By Elizabeth Prata
Tech giants are making decisions for us. Governments, with the assistance of technology, are intruding on our private lives in ways that we’d believe unthinkable two months ago.
Example: Amazon is delaying fulfillment based on their assessment of whether the item is “essential” or not. At the outset of the lockdown, I ordered two items.
1. CPAP headgear
2. Compression socks
Both items were medically necessary for me. I use the CPAP machine to breathe at night, my sleep apnea is bad and I stop breathing multiple times per night for lengthy periods. The headgear is the strap that keeps the mask attached to my face. It had gotten very stretched and through repeated washings the velcro was practically useless. My machine data showed increasing number of apnea incidents during the night due to mask slippage. I ordered a new one. Amazon said it wasn’t essential.
Oh, yes it is.
During times I am not at work I sit a lot at my table and write, edit, use the laptop for entertainment, and communication. I might sit for long periods, and thus the circulation in my legs causes ankle swelling. I use compression socks to help with this. Amazon said the socks weren’t essential.
Oh, yes it is.
So, tech giants are monitoring what we buy and making decisions for us as to whether we truly need it or not.
Then I learn that some tech apps are suspending privileges based on the topic of sermon, if they don’t like it!
Tech Giants Begin the Crackdown on Unapproved Sermons as Churches Are Forced Online
On Friday, Google suspended Christ Church’s app from the Google Play store after accusing the pastors of a lack of sensitivity and/or capitalizing on the current coronavirus pandemic. The church received a notice from the platform, stating: “We don’t allow apps that lack reasonable sensitivity towards or capitalize on a natural disaster, atrocity, conflict, death, or other tragic event. “Your app has been suspended and removed due to this policy issue,” the notice added.
It’s believed Google was referring to Pastor Douglas Wilson’s short lessons on responding faithfully to the COVID-19 crisis, and Pastor Toby J. Sumpter’s sermon calling God’s people to humble repentance in the face of the pandemic.
Tech giants are making decisions about the topics of the video content we view.
Facebook will steer users who interact with coronavirus misinformation to WHO
The move is just the most recent step in an aggressive and coordinated response by Facebook and other tech companies to promote facts and guidance from reputable sources. … Users who have liked, commented on or otherwise reacted to coronavirus misinformation that Facebook has flagged and removed as “harmful” will be directed to a website debunking coronavirus myths from the World Health Organization.
Tech giants making decisions about how we need to be ‘guided’ and to whom (or WHO) we need to be guided TO.
In a chilling dystopian move, 22 states now using drones to enforce lockdowns
In this article, Drone Pandemic, we read, “straight from a dystopian film script—as successive lockdowns have been declared across the world from Wuhan to Lagos—authorities have begun turning to loudspeaker-equipped flying drones to enforce social distancing rules, Elsewhere, the buzzing beasts hover ominously over upright citizens engaged in seemingly innocent activities like shopping or getting some fresh air…”
In Daytona, they have a drone with “a FLIR cam that can read a person’s body temperature.”
In NJ, “Some may notice drones monitoring your neighborhoods. These drones are going to alert people to move away from each other if they are congregating. … These drones will be around the City with an automated message from the Mayor telling you to STOP gathering, disperse and go home.”
Authorities in Britain were criticized last week for sending drones flying over visitors to a park and then shaming them by posting the footage on Twitter.
Neighbors were encouraged to snitch on other neighbors who were not wearing masks or not staying 6 feet apart from each other.
Technology that finds us, photographs us, does a biometric on us, shames us, orders us, manages our behavior…
Have we given too much authority to the techs?
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Technology is a blessing. I love technology. I am glad I’m living now, when the internet was invented, color television, cell phones, digital cameras & etc.. I am old enough to have been born before those things were invented and I appreciate being able to use them now.
But as with anything, technology has a dark side. Technology is a slave to user input and users are sinners. Pornography comes to mind. Bank fraud. Shell corporations. Cyber stalking/bullying. I’m personally not crazy about drones.
This next statement will seem like a non sequitur, but eventually I’ll bring these two thoughts together. We are in the end time now. We have been since Jesus ascended, and we will be until the rapture when Jesus returns in the sky and calls up His saints, dead and alive, to heaven, ending the Church Age.
