Sid: My guest by way of telephone if you’re not red hot by the time you listen to this week’s broadcast or read his book “Future Wave” you will be. His name is Ed Hindson he’s the assistant chancellor at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. He is the new dean of the Tim LaHaye School of Prophecy in Lynchburg. His specialty as you might guess is Bible Prophecy end-time scenarios. He’s teamed up with a futurist a high-tech man by the name of Lee Frederickson come out with a brand new book called “Future Wave” that the greatest science fiction writers of our day I don’t think they even came close to speculating what’s available today. For instance, you were talking Ed on an earlier broadcast about implanting into the brain a microchip that would allow a human to become a super human that would have wonderful benefits from the viewpoint of controlling health and helping people to live longer. To be able to get all the information in the Library of Congress just by thinking a thought and the computer chip would just be like a regular computer except you’re walking around with it you don’t even have to plug into electricity. Has anyone actually attempted to put this chip inside of a human?
Ed: Actually one of the researchers in this area did have done to himself and wanted to see how this would work, how this could be effective and eventually found himself communicating with himself so much that his own wife got jealous that she couldn’t get his attention. Like a guy who has his face in the computer all the time and doesn’t even want to come to the dinner table, the computer was in his mind.
Sid: But can you imagine if the kid doesn’t have to go up to his room to the computer he could be in the computer as he’s having dinner.
Ed: Exactly or anywhere. It’s going to affect how we communicate with each other, how we deal with each other. Right now on a much lower level for example, people will be talking on their cell phone in the middle of church. It’s not that somebody’s alarm watch went off in the middle of the sermon now, now people are talking on their cell phone in the middle of the sermon because somebody beeped in on them. You’ve got people responding with email devices right from their seat wherever they are. You’re going to end up with people having these things in their brain. Wireless communication transfer of information from one computer to another. This computer is only going to be the size of a computer chip that’s the difference. Somebody could be there listening to you preach the sermon but he could be downloading information about other things. Now the neat side of that is you could be talking about Jesus going to Jerusalem and he could download information about Jerusalem if he wanted to. He could also be downloading the Three Stooges in a movie and not paying one bit of attention to what you are saying. It’s going to be more and more of a challenge to get people’s attention in the future, keep it focused, and keep it focused on the word of God.
Sid: What do you see as the future to education?
Ed: I think the future in education is we’re going to move more and more towards what institutions call today “External Study Programs.” When schools first began to do this kind of thing whether they did it through correspondence courses, or they did it through audio tapes, then video tapes were a big thing. With Liberty we pioneered video education externally fully accredited. There were people that complained “Oh this isn’t real education” now everybody is doing this. Every school in the country has video courses. Now they’re moving to internet courses and pretty soon the information can be transferred right directly to your own brain. You won’t have to pick up and go away to school anymore school will come to you. Instantaneous language translation means you can study under a professor in university that you did not know the language. So that a Gentile for example could study at the Hebrew University under an archaeology professor like Dothan and get all of her information about excavation of Philistine sites automatically in English.
Sid: There’ll be no need to learn a foreign language.
Ed: No it’ll be gone. You’ll have… the “Global Brain” is what the educational technology people are calling it. It’s going to be information on an internet kind of a system, wireless transformation and communication of that information right directly into your own brain. There won’t even be a need for a teacher necessarily on site. The challenge with all of that is that means eventually the people who control the technology will control the mind.
Sid: But in affect today doesn’t television control this generation?
Ed: Oh yeah totally!
Sid: But you’re saying even greater.
Ed: Even greater direct control right into the mind. It’s just like you have to shut your computer off at the end of the day, you’re going to have to shut this thing or its going to be with you 24 hours a day and influencing… you can also communicate the gospel through that means which will be a tremendous opportunity and option for people.
Sid: Now where do economics fit in to the whole education mode of the future?
