Sid: My guest by way of telephone is the assistant chancellor of Liberty University. I’m speaking to him at his office in Lynchburg, Virginia. His name is Ed Hindson. He’s teamed up with a futurist a high-tech man by the name of Lee Frederickson and they’ve written a book called “Future Wave.” The greatest science fiction writers of our day didn’t even come close to what’s inside this book that is actually happening today in the infancy if you will, but time is speeding up so quickly. Now Ed your specialty is end-time Bible prophecy. So based on your knowledge now of what’s going on in technology and your knowledge of the Bible, what do you think the mark will be? What do you think the anti-Christ will be? Will he be a person? Will he be a system? Will he be a robot? What is your sanctified speculation based on technology and the Bible as to what we will see when that anti-Christ is in operation?
Ed: Sid I think we have to begin with what does the Bible say about him. Then look at where is technology today and then do the speculating about what all of that could mean. I think the scripture makes it very clear that first of all the ant-Christ is a person. He’s referred to as “He” in the masculine as specific man, a man of sin, a man of lawlessness, a son of perdition etcetera. He as god sits in the temple of god claiming that he is god. So you get all of these personalized masculine descriptions. He’s a human being, he’s an individual, he gains control of the world and the world system. Economically, I think technologically, then ultimately setting up a global government and a global military system as well. But on the other you also have passages in scripture that talk about his kingdom about his system, about his government etcetera. Not only does the anti-Christ come under the judgment of Jesus Christ at His return and he’s cast into the lake of fire. You also have the whole system of anti-Christ described symbolically as Babylon that is destroyed and burned up. It’s a city, it’s a government, it’s a place it’s the materialistic intellectual headquarters of the world etcetera. So I think we have to look at both aspects of Bible prophecy. John, Jesus’ disciple way back in the 1st century said “The anti-Christ is coming you’ve heard that he’s coming, but I tell you many little anti-Christ have already come.” The spirit of anti-Christ is already at work in the world it’s that anti-God attitude, that anti-Christ attitude that motivates people to be the tool of Satan to do the work of Satan. Whether that is a false prophet who denies the teaching of the Bible, or whether that is somebody who hates the people of God like Hitler attempting to destroy the Jewish people, or whether it is some anti-Christian movement in society today that is trying to destroy the influence of Judeo-Christian morality in our society. Those attitudes are already at work because Satan is already at work. The timing has not yet come for him to move that individual into power who will then enact the program and the policies and the attitude of Satan worldwide, but the stage is certainly being set in that direction. Now when we take those Biblical descriptions and then we put them with that passage in Revelation 13 that the world worships the image of the beast. Now in the Greek New Testament it’s the word eikon, it could be a painting, or a statue or whatever but some kind of an image of the beast, but the false prophet gives life to the image of the beast. It can speak, it can talk, you can interact with it and it can even respond and hurt you and kill you if you do not worship the image of the beast. I began to see something more like a televised image, more like interactive TV that goes a step further in which you have a 3 dimensional hologramic image that could actually be projected into your living room. So that Tom Brokaw could appear to be in your living room and give you the evening news. In this case the ant-Christ, the world leader, could appear in your living room to speak to you about governmental policies or whatever.
Sid: You know I’m reminded going back to Adolf Hitler it wasn’t natural the demonic supernatural power that he had to motivate people. They would go to these meetings where there would be torches at night and just the whole thing caught the people up into the same spirit that was on Adolf Hitler. You’re saying this could happen in everyone’s living room everywhere in the world because we were talking on our earlier broadcast the languages would be simultaneously translated into the language of the people from whatever country they are from.
Ed: Yeah imagine if he could have communicated that message not just in German to the German people but he could have automatically communicated that message to every language group in the world.
Sid: Hmm.
Ed: The exponential development of his following would have been incredible. He would have had hundreds of millions potentially worldwide. There were even some Americans early on that thought “Well he sounds like a pretty good deal. He’s for work and hard work, and good ethics and morality. He wants everybody to behave and cooperate and he’s going to produce a more efficient, more effective economy in Germany. Maybe this would be a good thing.” They could not foresee the demonic devilish attitude that was being communicated. Now the Jewish community certainly picked up on it very quickly because they realized they were the target of a lot of that. Even then you had people as intelligent as Sigmund Freud who was Jewish who was living in Austria and saying “Ah it’s just talk they don’t really mean that. They’re really not going to do that.” Only at the last second before the onslaught was he finally persuaded to move to America. Otherwise…
Sid: Listen even our Jewish rabbis, our traditional Jewish rabbis in Poland were saying “Don’t go to Israel” or in Germany “This is a great country,” even with the handwriting on the wall they chose not to believe it because it was so horrific.
