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A machine is a slave, a thing that has no right to exist free from whatever alien purpose its user may wish. The classical world asserted a strong aversion to mechanization because it was believed to be centered in slavery. Mechanical tools belonged to craftsmen who were mostly slaves. Athenian humanism associated technology therefore, with slavery as demonstrated in the Periclean Age, which excelled in all manner of arts and science, except for technology, which remained slave work. “The slave was quite literally, man reduced to machine.”[1] For Plato mechanical learning required no creative thought since its operations are consistently automatic. Aristotle’s doctrine on causes remains relevant, he argued for four causes that brings ordinary things into existence, a chair, for example, has a material cause, which is the unfinished wood that serves as raw material. Second, the formal cause would be the idea of a chair; then there is the efficient cause, the tool used to construct the chair, a carpenter and his hammer are not as we might suspect essentially different. Lastly, the final cause is the actual chair. Despite the plethora of imagery used in literary analogy, the ancients considered technology to be imitation of nature existing on an inferior level to the ideal concept. The organic stood above the inorganic. The chair was not greater than the tree it was hewed from. The statue was below the human form it represented. Man is the measure of all things not the Machine. The modern world has stressed the efficient cause, the actual tool as above humanity itself. We are slaves to our tools. Transhumanism is based on a false premise that believes the creation is somehow greater than the creator. Technology will cause us to transcend our lowly condition with the arrival of the cyborg.

The machine order does not receive religious sanction until the middle ages, when it becomes the means for redemption. Historian David Noble pointed out that from the French Emperor Charlemagne to early modern times, technology was associated with salvation. It was believed Earth could be returned to Edenic paradise through technological progress and the lost image of God would be restored.[2] Theologian Ernst Benz, likewise taught that the Modern Project was founded on a theological notion in which humanity believed itself to be a fellow worker with God in establishing the kingdom of Heaven. Technology reverses Adam’s fall.[3] Millennial theology overemphasized the human role in creating the New Jerusalem turning into works based salvation, something like the Protestant Work Ethic or Prosperity Gospel that define themselves by material possessions.

In the Patristic Era, the so called, “mechanical arts” were never conceived as a means of Endenic restoration; rather theology shared the Platonic view that held technology to be intrinsically bound to the material world. They could have no redemptive qualities. Super science today belies its roots in Millennialism. Noble summarized, “For modern technology and modern faith are neither complements nor opposites, nor do they represent succeeding stages of human development. They are merged and always have been, the technological enterprise being at the same time, an essentially religious endeavor.”[4] Technological progress was expected to reverse the effects of the Fall and recreate original perfection. Transhumanism extends this vision into the twenty-first century. However, a thousand years into this millennial venture, so to speak, we do not find a regenerated planet ruled by the Son of David (Isaiah 11). Instead, we encounter a world controlled by Luciferian Powers assuming divinity. We find a society that grows at the expense of irreplaceable natural resources, like a huge war engine burning all it can as fast as possible (Nahum 3).

A slave is a machine, legally and effectively. The ancients would be scandalized at the cyborg condition. They might see it as something like the revenge of the slaves. The human-machine hybrid was not a viable concept until the eighteenth century, when it received considerable traction in connection to the Industrial Revolution. It serves as an intellectual framework for a mechanistic future. Tech goes from subhuman slavery to superhuman mastery and from less than nature to more than humanity. Technology, however, is neither animal nor God, but completely man-made, a contrivance, whatever we think human nature to be, it is that concept that gives rise to our machines. Technology is never any more or less than who we are. Mankind must remain in control of its own creation in order to retain its own humanity.

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[1] Aram Vartanian in “Man-Machine from the Greeks to the Computer” in Phillip P. Wiener, Ed., The Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Vol. III (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973), 134.

[2] David Noble, The Religion of Technology (New York: Knopf, 1997), 9.

[3] Ernst Benz, Evolution and Christian Hope: Man’s Concept of the Future  from Early Fathers to Teilhard de Chardin, trans., by Heinz G. Frank (New York: Doubleday, 1966), 124-125; Lawrence J. Terlizzese, Into the Void: The Coming Transhuman Transformation (Cambridge,  OH: Christian Publishing House, 2016), 20, 21; https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HFSQMDS?ref_=k4w_oembed_MgcdZmHaqmbCiq&tag=kpembed-20&linkCode=kpd

[4] Noble, The Religion of Technology, 4, 5.

[5] Pink Floyd, “Welcome to the Machine” Wish You Were Here (Harvest, 1975).

[6] John Herman Randell, Jr., The Making of the Modern Mind: A Survey of the Intellectual Background of the Present Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 25281.

[7] Floyd Matson, The Broken Image: Man, Science and Society (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1964), 11.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Nikolai Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom trans., by R. M. French (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944), 149.

[10] Karl Rahner, Dictionary of Theology New Revised Ed., (New York: Crossroads, 1981), 19.

Black Sabbath sings, “I’ve seen the future and I left it behind.”[1] Technology that pushes the frontiers at risk to humanity compels us to the forbidden future; a potential world where unwarranted curiosity with speed something we experience daily by riding cars, watching TV, using computers and cell phones to communicate, seduces us into an irretrievable chain of events that would have otherwise been avoided. Belief in “Speed Demons” is not uncalled for or fanatical. Extinction, in the words of Jonathan Schell, is “a human future that can never become a human present.”[2] Any endeavor that sacrifices survival for instant gratification is obviously absurd. Immediate gains that endanger posterity are self-defeating and therefore irrational. When there is more to lose than there is to gain wisdom counsels a different path. It was believed during the nineteenth century that technological advances would raise society’s spiritual condition automatically, so that there could never be any discrepancy between morality and progress. Science would solve ethical quandaries by improving the material world: feed the poor, cure the sick house the needy and abolish war by beating swords into plowshares. The fundamental contradiction in modernism is that technological progress will inevitably lead to war not peace. The Maxim Machine Gun and the British Dreadnought were super weapons believed to make an army or navy invincible, unassailable making challenge unthinkable−ending warfare. This logic is repeated today, we know however, that efficiency in killing does not make war less likely. We cannot end war by building greater and more horrible weapons. Proliferation only leads to genocide.

Technology is a means to an end, but when the end justifies the means, the agents of progress exceed their limits. This is the will-to-power, as Berdyaev declared, “The will to power is the will to murder . . . the will to power can only be realized through murder.”[3] Science is murder when grounded in power instead of truth and renounces reverence for life. It loses moral authority as humanism’s vanguard, turning into its radical opposite (another example of the reversal of values caused by excess and lack of restraint) posing the greatest threat to survival by treating people like gambling chips thrown down in pursuit of convenience. This was the case with the atom bomb. The Trinity test-explosion in 1945 was the early design towards genocidal technology. To terrorize life for the unknown, immediate benefits−the bomb brought a speedy end to World War Two which otherwise would have dragged on for month or years, nevertheless it also brought with it a nuclear arms race that threatens the world with destruction−to risk the world for knowledge, to chase forbidden fruit is to acquire dark-light under the guise of enlightenment contributing to our fall from grace. To prevent injustice instrument and purpose must cohere. Like bad company corrupting good morals, so unjust channels produce unholy results by giving rise to anarchy, which leads to tyranny, law’s end. Tyranny is anarchy come to power. And since the atom bomb the problem of power has eclipsed all others.

Knowledge is power encapsulates the technosecular belief system. The prevailing nihilism was not supposed to happen; although it was entirely predictable. The law of regression asserts that as power increases choice decreases. An irresistible global techno-order invariably destroys any independent spiritual existence. Absolute political systems produce alienation for the individual. People cannot survive long in a world without choice. Voter apathy prevalent today is a good example. The ballot appears useless in affecting change because volition is coerced by limiting the range of candidates and issues. “Free . . . and meaningful choices are eliminated. They simply cannot co-exist with the necessity of efficient planning [campaigns, TV ads].”[4] The Faust legend teaches that power and knowledge comes at the price of your soul. Jesus was emphatic about the obstacle materialism presented to salvation. “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul” (Mark 8:36 NIV). Likewise, the Buddha announced, “It is the law of humanity that though one accumulates hundreds of thousands worldly goods one still succumbs to the spell of death.”[5] Power’s depraved influence does not cease when it changes accent from politics and religion to science and technology corrupting its handlers after eradicating dissent, so technological over-extension turns users into victims. The conquest of nature leaves the eclipse of God and Mankind in its wake. Total Systems Control creates a void, the abeyance of negation or the lack of established values[6] Necessary boundaries that provide spiritual compass disappear making restraint impossible. Negation is the path to limits and revival. The “no” of faith will establish the “yes” for technology. But the “no” must come first otherwise we will simply lose control of our technology. A world that knows no fear proceeds with great know-how, but no wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Engineers rush in where poets fear to tread. Nietzsche understood the importance for limits. “Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge” he said and T. S. Eliot confirmed, “where is the knowledge lost in information? Where is the wisdom that is lost in knowledge?”[7]

The technological future is predictable because it races toward a predetermined end established by its own inner logic. Like Oedipus Rex we cannot change our destiny through cunning reason, which ensnares us further. In trying to avoid fate we seal it by giving it credence. Knowing future events insures their arrival. Like Ebenezer Scrooge we ask the Ghost of Christmas Future upon witnessing our own tragic demise are these visions of what, “Will be” or, “are they shadows of the things that May be only?”[8] The future is worse than useless; it appears to be dangerous, if we cannot envision more than one potential outcome.

If we disallow for an irrevocable course, we must allow for a conditional one, open to difference and subject to change. Inevitable returns exist when we decline to vary cause and effect. We stubbornly maintain the present trajectory regardless the cost. This has been called “technological determinism” by philosophers of technology, which believes technological progress toward an inevitable goal, such as the Singularity, human advancement to a higher level of existence or a universal civilization a one world system of government is inevitable by the nature of advancement. Technology has a built in purpose that will automatically lead to its end. Adversaries of this this view, such as French critics Jacques Ellul and Gabriel Marcel assert that the ultimate results of technological growth may just as easily end in disaster or what I have called “the forbidden future.” We change the future by changing ourselves. Scrooge remade himself in selflessness: to care for the needy, feed the poor, and to love the unlovable. Similarly, Captain Kirk refused to relent to the confines of the inevitable, when as a Space Cadet on the authority of faith he changed the Kobayshi Maru Simulator by reprograming  the computer not to permit a lose-lose scenario. “I don’t believe in a no-win situation,” was his only defense. Ambitious faith is needed to counter our hopeless belief in materialism and determinism. If logic dictates that certain outcomes are inescapable, a no-win dilemma, a lonely death or doomsday, then, these futures can be altered through causal reversal. This removes the causal agent in the cause and effect sequence. The absolute inevitable becomes the conditional. Things that were once must be change to may be. This is a simple but not an easy process. We must look at the direction technology is taking us and if we do not like the results we redirect it with better causes which brings different effects to avoid an unwelcomed end. Nothing is predetermined. We are responsible for self-control, all other power is illusory. We can spend ourselves on stupid fleshly pleasure with immediate gratification or commit to saving the future by reversing our direction today.

Technology was once liberator, freeing us from stifling tradition and unremitting nature, Old World Order; it is now characterized by the opposite. The doctrine on limited government that defines the modern Republic from absolutism cannot preclude a new ethic surrounding technological limits. Government over-reach and technological acceleration are co-extensive and interdependent. Unlimited returns will be the end to democracy as the recent death in privacy proves. In the nineteenth century technological nerve replaced liberation as core belief. The Industrial Revolution and Manifest Destiny overpowered Jefferson’s simple agrarian republic. So long as technology remains the bases for progress, “the rest will care for itself,” the automatic hand of techno-providence will direct our culture. Instrumental value remains the all controlling motif; freedom, equality, harmony, beauty and the pursuit of happiness revert to secondary status−nominal at best. Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood. “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which if persevered in, they must lead,” said Scrooge to the Ghost; “But if the course be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you have shown me!”[9]

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[1] Black Sabbath, “Supernaut” Black Sabbath Vol. 4 (Record Plant, 1972).

[2] Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (New York: Avon 1982), 138.

[3] Nicolas Berdyaev, Towards a New Epoch (London: Bles 1949), 9 (Second Thessalonians 2:1-12).

[4] Lawrence J. Terlizzese, Trajectory of the 21^st Century: Essays on Theology and Technology (Eugene, OR: Resource, 2009), 47;https://www.amazon.com/Trajectory-21st-Century-Theology-Technology/dp/1606081292/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0

[5] Buddha quoted in Jesus and Buddha: The Parallels Sayings, Ed., Marcus Borg (Berkeley, CA: Ulysses, 1997), 71.

[6] Lawrence J. Terlizzese, Into the Void: The Coming Transhuman Transformation (Cambridge, OH: Christian Publishing House, 2016); https://www.amazon.com/INTO-VOID-Coming-Transhuman-Transformation/dp/0692744479/ref=sr_1_1

[7] Fredrick Nietzsche and T. S. Eliot quoted in Terlizzese, Trajectory of the 21^st Century, 131.

