My hotel breakfast included pancakes that only required me to push a button. They cooked themselves and then fell onto my plate warm and ready to eat. When I left the hotel, I saw cars driving themselves on the interstate while people in the driver seat read books or enjoyed the scenery. And to top it off, when I returned home my husband showed me a news clip about a robot that can think freely for itself. The suspended Google employee on the news would only refer to the robot as a person.
I started looking around for George Jetson, his boy Elroy, daughter Judy and Jane his wife, not to mention Rosie the maid and Astro the dog. Sometimes I look around at the technology that we use on a daily basis, and I am completely amazed. Will computers continue to make us less and less useful? And what will happen if robots become viewed as people? Sometimes it is all too much to take in.
As a student of the Bible, I have learned that there is no issue past or present that is not addressed in God’s Word. Our futuristic existence is no different. In Daniel 12:4 God says, “But you, Daniel, keep these words a secret and seal the book until the time of the end. Many will roam about, and knowledge will increase.” The fulfillment of this prophecy is here. We live in the information age in which people can “roam about” in planes, trains and automobiles or without ever even leaving their home.
We can be around the world by just a few clicks on our phone as we share information with people anywhere on the planet. What does this scripture mean for us? It means that a sign of the end times is here. How near you ask? I have no idea. In fact, the book of Daniel ends with one of the most frustrating passages of scripture. “From the time the daily sacrifice is abolished, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days. Happy is the one who waits and reaches 1,335 days.”
Many have made predictions in vain based on this scripture about when the end times will occur. Scripture tells us only God knows. I believe that no matter where we fall on the timeline of history, God is saying “wake up, sleepers”. We can’t walk through life day in day out ignoring God. Our minds become so preoccupied with futuristic things sometimes that we don’t contemplate the future itself. We must remember that in the future, there is an end. Since we have so many gadgets to think for us, one would think that might free people up to think deeply about the things of God. Interestingly, the more technology we have that performs our tasks for us, the more we seem to preoccupy our minds with useless things.
Let me leave you with some hope. It is the last verse of Daniel. “But as for you, go on your way to the end; you will rest, and then you will stand to receive your allotted inheritance at the end of days.” We are all going to meet our end sooner or later. You are a part of the information age, so increase your knowledge and wisdom about the One, true God and like Daniel you will stand to receive your reward at the end.