Ed: Yeah and I think there is a tendency in the same direction among American Christians today to say “Oh things aren’t that bad. We’re really not getting into a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah it’s a little more than it ought to be but you know it’s recoverable.” Yet many are saying “We’ve already gone beyond the point of no return.” We have a society that is so obsessed with pleasure and self-gratification that law and decency and order, and commitment to God, and the word of God are things of the past. We’ve got a kind of feel good Christianity today that says to people “It don’t matter what you believe just kind of you know… let’s all just get together and sort of sing and dance.”
Sid: It’s a self-gratification that’s slipped right from the world into the church.
Ed: Exactly and it’s come really right from the heart of Satan himself. I have a friend who recently visited a Buddhist monastery and he was curious about it and there was a temple there and there was nobody in the temple but a monk. He went up to the monk and said “Help me to understand what you believe.” The monk said “What do you mean?” And he said “Well your theology what’s your theology?” The monk thought for a minute and he said “Well we don’t have a theology.” “Then what’s your ideology? What are you trying to accomplish?” And he said “Well we don’t have an ideology.” So my friend said to him “What do you do?” The monk thought for a minute and he said “We dance.” All of a sudden he said “It hit me we’re moving in Judeo-Christian circles almost into that same kind of mindless attitude today.” We come to church to sing and dance but it really doesn’t matter what we believe. The danger is once Satan captures the hearts of people he’s got their emotions. He’ll control their mind and ultimately use their body to accomplish whatever purposes he wants to accomplish. All of a sudden we see this descendants of the human race away from family and value…
Sid: It’s like the old story of the frog in the slow boiling water versus the hot.
Ed: You throw him in a pot of hot, a pot of hot water he’ll jump right out, but you put him in a slow boil and he’ll swim around in there until it finally kills him.
Sid: What you’re saying is that’s what is really going on. Let’s go back to the scenario for the future. What do you envision is the mark of the beast?
Ed: I think the mark of the beast is going to be some kind of an external thing that can be seen. The Biblical term in the book of Revelation kragma abrand, a tattoo, it’s not just necessarily something slipped under the skin. It’s something people can immediately identify, these are people that are marked these are the people that are not.
Sid: Sort of like the Jews in Germany who had to wear a Star of David.
Ed: Star of David so they could easily be seen and identified. Had he had the ability to do it today they would have just tattooed that right on everybody. Then you couldn’t pull the star off of your pin and try to hide your identity in some way. I think however if we look at…
Sid: But if it’s on the forehead then everyone will be able to see it.
Ed: See it, yeah. Also then somehow with this thing implant some kind of device in people that can identify their location, can in some ways control their behavior and their physical responses you could end up with a society that is totally, completely, chemically, and computerized controlled.
Sid: This is way beyond Oral Welles’ 1984, way beyond it!
Ed: Way beyond it. Then to satisfy them you dispense physical pleasure to them. You create even if you have to do it artificially the sense of sexual gratification, or physical gratification. You convince them through computerized technology that they’ve just eaten a gigantic chocolate bar and they’re happy. Then they’ll do anything you want them to do. So that’s the scary part of the technology.
Sid: Now what is that famous quote from communism? “Give me a child before a certain age and I’ll make them anything I want.” Isn’t that what this technology will be used with say the next generation of children? Have them totally controlled.
Ed: Yeah you’ve got people right now saying “We should put an identification chip in every kid because then your child can’t be kidnapped, he can’t get lost you lose your kid at the mall you immediately find where he’s at.” Now it’s not as far-fetched as people think so I wouldn’t do that. There are lots of people right now who already have an implanted chip they don’t realize it it’s in their car it’s called OnStar. You get lost you push a button all of a sudden the person comes on and talks to you says “Hey where are you? You’re lost you’re in Philadelphia you’re trying to get to New York you’re on the wrong street you need to go here, go there straighten yourself out etcetera.” We say “Oh that’s terrific!” The chip knows where my car is. Well you put the chip in your dog you know where your dog is. You put it in your child you know where your child is. You put it in you they know where you are.
Sid: As you said earlier this week technology is such that you’ll be able to swallow this chip like a pill.
Ed: Yep so it won’t all that difficult. It won’t even take surgery to implant the thing in you it will implant itself inside you.
Sid: What type of feedback are you getting on your new book “Future Wave?”
Ed: Well people are… everything. Some are thrilled and excited about the potential of using the technology to communicate the gospel. Other people are scared to death saying “Oh my goodness I see us moving into a world of mind control, body control and everything else. I want to know how it will affect my children. How’s it going to affect our kids in our educational system and the next generation?” There’s so much information available on the internet right now….
Tags: It's Supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: It's Supernatural, Sid Roth