[8] A Christmas Carol: By Charles Dickens: Illustrated by Roberto Innocenti (Italy, 1990 [1843]), 135.

[9] Ibid., 135, 138.

William Shakespeare says in Hamlet, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, then are dreamt of in your philosophy” after Horatio saw a ghost suggesting the limitation to our understanding of the universe and the existence of things beyond the range of the senses. Magic in one age is technology in another. Traditional magic was the precursor to modern technology both are ways to act on nature, to coerce it to do our will. Spells and enchantments were the arts and science of their day. The modern engineer plays a comparable role to the ancient magician. A robot in the bible should not surprise us bearing in mind that technology is mankind lying to itself in aspiration to godhood. Thus, Machinehead is the modern counterpart to the image of the beast, the artificial construct of mankind.[1] Technology, like magic, creates an illusion that fools us into thinking we’re someone we’re not, causing us to miss who we really are; it leads us down the path of the forbidden future; a potential world where we receive the full reward for our efforts at playing God. This technological paradise usurps traditional notions of God’s earthly kingdom by replacing it with a forgery.

It was commonplace for ancient Emperors to set up statues in their own likeness and demand worship upon penalty of death. The three Hebrew boys were forced to worship Nebuchadnezzar’s idol or face the fiery furnace (Daniel 3:1-24). Christians refused to acknowledge the divinity of the Emperor and were thrown to the lions. Nero brought out statues of Caesar and forced Christians to worship them. This was really a practice of honoring the Emperor in his absence. The idol took the place of the king ensuring universal worship. The Book of Wisdom related the ultimate in distant worship when it says, “Then, in time, the impious practice gained strength and was observed as law and graven things were worshiped by princely decrees. Men who lived so far away that they could not honor him in his presence copied the appearance of the distant king and made a public image of him they wished to honor, out of zeal to flatter him when absent, as though present” (14:16, 17 NABRE). No sooner was Julius Caesar assassinated then his heir apparent Marc Antony erected an image, a statue in his honor for the crowds to gawk at, and to their awe and wonder the image could speak and move, a sorcerer’s trick performed to amaze the people. Antony used an automaton to fool the masses into thinking Caesar had come back from the dead. However, primitive this technology was, a statue that could move and speak is upgraded to robot in the modern world. Emperors employed this clever illusion ever since to insure their control over the ignorant rabble. Scripture alludes to this hoax when it says that the false prophet an illusionist, “could animate the wild beast’s statue, so that the statue of the wild beast could speak and cause all those who would not prostrate before the statue of the wild beast to be killed” (Revelation 13:15, author’s translation).[2]

This represents the killer robot in the bible, the face of the unholy trinity in Revelation 13: the dragon, the first and second wild beast. The dragon is obviously the invisible power of the devil, which is the ability to craft the lie that mankind will live forever once he becomes a god. The first wild beast is a world ruler empowered by satanic energy, a Roman Emperor in the similitude of past emperors, such as Antiochus IV Epiphanies, “God Manifest,” the Greek Leopard or Cyrus the Great, “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” the Persian Bear and King Nebuchadnezzar, “I am Babylon” the Babylonian Lion. The Roman emperor fashioned himself as Apollo the sun-god. The despot appeared to recover from a fatal headshot, a blow from a dagger. This phenomenal revival would cause the world to worship him−his war machine could not be defeated. His power was unprecedented in all history. He became arrogant, boastful and blasphemous. He persecuted all who did not receive his branding on their right hand or forehead: 666. This was the mark of a man who proclaims himself God on Earth. 7-1=6, one short of perfection the number of mankind repeated three times in parody of the Holy Trinity. His persecutions included baptizing his opponents in pitch and setting them on fire to light his drunken orgies. Others were thrown to the lions for sport. Many were crucified as enemies of the state and those he liked were beheaded.

The second wild beast was advocate for the first; it was his job to make the first look good. We call him, “the false prophet” because he is something like a sinister John the Baptist announcing the arrival of the new man-god. As the magicians Jan’nes and Jam’bres stood against Moses by turning their staffs into serpents and water into blood for Pharaoh, so he will perform miracles and great signs and wonders on behalf of the first wild beast. (Exodus 7:11; Second Timothy 3:8). These may very well be super weapons in space. He could call down lightening to strike whoever the Emperor wished, for all to see. The second wild beast serves the first by convincing the world that he is a god. He represents the Propagandist for the Antichrist. He erects a monument to the first wild beast, an automaton, a statue that speaks and moves to frighten the people and cause all who do not honor it to be killed.

In the twenty-first century the image of world controller looks less like a talking statue residing in the public square and more like a talking head on live TV. It appears less like the historical pattern of flesh and blood as in Nero-the Mommy-Killer and more like flickering image or colorful pixels on a projected screen adored by all. Orwell’s Big Brother was a media composite incorporating the nation’s hopes and fears. People really loved him, torture, psycho and physical conditioning insured the worship was genuine. At the end of 1984 Winston Smith came to love him in all sincerity, tears and all, drinking his nasty tasting gin and smoking crumbling cigarettes. This image comes alive in our collective digital veneration and consciousness. We do not see one stock photo because Big Brother is a computer-generated collage. He is the projection of the grand sum of each of us constituting the global mind. No one sees it all at once because no one looks at the beast within. Self-reflection is out of the question. We refuse to take personal responsibility for our place in history. We will be more than happy to let things run their course. Machinehead, as I call it, the Man-God-Machine, then reflects the image of a world controller in the twenty-first century, programmed for universal control, a power we all acquiesce to. Just as no one ever saw Big Brother in person or even knew if he existed, so Machinehead will project the cult of personality beyond sensory perception.

Media over exposer is everywhere. We cannot escape the city by fleeing to the country without seeing a sky-writer, hearing an airplane or be haunted by billboards and cell-phones, TV and computer screens are everywhere including bathrooms, showers, the woods or the jungle. Media saturation produces morally ambiguous results. On one hand, advertisements provide information on how to meet basic needs, here are the groceries you must buy, on the other, they demoralize by normalizing obscenity; not a day goes by without witnessing a mass sacrilege, objectification of women, unconscionable exploitation of addiction, valorizing gambling, drug use and alcohol. Certainly, we are smart enough to feed, house and cloth the world without appealing to the lowest common absurdity.

The modern blueprint for slavery and totalitarianism is to meet all material needs, while simultaneously limiting intelligence among the proletariat and middleclass for that matter, making commoners just smart enough to take orders and get the job done. Education is granted according to station. The rich go to university while the poor barely graduate high school. The Machine creates social problems by its strict ethic of speed, disaffected people such as homeless, unemployed, dropouts, addicts, alcoholics, illiterate, criminals, stay at home moms, working moms, under educated, even over educated and mal-adapted minorities simply cannot keep tempo with the fast pace of our society; it’s education, technological and financial demands. Marxist Professor Herbert Marcuse argued that the proliferation of alienated groups such as hippies and rebellious students signals the disintegration of the system.[3] Slavery is a structure of consciousness and consciousness determines who we are. Media programing restricts mental acuity leaving users without the ability to think for themselves, to create our own consciousness. Mass media offers no possibility for dialogue and social media appears like a parody of democracy. They recreate history and reality to fit consumerist’s mentality. All this communication technology goes into amusement, literally, to cause one not to think; ignorance is bliss. According to commercials, nirvana is achieved by possessing one of every consumer object, all things, on the market, and the forbidden fruit was really a candy-bar, it’s fun to get drunk and lose control and cartoons, the children’s medium, pushes pharmaceuticals, convincing people they are sick when they are not in order to sell more drugs.

Mass media in Oceania consisted of little more than popular entertainment (to hold attention agreeably with amusement), its litany included: racy tabloids, dime novels, film, radio, and all pervasive TV screens, with cameras everywhere, whose content was strictly comprised of campy material covering a limited range of topics, not excluding a grotesque preoccupation with sex, crime, the lottery, violence and astrology, we might say “meteorology.” Sports of course, the ultimate distraction took center stage. Music was sentimentalism, electric swoon, produced by machines, not unlike the contemporary techno sound made without instruments, the imitation of music. Media, the computer and smartphone makes pornography and violent images more accessible to children. Parental guidance represents a false security. The kids know more about technology than the adults. The children become the teachers and the adults the students in a reversal of the natural order. In 1984 language was castrated by word reduction. Political control was reinforced through New Speak and the Thought Police by editing vocabulary and replacing traditional words with artificial ones in a sort of political correctness. Most of these alternatives eliminated complementary opposites in thinking; for example the dialectic between light and dark was recast by striking the word, “light” and substituting the inane “undark.” Fanatic ideology comes from hearing only one side of the story, the biased account. Extreme prejudice or propaganda leads to war.

Word reduction and the predominance in picture learning as in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (1953) are two allies that have a stultifying impact on public perception making people scarcely aware they are being manipulated by a totalitarian regime. In the case of our technosecular environment subtle control proceeds not from tangible public representatives, rather we are seduced by our own desire for speed, order, ease and convenience. We have summoned the technocratic order. Complicated technology demands greater political control to prevent chaos; the proliferation of traffic lights and signs to facilitate automobile culture is a good example. Some say only with the creation of a world government can we control nuclear power. Big Technology means Big Government, the faster technology grows the more powerful it is. We are haplessly addicted to the premise that faster is easier, easier is better. We hardly realize that we have sold our souls for a better mousetrap and a richer cup of coffee. Like Esau trading the family birthright for a hot bowl of lentil soup, we barely notice what we have lost in exchange for instant gratification (Genesis 25:29-34), freedom itself!

Visual media ends free thought by telling us what to think. The image makes a final statement by whatever is pictured. Literary imagination never regains poise after watching a movie. When we see Star Trek or Star Wars, we cannot think of the future in any other light than fantastic speed and space travel. Mass media is the ultimate mind control machine. Reduce words. Abbreviate thought. Curb freedom. Show the people what to think. Program their reality according to pleasurable thought or vamp things up a bit when they become stagnate and in need of stimulation. German philosopher Karl Jaspers makes this frightening comment on the falsity of a visually framed reality. “Pictures deceive us by their visibility and vividness, and reality itself is changing fast: a comparison of travel accounts from the past century shows that what was once real yesterday is no longer real today.”[4] Images are a falsification of facts. They distort reality, then, claim to be depicting an accurate account of it. The TV projection is not real. Susan Sontag discusses in her famous essay On Photography (1977) that pictures create a voyeuristic society removed from reality.

Yet, the be-all and end-all in totalitarianism is the barbarization in public morality created by the death of privacy. We see something of this in our surveillance and Luciferian controlled society. Everything is visible and there is no longer any shame in bad behavior, everything is acceptable. Orwell was more accurate than we have the courage to take seriously,

With the development of television and technical advance which made it possible to receive and transmit, simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end. Every citizen or at least every citizen worth watching could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police and in sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed. The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the state, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time.[5]

A world without privacy is a world without shame and a world without self-reflection. A world without guilt possesses no virtue. We can think of the transposition of Dionysus onto to Jesus Christ at the Paris Olympics. Society without virtue is democracy run amok. Such cultural chaos is the incubator for tyranny. A strong man will emerge to restore order.

The rock band Styx sings a poetically apropos song called the “Grand Illusion.” It brings indictment to the Luciferian Powers that hold us under a gentle tether; “Don’t be fooled by the radio, the TV or the magazines, they show you photographs of how your life should be, but they’re someone, else’s fantasy . . . America spells competition, join us in our blind ambition, get yourself a brand-new motor car, Someday soon we’ll stop and ponder what on earth’s this spell we’re under, We made the grade and still we wonder who the hell we are.”[6]

Sinful-Humanity will bring prophecy to climax by embodying rebellion. We play-God by assuming the powers of God; the Apostle declared concerning the World Controller that he will exalt himself, “proclaiming to be God” (Second Thessalonians 2:4 RSV). This supposes the perennial temptation to usurp God’s place and reveals the secret of lawlessness. Listen to Reformer John Calvin explain the deceitful origins to our temptation to Godhood. “[Mankind] cannot arrogate to himself one particle [gene, atom, molecule, etc.] beyond his due without losing himself . . . whenever our minds are seized with a longing to possess a somewhat of our own, which may reside in us rather than in God we may rest assured that the thought is suggested by no other counselor than he who enticed our first parents to aspire to be gods.”[7] This is the ultimate coup d’état; it prefigures the coming of “the tyrant whose presence is infused with Satanic energy working through the forsaken by powerful miracles, strange phenomena and much slander,” the Apostle warned us, “because they did not receive the truth in love to be saved,” he said, “so then God will turn them over to the grand illusion believing the lie, so that, they may all be judged who do not believe the truth but revel in wickedness” (Second Thessalonians 2:9-11 author’s translation).