Ed: Well I think money drives the system ultimately. The educational institutions cannot afford to continue to expand at the rate that they’ve been expanding. Almost all of them are financially challenged and therefore this becomes a cheaper, quicker, less costly way to communicate not only the information you want taught but you don’t need as large as a faculty, you don’t need as large of a library. Students today don’t even go to the library they download everything on their computer from the library. The books are there but nobody’s checking them out. They’re getting all of it off the computer and there’s a lack of discernment in doing that. I’ve found even with students writing a paper for me in a Bible prophecy class like on the book of Daniel. They’ll download… they’ll just type in words and concepts and just pull up whatever is available on the net. Some of it is very legitimate research, some of it’s crazy stuff that some guy put on his website and they can’t discern the difference which tells me that eventually that’s how the anti-Christ will control how people think. Just like a librarian selectively starts to eliminate certain books you just start eliminating electronically certain information and pretty soon it’s not there, and if it’s not there the new generation functions as though it was never there.
Sid: Well and of course the books of the future will all be the internet.
Ed: Exactly electronic books. Lee the co-author of “Future Wave” is a specialist in this area. He says that you’re going to have electronic books and electronic newspapers. They call them e-books and an e-newspaper in which you download this information onto something that looks like paper it might even feel like paper but it’s not really paper it’s a screen. You can get today’s news on it then blank the whole thing out then download it again tomorrow and get tomorrow’s news on it. You can get one book on it eliminate that and bring in another book. If you want to print it you hit the print button and you print the thing. The way we give information and the way we get information changes dramatically in the next few years.
Sid: So someone or some group could literally control what we think, I mean we were talking earlier this week about once the chip is inside of the brain they can transmit… remember the subliminal advertising they used to have in movies were so quick you wouldn’t even see it with your eye. It would say “Buy popcorn” and more people would buy popcorn. They’ll be able to do this with the brain.
Ed: Yeah and that’s the scary part because you won’t even see it flip by for a split second. This will be in the brain for a split second and in there it’s going be more effective you’ll have more people buying popcorn so to speak than ever before. Or doing anything else, that communication could say “Obey the law. Follow the rules.” Or it could tell you to rise up in rebellion and overthrow the government.
Sid: Boy this stuff gets scary. With the positives which we brought out we’ll be able to control diabetes, control blood pressure, control all of the various diseases of society through these chips. There’s wonderful things that will occur but there’s equally negative things that’ll occur. So how should we spiritually respond?
Ed: I think we have to do 3 things:
- I think as Christians we have to not run away from the technology. It’s a God given human intelligence that enables human beings to develop these things. We all appreciate the benefits of the lightbulb we don’t want to live with candles anymore. We understand the value of radio and television etcetera so we need to understand the technology can be used for good and find ways to use it most effectively.
- We also have to be discerning enough to realize that one of the dangers of technology is you become so dependent on it you can’t function without it. Don’t just sit around with your face in a computer screen all day long whether it’s as big as a television set or as small as a watch. Get out and enjoy nature go fishing, have your time with your family. We can communicate with the world but we can’t communicate with each other.
- I think prophetically we have to be discerning enough to realize that all of this is only moving us many many steps closer to a world that can be controlled by an individual and an individual system. Everything the Bible predicts about the coming of the anti-Christ, the control of a global economy and a world government is going to be made possible by the development of technology so we have to understand there’s a danger in all of this as well as a positive.
Sid: Ed you’ve written this book “Future Wave,” do you sense that this is not just an ordinary book, but this is a book that’ll light a fire under people?
Ed: Our hope is that it will help first of all people like me who are not into every nuance of technology. Understand what in the world is going today it blew my mind. Then for people like Lee the co-author who are really at the cutting edge of using technology to be able to raise words of caution to us as to where this is going. Many of the seminaries right now have whole new programs and bioethics and how to raise ethical and spiritual questions and issues that are going to be impacted by the development of technology especially in a biological medical field. But there’s technology going on in the educational field, in the transportation field all of these things are going to impact the way we live life today. So I think the challenge in “Future Wave” is if you don’t understand what’s been happening and what’s going to happen this book is a wonderful introduction.
Tags: It's Supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: It's Supernatural, Sid Roth