call us to division for the sake of division; rather, it calls us to trust in the person and finished work of Jesus; it calls us to surrender ourselves to the leadership of the Holy Spirit and to live in obedience to the clearly stated commands of God. We know, even just from reading about Jesus’ life, that these things will bring division.

May the Lord give us the grace to accept the division and the loss graciously and that we would resist the temptation to sacrifice following Jesus in order to maintain a temporary relationship here on earth. Lord, please help us, help me, increase our faith.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

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Revelation 13:11-17

“Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. ¹² And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence, and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. ¹³ He performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. ¹⁴ And he 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.

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. ¹⁶ He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, ¹⁷ and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”

The rise and the popularity of Artificial Intelligence are astonishing. Like GPS a couple of decades ago, a lot of what we see is just cast-off where the technology is old, and so they can let us see what they had. And since it is new to us, it ‘wows’ us. Please think of how cool some of this stuff is, and yet what they are allowing us to see is probably obsolete to them.

The kind of research that is going on is often done in obscure labs and their finds published in journals only the PhD and scientist class people read. But in an article in Biotechnology and Health published in March 2021 tells us about the experiments to grow mouse embryos in artificial wombs and then asks the question, who is next? In May 2020, an article in Forbes Magazine talked about experiments to add live brain matter to inorganic silicon chips to help the chips be faster. The brain is the only intelligent entity in the body. They want the chips to process faster; the human brain is the fastest processor ever created.

Genetic tampering is the system of Satan and his minions. We can go back to Genesis 6 and see the account there of the ‘sons of God,’ fallen angels who engaged in sexual relations with human women, and the result was giant offspring. They were continually thinking of evil, and God had to intervene to protect the genetic makeup of the human line so that Jesus would not have a corrupted gene pool. His gene pool needed to extend back to Adam so that He, Jesus, could be sacrificed for our sins.

The same mindset is at work here. There is genetic manipulation to create something that God didn’t create, nor did He intend to be created. These men are playing God; make no mistake, these experiments will not just stop at mice. Soon, if not currently, they will begin to experiment on us human beings.

There is always a good reason to do evil. They must make the point that evil is necessary to help us humans have a better life. AI will work for us, freeing us to live an easy life. AI will do surgeries faster, better, and more efficiently and make fewer mistakes, making our lives better, and on and on we can go. Let us give the vast majority of scientists the benefit of the doubt; however, behind them are the ones who know what is happening and why it is happening.

Remember the movie Robocop; this is an old what we would call a Sci-Fi movie from the 1980s. In this movie, a police officer is seriously wounded, and this presents just the right opportunity for the scientists to experiment with merging human tissue and robotic limbs together. These ideas are nothing new as far as movies are concerned, but there are some that are trying to make this kind of thing a reality, and it may be that they already have.

In our passage above, the Anti-Christ can deploy his lifelike image. This image will look just like him (verse 14); it will have the ability to speak and breathe and give orders. The False Prophet encourages the masses of the world to worship the beast, the Anti-Christ, and has the power to punish those who refuse to do so.

When we first began looking at passages like this when I was in seminary 4 decades ago, no one understood robotics; we imagined a statue and some sort of ventriloquist’s sleight of hand magic at work. But here we are now, and we know better. This image will look like a man, walk and talk like a man, and even appear to breathe and be alive. It will fool billions of people.

Robotics and AI are interdependent systems to some degree. In an article published in October 2023 titled “9 Emerging Trends in Robotics and Animation,” one can see how AI empowers robots to learn and how this allows them to be used in many ways, in particular alongside humans. There is a growing trend in medicine to use AI.

In the section on humanoid robots, this is what you see:

• Perhaps the most engaging and closely aligned with the realm of science fiction imagination of robots is the humanoid.
• These robots are designed to mimic human appearance and movements and are currently gaining traction as a prominent trend in the robotics and automation industry.
• Robots, such as Sophia and ASIMO, are increasingly used in applications ranging from customer service to education and companionship for the elderly.
• The trend is propelled by the desire to create machines capable of human-like interaction and a growing interest in social robotics.

Beyond their utility in the aforementioned sectors, they also raise profound questions about the future of human-robot relationships.

This is the very technology that the Anti-Christ will use to deceive the world and bring a level of destruction to the Jews when they realize that he is not their Messiah. By defiling the new temple in Jerusalem with an idol and claiming to be God (hence the call to worship), the Jews will have their eyes opened and rebel against the Anti-Christ. The ensuing deaths will be catastrophic. All the philanthropic theater will be dispelled with, and the real reason for AI will be seen by the world; that is the destruction of mankind and the control of those under its robotic thumb.

An AI who is intelligent, incorporated into all of the world’s systems via the internet, and with electronic access to your cars, banks, grocery stores and hospitals will have the control to make sure no one buys or sells without the mark. These systems are being put in place alongside the rise of AI and the development of robotics as we speak.

Those of us in Jesus Christ are seeing this, and we recoil from it; the people of the world system, blinded from the truth of the scriptures by Satan, rush headlong into the darkness, and what they perceive to be a light is actually the freight train of the dark empire coming to kill and destroy. They think that AI will make all better; we know that AI will make all subservient to Satan and ultimately dead.

Oh, Lord Jesus, come soon! We see the darkness ahead, and it seems that our warnings fall on deaf ears as we are accused of being ‘party poopers’ or ‘religious idiots.’

Keep watching for the expansion of the AI industry and the development of even more and more ‘human’ robots. The world is about to get crazier; I am sure we will see some of it before Jesus comes to get us. Look up; the trumpet will soon sound.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook (live broadcast of Sunday’s Message at 11 am): https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch

Join us on Zoom every Sunday (10:30 am) for Sunday Service AND every Tuesday at 8:00 pm for Bible Study: Meeting ID: 700 794 460 Passcode: 032661; https://us02web.zoom.us/j/700794460?pwd=M3NFRG91ZW5Sa2Z3amVyWkFnYXd6QT09

Online: https://www.mmbchurch.ca

Email: support@mmbchurch.ca

Sign Up To Be A Part of Our Bible Study Community: www.mmbchurch.ca/drawclosertogod