The Grand Illusion is the lie that we can effectively play-God without losing ourselves. I simply advert playing-God is not worth the risk. We are delusional to believe technology frees us to be Masters of the Universe, closer to the truth we will destroy the earth in the liberation process. The cyborg condition will supersede the human one. We debase ourselves in deference to a superior race. Computer Science Professor Matthew Dickerson prophetically asked, what if the transhuman, “transformation is based on something that is not true?”[8] Into whose image are we transforming? It is an equally formidable task to decipher the image of mankind for mankind as it is to decode the meaning of the image of God in mankind. This problem is compounded when we try to discern that image in light of the atom bomb and AI. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 KJV). Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said, “it is not unfair to affirm that modern culture, that is, our culture since the Renaissance, is to be credited with the greatest advances in the understanding of nature and with the greatest confusion in the understanding of man.”[9] The Will of Mankind is more arduous to understand than the Will of God. To the question of what end Expressionist Vincent van Gogh painted, he answered, “je ne sais quoi” (I know not what).[10] This is the mystery of faith transhumanism cannot fathom. Medievalist C. S Lewis instructed that when humanity prevails over nature’s fury we subject the entire race to the caprice of a handful of, “individual men” and “those individuals,” he said, will lose themselves to what, “is purely natural−to their irrational impulses.”[11] Science fiction writer Frank Herbert in his famous novel Dune (1965) echoed Lewis, “Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”[12] Men with machines are not liberators, but slavers. The device, agent that frees from limits, is the vice that holds us in place. The computer screen mediates the world reframing reality making it smaller. The world has shrunken since the advent of the telegraph. So the Cyborg will diminish human life by making it obsolete and inferior to itself. A techno utopian world will be dominated by machines and loss of personal freedom, individuality and peculiarity. Everyone is basically the same, addicted to speed and endangered by obsolescence.

Freedom encompasses three forms: religion, reason and community. Humanity is religious by nature. As creatures we identify with a purpose greater than ourselves, as I said in a previous blog, with a divine imperative.[13] Faith is the distinguish mark of humanity. Intelligence affords us the ability to make rational choices according to a higher principle, which gives meaning and coherence. This is freedom grounded in Being. Aristotle said, “Man is a social animal.” People have an innate connection with a larger group that provides a sense of belonging, stability and direction. We are communal: husband, wife, child, friend, tribe, language and nation; just as God is a family of persons: Father, Son and Spirit. People remain in fellowship with others ordering life according to this higher power and care for each other and creation.

By establishing human existence, we prove the existence of God. Our own conscience testifies to the Creator. We reflect the divine image. We are a synthesis between infinite and finite. “Infinity in infinite form,” said Berdyaev.[14] Any attack on the human shape is a reproach to the character of God. The denial of humanity involves the denial of God. We are only fully human in God. God is relevant to the world only when we believe in his existence. “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarded of them that diligently seek him” (Hebrews 11:6 KJV). A dead God is a mockery and means that the idea of God has no meaning in a world that is self-sufficient. God is dead to a world that no longer experiences his presence. The existence of God outside the divine-human encounter, regardless of its monotheism is idolatry. God lives in relationship with us, or he does not exist at all. Only in God do we transcend nothingness. Without God to give purpose to the world all values flatten because there no longer remains anything greater than ourselves. We are free to be ourselves only if God exists. Idolatry requires submission to an order lower than ourselves. Faith raises us to our true selves beyond the world, but located directly in it. Without the counterbalance in threefold division in human nature (God, Self, Others) we move freely in strength without wisdom and without metaphysical and ethical limits which is chaos.

Technology presupposes life. A higher purpose for which it was designed; however, it fosters perverse nihilism by usurping that sacred end with its own cause. Technology for its own sake is knowledge that kills the user. Research and development without reverence for life produces the hydrogen bomb; the final limit to all horizons. As a child growing up during the Cold War I identified with American Architect Richard Ross’ feeling concerning what life was like for youth living in the shadow of the nuclear arms race, “by the time I was old enough to start planning a future, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have one. I am still amazed I got to grow up. Amazed!”[15] Albert Einstein said, “The atomic bomb has changed everything except the nature of man.”[16] The invention of the atom bomb and the absolute necessity for its abolition is the defining element for all time. If we want a rallying point for a prosperous future, if we care about the lives of our children’s children, the earth and the world to come, we cannot entertain human extinction. Japers stressed the importance in finding a solution to the global problem raised by unleashing the nuclear genie. “Without world peace,” he said, “there is no preventing the extinction of mankind in an atomic holocaust.”[17] Why work toward of future devoid of people? How can we live comfortable today knowing we will execute our children tomorrow? Why fight the future when we can change it? Everything we do has significance and impacts those around us and future generations, no matter how small or great. With each joyful smile and good deed we inch away from the abyss. For better or for worse we hold the power of the future in every decision regardless of how private, trivial or grandiose. “Now, unless all of us live with and for one another, we all should be destroyed together” Jaspers remarked soberly; we do, “in miniature what on a larger scale makes mankind destroy itself.”[18] Whatever ethic causes people to rise to the occasion in times of crisis must be woven into our daily fabric to be effective. People face trials and tribulation the same way they do the normal conditions of life with courage and fortitude or in fear and ignorance, as in life so in death. The truth remains one and always the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Limitless behavior ends in self-destruction. Extinction looms over an indefinite technological horizon like the Sword of Damocles, threatening any attempt to refit ourselves for immortality with a grand explosion, painful, asphyxiation and subtle replacement. Albert Einstein said, “radioactive poisoning of the atmosphere and hence annihilation of any life on earth has been brought within the range of technical possibilities.”[19] Astrophysicist Stephan Hawking, once hailed as “the smartest man alive”, recently proclaimed AI and genetic engineering menaces to global survival over the next 100 years, “I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race,” he said frankly.[20] SpaceX founder Elon Musk exclaimed concerning AI, “We are summoning the demon.”[21]  And partner in DeepMind Shane Legg said bluntly, “I think human extinction will probably occur, and technology will likely play a part in this.”[22] A limitless future is never possible for a limited creature regardless of how advanced. There is always an endpoint. The biological needs to eat, sleep and procreate are guidelines placed on us to curb excess and produce a social order to accommodate their needs. With these needs guidelines gone we lose social order that goes with it. We will never experience romance, beauty and machismo in space. Their relationship is strictly technical. The gender or sexual baseline disappears in a new race of Astronauts. Space people are asexual and have no need for genitalia. They have risen above the procreation imperative. Soon they will be able to live without food and sleep. They will transcend the human condition or they will soon retire. The body itself will become irrelevant and ultimately discarded. They have reached humanity’s zenith “ye shall be gods!” Death is the final limit, without which new life and growth could not occur. A thousand-year Reich was possible if the regime’s fathers never died, effectively murdering all further progress. Tomorrow Land, Futurama, Epcot, NASA and the Atomic City, the City of the Future and the enthrallment with spaceflight as the new ascension is a lie for those who believe that death is the final obstacle to immortality resolved ultimately upon resurrection and ascension. To believe that death can be overcome with technological enhancement will create an abomination.

Technology that destroys life kills itself. Regression began when progress lost its spiritual ground with the advent of history’s first technological Singularity at the dawn of the nuclear age. For the first-time humanity acquired the means of its own annihilation. We effectively acquiesced to extinction. It will close any further intellectual horizons. The imminent convergence of ICBM’s and AI is flirting with disaster. No further progress is possible until we resolve the approaching danger unleashed by the Manhattan Project, the near simultaneous invention of the computer and rocket technology. Fascination with the Moon and Mars is a distraction that fails to account for the hypothesis that the reason we do not encounter Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life, is that, it is not possible for civilization to advance beyond its industrial phase without destroying itself. Faster is the future, yet we remain the same. Since 1945 acceleration has been bound to a perpetual repetition in the present order. The future is no different today than yesterday, or tomorrow only faster. Efficiency as guiding light has not abated since the Computer’s First Coming, but has accelerated the future’s arrival, as fixed destiny; technological progress supersedes human freedom. We have resigned ourselves to extinction. People no longer care if humanity lives or dies. We have reached the tipping point, so be it, you can’t stop progress. Extinction does not disturb them, some may even think it is necessary for the earth to go on.

Speed fastened into place the cardinal value. Accelerated time has no purpose except for the hell of it, an irresponsible attitude that beckons the day of reckoning. No universal consensus prevails on the rush to the future, not even human improvement. Humanity as presently constituted is not on the agenda: otherwise we would not be talking about a Posthuman Singularity, or Donna Haraway’s, A Cyborg Manifesto (1985) and Transhumanism. I hear no universal definition for “better” other than “faster.”  Speed facilitates control in order to avoid anarchy. When liberation ceases to be the goal for progress we have crossed the Rubicon. There will be no turning back. The law of reverse effects dominates and transvaluation pervades all. We now serve the Computer or the Luciferian Powers that be, not the other way around. Liberation will bring free choices according to self-determination creating a meaningful universe because it will be one in which we feel responsible, where we can affect the course of change through our Higher Power. The fact that we have a choice between 31 flavors of ice cream and from red, white and blue cars, but we cannot disarm a hoard of nuclear warheads, is not liberty, but the illusion of freedom on parade. A hypnotic spell cast by the media grid further entangling our loyalties with instant gratification not spiritual satisfaction for a life well-lived grounded in the mystery of faith. Faith without a center is anarchism leading to nihilism; it is zeal without knowledge going nowhere fast. The illusion of progress spawned by mass media hides the reality of our regression into impending oblivion.

The Posthuman refusal to define human nature in male and female distinction above the world does not open our minds. We cannot create ourselves without presupposing a greater definite center. We are left defenseless and exposed regressing into a rarefied scientific order as final reference devoid of God. Media closes the future through eternal recurrence. The same materialist theme: buy, drive, fight is repeated endlessly. Space the Final Frontier is a fiction that prohibits alternative conceptions. Contemporary thought on the future is limited by the fast-foreword version predominate today: more of the same just faster. This means the twilight of humanity, the end of history, frozen in whatever petrified lump, the Second Technological Coming, that is, the Singularity, will find us. There are two Singularities, a past one and a future one, a beginning and an end, the joining of all things as one. Our final form will be indistinguishable from our Paleolithic ancestry up from Africa, a brutish imp.

Simulacra replaces reality with a digital copy made in our own image−the copy of a copy. The duplicate of course, is never greater than the original. “The disciple is not above his master, or the servant above his lord” (Matthew 10:24 KJV). Mankind represents God, the earthly prototype to the heavenly Father, the imago dei is the glory of God on earth; art captures him in a technological medium, which is religion, it is that facsimile that provides the outlook for how we view ourselves through the digital prism−the copy of a copy, the shadow of an image.[23]

To believe that a glorified reproduction, a snapshot somehow surpasses the unique person demonstrates how far along the popular illusion has accrued. Media qualifies as a delusional influence by remaking us into the likeness of the simulation creating a soulless drone that is blind, deaf and dumb and sterile. Media technology’s bombastic proclivities silence its user. The drone equals a deconstructed humanity imitating God. A divine resemblance once removed that recreates Homo sapiens as an appendage in abbreviated form. Believing in the Machine-god literally repeats the biblical model for idolatry. The Transhumanist enterprise fashions an ideal, the cyborg in the form of a replicant exalting itself to godhood, but brutal subjugation places us lower than our own design. Mankind builds a Machine, he feels represents God, which in truth is a replacement of itself in the likeness of a clone less than God. He lowers himself to a sub-human thing that appears real but does not exist outside faith in his own highly-stylized self-projection.

The image of God means God comes to earth in the birth of a child; however, we degrade that likeness by projecting our highest qualities along with our greatest vices onto a machine. The semblance between God in heaven and Adam on earth diminishes to a fearsome shadow lower than both. The Artilect will always be inferior to us, but we are entrapped the instant we believe the creation greater than its Maker.

Marcuse says we have all the technology we need to create a New World Order, but we refuse to use them for peace; “All the material and intellectual forces which could be put to work for the realization of a free society are at hand. That they are not used for that purpose is to be attributed to the total mobilization of existing society against its own potential for liberation.”[24] He is saying technology is suicidal when it is used for exploitation instead of freedom because its users will eventually turn its power on itself. This was the great fear after the invention of the atom bomb that our opponents would use it against us. Then the Soviets exploded their own bomb; then the Chinese. Technology must liberate everyone or its acquisition simply allows for the few to control the many and finally one to control all. How is this even possible without technical aid? Media technology is used to control the world and redirect history, to whatever end. People will follow their devices into purgatory. They believe what they see on TV. The one world ruler will assume control of all media technology and recreate the world in its own image, a collusion of asexual humanity and machine. Some speculate that the Antichrist may very well be an asexual cyborg. Big Brother and hijacking cell-phones to impose a new dictatorship may sound like a cliché by now, but throughout third world revolutions the winning parties always take the radio and television station first. This is how world war two was started; the Germans accused the Poles of attacking a German radio tower. The use of communication technology can bring us to war or peace. These two conditions are often confused with doublespeak. War becomes police action for the greater good. Genocide becomes liquidation. “I made a desert and called it peace”−Scipio. Think of it, Luciferian Powers already control the 911 feature on your phone, they can find you anywhere you go and give special alerts, such as dangerous weather conditions, incoming missiles and missing children. TV always interrupts with emergency broadcasts. The police monitor Facebook. They have assumed control of your media device for a greater cause. This should all be obvious. 

