Revelation 13:14 - The Constructed Image of the Beast - Where AI Meets Non-Human Intelligence

UPDATED 25 October 2017: It's been almost five years since the original post below about "the image of the beast" was published. A lot has changed since then, and an update is mandatory, not primarily for most born-again Christians, but for those who will suddenly find themselves in a post-Harpazo world.

AI (Artificial Intelligence) and human intelligence interact on pretty much a routine basis. We human beings now regularly talk to Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant or even the artificial intelligence embedded in your car, your refrigerator, or even your entire house. The AI talks back and responds directly to us about whatever ever it was that you wanted to know from it or to do for you. So, human daily interaction with AI has become common place in 2017 and is growing by leaps and bounds, technologically speaking. In three to five years time there will likely be another quantum leap in the technology driving AI. Futuristic thinkers are even telling us without any reservation that AI/Human Intelligent interactions will become even greater very soon. This isn't SciFi anymore, it's become Sci-Fact. 

However, what no one is thinking about, and what virtual none of the most well-known prophecy teachers have touched yet with a ten-foot pole is to discuss what will happen when AI and non-human intelligence are linked together in the very near future of the 70th Week. The Revelation of Jesus Christ tells us this will be the fact-of-the-matter during the 70th Week, and that man-made artificially intelligent construct empowered by a non-human demonic entity (i.e. Satan himself) will have the power of life or death over every individual living on the planet.

"[the second beast] was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. 16 He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, 17 and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or[f] the name of the beast, or the number of his name." (Revelation 13:15-17)

[Perhaps if you've not read the original post form December 2012 before, now would be a good time to do so, or to refresh, and then come back up to see where we are today in 2017.]

Think about the prophetic terminology God first used 2,600 years ago to describe what this AI coupled with satanic (non-human) power of the Antichrist and False Prophet will be, and that is "shiqquwts shamem," whose full-meaning would best be expressed as "a thing of detestable, abominable filth that will cause desolation and waste" upon the earth. This thing will be stood up in the Holy Place of the coming Jewish 3rd Temple approximate;y 42 months after the Antichrist confirms a covenant among many. 

The technology that will be brought together by men at the direction of the False Prophet (the second beast from the earth) to create this abomination of desolation, the artificial creation of the created to honor and cause worship of Satan in God's Temple, is all around us. Imagine, if you will, Artificial Intelligence that includes holographic capabilities, ultra-life-like cybernetic appearance, virtual reality; a near omniscient situational awareness capable of global control over inanimate things from finance and routine commerce,  to global fleets of drones and superhuman soldiers and robotic war machines, to animate things like human beings and the ability to kill them forthwith. (This super-soldier capability is Vladimir Putin's worst nightmare!)  The ultimate in oppression and totalitarian control of every aspect of life on planet earth. And millions of our future brethren will die professing Jesus Christ, refusing to take the mark of the beast or worship his abominable image of the beast stood up in the the Jerusalem Temple. (Matthew 24:15-22)

No, this is not a plot merger of the Terminator Sci-Fi movie series and George Orwell's 1984, this is what the Bible says will take place in the very near future, and it may well be far worse than described here. The blessed hope for all mankind is the Harpazo, the sudden catching away of the bride of Jesus Christ, to escape all these things, the likes of which have never before occurred on the earth, and never will thereafter for all eternity. The only time anyone has to make a decision for Christ is right now, while there is time to do so before the Harpazo. What will you do?

 

18 December 2012: One of the things in Revelation 13:14-15 that has always fascinated me is the God-breathed prophecy that the second beast, the False Prophet, will issue a command to all mankind inhabiting the earth that they must construct an image of the first beast, the Antichrist.

"And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed."

The key sequential Greek words in verse fourteen are poieō eikōn thērion, meaning that the fully deceived men of the earth of that time will be called upon by the False Prophet to construct a likeness of the Antichrist. Understand this completely: mankind will be called upon to create an image of Satan incarnate as was man created in the image of God. This will occur shortly after the Antichrist will appear to have sustained a mortal head wound yet he will pseudo-miraculously not die as a result of it. This image of the Antichrist will be constructed by mankind to honor him.