I named this blog The End Time to remind myself and readers of that fact, that we are in the latter days and Jesus could return at any moment. When He does, our duties here on earth will be done. We should have a sense of urgency every day with that fact in mind. His return for His church in the air has always been imminent.
After the rapture, an imminent event described in 1 Corinthians 15:50-53, John 14:1-3, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, to name some, there will be a period of judgment on earth called The Time of Jacob’s Trouble. (Jeremiah 30:7). It is when the Jews will be finally punished for 7 years to finish the decree, (Daniel 9:24-27) and also sinful Gentiles remaining on earth will be punished. Jesus said in Matthew 24’s Olivet Discourse that many will have tribulation, so, many people call this time “The Tribulation” as well.
During the 7 year Tribulation, when God’s wrath is poured out over the whole earth (but the Church is not destined for wrath – 1 Thessalonians 5:9; Revelation 3:10), an event occurs which even most unsaved people know about.
It is called the Mark of the Beast. In this time, God allows satan and his demons to run the earth in greater and greater ways than even now (2 Corinthians 4:4). Sin will be king. The upheavals in economies, weather, geophysical, behavior events are so terrible, no a worse time there shall never be, (Matthew 24:21) that the nations reform into one world government with one leader, the antichrist. In Revelation 13:16-17 he is described as instituting a mark upon all the people of the earth. It is a mark of allegiance and worship and oh by the way, those without the mark cannot buy or sell. Christians refuse the mark because they refuse to worship the beast, and are hunted down and beheaded.
We are not in the Tribulation now. I repeat, we are not in the Tribulation now. I am not saying that prophetic time is immediately upon us. I want to make the point though, that in former times it has been hard for people to imagine how the ‘one world government’ and the ‘mark of the beast’ will come about.
During this pandemic time in 2020, I believe that what occurred indicates just how easy it will be to enact the prophecies we read in Revelation.
The world acquiesced to lockdowns, shutdowns, social distancing, and the like, almost immediately. In America, the land of the free, people acquiesced immediately to orders to remain inside, to wear masks, to shop only at certain times or certain places. Because of the good obedience in good faith of the American people, sadly, some politicians have taken advantage. They extend the lockdown beyond the flattened curve we were told was the reason for the lockdown in the first place.
Fear drove it, uncertainty propelled it, suspicion wafted in. Compliance was easy to engender. However, the power that was grabbed has been hard for them to let go.
I don’t know what the Lord is doing through this pandemic. Pastor Don Green preached a good message that asked the question, the seminal and primary question we should all be asking: Why did God stop the world? Coming out the other side we may see some new things, to the good or to the bad or both. People miss church People miss friends. People don’t take for granted the time we are given. People may value educators, first responders, hospital workers more. People may respect the president more as he has led through this pandemic. They may respect certain leaders less since they totally failed during the pandemic. They may not buy as much from China.
Alternately, people may quickly forget and revert to old ways. They may have become conditioned to accept drones, government intrusion, immediate compliance, and tech giants making decisions for us.
When the time comes, the Antichrist will seem like Orwell’s ‘Big Brother,’ a benign, helpful overseer of all that is good, when in reality the truth will be that he is a demon spawn from hell bent on forcing worship and won’t hesitate to kill anyone who objects. The ultimate dystopia.
Why DID God stop the world? Perhaps this time was meant to advance the plan of God forward in a huge and visible leap. All I want to say is, this pandemic time of COVID-19 has shown me at least, how easy it will be when the time comes for secular people to accept a one world government and to take the mark of the beast.
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Further reading
If you enjoy dystopian literature then see these:
EM Forster: (1909, novella) The Machine Stops, The story, set in a world where humanity lives underground and relies on a giant machine to provide its needs, predicted technologies similar to instant messaging and the Internet.
Article – Prophet or Futurist? 7 Technologies Jules Verne Predicted Leagues Ahead of His Time
Author (and inventor for some) Jules Verne created worlds in his stories that featured technology that is still relevant to this day. You might enjoy pairing his book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, with the book or movie Ice Station Zebra, or his story Robur the Conqueror that predicted helicopters with the movies Black Hawk Down or Blue Thunder.
Book – One Second After by William Forschen, A post-apocalyptic thriller of the after effects in the United States after a terrifying terrorist attack using electromagnetic pulse weapons, which destroy all electronics and technology, rendering them useless.
Q&A – What is the Mark of the Beast, credible and biblical answers to this amazing and devastating period to come.
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