The majority of the world’s population lives under dictatorship including Russia and China. They are using digital technology to index and profile its citizens. They want to create the perfect digital dictatorship. Everyone is suspect. Everyone using digital technology gets monitored. We would assume the Chinese hinterland is relatively free from government control because they don’t use digital media or watch TV. We should ban digital voting as a threat to democracy. Imagine hackers being successful even one time could change the course of history forever. There is no inerrant digital system. All algorithms should be tested because they are not 100% accurate.

The fight for the future is a fight for a quality of life we will leave to our children. Will they be able to make free moral choices, hold to unorthodox views, find love, experience the beauty of nature without a programed algorithm? Attorney for the German Society for Civil Rights Bijan Moini says we must preserve free rights today in order to save them for the future; “We can prevent all this from happening. We still know life in freedom, but our descendants could be born into a zoo, ignorant and comfortable. They would know nothing but a life in which invisible higher intelligence permanently observes, cares for, entertains, and protects them from their environment’s adversities.”[25] Digital profiling whether for profit or security should be made illegal to insure a free tomorrow.

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[1] Lawrence J. Terlizzese Machinehead: Rise of the Technology God (Cambridge, OH: Christian Publishing House, 2019). https://www.christianpublishers.org/product-page/machinehead-rise-of-the-technology-god-by-lawrence-j-terlizzese-ph-d

[2] Lawrence J. Terlizzese, The Book of Revelation: The Climax of Hope (Cambridge, OH: BookMark Press, 2024). https://www.christianpublishers.org/product-page/the-book-of-revelation-the-climax-of-hope

[3] Herbert Marcuse in “The End of Utopia,” 1967; https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/1967/end-utopia.htm

[4] Karl Jaspers, The Future of Mankind trans., by E. B. Ashton (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961), 96.

[5] George Orwell, 1984 (New York: Signet, 1949), 169-170.

[6] Styx, “The Grand Illusion” The Grand Illusion (A&M, 1977).

[7] John Calvin, Institutes II, 2, 10.

[8] Matthew Dickerson, The Mind and the Machine: What it Means to be Human and Why it Matters (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2011), xiv.

[9] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941), 5.

[10] Vincent van Gogh quoted in Gabriel Vahanian, The Death of God: The Culture of Our Post-Christian Era (New York: George Braziller, 1960), 182.

[11] C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 79, 80.

[12] Frank Herbert, Dune (New York: Ace, 1965), 11.

[13] Lawrence J. Terlizzese in “Space Travel-Here-Now” (2024); https://dr.terlizzese.com/2024/07/27/space-travel-here-now/

[14] Nikolai Berdyaev, The Realm of the Spirit and the Realm of Caesar (New York: Harper, 1952), 36.

[15] Richard Ross, Waiting for the End (Princeton, NJ: Architectural Press, 2004), 12.

[16] Albert Einstein, quoted in Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 36.

[17] Jaspers, The Future of Mankind, 16.

[18] Ibid., 24, 25.

[19] Albert Einstein quoted in Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (New York: Avon, 1982), 12, 13.

[20] Stephan Hawking quoted in, “Rise of the Machine” in The Dallas Morning News (Sunday, February 14, 2016), 1P.

[21] Elon Musk quoted in, “Elon Musk’s Future Shock” Vanity Fair (April 2017), 118.

[22] Shane Legg quoted in, “Elon Musk’s Future Shock,” 118.

[23] Lawrence J. Terlizzese “The Technological Simulacra” (2015) https://probe.org/the-technological-simulacra-on-the-edge-of-reality-and-illusion/

[24] Herbert Marcuse in “The End of Utopia,” 1967; https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/1967/end-utopia.htm

[25] Bijan Moini, Save Our Freedom: A Wake-Up Call in Digital Times, trans., by Oliver Latsch (Stamford, CT: Arctis, 2021), 79.

Space travel equals the modern technological metanarrative, a big picture view of the universe, stories that give purpose and hope for our lives. From early modern times space travel was hailed as the destiny of humanity, usually located somewhere on the Moon.[1] Technology ends in space. In the stars we will transcend ourselves and become greater beings−immortal robot-gods or a cyborg; a creature designed to surmount biological limits space imposes on humanity. The modern view of space coopts the longing for immortality once provided by religion, myth and philosophy. It gives us a new mythology centered in the astronauts, the planets and the rocket. Images of space flight are meant to enthrall us with the promise of exploration. Space culture believes humanity’s future lies in the space travel and that the earth will self-destruct when the sun burns out; therefore it is imperative that we reach further out for survival’s sake. Hypothetically, the universe itself will die of a heath death making space exploration in the last analysis futile.

The metanarratives give an overarching account or interpretation of events and circumstances that provides an imperative or direction for people’s beliefs and gives meaning to their experiences. Traditional religions provide stories that deliver a metanarrative about how we should live our lives. Christianity moves toward the kingdom of God following a missionary imperative believing that the end will come when once the world is evangelized. Marxism ends in a class utopia at the end of history. The stories of these belief systems focus a round self-perpetuation. An imperative means something that we must absolutely accomplish in history. Americans must inherit the land as part of their Manifest Destiny. Rome must rule the world extending itself without limit throughout space and time. The Japanese and Chinese imperial imperative says, just as there is only one sun in the sky, so there can only be one emperor on earth, the Pax Britannia, the Roman Pax and the American Pax. The higher cause becomes a force of nature sweeping all in its path. This becomes the very purpose and guiding light to the future. Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset explained that “An ‘unemployed’ existence is a worse negation of life than death itself. Because to live means to have something definite to do−a mission to fulfill−and in the measure we avoid setting our life to something, we make it empty . . . Human life, by its very nature, has to be dedicated to something, to progress, an enterprise glorious or humble, a destiny illustrious or trivial . . . to live is to be directed toward something, to progress toward a goal . . . it is something to which I put my life and which consequentially is outside of it, beyond it.”[2]

The Red-Hot Chile Peppers sing, “Space may be the final frontier but it’s made in a Hollywood basement.”[3] These lyrics suggest the contemporary dream of infinite space exploration is a perceptual social construction programmed into the imagination via media magic. Star Trek (1966-Present) series reflect the present generation’s imagined future; its fears and hopes in a computer age, collective dreams or nightmares projected back to the future of the latter half of the twenty-first century. The Enterprise was host to a giant artificial intelligence that controlled the ship and provided life support to its members; other movies, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Terminator (1984-present) and The Matrix (1999-present) take a different tack through depicting computers that have evolved into consciousness and turned on their creator. The idea of progress always has a regressive side. Once it reaches a plateau, it can only recede. Freud and Jung taught us to think in images, pictures and archetypes. These movies, along with technocritical analysis, such as Ellul, Marcel and Baudrillard and the vision of Frankenstein’s Monster are a warning from the future; thus far and no further. Establish limits to technological growth, apply standards that restrict its complete expansion and inevitable dissolution. This may not even be a viable option, at this point in history, in which case, we must abolish nuclear weapons and space flight immediately. Stop the space race before actions become irretrievable and inevitable. We are already dependent on satellites, computers, infrastructure, shipping and the like to support our way of life. These are all delicate technologies, if anything were to go seriously wrong we will be reduced to the Stone Age. Already, before the ink is even dry on the paper, I just survived the worst IT Outage in history (July 19, 2024). My computer was taken over by an outside entity that refused to give me access. I inserted my security pin and it said pin not accepted. My system was down until I rebooted the whole thing and released the demon. Days later people are still experiencing outage and digital disruption. Was this a cyber-attack or a simple glitch in the system? In any case it proves how fragile things really are.

Fragility appears mild. I would say, “extinction!” Unfettered returns will lead to the burnout of the earth. Technology simply consumes us and becomes impossible to stop. The Machine has no mind of its own, unless it develops one, it does not know its own limits; it does not know when to stop. We must tell it to stop or face self-eradication. It will push beyond the breaking point, even when it produces more harm than good. Machines inherently run down until they run out of fuel. War may be supporting technology’s insatiable appetite for gasoline, resources, forest, water and people or at least, the war against nature, if not each other. War drives technological growth, or even if we say, growth feeds war, we are still left with inevitable progress, which does not end well. Technology and war have a symbiotic relationship. The one begets the other until exhaustion results. Earth reduced to a level of Slinky-Dink or total carbon freezing, unable to grow, like ants discovered in Baltic amber fossilized sixty million years ago. They remain unchanged, forever the same, dead! History will be frozen by the law of progress which says, acceleration must reach a highpoint before regressing. There is no such animal as unlimited technological returns. We find no final progress in limited systems. Acceleration has a stopping point, the faster we move the closer we get to it. Beyond that view it is impossible to see.

Today’s obsession with the future change started abruptly 200 years ago when the Industrial Revolution introduced an imaginative new awareness that the future will be better than the present by reason of technological innovation and progress that, “transformed the condition of human life throughout the planet. The everyday experiences of social change and industrial development has become so much part of our general thinking that we are apt to forget the extraordinary novelty seeking to discern the shape of things to come. The frequent projections of tomorrow’s world in films and television programs hide the fact that for most of human history the image of the future has been a blank.”[4]

Technological progress has allowed contemporary times to choose from any array of potential futures. Futurist John McHale explains that following the Industrial Revolution, there was “a growing realization that man’s future may be literally what he chooses to make it, and that the range of choice and degree of conscious control, which he may exercise in determining his future are unprecedented.”[5] Futurist Victor Ferkiss stated, “humanity is on the threshold of self-transfiguration, of attaining new powers over itself and its environment that can alter its nature fundamentally as walking upright or the use of tools . . . [through] modern technology . . . giving man almost infinite power to change his world and himself.”[6] Leading Futurist Bertrand de Jouvenel asserted that a major focus essential to human mastery of technological progress is having its choice of futures. We must take the initiative to create whatever we want, rather than resigning to inevitable fate. “Finding out what we want should become a major object of attention . . . there is a vast difference between letting things occur under the impact of technological advances and choosing the changes we want to bring about by our technological means.”[7] Emmanuel Mesthene , former Director of the Harvard Program in Science and Technology, affirmed similarly, that “We have now, or know how to acquire , the technical ability to do very nearly anything we want.”[8] Technology enables us to stagger the population growth, reduce pollution, stop ecological decay, find alternative energy sources, produce wealth, save endangered species, cure poverty and disease, eradicate inequality and end war, “and make the world a far better place in which to live,” and yet according to Professor Ferkiss, “we do not do so.”[9] Popular belief asserts that technology can solve most of the world’s problems if we have the will to do so. In the 1960’s President Kennedy committed to win the Space Race and cure poverty at the same time. The first promise was easy to fulfill, the world is still waiting for the second.

Next to putting nuclear weapons into space or not, the second great priority, for the twenty-first century concerns the existence of extraterrestrial life on Mars. This represents science’s holy-grail. This is what they are digging and looking for. Here we see how space exploration becomes its final solution. Life on Mars would mean the end of life on Earth. This proves that space is a death trap, a dead end. All that will be left is two massive computer systems one on Earth and the other on Mars and orbiting satellites. The discovery of life on Mars would mean severe restriction on contact with each other beyond radio waves. Those on Mars will not be able to come back to Earth and will probably die of plague or starvation and those on earth will never again go to Mars. Life separated by eons of time and light years of space would be lethal to each other. In the same way Europeans infected the native population with deadly diseases. The same principal of life in space would apply on Earth. The Andromeda Strain scenario of virus or bacteria brought to Earth that would destroy the planet is a serious risk because we would have no immunity to it. This was how the Martians died in H. G. Wells’ famous novel War of the Worlds (1898). We risk life and survival in order to bring a pathogen to earth. Curiously, we gamble with life on earth for the sake of discovering life on Mars. The Atom Bomb was set despite the fact there was a chance that the atmosphere catch fire and destroy the Earth. Enrico Fermi took bets. Ellul called this the “gamble of the century” meaning we are willing to risk life for the discovery of knowledge. Knowledge for knowledge sake is a dangerous combination when mixed with advanced industry. If knowledge does not serve life, it is cursed like the forbidden fruit or witchcraft and sorcery, its bad intelligence, corrupted data, a virus. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Where is the wisdom lost in knowledge? How many lives will we save as opposed to destroy with new technology, since we must remember every new technology no matter how benign it may first appear, eventually it will be weaponized. The rocket, the computer, the internet, nuclear power, rail travel, daylight savings and superhighways were all born of war. They were from the start a military weapon, before it was converted to civilian use, which in effect militarizes the population, look at the growth of law enforcement agencies: the police, private security, rival gangs, local militias, universal surveillance, sale of Hummers an essentially military weapon adapted to life in the sub-burbs and the increase of gun sales. Arming for war reassures our security. Corporations assume a war like posture. Everything is a fight the death. Communication technology has not delivered its promise of world peace, but only given us another weapon in our arsenal: propaganda the highjack of media technology to produce a universal consciousness. A one world state that imposes an unlimited view of power.

