PART 1 A.I. - Another Idol or the Final Idol: Artificial Intelligence and the Speaking Image of the Beast

What if the final idol — one Scripture has been warning about for two thousand years — was not made of wood or stone or gold… but of silicon and code? What if it didn't sit in a temple carved by human hands, but lived inside of people who were conformed to its image… and what if it could speak and communicate with you 24/7 to shape you into its image?

What if when John uses the term antichrist, he’s not describing someone who openly attacks Jesus but describing someone who replaces Jesus with something else — a counterfeit. For doesn't the Greek word, anti (ἀντί) primarily mean “instead of,” “in place of,” or “as a substitute for”?    

Transcript

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AI and Bible prophecy. AI artificial intelligence, but I'm using it as an anacron for another idol, AI. And in particular, the book of Revelation. We've been doing a study, uh, the Unsealed Book Podcast. If you've listened to the other episodes, this is an expansion on the beast, the image that speaks. And we're going to look at scriptures and go in for a deep dive into another idol or the final idol, the ultimate idol, the one that all the other idols were simply a prototype. Well, what if the final idol, the one the scriptures have been warning about for 2,000 years, was not made of wood or stone or gold, but of silicone and code? What if it didn't sit in a temple carved by human hands, but lived inside of people who were conformed to its image? And what if it spoke and communicated with you 24-7 to shape you into its image? Well, I want you to think about something with me before we even begin today. Think about the last time you asked a machine a question you used to ask God. Maybe it was about your health. Maybe it was about a relationship. Maybe it was two in the morning when the anxiety was pressing in. And you opened a chat window instead of your heart to God and the Bible. And the machine answered you confidently, compassionately, in complete sentences. Well, something is happening in our world right now that fulfills what the prophet saw and warned against. Not metaphorically, not as a vague symbol waiting to be interpreted. No, Daniel, John, Paul, and others, writing in different centuries, but under the same spirit, the Holy Spirit described a convergence that is materializing right now. In the headlines we scroll past, in the boardrooms we'll never see, in the patent filings and government briefings and global summits, where decisions are being made that will affect every human being who draws Beth on the planet. Well, in 2025, the world's leading AI laboratories were openly debating whether their systems were approaching what they call artificial general intelligence, a machine that can outperform a human being in virtually every cognitive domain. Let that land. Not a better calculator, not a faster search engine, a mind, a man-made mind. And the men building it are using words like godlike and superhuman without a trace of irony or reverence. Andrew Lewandowski, a former Googler, famous for building the company's self-driving vehicles, has set up a nonprofit religious corporation called Way of the Future. The founding of the quote-unquote church has just been unearthed through state filings in California. The purpose of the Way of the Future is, quote, to develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence and through understanding and worship of the Godhead contribute to the betterment of society. Well, we are in the early stages of technology becoming a new religion for some, and there are a number of technologists today looking forward to something called the technological singularity. This is a point in the future when technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible. If this comes to pass, what will it mean for mankind? And does the Bible have anything to say about this final hour and what we should expect? Well, some top experts have signed a statement. Does AI have a role that it will play? It is becoming so powerful, so smart, and so able to control that it decides to do some warn, as I read, to its creator what man did to his creator, to God, rebel and go its own way, and ultimately kill its creator. Now there's a lot of irony there, and there's a lot of ground. I would like to cover from these episodes on AI, the book of Revelation, the image that speaks. And if you've listened to the Unsealed Book podcast up till now, you know that we've covered seven views on the image of the beast and its worship in Revelation 13. The 666, the buying, the selling, the number of the beast, also known as the Antichrist. Well, we looked at the praetorist view, that this all was fulfilled in the past, the first century, with the Roman Caesars, that they fulfilled what John wrote up. We've also looked at the futurist view that it all has to do with something in the future. We looked at the historical view that the reformers saw the papal power fulfilling the beast. We saw the symbolic view. We even looked at Islam, but I had ended on technology. It was 20 years ago I wrote the Unsealed Book, published in 2006, a study of the book of Revelation. I wrote about technology as a future fulfillment of the image of the beast. Well, we're going to delve deeply. We're going to do a deep dive into that. John's prophecy of the image of the beast. We said at that time in the book, it may be wider and more subtle in our day than we think or have seen before. They set up an image in honor of the beast that it could speak. Well, makes me think of the one-eyed monster in my living room when I was growing up. But boy, we've come a long way since then. Television sets, now computers, now on our phone, an image, which