How will mankind construct such a thing? Through the all types of emergent technological know-how that mankind will have at its disposal. It will be a 21st century technology that many are seeing greater and greater glimpses of in these pre-70th Week days: the fusing and absolute convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, artificial intelligence, robotics and instantaneous global communications that provide instantaneous global situational awareness. Mind-boggling to be sure even by 2012-2103 state-of-the-art technological advancements. 

This will be the high-tech 21st century equivalent of the statue of Zeus-Olympus that the forerunner antichrist, the Hellenic Seleucid Empire's absolute ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes stood up in the 2nd Temple on the 25th of Kislev, 168 BC. The difference between this coming outrage and the latter will be that the False Prophet will be able to supernaturally embed a demonic spirit (Greek: pneuma) within this human construct so that it will be a virtual, physical being, a totally aware and communicating entity in the service of Satan which will be capable of killing both Tribulation Saints and all of mankind who will dare to refuse it the requisite worship. Perhaps it will be the demonic spirit known as Abaddon/Apollyon who will inhabit this constructed thing; the penultimate of demonic and gentile desecration of God's Temple?

As Jesus declared in the Olivet Discourse, referring the the prophecy given to Daniel by the angel Gabriel, this action will define the mid-point of the 70th Week. He has made it unambiguously clear that this utterly detestable thing will be literally stood up in the Holy Place within the 70th Week (Tribulation) Temple; that this will be the "Abomination of Desolation." This event, Jesus tells us, will be the final sign for the Jews to flee Jerusalem with extraordinary haste; to flee in the direction of the mountains of Judea meaning 'take nothing with you, just get out of the city of Jerusalem!'

the Holy Place within the 70th Week Temple

I believe there can be little confusion or wonderment as to why the wrath of God is thereafter poured out upon the earth in such a way as there has never been anything of this scope previous or ever will there be anything like it again. And there is no further mention of the image after this. We can only assume that God utterly annihilates the "Abomination of Desolation" and it passes into oblivion without further notice.

Global SITREP E5-14: Beholding The Truth About Armageddon

16 November 2014: As with many of the posts here, this one is about Bible prophecy. Be forewarned, this will not be a sugar-coated treatise on what lies in the immediate future. 

In Daniel 9:26c the angel Gabriel spoke these prophetic words to Daniel: "The end of it shall be with a flood, and till the end of the war desolations are determined."  Thus for the one-thousand nine-hundred forty-four years since the sacking of Jerusalem and the complete destruction of the Second Temple of God on Zion (Mount Moriah) in 70 AD have the continuous wars heralding the end of the present ago of mankind raged. And the final prophetic flood is just barely being restrained at the gates. 

In our Lord Jesus Christ's sermon on the Mount of Olives He foretold a more detailed reiteration of Gabriel's prophecy what would occur in the final 42 months of the 70th Week. This, He said, would follow immediately after the image of the Antichrist is stood up in the Holy Place of the 3rd Temple on Zion (Mount Moriah):  "For then there will be great tribulation (megas thlipsis), such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened." 

Now most people who are known by His Name will immediately and correctly relate this statement to the passage in The Revelation of Jesus Christ found in chapter sixteen, verses twelve through sixteen. However, that is not the complete picture that Scripture provides to us. In no way do I belittle this God-breathed Scripture, yet in my studies I found it to be missing prophetic detail found elsewhere in Scripture that provides vivid detail of occurs in those final 42 months, especially right up to the very moment preceding Jesus' Second Coming. We know the earth will be shattered under the judgments of God during the whole of the 70th Week, but there is far more detail given of the complete prophetic picture.

For that more complete prophetic picture we must turn to the prophet Isaiah and his direct call from God Almighty to become His prophet two-thousand seven-hundred fifty-four years ago. The date of Isaiah's call to be a prophet was in 740-739 BC when King Uzziah of Judah, who was afflicted with leprosy over the period of a decade for his failure to obey God, finally passed away. 