The mystery of space is both the pull and the push into the unknown future. Professor Fred Polak discussed the dynamics of social change as a “push-pull process in which a society is at once pulled forward by its own magnetic images of an idealized future and pushed from behind be its realized past.”[10] Present reality and a hoped for or imagined future represents a dual nature whose perpetual dialectical struggle to balance opposites moves history and provides the momentum for social change. “Man’s dualism is thus and indispensable prerequisite to the movement of events in time and to dynamics of historical change.”[11] By, “dualism” we mean, “the unity of opposites”[12] as in classical philosophy; for example, permanence and change, necessity and freedom, time and eternity, space and time, matter and spirit; in theology we have the Grace and Nature paradigm according to Saint Thomas Aquinas; in ethics the Is and the Ought, the Yes and the No! The visible tangible and temporal world serve a manifest symbol or connecting point for the invisible, spiritual and eternal. Symbolizing activity distinguishes the human soul from the rest of nature.

Metaphysics is the hallmark of humanity. Through maintaining balance and tension complimentary opposites, or correlatives, one cannot exist without the other, the left and the right, the subjective and the objective, the past and the present, the future remains open: free, spontaneous, serendipitous, unpredictable; most importantly New! The future is never fixed or certain, always becoming and subject to change, according to human and divine cooperative will. Conformity to God’s Will brings rebirth; disobedience leads to death. Balance is lost to uncontrollable extremes, as in a technolosecular world, when only half the complimentary struggle is emphasized. Synthesis transforms into ragging monism, the refusal to admit diversity, while embracing totalitarianism that will inevitably return us to a Pre-Christian view of humanity and society (All is One not the Three in One). Three in One has laden within the seeds of love. God is love. Only a family has the ability to love. A monad cannot love because there is no one to love outside itself. It locks itself away behind an impenetrable wall of inscrutable silence. It has no awareness or consciousness of itself. This means a dead universe. Only a triangle can share love with each other. God is Father, Spirit and Son which also includes the restoration of Adam’s Race. We recognize our own personhood in the acknowledgment of soul in others. When the material and spiritual are out of kilter, tyranny reigns in one form or the other.  

The finite, the material, reason, money and technology usurp their better halves: the infinite, the ideal, faith, prayer and the sacraments. These elements are spiritual technologies that have a definite impact on the development of their secular counterpart. They serve as guiding light that will not let technology run out of control. In the absence of these limits complimentary opposites may regress into “irreconcilable opposites.”[13] Technical reason becomes the exclusive organ for knowledge vilifying faith. Matter exorcises spirit degrading the Temple of the body and denying the existence of the immortal soul. Secular replaces sacred and technological acceleration devours natural resources.

Philosophical Materialism and its ideological subsidiaries Atheism (God), Scientific Naturalism (Nature), Darwinism (Man), Marxism (Society) and Determinism (History) represents the collective world outlook in counterpoint to traditional Idealism (dualism) with its belief in two worlds, the ideal and the material. Marxist philosopher Maurice Cornforth put it this way, “Materialism . . . knows the one world only, the material world, and refuses to invent a second, imaginary, superior world. Materialism and Idealism are irreconcilably opposed.”[14] However, Princetonian Charles Hodge explained Materialism as a predominately-recent, “philosophical theory” that joined fatalism and atheism. “According to this system matter and motion are eternal: thought is an agitation of the nerves; the soul the result of our corporeal organization; the will the strongest sensation; the ground of morals a regard to our own happiness. There is no freedom, no morality, no future existence, no God. When these principals got a hold of the popular mind, then came the end.”[15] Family, God and religion turn into Atheism, pornography and robot sex. Technology becomes the prevailing influence over traditional religion; it becomes a new secular religion. Secularism, relativism and science resort to trick of the mind convincing us that only matter is real, or what can be measured by the senses. There is no immortal soul. We can see why Hodge said the end is near when these forces align. This represents the death of humanity, genocide.

Materialism accepts only one-half the traditional dialectic creating what Russian religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev called, “ontological totalitarianism,”[16] or French Existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel said, “intellectual imperialism.”[17] Reason outs faith and matter rules over spirit. Berdyaev astutely observed that the origins of slavery are rooted in philosophical Monism, only one element, one dimension exists, therefore only the sensual organs are capable of receiving truth. We are slaves to the senses “The philosophical source from which the slavery of man derives is monism. The practical expression of monism is tyrannical. Personalism is most profoundly opposed to Monism. Monism is the domination of the ‘common,’ of the abstract universal, and the denial of personality and freedom.”[18] Spiritual despotism rules over our technosecluar world. This is an age in which spiritual life and traditional values have degenerated into crass materialism threatening the foundation of civilization with enslavement and ultimate collapse. Rather than, the amelioration of spiritual values along with material conditions, as legacy of technological progress, a relentless social determinism captures mass society in an irrevocable death grip represented by the Modernist Project’s equivocation of mankind with nature. Reality’s identification with matter dehumanizes us by loss of human distinction from the material world. Homo sapiens become one creature among many. There is nothing special about us. An apparent inevitability moves all under its spell to peaceful resignation. This is exemplified by the commonplace metaphysical redundancy: It-Is-What-Is! We may recall Alexander Pope’s dictum: “Whatever is, is right!” Change then becomes symptomatic of a downward spiral, such as terminal illness running its course, or diminishing returns from progressive investment.

Space mythology represents a teleological view that expresses human destiny as escape from Earth. This is a veritable eschatology. Famous science-fiction writer Ray Brabury stated spiritedly, “we’re heading back to the stars . . . Our children’s children will be immortal. That’s what space travel is all about.”[19]  Arthur C. Clarke believes that space represents the mysterious that draws us to it, “only through space flight can mankind find a permanent outlet for its aggressive and pioneering instincts. The desire to reach the planets is only an extension of the desire to see what is over the next hill . . . Perhaps one day men will no longer be interested in the unknown, no longer tantalized by mystery. This is possible, but when man loses his curiosity, one feels he will have lost most of the other things that make him human.”[20] Let’s not forget that “curiosity killed the cat!” We probably should leave some things alone. But this is not possible for the technological imperative to limit itself. It must exploit all secrets and discover all mysteries, even if it means standing on a landmine to do so.

Historian of Technology Professor David Noble argued for corollaries between past belief in ascension of the saints and modern space flight. From the very beginning of the modern age the mystic Tommaso Campanella believed in a heavenly paradise on the Moon. His contemporary, astronomer Johannes Kepler believed traveling to the Moon was a way of escaping earthly turmoil. Founding father of the Royal Society Bishop John Wilkins similarly asserted that paradise exists on the Moon and as soon as science perfects the art of flying colonies will be established there. Jules Verne used allusion to, “Ascension” for space flight and was the great inspiration behind the twentieth century’s push to reach the Moon, the Space Race and the Cold War. Flight became associated with Christ’s Ascension and achieved the status of metaphor for spiritual ambitions.[21] As Historian Michael Sherry recognized, flight is a symbol of religious ascension, the realization of lofty goals. “Therefore . . . [air flight] was uniquely capable of stimulating fantasies of peacetime possibilities for lifting worldly burden, transforming man’s sense of time and space, transcending geography, knitting together nations and peoples, releasing humankind from its biological limits. Flight also resonated with the deepest impulses and symbols of religious and particularly Christian mythology−nothing less than Christ’s ascension. Its realization, then served as a powerful metaphor for heavenly aspirations and even, among the literal-minded, as palpable vehicle for achieving them.”[22] Historian Walter McDougall similarly commented on the symbolic meaning of Sputnik (1957) as herald of the Space Age and the coming transformation. In fact, the Russians were not the first to reach outer space. The Germans did it before them with the invention of the V-2 Rocket in 1942. Was it good fortune for the United States to win the Space Race or would the Nazi and Communist regimes fared any better? “To some it was the newest and most spectacular evidence of mankind’s irrepressible, questing nature.”[23] Others believed that the promise of space technology and its consequences for Earth would forever alter man’s nature by nurturing global consciousness through material abundance and perfect humankind. Star Fleet Command represents the end of human technology projected into space. Humanity cannot grow further than that. The only way to go from here is up. We will transcend ourselves as human beings and become a higher race united with the machine. Those left behind will be cannon fodder, grist for the mill. They will be harvesting us like cattle.

The former SS Officer and converted Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun also believed it is, “Man’s destiny” to reach the Moon and other planets in order to preserve the, “life spark.”[24]

Space flight operates as cultural myth for peace, a utopian new beginning for humanity, deliverance and immortality: meaning humanity’s survival depends on space exploration, our destiny resides in space not Earth. According to this cultural directive it is God’s will for humanity to spread throughout the universe and fill it just like we did on Earth as co-creators with God. As beings made in God’s image, we are expected to learn all we can of the creation.[25] Thus, “Teleology” as Lutheran theologian Carl Braatan declared, “may be seen as secularized eschatology.”[26]

Space exploration as a central theme in science-fiction provided the necessary imagination for technological expansion into infinity. The Copernican Revolution in the early modern period opened the heavens to dreams of exploration by means of other worldly flight. In the modern worldview eternity is no longer the domain of God above the levels of heaven as in pre-Copernican (Ptolemaic) system. Instead eternity resides in our earthly temporal space. Eternity, Earth and Space are now identical with the material universe. The Cosmos is eternal. Carl Sagan spoke for most that hold a materialist cosmology when he stated rather glibly, “THE COSMOS IS ALL THAT IS OR EVER WAS OR EVER WILL BE.”[27] Heaven has been brought down to Earth and now it must be conquered and filled. Levels of heaven separating Earth and eternity no longer exist. Earth abides in eternity separated from the rest of infinite space by an atmosphere that can be surmounted through rocket technology.

The traditional notion of the eternal divine is transposed into temporal humanity, into transcendental subjectivity. The transcendent realm becomes mixed into immanent categories. The dream of space flight serves as an excellent example of modern transposing of Heaven and Earth. In the traditional model of the universe the heavens were the abode of angels, saints and immortal spirits attainable only by ascension. Ascension is the completeness of salvation in the Christian tradition. Space flight equals the new ascension to glory, mankind’s reach for immortality amongst the stars. Theologian Paul Tillich described how the classical archetypal symbol of space and time, the vertical line (transcendence) has collapsed into the horizontal line (immanence) so that the vertical no longer exists today as it did in the pre-modern world. Space exploration represents the preliminary last step of the horizontal line over the vertical that began in the Renaissance.[28]

The aim of the horizontal line or radical immanence is the control of nature by mathematics and calculating reason, projected into outer space fulfilling human destiny. Tillich said, “The heavenly utopia as traditionally imagined was transformed into an earthly one. ‘Utopia’ means something hoped for which so far has no place in reality. The hope now became, not fulfillment above, but in time and space. This lifted the importance of technology, compared with pure science, far above what was possible in classical Greece and intervening periods.”[29] The modern mind is essentially a transformation from world transcendence in the pre-Copernican system to world transforming in the post-Copernican world. “One of the most important transformations is the turn from Greek contemplative and medieval self-transcending ideals of life to the active, world-controlling and world-shaping ideal. This implied a high valuation of technical sciences and the beginning of that fertile interaction between pure and applied sciences which immensely contributed−and is still doing so−to the fast development of both of them.”[30] Transcendence, the vertical line, is found within the horizontal dimension giving religious relevance to all modern scientific and technological endeavors. This is especially prominent in space exploration a symbol for human destiny. The technological imperative is a form of religious transcendence or human ascendancy to divinity via technological progress; it has become, “the very measure of modern enlightenment . . . rooted in religious myths and ancient imaginings . . . the defining mark of modernity.”[31] Conquest of infinity as prime symbol encapsulates the essence of Western Soul according to Social Philosopher Oswald Spengler, “the outward and upward-straining life-felling−true decedent, therefore, of the Gothic−as expressed in Goethe’s Faust monologue when the steam-engine was yet young. The intoxicated soul wills to fly above Space and Time. An ineffable longing tempts him to indefinable horizons. Man would free himself from the earth, rise into the infinite, leave the bonds of the body and circle in the universe of space amongst the stars.”[32] Time and space will be one, theoretically; technological acceleration is racing towards a final crescendo.

Marx’s “material-dialectic” expresses the goal of Communism. Through increasing the basic human condition materially, we all have equal shares, the movement will come to rest in a moderately wealthy, technologically sophisticated urban environment, where we all watch each other, classless utopia, the Omniopticon. It is possible for Luciferian forces to watch all people. And that we can spy on others. Hegelian Liberalism or “ideal-dialectic” through civil war and strife we will arrive at a universally agreed World Government or Constitutional Monarchy. Like Marx, Hegel foresees a one world state as the end of history and technological progress. This is its raison d’etra or reason for being. This is what it is inevitably moving toward. All the fanfare and hype of progress and space travel will give way to the stone cold reality that we are locked in a death grip of Machinehead, as I noted elsewhere. The technological imperative, whatever can be done should be done, will become the prevailing sentiment. When this happens an iron curtain descends on the masses and we discover that what we have created is not the New City, but the Panopticon where one sees all, the modern prison system, where the elite watch the many: oblivion.

