https://cdn.quotesgram.com/img/43/46/350399138-07-mythbusters-expressions.jpg
You may recall the great Adam Savage of Mythbusters (who could forget him?), whose iconic and prophetic phrase is coming true in the strange era of Covid. We seem to have a choice of realities. Technology and prophecy are meeting on common ground here at the end of the Age of Grace, and my daily Bible study project with a friend is giving me some unusual but logical ideas. If you’re interested, grab your Bible* and follow along with us.
*If you don’t have one, or even if you do, this is a great tool: https://www.blueletterbible.org/
We are working our way through the Bible chronologically, and this revealed some interesting parallels in the prophetic books that I haven’t put together before. Now that the metaverse is soon to be an alternate reality, I am reconsidering them in a new light. Are smart cities foretold in the Bible? Time for some linguistic archaeology.
It make sense that the prophets of the 8th-6th centuries B.C. would not have specific technological language to describe what God showed them in visions about the Tribulation. It helps to know scholars agree that many if not most prophecies have a double fulfillment, one for the immediate situation the Israelites were facing in the prophet's time and another for the future, called the "day of the Lord” or heralded by “in that day.” Thus the events of the period of 800-500 B.C. may also be mirrored in the End Times. So keep that in mind.
Sometimes I read a verse and go “huh?” Where the passages make no sense in English and the commentaries are silent I look at all the ways a word has been translated and the alternate definitions and root words to see if these shed more light on the passage. And what I find is that where a few years ago a verse made zero sense to me, now with new technology emerging (like crypto and the metaverse) I can sometimes make more sense of it than previously.
For example, a few verses from Isaiah 28:
"...you scoffers who rule this people in Jerusalem,
You boast 'We have entered into a covenant with death...
When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by, it cannot touch us,
for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.'
I [the Lord] will make justice your measuring line...hail will sweep away your refuge, the lie.
...Your covenant with death will be annulled...
When the overwhelming scourge sweeps by...it will carry you away...
The understanding of this message will bring sheer terror...
The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around you...
The Lord...will rouse Himself in the Valley of Gibeon* to do His work,
His strange work, and perform His task, His alien task.
Now stop your mocking or your chains will become heavier."
*Now called El Jib, near the Palestinian city of Ramallah. For more on El Jib:
https://trigrace.wordpress.com/2016/11/28/expedition-bible-off-the-beaten-path-tel-gibeon/
When I last read this chapter, Facebook had not yet announced its new identity as the metaverse, an alternate reality where people can interact remotely (and in my opinion risk becoming blind to the real world). This could be "the lie" referred to. The "sheer terror" may refer either to the severe withdrawal effects of detaching from a virtual reality brain implant or the shock of being faced with the truth after immersion in an elaborate lie, or both. I looked up Ramallah on a whim to see if a smart city was being planned for the area, and was surprised to find that it was. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.
https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2016/04/ramallah-smart-city-infrastructure-technology-palestine.html
So perhaps when the Palestinians finally agree to a peace deal with Israel, it will open the door to a joint smart city project where returning Diaspora Jews can settle, and Israel can offer as her part of the deal to make Ramallah a testing ground of the new metaverse technology. If so, you heard it from Isaiah first.
Note that hail also appears in conjunction with a peace deal that is prophesied to fail in Ezekiel 13:
Ezekiel 13:10-12 says:
"Because they lead my people astray, saying "Peace" when there is no peace, and because, when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash, therefore tell those who cover it with whitewash that it is going to fall. Rain will come in torrents and I will send hailstones hurtling down, and violent winds burst forth. When the wall collapses, will people not ask you, "where is the whitewash you covered it with?"
A “flimsy wall” could refer to the Iron Dome, an invisible "shield" of precise ballistics that blow up incoming rockets before they strike, but because hail and wind are mentioned, I don't think the Iron Dome is meant. An easily broken city “structure” could refer to servers that create a smart city metaverse, and a disappearing whitewash or covering could refer to an area insufficiently covered by wifi. Damage to the equipment by weather could cause outages that shrink the coverage area (the "bed" is now too short, the "coverlet" is not big enough), leaving many plugged-in people in Ephraim suddenly outside the metaverse. I can’t imagine how Isaiah and Ezekiel got their brains around this, but the passage makes no sense as written, so speculation (informed by the Holy Spirit, I hope) will have to assist us (me in writing it, you in reading it).
In verse 18 of Ezekiel 13 is the mention of magic charms on wrists and magic veils on heads that ensnare the people. Ezekiel 14 speaks of "idols in their hearts," but another valid translation is "images in their minds" (v.4). The method of sinning is described as "wicked stumbling blocks before their faces." To me this sounds like virtual reality headsets (my nephew convinced me to try it for a few minutes once, ugh). Besides the sin of surrendering their God-given senses for discerning truth from lie, who knows what kinds of sin people will be able to commit in virtual reality? The other day the WashingtonTimes reported that someone was accused of virtual groping:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/woman-claims-she-was-virtually-groped-while-inside-metas-virtual-reality-metaverse
Given the Satanic enemy behind this technology, it's likely that any brain implant will eventually involve endorphin rewards and possibly pain punishments as ways to enforce social obedience and eventually Satanic worship.