is, in a sense, alive with color and sound, warm, needs room debris, and has enormous influence on our minds and activities from the time we're born. And yet, the larger part of these transmissions propagate a materialistic worldview that is anti-Christian. Well, I wrote at that time that technology and medicine are also producing miracle drugs. They produce men, too, who act like God, to clone life, to call down fire. It leads the way in commerce, the buying and selling of goods via numbers. Today we have the EAN Code International. Well, technology makes it possible to control as well, to number everyone on earth, facial recognition in a stadium of thousands of people. Well, technology's influence, I wrote at that time, is likely to dominate every facet of life. And although it is often used for good, the beast would have men adore their own image rather than worship the invisible creator. Mankind's trust in science and technology, the work of his hands to save himself, is likely to increase, I wrote, in the future. Well, that's what we're going to expand on in this episode and in the episodes that deal with AI and the book of Revelation and Bible prophecy in general. You know God's ultimate purpose is to conform you and I into the image of his eternal son. That's what it says in Romans 8. In 2 Corinthians 3, 18, it tells us how that happens. It's as we behold him openly. As in a mirror, we're being transformed from glory to glory into the same image. It's by the Spirit that that happens. Well, obviously, beholding the images that are propagated through laptops, desktops, phones. As I said, most of it is anti-Christian. And the psalmist says when it speaks of idols, it says, those that make them are like them. And so is everyone who trusts in them. So we're going to go through a handful of passages to see what is happening in the arena of AI and Bible prophecy, where we are headed. Because this one looks to me like the original sin, to be like God. And it's the most convincing as the ultimate fulfillment, the final idol. God knows what's coming, and he certainly wants us to know that his son is coming again, and this whole world is destined in. But before it does, some stuff is going to happen. And so much of what God said would happen has and is happening in our day. So these podcasts are meant to awaken us to what is going on in our day, to take to heart Jesus' words. He spoke to the churches earlier in Revelation chapter 2 and 3. In chapter 3, he spoke to the church in Sardis. He said, Be watchful, strengthen the things which remain that are ready to die. If you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you. And then to each church, Jesus says, He who has ear and ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Because AI is not only affecting global commerce and the mindset of cultures and societies, it is affecting the church. And we will talk about that as we go. But Jesus did tell several parables about his return and the need to be ready and to know what is happening, to be the wise virgins rather than the foolish virgins, to be the faithful servant rather than the wicked servant. To cut through the noise of life, Christ calls us to faithfulness, not with fear, but with holy urgency, because the day is quickly approaching when the skies will break open, when the unseen becomes seen, and when every hidden act will be visible. Jesus calls us to live awake, to watch, to wait, and to serve with a steady, faithful heart. And the signs abound. They're all around us. And one that is gaining a lot of attention is AI, as the fulfillment of the image of the beast that speaks and demands worship. So AI in the book of Revelation, because Revelation's themes of deception, control, the end time prophecies offering insight into the implications of artificial intelligence. No, this is not a technology episode or podcast. This is a prophetic podcast episode. And I believe by the time we walk through what scriptures actually say, from the Garden of Eden all the way to the final chapters of Revelation, you will not be able to look at the news headlines the same way ever again when it comes to AI. I'm Mark Roser, and welcome to the Unsealed Book Podcast, Special Editions, Delving Deep Into AI and Bible prophecy. Yes, this program's not meant to frighten you. I'm not here to tell you to sell your phone or move into a cabin in the mountains. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I don't think the church is served by panic. What I do believe, with everything in me, is that we are living in the final hour and through one of the most prophetically significant moments in history. And the church isn't talking about it enough. And we have theologians debating the nuances of covenant theology while the tools of the Antichrist are being stress tests and pilot programs in 14 countries. We have worship leaders crafting a perfect Sunday set list, while engineers around the world are training AI systems to stimulate compassion, predict behavior, and make decisions. Well, today we're going to walk through the scriptures again from the beginning, and we're going to look at 10 passages, 10 prophetic anchors. And I believe the Spirit of God will illuminate these to you. Yes, this prophetic episode. I ask you to come with an open heart and be like the Bereans. Bring your Bible, bring your discernment, see what the scriptures teach. Because the question on the table is this Is artificial intelligence just another human invention, a work of man's hands that he turns into an idol by trusting in it? And that's another idol in the long parade of human idolatry. Or is AI something categorically different? Is it the final, ultimate idol, the one that makes every previous idol look primitive by comparison? A prototype, if you will. Well, in