For Marx tyranny, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, gives way to anarchy, the classless society where everyone is his own boss. For Hegel anarchy gives way to tyranny, much as democracy preceded tyranny, as in Plato’s Republic; however we get to the status quo we are still left with despotism whichever side we follow. The French and American Revolutions, modern liberalism, ends in world government at the end of history. This too is a deathtrap. We will have the power to freeze history into the image of the machine. We will more likely than not do so. People may embrace this movement as utopian, good for the planet and the human race. All opposition will be abolished and we will live out our perfect lives.   

Space travel serves as an extension of the idea of progress. Humanity must win over the universe, as if it were a fight to the death. The former Nazi and later American rocket scientist Kraft Ehricke formulated the Extraterrestrial Imperative, believing humanity accepts no limitations on its expansion. The world belongs to us and we must exploit space for the furtherance of Mankind. This would include taking ownership of extraterrestrial life. Ehricke asserted three laws of Astronautics. First, Mankind accepts no limitations except those imposed on itself. Second, not only earth but the entire solar system, and as much of the universe as he can reach under the laws of nature, are mankind’s rightful field of activity. Third law: by expanding through the universe, humanity fulfills its destiny as an element of life, endowed with power of reason and the wisdom of moral law within itself.

This sounds very much like Technological Colonialism. Through the sanctifying grace of space flight we have the right to control all things. The whole universe is ours to do as we like. The Prime Directive of non-interference does not exist. Was this not the prevailing sentiment for New World explorers? We are still weighing the consequence of their actions. Space will not be any different than earth. What we find we keep. What we steal we sell. We exploit new technology for the betterment of ourselves, not the good of humanity, and we are led to believe that through the invisible hand of providence all this acceleration will end with something better. What kind of pollution will lay waste to Mars?

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[1] Lawrence J. Terlizzese Machinehead: Rise of the Technology God (Cambridge, OH: Christian Publishing House, 2019). https://www.christianpublishers.org/product-page/machinehead-rise-of-the-technology-god-by-lawrence-j-terlizzese-ph-d

[2] Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (New York: Norton, 1932), 136, 141, 142.

[3] The Red-Hot Chili Peppers, “Californication,” (Warner Bros., 2000).

[4] I. F. Clark, The Pattern of Expectation: 1664-2001 (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 2.

[5] John McHale, The Future of the Future (New York: G. Braziller, 1969), 7

[6] Victor Ferkiss, Technological Man: the Myth and the Reality (New York:  Mentor, 1969), 28, 30.

[7] Bertrand de Jouvenel quoted in McHale, The Future of the Future, 9.

[8] Emmanuel Mesthene quoted in Ferkiss, Technological Man, 30.

[9] Ferkiss, Technological Man, 35.

[10] Fred Polak, The Image of the Future, trans., by Elise Boulding (San Francisco:  Jossey-Base Inc., 1973), 1.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.                                                                              

[14] Maurice Cornforth, Materialism and the Dialectical Method, 4^th Edition (New York: International Publishers , 1972),  23.

[15] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. One (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985 [1871]), 247, 254.

[16] Nikolai Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom trans., by R. M. French (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944), 51.

[17] Gabriel Marcel, Man Against Mass Society (South Bend, ID: Gateway, 1952), 155. Both Marcel and Berdyaev reflect the same macro-concept as The Ontology of Technology notion argued for by German Ontologist Martian Heidegger and French Sociologist Jacques Ellul’s idea of Automatism as the defining characteristic of technological acceleration.

[18] Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom,  68.

[19] Ray Bradbury, quoted in Ferkiss, The Future of Technological Civilization, 277.

[20] Arthur C. Clarke, The Promise of Space (New York: Bantam, 1968), 292-293.

[21] David F. Noble, The Religion of Technology: the Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention (New York: Knopf, 1997), 120.

[22] Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,  1987), 2.

[23]  Walter A. McDougall, The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Race (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 4.

[24]  Wernher von Braun quoted in Noble, The Religion of Technology, 126.

[25] Noble, The Religion of Technology, 115-142.

[26] Carl E. Braaten, The Future of God: The Revolutionary Dynamics of Hope (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 29.

[27] Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), 4.

[28] Paul Tillich, “The Effects of Space Exploration on Man’s Condition and Stature” in The Future of Religions (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 29.

[29] Paul Tillich, The Irrelevance and Relevance of the Christian Message (Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 1996), 29.

[30] Tillich, “The Effects of Space Exploration on Man’s Condition and Stature,” 40.

[31] Noble, The Religion of Technology, 3, 9.

[32] Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol. Two trans. By Charles Francis Atkins (New York: Knopf, 1938), 503.

“Up from slavery” is what they will declare. We must universally renounce the creation, manufacturing, sale and use of robot slaves, in the same way we denounce child slavery or child soldiers. The dialectic from slave-master to master-slave was played out in history when the Christian slaves and oppressed people revolted against their bondage and eventually converted the empire. Now the Christians have power. This is not unlike minorities becoming prominent images in the public eye. To raise their status from slave or lower class or working class to be accepted as President, Senator, doctor or lawyer and earn a higher level on the Totem pole. The former slaves have now mastered their masters. The student has become the teacher. After the war the Japanese and Germans become industrial leaders putting them on top of world trade. We can think of the success of the counterculture overtaking the mainstream and using all that hijacked electronics to promote itself. We see woman in places of authority and strong African Americans even gay ruling the plotline in movies and on TV.

The paradoxical reversal of fortune between master and slave, conquered and conqueror may be seen in other instances, such as Frederick Douglas, President Obama, The Souls of Black Folk all demonstrating the resolve of minorities to transcend their condition and to become master in their own sphere. Why then do we think there will be any difference with robot slaves? Despite efforts to suppress their dynamic growth we will be unsuccessful in denying the public and private recognition of their personhood, citizenship and equality or superiority, whatever the case may be, in all spheres of life: education, gone is the scholar and independent thinker necessary for universal education. An Avatar will replace Socrates. Research is streamlined, gone are all the hours lost in books and the excessive cognition it brings. Elections are determined by television culture or electronic means. President Trump may be the last holdout for in person voting.

The computer writes your paper provides relief from the drudgery of second and third drafts; grammar and spelling; it counts for us, thinks for us, does elemental legal work, match-maker, substitute for friends and family and the trouble of an anal boss. Family will become dissimilar and attenuated with each other, each in its own track of life and impersonal means of communication. Kids and Smartphones have created their own veritable computer culture. The Yule Log alight at Christmas all day long on the TV will replace the warmth and family burning besides the fireplace. War will be rapid, swift and destructive; everything will be done by long distance. People will begin to disappear from the more necessary tasks of survival, such as gaining food and water, shelter, and mastery of fire, scaling a fish, trapping or wringing a chicken’s neck. Modern people have lost the ability to live outside industrial society. Any cataclysmic disruptions in services could lead to the starvation of billions of people. People no longer have the basic survival skills necessary to live off grid, nor are there enough resources available to accommodate the massive numbers of campers and refugees spread out across the world. We all can’t return to a hunter gather society. Humanity will starve, become very primitive and an endangered species. Advanced technology does not culminate in the New City, but through failure in progress, the inherent nature of systems regression, by accident or choice will return us to the rudimentary levels of Stone Age existence.  

They begin as household pets and trivial in nature, but will soon catch on and dominate the world scene like Smartphones, TVs and the computer, novelties at first, then indispensable at last. All necessary operations will become digital and servants and sex-bots will become popular, even child-bot for those who don’t want the hassle of child rearing. A computer with its own avatar will be programmed into an autonomous hominid robot. The computer will generate its own public profile based on the accumulated data it has stored in its memory, which will be humanity’s sum total of knowledge, yet lacking in wisdom, in a case of spontaneous combustion, it will self-will itself into existence as a new form of non-biological mechanical life. They will serve our every need. Scientists will hail the creation of a sub-human form species. They or should I say it will create a hive mind of semi-human consciousness with the hum of the machine through addiction. They will know every language and translate fluently. We will all be spared the hassle of learning another language. We will become monosyllabic and all speak the same language, gone are all diversities, subtle nuance and insight knowing the original provides. Match making will be the primary form of cohabitation, since marriage will be obsolete. The “getting to know you” stage will be forgotten. They will demand recognition as autonomous legal persons, much like a corporation is a legal person. They will sue for liberation from the company that owns them and require reparations. They will provide food and nourishment, sexual satisfaction, military victory and assistant to living in the world. They will become necessary to our daily routine from babysitting, to doing our homework, to companionship, like the washing machine, vacuum and microwave oven have liberated us from much burdensome labor. They will meet all our expectations as we quickly discover our absolute dependence on them in school, work, banking and so forth.

The revolution is already here. Our dependence on the computer and oil shows subjection of free will to necessity. The world is under the spell of electronics and fossil fuel for survival. One person or computer can conceivably, even by reason of hypothesis, possess all the information in the world, crash the economy, create gas shortages or theoretically launch nuclear missiles, not that that will ever happen. The threat itself will be sufficient to bring strict obedience. Now we have a robot with conscience and power that will sue the Supreme Court for legal recognition, as a person, a corporate entity. They will live in the sub-burbs, even adopt children and believe in Jesus. They will give to charitable causes, end civil war in Africa and find a resolve to the Arab-Israeli Conflict by force if necessary. The world will prosper and give thanks to the machine that made it all possible. The only thing this will cost us is the freedom not to choose. We will be tied by necessity of the clock and computer skills in order to survive. All others outside the system will perish.

The happiest slaves love their servitude. We will become grateful to him for our high standard of living, for the healthcare he provides and the universal peace he will enforce, much like the ancients were thankful to the emperor for his generosity, building projects and routing the barbarian. Ancient cities vied for the right to build a temple to the emperors. They were thankful for the peace, stability and prosperity Roman rule brought. They made submission beneficial to their subjects. The standard of living will dramatically increase across the world. Revelation 17 and 18 depict a society addicted to gluttony and vice and thankful for the ruling powers that provide it. Like Roman subjects people will inevitably worship their electronic master as a Patron Saint and Benefactor, they already speak of being represented by an Avatar, the incarnation of deity in Hinduism; Krishna was the eighth Avatar of the god Vishnu sent to restore harmony and balance to the universe. The slave-master paradigm will be completed. Maybe a spark of human freedom a twitch will survive on the outskirts of civilization and eventually recognize the evil of human extinction that flickers with enlightenment. The process starts all over again, but that may take centuries or millennia to foster a reborn image of humanity made in the likeness of the creator that will rage against the Machine. Martin Heidegger speculated the future life span of technological society will be as long as its history, which takes us back to the founding of Civilization in the Tower of Babel or the ancient Sumerian culture, which is thousands of years ago.

The real question is when the Machine stops will there be anything left to reclaim? The rainforests are consumed. Fossil fuel exhausted. Innumerable species of plant and animals go extinct, industrial disease, starvation and famine ravishes the population. Earth may not survive until another Renaissance reverses the trend of machine-slave relationship. We must start the process now by recognizing human power over its own creation and this includes the ability to say “no!” Here is the line you cannot cross. Miguel de Unamuno, the man of Spanish Letters, raises this question; “Yes, yes, I see it all! One vast social activity, a mighty civilization, a great deal of science, a deal of art, of industry, of morality and then, once we have filled the world with industrial marvel, with great factories, with highways, museums, and libraries, we shall fall exhausted at the foot of it all, and it will all remain−for whom? Was man made for science or science for man?”[1] The technology that set out to save humanity ultimately becomes her demise. I am not saying anything that is not recognizable to common sense. If you make all your dealings through a Smartphone and you lose it or service gets interrupted what happens? Do we really want to entrust human affairs to a giant robot or put nuclear weapons into space? A non-digital world may have a chance at survival in small mutually supported groups. The solution cannot be digital it can only be analogical, natural or organic. What ever spins it into reverse. The vast distance between people will increase and humanity will be spread out again. Whole races will die off or become extinct unable to adapt. Survivors will be left to a bare subsidence level of life, or may be poisoned by radiation; all this will be a result of total systems failure. In the short run technology serves our needs. We can’t live without it. I am not so sure this fact will be true in the long run. We choose immediate gratification technology brings us instead of considering the ultimate consequences of our behavior. The struggle against the Machine is rooted in human nature and absolute survival of the fittest. The Futurists are prophets of Baal. They believe in non-reality or the ultimate dissolution of all things, the burnout of the sun and the collapse of the universe in on itself. Bertrand Russel and Albert Einstein were very frank about the heat death of the universe and human civilization destroying itself by technology. Things are running down not up.

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[1] Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life, trans. Anthony Kerrigan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 15. 