Isaiah 6 tells us of his realization of being a hopeless dead man covered from his lips to his toes in his sins, and of his immediate repentance to God upon seeing the Lord sitting upon a throne. And Isaiah thereafter was instantly confessing the sins which made him totally unworthy to view the immense power, Holiness and Glory which he beheld in front of his eyes. Then upon the confession of his sins Isaiah speaks to the sight of mighty and majestic pair of six-winged seraphim which stood above the temple of God. As an aside and for what it might be worth to the reader, I would like to note here that Isaiah's description of the disposition of the seraph's six wings (two wings folded over the face, two to fly with and two wings covering the feet) appeared to my mind's eye as a representation of what we know as the Star of David. Whenever I see the Star of David, I see a representation of the majestic seraph standing above the Temple of God.

Then, immediately following Isaiah's confession of his sins, one of he seraph's flew to Isaiah, touching his lips with a live coal from the burning altar before God and declaring the removal of his iniquity and the purging of all sin from him. Isaiah the prophet was born-again in the presence of God at the very moment he is called to prophecy. And Isaiah hears the voice of YHWH God speaking, "Who shall I send, who will carry forth for us?" Isaiah's response is immediate, "Here am I; Send me!" 

What YHWH God says next to Isaiah is most instructive, even in our day! It is a direct repetition of what God had instructed Moses about, and Moses in turn had spoken directly to all of Israel in the Covenant of Moab found in Deuteronomy 29:2-4. (See also: Romans 11) So to Isaiah the Lord God specifically identifies "this people" who Isaiah is to speak the prophetic word to:

"Go, and tell this people:

‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’

Make the heart of this people dull,
And their ears heavy,
And shut their eyes;
Lest they see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,And return and be healed."

No question about it, Isaiah is to prophecy about these things to Israel, and we, in turn, receive this word through the inspired recorded Lord's word, the Holy Bible. 

Now here's where the exquisite details about the final forty-two months of the Megas Thlipsis (Great Tribulation) are made clear. After being told by God who he is to tell these things to, Isaiah asks a question: "Lord, how long?" And the Lord God gives His response to this which is completely unambiguous even though the language is more than 27 centuries old:

"Until cities are devastated, without inhabitant,
Houses are without people
And the land is utterly desolate,

The Lord has removed men far away,
And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.

Yet there will be a tenth portion in it,
And it will again be subject to burning,
Like a terebinth or an oak
Whose stump remains when it is felled.
The holy seed is its stump."

Planet earth today is home to something over 7.2 billion people and that number is growing annually by about 72 million additional people. By he end of the 42 months of the Megas Thlipsis the number of mankind who survive because God will have shortened the days in order to save what human life remains will be but a tenth of the number alive when the 70th Week began. There will be no cities and no one will be living in them. The remainder of the land will be utterly desolate.

I would roughly estimate that number will be just under 8 billion people living at the time. In real numbers that means every person who is alive today, all 7.2 billion of them, and excepting only those taken by Jesus Christ at the instant of the Harpazo, will have been killed. The remnant tenth of human life upon the earth will number 800 million, and of those (the 200 million of the army of the kings of the East, plus the armies of the Beast gathered at Har Megiddo) will be dispatched into eternity as described in Revelation 19:17-21.

The remnant of mankind, perhaps 600 million or so, will be the stump spoken of in the prophecy directly from God to Isaiah above. All men are created in the image of God, and this is the holy seed of the stump of mankind that will repopulate the earth during the 1,000 years of the Millennial Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

So, as stated many times here, the flood of prophetic fulfillment is about to commence; the Restrainer who is currently holding back the flood at the gates will soon be taken out of the way. Will you be one of those who will soon be swept away by the irresistible force of the flood and into oblivion and the second death for all eternity? Or will you gaze upon and recognize Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, as Isaiah gazed upon and recognized God Almighty, and begin confessing your sin and unworthiness and thereby receive the eternal life the Lord has promised to all that would receive Him into their heart. At this time do you dare deny He is who He has proven Himself to be? It up to you, no one can do this for you. Your future is right now and it lies between just you and the God who created you. Make the right choice. Choose God. Choose now, before its too late.