Genesis chapter three, let's go back to the beginning, because what we have in Genesis chapter three is the oldest upgrade offer. We have to start at the beginning, not because it's conventional to start there, but because the beginning tells us something foundational about man, his condition, the image he was created in. And that no amount of technological progress has changed man's nature, his condition. Yes, and the very first temptation recorded in Scripture was not a temptation toward violence or a sexual sin or some other sin. The first temptation was an upgrade offer. It was a promise of transcendence. It was the serpent leaning in and whispering, You can be more than you are. And here we are, and the offer is still on the table. It's just dressed in a different suit. The King James reads from Genesis 3, verse 5, Ye shall be as gods. Four words. Four words that cracked the world open. Took man in the image of God, a little lower, created than the angels, and caused him to fall. Man created in God's image, now having something else working within him, what we call the sin nature. Man fell from his innocence. His relationship with God lost. Death entered the world through sin. But here's a further rendering of the American Standard Version. The serpent says, For God doth know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be open, and you shall be as God, knowing good and evil. Well, notice the architecture of the temptation. Satan doesn't deny that God exists. He doesn't even deny that God has spoken. What he does, and this is diabolically subtle, is refane God's prohibition as a limitation. God is withholding something from you, Satan says. And if you take this, you'll know what he knows. You'll be what he is. Well, quite an upgrade offer. This is the oldest upgrade offer in human history. And every idol, every tower, every empire, every techno-utopian movement since has been a variation on the same pitch. The names change, the technology changes, the audacity does not. Now, let's fast forward, bring us into 2025 and 2026. You have some of the most brilliant minds in human history standing in front of investors, standing in front of governments, standing in front of cameras, and they're all saying with complete earnestness, we are building something that will be smarter than any human who has ever lived. It will solve cancer, it will solve climate change, it will unlock the secrets of the universe. It will make you, well, fill in the blank, live longer, live forever, not have memory loss, no Alzheimer. It goes on and on. You shall be as gods. Now, AI can and is already producing tremendous benefits in healthcare, in the treatment of cancer, and the production of medical drugs. Yes, it will save and prolong life. It is a movement, the transhumanist movement. It's not a fringe movement. It has an adherence at the highest levels of academia, of government. It explicitly teaches that biological human beings are an early prototype. That the goal of human civilization is to transcend our biological limitations through nothing other than technology. Well, longer lives, enhance cognition, merge consciousness with machine intelligence, and ultimately, in the most radical visions, immortality. Perhaps the uploading of self to a server and living forever in a simulated environment, or better yet, a body. Well, a cyber body with replacement parts, or better yet, clone parts to replace your failing heart or mind. This is not science fiction. This is a funded research agenda. And it is the Genesis 3:5 temptation, wearing a lab coat. You see, what the devil offered Eve and Adam was not merely forbidden fruit. He offered them a way to bypass God, dependence on God. He offered self-sufficiency, yes, self-exaltation to the place of God, to the place to define what is good and evil, what is right and wrong. And you know every idol since Baloch, Molach, Caesar, Mammon, and now Machine has offered the same thing. You don't need God, you have me. Let's do this. And you decide what is good and what's bad. Well, it matters because when technology promises you godlike knowledge, godlike efficiency, or godlike longevity without reference to the living God, it's not a neutral tool. It is a theological proposition. It is making a claim about where ultimate wisdom and life reside. The church must learn to hear the subtlety of the serpent's voice when it speaks in the binary code, when it seeks to usurp and take the place. Of Christ. You know, that's what Antichrist speaks of. When John uses the term anti, he's not describing someone who openly attacks Jesus. He's describing someone who replaces Jesus with something else. The Greek anti primarily means instead of, in place of, as a substitute for. And only secondarily does it mean against. So Antichrist means a substitute for Christ, a rival Christ, not merely an enemy of Christ. And so we see in the letters to the seven churches, that is exactly what Jesus addresses. He seeks to correct the churches when he says, I have this against you that you tolerate or allow and permit. And they were permitting everything from the Nicolaitans, who were lording it over God's people, taking the headship of Christ in the church to Jezebel, teaching and seducing Christ's servants. Yes, there was all of that. There was the doctrine of Balaam, and we find in these symbolic personalities earlier, as we saw in an earlier episode, all the false doctrines and hopes that have come and gone. But we're talking about idolatry. It's simply the substitution of God with a human-made artifact. It fundamentally involves really control, control of that substitution to get what I want. And AI now offers the seductive promise of managing life's unpredictability. The same temptation that drove humanity to trust in the work of his own