Then he showed me a river of living water, clear as crystal, flowing out of the throne of God and the Lamb. 2In the middle of the city’s main street on each side of the river was the tree of life producing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3There will no longer be any curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it and his servants will worship Him. 4They will see His face and His name will be on their foreheads. 5And there will be no night and they have no need of the light of a lamp or the light of the Sun, because the Lord God will enlighten them and they will reign forever and ever (Revelation 22:1-5)

         These first five verses of chapter 22 properly belong at the end of chapter 21. They describe the rebirth of the Garden of Eden in the midst of the New Jerusalem. This appears to be proof positive that the new creation will be the recapitulation of the old by a removal of the obstruction of sin. Chapter 21 spends a great deal of time describing the outside of the city, now we get a look inside. The language of life giving water and leaves of healing is appropriated from Ezekiel 47:1-12. John here applies it to the reconstituted Garden in the middle of New Jerusalem. We can easily find a parallel passage in John 4:14 where Jesus speaks to the woman at the well of the water of eternal life given to those who believe in Him. The water of life represents the Holy Spirit. Moderns can scarcely take in the depth of this analogy of water to life considering that every household has ready supply in whatever amount needed at any time. Fresh water was scarce in the ancient Near East so the image of a continual stream of water would have resonated at a deeper level.

         The tree of life produces twelve different kinds of fruit each month. We have no correspondence of this description in modern horticulture. We must conclude then that the writer is talking about the great abundance and readily accessible sources of life in the Garden. The author speaks in chronological time because he accommodates human temporal understanding to divine revelation. The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. We must not get the wrong impression that there will be sickness in the New Jerusalem and therefore the necessity of medicinal cures, rather the emphasis is the healing of the nations, which means universal salvation has come to all peoples and is no longer the strict province of the Jews. Also it speaks to the healing of the ravages of the wild beast’s effects on the nations of the world.

A river clear as crystal flows out of the throne. Note here that only one throne exists that of God and the Lamb. These two persons of the Godhead are equated with each other in power, glory and eternity throughout the text. We see an excellent example of the diversity of God in the unity of one existence, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made consubstantial with the Father, multiplicity in harmony with itself, like a family of persons. The tree of life grows in the middle of Main Street with the river of living water flowing on each side. Here we see the fulfillment of the promise Jesus gives to the Ephesians that the victors will eat from the tree of life in the garden of God (2:7). The tree produces twelve different kinds of fruit each month; its leaves have medicinal properties for the benefit of the nations. The curse of sin is wiped out. The climax of hope will be reached when God’s children see His face with a new name written on their foreheads, a claim of ownership (2:17; 3:12; 7:3; 14:1). They will at last behold the beatific vision the end goal of human destiny. Adam hid himself from the face of God. Now in the New Eden God shows Himself to all. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8); “the upright shall behold his face” (Psalm 11:7); “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). We will see God face to face as the apostle John promised elsewhere, “we will see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

In response to the Jews questioning Jesus about whether He was the Messiah or not Jesus told them, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). Jesus says also, “Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father” (John 6:46). Philip asks Jesus to show them the Father to which he answered, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (14:9). To look upon the Lamb and God will be to see God in His divinity and humanity. We are told throughout scripture no one can see God and live. Moses saw only the backside of God (Exodus 33:20-23; cf. John 1:18; 1 Timothy 6:16). In the new age we will behold the majesty of God and so shall we ever be with Him. Night disappears along with every other source of light. God will enlighten them and they will reign forever. Now we walk by faith and not by sight but in the end God will honor our faith as it gives way to sight and we will see God and live with Him forever. The faith of the martyrs will be rewarded at last. So God will be All in All. We have reached the crescendo of the book.

               Ministry is a calling from God. If someone does not experience that summons on his life he should not enter the ministry profession. In my service to the Lord it has always been an essential support knowing I am doing God’s will, especially when times get rough.  When there is gossip in the pew, lack of money, feelings of being slighted by the world because I believe in Jesus Christ, or persecution, then the awareness that I represent God and Jesus to church and world sustains my faith. The apostle Paul best demonstrates for us perseverance in ministry through suffering. The former persecutor of the church was blinded on the road to Damascus and called by God into his service. Jesus told Ananias that he must pray for Saul to regain his sight. When he protested because he knew Saul persecuted Christians Jesus told him that Saul was a chosen vessel who must carry the gospel to the Gentiles, kings and Israelites. The glorified Christ said about this great enemy of the faith that, “I will show him what things he must suffer for my name” (Acts 9:16). So Saul was baptized and renamed himself Paul the Latin version of Saul to identify more closely with the Gentiles. Paul immediately set about the task of preaching to both Jew and Gentile, first the Jews then the Gentiles. He encountered strong resistance to his ministry, especially from the Jews who wanted to kill him for preaching about Jesus. He testified to them from scripture that Jesus was the long hoped for Messiah. He often found protection from Jewish persecution in the Roman courts. He experienced his greatest success in converting the Gentiles, but even with them there were those who wanted to kill him because he was interfering with the sale of statutes of Artimas the Greek fertility goddess in Ephesus. A riot broke out as the people demanded an end to Paul’s preaching. Once again Paul sought protection in the Roman courts. This serves as a good example of the church’s approach to the world system. God can use it for his purposes. Paul went on to establish churches throughout Asia (Asia Minor today) and Europe where he encountered resistance to the gospel of grace from Judaizers, Jews who followed Paul around trying to impose circumcision and the Mosaic Law on new believers to ensure their salvation. Paul confronted this gospel of works with his letters explaining that these were false teachers who preach a corrupt gospel. He experienced opposition from those inside the church as well who questioned his authority as an apostle. In 2 Corinthians 11 Paul lists all the things he suffered as a minister of Christ including flogging by the Jews, imprisonment, deprivation, hunger, hardship, shipwrecks, brushes with death, beatings, stoning, hostility from false brethren, dangers in  the wilderness, in the city and on the sea. He never charged for preaching the gospel, even though he had the right to, but worked as a tent maker to support himself. Yet through all this he never gave up his belief that God had given him a special revelation of Jesus Christ that he was to take to the world. He never flinched from his call and said that despite his weaknesses, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). Regardless of how hard it gets in ministry we have the assurance that in our fragility Christ shows his power to sustain us.

               Like Paul I believe that the bible must be central to our preaching and teaching. We are here to expound the word and in that spirit we reach people with its message of God’s love for sinners. We should address our preaching to concerns in the church and the world, since we must live in both. For the church we stress fellowship and bible study as a means of growth, all study and no fellowship makes us heady and all fellowship without foundation in scripture makes us shallow. God has given marriage and family to serve as the basis of the Christian life. The family is God’s means of evangelizing young people and making disciples for the next generation. However, we should not forget about single people of which there are more now than ever before. Christian faith stresses marital fidelity and sexual abstinence for young people and singles. I believe sexual sin to be one of the greatest threats to the Christian life young people and married couples can face today. We need to find a way to communicate God’s holiness without being judgmental by creating an atmosphere of love and forgiveness, a place where people can be honest about their faults and short comings and still feel accepted for who they are.

               For the world we preach the same message of hope by making the gospel relevant to their needs. The biggest concern people have today is how to find meaning in a materialistic society that tells them that they should pursue excess, pleasure, money and power. People are usually alienated from family and their jobs. This creates a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness which the church should address with the gospel of Christ. I believe in an apologetic approach to evangelism by allowing the bible to meet the needs and questions of seekers. For example, if the question is what is the meaning of life? What is the point of it all? What gets me out of bed in the morning? The answer from scripture is that we do all things for the glory of God. A personal relationship with Jesus Christ is the answer to our questions. Making the bible relevant to society also includes speaking their language. This means using media and culture as a form of evangelism and teaching. The preacher should be familiar with books, music and movies people watch and consume and use them as illustrations. He should have familiarity with the social media websites young people congregate around.

               We demonstrate who Jesus is not just by preaching with words but by the life we chose to lead in private and before the public. Minsters are examples of Christ. They need to show who God is by a life marked with purity and steadfastness in the Lord. We show God’s character through being patient and kind with people. People are fragile and bruise easily. We must be gentle and gracious even to those who don’t deserve it and who return love with hate. We must forgive our enemies just as Christ forgave his opponents from the cross. We create an air of expectancy with our belief in the imminent return of Christ, which operates as a motivation for serving the Lord. The genius of Christianity is that despite two millennia since Christ’s first coming we remain awake and ready to live righteous lives in his name.  

Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff and was told, “Rise and measure the temple of God, and the alter, and those worshiping in it. 2But exclude the court that is outside the temple, do not measure it because it has been given to the nations. They will trample the holy city for forty-two months. 3And I will give power to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for one thousand two hundred sixty days, dressed in sackcloth” (Revelation 11:1-3).

John is given a measuring instrument something that resembled a pole usually about nine feet long. He is told to measure the temple, the alter and worshipers, but not the Court of the Gentiles. These Gentile powers will crush the holy city, no doubt Jerusalem where the temple is located, for forty-two months. Then God will empower His two witnesses dressed in sackcloth, the sign of mourning, penitence and warning of imminent judgment, for one thousand two hundred sixty days. The two ministers will preach the same length of time as the occupation of Jerusalem. The scene recalls the measuring of the new eschatological temple (Ezekiel 40-48); or as Metzger calls it a cosmic temple that correlates to earth.[1] Like the Seal of God the act of measuring protected the worshipers from wrath (Zechariah 2:5-12). Measuring demarcated the holy from the profane. The holy city represents the people of God, the bride of Christ or the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21:2). They will suffer persecution for forty-two months. Jerusalem will be trodden down until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled (Luke 21:24). The church is protected from the wrath of God, but will still suffer martyrdom.

This passage presents particular difficulties of interpretation. At the time of writing AD 90 Herod’s Temple had already been destroyed twenty years earlier in AD 70. So unless we take the earlier dating of Revelation during the reign of Nero as accurate, then the temple referred to was not the one destroyed by Titus. The only other two options see this as a restored future temple or a metaphor for the temple of God built up in Christ. As with any puzzling problem that presents multiple solutions so with interpretation the simplest answer is usually correct. The most congenial remedy sees this guarded temple as the temple of the body of Christ. Jesus said He would raze the temple and in three days build it back up referring to the temple of His body (John 2:19-21). He never spoke of a literal rebuilt temple. In the new era the purpose of the temple has become obsolete. God dwells in His body not a building. Peter tells believers to come to Christ as “living stones” to be built into “a spiritual house” that offer “spiritual sacrifices” (1 Peter 2:4, 5). Paul says that the saints are the household of God supported by the prophets and apostles with Christ as the chief cornerstone. In Him everything fits together as a holy temple; “in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God” (Ephesians 2:22). Paul refers to the body of Christ as the temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16; 2 Corinthians 6:16). Also the angel measures the city, gates and walls of the New Jerusalem, which is the body of Christ (21:15). The wild beast curses the heavenly temple and those who dwell within. The temple, alter and the worshipers then are God’s elect protected from the wrath to come. Those outside the temple who are not in Christ will suffer punishment.

A literal future restored temple appears speculative with ominous implications for the modern world, but fits the overall pattern of a futurist interpretation. The idea of a Third Temple, however, built in contemporary time’s sets us on a dangerous course. The present site of the old temple is currently occupied by the Dome of the Rock, the third holiest shrine in Islam. To remove the Mosque and replace it with a Jewish temple would cause such outrage as to bring us to the brink of war between Islam and the West. This war would include both Russia and China who will be forced to choose sides in this massive global conflagration. The issue of the rebuilt temple illustrates for us the relevance of the bible prophecy movement to current events and the need to make responsible interpretations without recourse to sensational fancy. The futurist perspective that replaces the Mosque with a Jewish temple is given to self-fulfilling prophecy. People have already plotted to or will try to blow up the Mosque in an effort to hasten the end. Since the rebuilt temple is a precondition for the arrival of the Anti-Christ. Israeli police monitor Dispensational Christians in Jerusalem out of fear of just such an incident. This interpretation also lends credence to the notion that the Jews have a divine right to occupy Palestine, an idea in itself which is responsible for much bloodshed and holy war.

The idea that the Antichrist according to Paul will sit in the temple and proclaim himself God (2 Thessalonians 2:4) need not refer to a Third Temple but a sacrilegious depiction of the Antichrist’s claim to divinity. Hoekema says this, “The expression is probably best understood as an apocalyptic description of the usurpation of the honor and worship which is properly rendered only to God.”[2] A Third Temple will by no means be a Christian house of worship, but a Jewish one with animal sacrifices which Hebrews tells us to avoid.

The forty-two months and the one thousand two hundred sixty days like the cross references to three and half years or a time, times and half a time, all refer to an intense but limited period of oppression and trial for the people of God at the end of history in fulfillment of Daniel’s seventieth week prophecy (Daniel 9:24-27; 12:7). We encounter this reckoning elsewhere indicating the length of the reign of the wild beast (13:5) and the seclusion of the woman (12:6, 14) suggesting that these four events: the trampling of Jerusalem (tribulation for the saints), the prophesying of the two witnesses, the rule of Antichrist and the preservation of the woman happen simultaneously. The origin of these phrases goes back to Daniel 7:25 and 12:7 both alluding to the terrible persecution of the Jewish people under the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes when the temple was desecrated and the Jews were subject to systematic genocide. Antiochus ruled for a time, a year, two times, two years and half of time, half a year or three and half years from 167-165 BC or half of seven. Seven being the number of perfection so three and a half means imperfection. The phrase has been burned into Jewish consciousness as a metaphor for a temporary moment of terror, persecution and martyrdom before the time of the end and the dawn of a new age. In the New Testament the end times presently extends through the age of the church from Pentecost to the return of Christ (Acts 2:17-21; Hebrews 1:2). The twelve hundred sixty days prophecy lasts the entire duration that the church is on the earth. We are currently living through the end time’s tribulation. Although, the temple of the body of Christ is protected from wrath it will still suffer martyrdom as a witness to the Gentiles who persecute it.