Isaiah 28 is a warning to Ephraim (another name for the area once occupied by the ten northern tribes of Israel, the areas today occupied by the Palestinians: the West Bank, Samaria, the Golan Heights, Ramallah). Some great achievement is referred to as Ephraim’s wreath or crown (Hebrew atarah), the pride of drunkards. I wonder if this “crown” is a smart city populated by the seriously befuddled. As cities get smarter, do people get stupider? The root word of atarah is atar, meaning “surrounded.” Like a crown surrounds a head, or a wall surrounds a city…or a wifi “neural net” surrounds a population. Look how Ramallah is located between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the Silicon Wadi of Israel. Seems like an ideal location to build a prototype smart city as part of a peace deal that demolishes border walls.
From: https://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1493/655/1600/UNWRA-Ref-camps2003.jpg
As in Ezekiel 13, Isaiah 28 also prophesies a strong storm, "like a hailstorm and a destructive wind, like a driving rain and a flooding downpour, He will throw it [Ephraim’s wreath] forcefully to the ground" (v. 2). After the storm, the inhabitants will be like those who are drunk (Note: this is hard to imagine with Islam, which forbids alcohol, but drunkenness is also a Biblical term for God's judgment of confusion on those who do not repent of their sin). Verses 7-8 describe the inhabitants of Ephraim as "priests and prophets," or those who serve some kind of god and see “visions.” These verses forecast what happens to them after this storm collapses the "wall," or as I think of it, the neural net:
"They reel from beer,
they stagger when seeing visions,
they stumble when rendering decisions.
All the tables are covered with vomit."
Sounds like a serious case of extra-pyramidal symptoms, the loss of muscle control which occurs when dopamine receptors are blocked by antipsychotic drugs.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK534115/
Note that if you block dopamine receptors, you interrupt the chain of reaction that causes an excess of dopamine to trigger the release of norepinephrine, which initiates the amygdala survival instincts of fight/flight/paranoia. This could be the “peace” that is not real—a boosting of dopamine but simultaneous blocking of receptors so that the victim is suspended in happy brain drugs and uninterested in fighting. Turn the virtual reality off and poof! “good feeling gone…”—to quote Marlin the clownfish (Finding Nemo).
However, if the dopamine dam is removed, and a norepinephrine cascade is triggered, nausea is one of the symptoms:
”Neurotransmitters and hormones involved in the sensation of nausea are diverse, and there is evidence that noradrenaline, 5-HT, vasopressin, substance P, cortisol, and the nonapeptide oxytocin [35] have some role in the genesis of nausea.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8198651/
Which could explain all the vomit.
It will certainly be a miracle if Palestinians and Israelis co-exist peacefully. Since God does not inform us through prophecy that this is His intention for Israel and Ephraim (quite the contrary), it seems that human ingenuity may try to create peace through chemicals. So perhaps the first Mark will require the administration of daily drugs, or it may even integrate directly with the brain to stimulate or block neurotransmitters.
“Reality” by Eran Fowler
Artwork available here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/eranfowler/works/22968406-reality
The people of Ephraim (presumably mixed Palestinians and Israelis during the Tribulation) are described as the mentally immature who have been taught to follow rule after rule that encroach on their autonomy. Because they won't listen to the foreign missionaries (Christians?) who speak to them of God's "resting place" and because they refuse the opportunity to enter into God's Sabbath rest (v.12), God says He will permit this slavish obedience to rules to go further, to injure and make slaves of them, or as 2Thessalonians 2:10-11 puts it, "They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie."
But our God is a merciful and covenant-keeping God, and He will give Israel one last chance, not because Israel deserves it but because He has made covenants with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David. It looks like He will dismantle the first “lie” and perform the "strange work," the "alien task" of disconnecting His people from the neural net; and warn them not to try the neural net experience again, "or your chains will become heavier"—so heavy, in fact, "that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness" (2Thess 2:12).
Because of references to this Divine rescue, one interpretation I can make is that there will be two "Marks," or two brain integrations into the neural net of the metaverse, but the first one is only a sin, of which they can repent; the second is eternal condemnation. I think of them as Mark 1.0 and Mark 2.0. The second one seems to be the “Mark of the Beast,” to be imposed at the halfway point of the seven-year Tribulation, during that three and a half year period known as the "Great Tribulation." According to Revelation chapters 13 & 14, it will no longer be voluntary; in order to participate in normal commerce (the purchase of food, the paying of rent, etc.) the choice will be to receive the Mark and renounce any faith in the God of Israel and/or Jesus, or refuse it and risk slavery or death by starvation or beheading. All of which are well-documented as End Time prophecies.
It is very strange to be alive at the end of the Age of Grace and to be observing the genesis of the technological means by which the enemy plans to lure people to take the Mark. Using these technologies is not yet a sin, and we can buy decentralized crypto today, such as Bitcoin and Ripple's XRP, and purchase NFTs, such as Melania Trump's artwork auctioned off for a good cause, and not be sinning. The intentions and purposes that began them are good: unchain the people from the central banks' debt-driven monetary system of global enslavement. But after the Church is Raptured, the enemy will only need 3.5 years to warp this tech into humanity's destruction.
Keep that thought in mind as opportunities such as this virtual concert series are presented (link below). Because there's no stopping it now.
https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/2021/12/27/vr-animal-concerts-metaverse-lead-next-wave-crypto-adoption