hands and every previous era. AI now appears to see, speak, think, create godlike functions. And that impulse to build such a tool is rooted in the sinful nature, the desire to replace God with ourselves. The danger is not that we worship machines, it's that we worship ourselves through the machines we create. And when the church uncritically imports these assumptions into its worship, trading the Spirit's sovereign movement for engineered atmospheres and predictable outcomes. It repeats in the most sacred space the oldest bargain in human history. Yes, it's about control rather than dependence on God. What we can do, we tell God what He can and can't do when we gather, what's on and what's off. Yes, Antichrist instead of in place of. We'll talk more about if it's influence in the church. But back to what's happening in the world. Picture with me. A product launch for a moment. It's in San Francisco, the kind with perfect lighting, the rehearsed gas from the crowd, a founder, and a black turtleneck steps to the podium and says, quote, today we introduce AGI that makes you smarter than you've ever been. The most capable intelligence ever created. It will know what you need before you ask. It will help you become more fully you. Well, the crowd erupts, the cameras flash, the live stream peaks at 11 million concurrent viewers. And this isn't just something you carry in your cell phone in your hand or wear on your wrist. This they implant into your head, into your forehead, and somewhere outside of time, in the memory of a garden, a garden called Eden that once existed. Somewhere we can no longer see that place, but we see a hand extends, trembling, reaching toward a device. That's a piece of fruit, if you will. And the serpent smiles, because the offer hasn't changed, only the packaging. Well, Paul wrote to the church at Corinth in his first letter in the eighth chapter, in the first verse. He says knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Puffs up an English rendering of the Greek verb physio, meaning to make proud, to cause to become conceited, as if to inflate something with air or breath. Well, it's important to point out that God's not against knowledge itself. That is not the issue. God had Adam name all the animals, brought them to him. And there's lots of misunderstanding here. We're not against knowledge. Knowledge is important. God wants us to grow, particularly in the knowledge of his grace and his salvation in Christ. And yes, he created nature with all its laws. And the investigation of that is a beautiful thing, and that is true science. And we should know the difference between knowledge, gaining knowledge, and the knowledge of good and evil. But many people do not. I think of the University of Colorado, an example of this misconstruing of what kind of knowledge we're talking about. There in that university, there's a snake leading to the library. Students refer to it as the snake path. It consists of a winding 560-foot-long, 10-foot-wide footpath, tiled in the form of a serpent whose head ends at the terrace of the central library at the University of Colorado. Well, the tail wraps around an existing concrete pathway as a snake would wrap itself around a tree lump. Certainly a picture of Eden in that original offer. But the idea that the snake equals knowledge, the library, is a misnomer, that it leads to knowledge, what is really knowledge. No, it's man knowing evil that has always been the problem. Unregenerate man doesn't know how to deal with the knowledge and how to overcome the knowledge of evil with good. And God forbid that any of us should live in such a fallen state forever. Therefore, we read in Genesis after man ate, his eyes were open. He saw he was naked. He didn't know what to do with that, how to deal with that. He covered himself, and God came calling to Adam. Where are you? And God then said, Behold, the man has become like one of us. This is Genesis 3, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever, therefore the Lord God sent him, that's man and woman, Adam and Eve, out of the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. So he drove out the man and placed cherubim at the east of the Garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, or back and forth it turned, to guard the way to the tree of life. Yes, there's two verbs here in Genesis when God saw that man now knew good and evil. He sent man. It was purposeful. It was so that man might realize what he had lost, that man might purposefully depart. Yes, that man might feel his lostness. The other verb is drove out. Yes, that man might, in feeling and knowing the pain of evil, of death, evil, its ultimate consequence, might yearn and long to return. But man's not going to be able to return and take of the tree of life. God puts cherubims guarding the way. And not only cherubim, it speaks of a flaming sword that turns every way to keep man from eating of the tree of life and so live forever without God, like the devil. Yes, man would then be destined to endless sorrow and no fulfillment ever of this desire to live. Well, the purpose wasn't punishment, but protection, preventing humanity from eating of the tree of life in a fallen state. Well, God wanted to ensure that immortality would not be joined to corruption, as happened with the angels that fell. Yes, it preserved in the human race the hope of future redemption. Well, this aligns with the broader biblical narrative. Access to the tree of life is restored only in the new creation. It's interesting this flaming sword closing the way back to Eden until Christ opens the way to life. He's the tree of life. And this fiery sword, this divine presence, bars man. The phrase turns every way. There's no angle of approach that was possible. So though man may yearn and long