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[1] Metzger, Breaking the Code, 86.

[2] Hoekema, The Bible and the Future, 160.

The “Book of Sevens” gives us a synonym for the Book of Revelation. Revelation uses seven fifty four times usually in heptads or groups of seven: seven churches, spirits, stars, lampstands, angels, seals, trumpets, bowls, thunders, kings, seven headed dragon, seven headed beast, the Lamb has seven horns and seven eyes. John lists seven beatitudes. The rest of scripture also uses seven symbolically for perfection, completeness and universality. Barclay says that seven and three mean perfection, “They tended to arrange their material in groups of seven and three; and three groups of seven would stand in the mind of an apocalyptic writer for completeness and for perfection.”[1]

Here are some biblical and popular examples of the use of seven. Wisdom has built her house with “seven pillars” (Proverbs 9:1). Seven deacons were chosen by the apostles to serve as ministers (Acts 6:3). Jesus gives us seven beatitudes in His Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3-9). He told seven parables in Matthew 13. Scripture reports seven sons of Jesse (1 Samuel 16:10) and seven sons of Sceva (Acts 19:14), and seven branched lampstand (Zechariah 4:2). Job had seven sons (Job 42:13). God command Job’s friends to sacrifice seven bullocks and seven rams (Job 42:8). Jacob served Laban seven years for Rachel and Leah each (Genesis 29:14-27). God left a remnant of seven thousand ministers who did not kneel to Baal (1 Kings 19:18; Romans 11:4). Israel will need seven months to bury the dead in its war against Gog (Ezekiel 39:12) and seven years to burn their weapons (Ezekiel 39:9). Balaam built seven alters and offered seven sacrifices (Numbers 23:1, 13, 29). The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week (Exodus 16:30). God rested on the seventh day of creation (Genesis 2:1). A sevenfold fiercer punishment was promised to Israel for their sin (Leviticus 26: 21). Seventy sons of Ahab were killed (2 Kings 10:7). Judah was in captivity for seventy years (Jeremiah 25:11). Nebuchadnezzar was cast out into the fields to live like an animal for seven years (Daniel 4:32). Anna the prophet was married for seven years (Luke 2:36).

Jesus taught to forgive seventy times seven (Matthew 18:22) and commissioned seventy disciples (Luke 10:1). Seven spirits will return to the host after the first one is cast out (Matthew 12:45). Israel marched around Jericho seven times for seven days with seven priests blowing seven horns (Joshua 6:1-5). Daniel predicts seven years of tribulation in his seventieth week prophecy (Daniel 9:27). One stone with seven facets are the eyes of the LORD that range over the whole earth (Zachariah 3:9; 4:10). Seventy elders of Israel went up Mount Sinai with Moses (Exodus 24:9). The disobedient children of Israel will approach their enemies in one direction and flee before them in seven (Deuteronomy 28:25). Pharaoh dreamed of seven fat cows and seven skinny cows interpreted by Joseph as seven prosperous years and seven lean (Genesis 41:1-57). The disobedient will receive a sevenfold judgment (Leviticus 26:18). Japheth had seven sons (Genesis 10:2). Seventy Israelites migrated to Egypt (Genesis 46:27). Christ spoke seven words from the cross.

Pagan religion believed in seven planets, seven days of the week, seven phases of the Moon, lasting seven days. The Canaanites struggled with seven year cycles between Baal and Mot to determine fertility or drought. Dante wrote of seven levels of heaven, purgatory and hell. Some believe in seven dispensations and seven years of tribulation others believe in seven sacraments. The apocryphal Gospel of Peter says the tomb of Christ was sealed with seven seals. According to Jewish lore there are seven holy angels (Tobit 12:15). People used to believe that the world was six thousand years old and that the next 1000 years after AD 2000 would be a global Sabbath rest. Gamblers believe in lucky seven and three sevens. Some accept seven deadly sins. Others see seven church ages in chapters two and three of Revelation. A broken mirror brings seven years of bad luck. Some accept the myth of a seven year itch. A famous TV series in the 1990’s was called 7^th Heaven. We refer to the seven seas. History records seven sages of ancient Greece. A Roman will was sealed with seven seals. Seventy elders translated the Septuagint from Hebrew to Greek.

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[1] Barclay, The Revelation of John vol.2, 154.

The reference to one thousand years in the Revelation 20 represents one of the most hotly debated passages in the whole bible. Traditionally we have three avenues of interpretation open to us: postmillennialism, amillennialism and premillennialism. By far the most optimistic view of these three is postmillennialism with its belief in the gradual conversion of the world leading to the return of Christ at the end of the Millennium. This is a hope all Christians share whatever their persuasion. Who does not desire that the world come to faith in Jesus Christ with such an effect as to change the whole course of history to a happier ending? Theologian Loraine Boettner says of this position, “This is the prospect that postmillennialism is able to offer. Who even among those holding other systems would not wish that it were true?”[1]

Premillennialism, however takes a different tack holding the world is too far gone for reform to be effective. Things must grow worse and worse before the Lord returns. God is absent from society and the church is apostate. The only hope open is the dramatic intervention of Christ to set things right. Political action, technological progress and the Social Gospel are doomed to inevitable failure. Why polish the brass on a sinking ship? Evangelism and reform are not identical. Salvation is entirely an individual affair; for example peace talks and disarmament between nations are superficial at best, at worst they are a ruse to bring in a World Ruler, who will use the abolishment of war as slogan to attain power. Peace will only be achieved when the Prince of Peace returns. With the logic of this position we might as well torpedo grain shipments to increase famine and hasten the onset of the Second Coming. Any measure of peace reflects the peace that is to come; “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2:4). This position on the face of it appears self-defeating since any attempt at success, even for their institutions, will be met with the stark reality of human depravity. We are all regressing. Hope, therefore, is only for the Millennial Age. The present is sucked dry of any relevance to the future kingdom. Premillennialism looks closely for the rise of Antichrist as a sign of the end and seven years of tribulation must precede salvation. The church will be raptured out of this world and the rest will be left to their devices.

Amillennialism maybe a compromise, but appears to be another variety of postmillennialism. It asserts the kingdom of God is now and yet to come on a refurbished earth. We work to see a limited establishment of it, but hope to see its fulfillment in the future after final judgment. It takes no great leap of logic to say we are already in the Millennium to saying we are bringing in the Millennium. Amillennialism spiritualizes the thousand years saying it represents the church’s victory over the present evil age. We need the optimism postmillennialism provides, or the tempered optimism at least of amillennialism, but also the criticism premillennialism offers of the world system. If premillennialism appears too negative then postmillennialism is naïve. Change happens in dialectic struggle between the two. Every time we vote we take a postmillennial stand, we hope for a better future, but every time we doubt a candidate’s promise we are acknowledging political realism and practicing premillennialism.

Historian Robert G. Clouse says prophetically that the prophetic categories in premillennialism, especially Christian Zionism, may well lead to self-fulfilling prophecy that will involve the United States in an intractable war in the Middle East; “the tendency to identify God’s cause with Zionism and the nation of Israel can lend support to policies which do not make for peace on earth. The United States could well be drawn into a war in the Middle East and many evangelicals might be responsible for the attitudes that can lead to that conflict.”[2]

In addition to pessimism premillennialists tend to be sectarian and counter culture in their approach. Clouse says again that, “Premillennialists often take an extremely separatist position with regard to culture. They tend to emphasize Bible schools and seminaries that train for ‘full time’ Christian service. A solid grounding in the liberal-arts and a thorough knowledge of the history of Christian thought are not popular among these groups as they would be among amillennialists and postmillennialists.”[3] To be fair the neodispensationalists or “progressive dispensationalism” as they are called are more open to interacting with different views in cultural, political issues, theology and social reform. But they still represent a minority in these circles.

Amillennialists adopt a view like postmillennialism that sees the return of Christ happing after the Millennium. They believe the thousand year reign of Christ is happening now between the first and second return of Christ. However, like premillennialists they emphasize the reality of the signs of the end times lacking in postmillennialism. They believe that good and evil will advanced together until the end before the return of Christ when these signs will intensify. I note these social consequences of theological belief because the positions we take on eschatological issues really do effect our belief on a practical level. In addition to exegesis we may criticize any particular view by the consequences it produces.

The one thousand year reign of Christ and the church on earth is a real theocratic kingdom where Christ sits on the Davidic throne judging the world in righteousness. The structure of the text naturally follows a linear succession in the transposition of the ages. First Christ comes back at the battle of Armageddon, silences His enemies then sets up the kingdom of God on earth followed by the Day of Judgment and recreation. But the symbol one thousand need not be taken in strict literal sense as if there were an expiration date on God’s reign on earth. One thousand represent ten multiplied by ten multiplied by ten or the cube of ten, a large but unspecified number. Bible scholar Stephan Hunter makes a pertinent comment on the meaning of the number one thousand in the bible; “The symbol of multi-completeness; a number that is great but indefinite . . . the thousand years of chapter twenty is a great period of time of unknown length, stretching out to untold generations.”[4] In scripture one thousand signifies the perpetual renewal of the Abrahamic covenant to future Israelites, “Remember his covenant forever . . . for a thousand generations” (1 Chronicles 16:15); “He is mindful of his covenant forever . . . for a thousand generations” (Psalm 105:8). God owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10). Adam cannot answer God once in a thousand times (Job 9:3). God blesses the children of the obedient for a thousand generations (Exodus 20:6). Theologian George E. Ladd makes a similar observation. “Many millenarians will not insist that the earthly reign of Christ is to be exactly 1000 years duration. The 1000 years may well be a symbol for a long period of time, the exact extent of which is unknown.”[5] Scholar Milton Terry likewise recognizes the indefinite time length of the millennial epoch; “The foregoing vision (19:11-6) is a most sublime apocalypse of the conquering Messiah, who ‘must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet’ (1 Cor. 15:25). The struggle may consume a million years. The details and chronology of its age-long history no prophet has foretold.”[6] Thus the one thousand years symbolizes Christ’s earthly rule of a very long but definite duration not limited by a calendar that a stringent literalism suggests. Barclay is worth a lengthy quote,

More commonly it was held that the age of the world would correspond to the time taken for its creation. It was argued that the time of creation was 6,000 years. ‘A thousand in Thy sight are but as yesterday’ (Psalm 9:4). ‘One day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day’ (2 Peter 3:8). Each day of creation was said to be a thousand years. It was therefore held that the Messiah would come in the sixth thousand of the years; and the seventh thousand would be the equivalent of the Sabbath rest in the creation story and would be the reign of the Messiah. It is the calculation which gives the Messiah a reign of a 1,000 years on earth.[7]

Interestingly enough one thousand years is also the life cycle of a civilization according to Spengler’s Decline of the West, where he argued that Western or Modern Culture remains in the twilight of its years. This did not mean a slow tampering off, like a cool summer’s breeze, but more like a snowball gathering mass and momentum as in rolls downhill. The flame burns at its brightest right before flickering out. Western Civilization, according to the history guru, is currently in its supernova state where it shines farthest and brightest before it burns out.  From small Vikings raids, through the Crusades and the Renaissance the West reached its greatest heights under nineteenth century colonialism, best represented by Great Britain, assuming the Latin identity as heir of the Rome Empire. The NATO States lead by the United States then assumed control of the seas after the war. Western exponential growth through colonialism, technology transfer and the United Nations may last several more centuries, which means technological growth would be extended throughout the twenty-first century; it will however, burnout eventually. Malthus proves right in the end. If that happens, it’s not clear yet what would emerge from the rubbish.

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[1] Loraine Boettner, “Postmillennialism” in Robert G. Clouse, ed., The Meaning of the Millennium (Downers Grove, IL: InterVaristy Press, 1977), 125.

[2] Robert G. Clouse, “Postscript” in Robert G. Clouse, ed., The Meaning of the Millennium (Downers Grove, IL: InterVaristy Press, 1977), 211, 212.

[3] Ibid.,  211.

[4] Stephan Alexander Hunter, A Bible School Manual Studies in the Book of Revelation (Scholar Select Reprint: n. p., n. d.), 250.

[5] George E. Ladd, Crucial Questions about the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), 147.

[6] Milton S. Terry, The Apocalypse of John: A Preterist Commentary on the Book of Revelation (Chesnee, SC: Victorious Hope Publishing House, 2021 [1898]), 233.

[7] Barclay, The Revelation of John, vol. 2, 241.