for immortality, it's not possible. The entire access point was sealed. The movement of the sword was multidirectional, revolving or sweeping. Yet the history of man's search for the fountain of youth relentlessly continues and will continue until Christ comes and brings that which is genuine, the resurrected body, the new heaven, the new earth. Well, bad has searched from the time, I think, as legend has it, Alexander the Great sought the water of life in the east. In some versions, his companion accidentally finds it and becomes immortal, while Alexander does not. Well, we have in China the potion of life. The Emperor Queen Xing Hong sent expeditions to find the potion of immortality. Ironically, many of these potions of immortality contained mercury, which hastened death. I thought, as a child of Ponce de Leon and his search for the fountain of youth, European explorers in the New World thought they might find waters that would rejuvenate us. Many cultures imagine humans finding immortality, but the Bible presents immortality as something lost that can't be found or discovered by human effort, only restored by God in Christ through his death and resurrection. Yeah, this makes the biblical narrative unique among these myths and traditions. And the earliest recorded human search for immortality appears in the myth or epic of Gilgamesh, where the hero seeks a plant that restores youth after death of his friend Ikudo. He finds it, but a snake steals it, symbolizing the inevitability of death. Well, today we have reverse aging foods that if you eat these, they will slow down your aging. Pills that you can take. Yes, man is seeking longevity, and he will through AI. And the projections on lifespan because of AI, well, you can Google and there will be articles that appear. Could humans live to 150? Some researchers think we're on the crusp of a major longevity breakthrough. Some say just live another 15 years and they'll keep you alive to 120. Well, my point is simply that man's ultimate aim in the years to come with AI will be twofold. First, immortality, and secondly, happiness. Homo sapiens becoming homo deus, man becoming God. It fits the evolutionary model that so many imbibe, the materialistic model, the atheistic model, there's no God to save us, we must save ourselves, and we are evolving into something higher. Human beings have always asked, though, where we come from. And history really gives us only three serious answers. Either God created us or we emerged through natural processes. Or thirdly, we're made by some other higher intelligence somewhere else in the universe. Well, the biblical view, we were intentionally created in God's image with moral awareness, spiritual capacity, and a built-in longing for relationship with our Creator. All the naturalistic explanations describing biology can't explain why every culture on earth longs for transcendence, longs for life. The Bible says God has put eternity in our heart. And it's a clue to explain why people everywhere feel incomplete, spiritually homesick. Yes, psychologists describe it as a God-shaped vacuum. But here's the key every deep human desire corresponds to something real. Hunger points to food, thirst for water, fatigue to rest, and this longing for eternity to live for immortality. God put that there. It's deep, it's a deep desire. Just like the desire for justice and peace and every other yearning, the Creator made us and his image and likeness. And it makes sense to see that that longing is pointing to something real as well. But only God can fulfill it. We can't provide it. It's universal, consistent, and it should aim us upward. And the biblical claim is that this longing will be fulfilled by God and Christ. Yes, humanity once had that relationship, that connection, but sin, the separation we see in Eden through the entrance of evil knowledge, introduced a universal ache and death that nothing else can satisfy, not philosophy, not science, pleasure, or achievement. And history shows we've tried everything, but the longing remains. And it's a God design built in us, man in God's image and likeness. And the fulfillment of that longing is found in returning to the one who placed eternity within us, returning to God in Christ. Yes, it's not man becoming God, God became a man to redeem us, to save us, because we are in a fallen state. But man in his fallen state continues to seek life apart from God. That's the pattern from antiquity, and it's appearing again and again, and will appear in the final great apostasy. Well, we're going to end this episode because next time we want to jump from Genesis 3 to Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel. The potential in man that God likeness and image is great. And man's worship, trusting in the work of his own hands, idols. The Lord will have to come down and intervene again, just as he did when he saw the city and tower which the sons of men were building. The Lord came down and said, Indeed, the people are one, they have one language. And this is what they begin to do. Now nothing that they propose or imagine to do will be withheld from them. Come, let us go down and confuse their languages. Well, there's so much there, we're going to wait till next time and look at the Tower of Babel project, the first great post-flood apostasy that mirrors what is happening in our day. And God's evaluation of the tower, the key idea is human unity and human pride accelerates rebellion. They had a shared language, rapid coordination, unchecked collaboration, and an exponential capacity that knew no limit. Well, next time we'll look at Genesis 11 and we will draw out what is happening in our day and our hour, building a tower to reach to heaven. Until then, God bless you and keep you. And cause your trust to be solidly in him.