Aug 20
Nowhere To Hide from Big Brother
The phrase “Big Brother is watching you” doesn’t carry the same weight it once did. When author George Orwell coined this
phrase in the 1940s, Big Brother did not have a way to monitor the activity of the average citizen. Today, "big brother"
technology such as closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) have become almost as commonplace as street
lights.
Earlier this week, I was driving around Omaha, and I noticed there are cameras at key locations all over the city. Every major
intersection has a camera watching the traffic; the three main malls are wired; and every Wal-Mart or Target in town has
cameras on the rooftops and in the stores.
Terry sent me an article about a city near him installing a camera to control vandalism in Lowell, Arkansas. The new camera,
which will have zoom capabilities, is perched atop a 200-foot-tall cell phone tower. It will be able to sweep over a
wide area.
These cameras are not connected to the CIA. The ones owned by the highway departments are there to monitor traffic flow, and the
ones controlled by cities and local businesses are there to control crime. What is interesting here is that no one really cares
whether these cameras are plugged into security operations.
I remember in the 1980s, the civil liberties organizations would object to any attempt to install cameras in the public places.
Since 9/11 and other major terrorist attacks, opposition to the use of surveillance cameras has largely collapsed.
The British people are now the most spied-upon citizens on earth. In an average day, a Brit will be surveyed by around 300
cameras. Four million cameras watch them in the lanes, streets, public squares and highways across the land, more than in any
other western democracy.
China is launching a surveillance program that may quickly dwarf the one found in the UK. Starting this month in the port
city of Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips will be issued to most
citizens. Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational
background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal
reproductive history will be included for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied
to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.
Shenzhen already has 180,000 indoor and outdoor closed-circuit television cameras owned by businesses and government
agencies, and the police will have the right to link them on request into the same system as the 20,000 police cameras,
according to China Public Security. If all this technology isn't disturbing enough, the system will be guided by sophisticated
computer software that can recognize a face in a crowd.
If the program is successful in Shenzhen, Chinese officials plans to expand it to all major cities. The Chinese government
has already ordered all large cities to apply technology to police work and to issue high-tech residency cards to 150 million
people who have moved to a city but not yet acquired permanent residency.
The internet has been a key factor in the ability to track number numbers of people. A US web firm is preparing to launch an
ambitious Internet search engine that it hopes will eventually track down the names of the world's six billion people.
Spock.com says it has already indexed 100 million people and is adding a million names per day on the invitation-only, beta
version of its website, which will be made available to the public in mid-August. If some small-tech company can put together
this many names, one can only imagine the capabilities of the federal government.
One of my biggest concerns is that the prophecies related to the mark of the beast technology will come to pass ahead of the rapture.
Because the rapture is predicted to be surprise event, I highly doubt the Church will have to deal with the mark, but I wouldn't totally rule it out as a possibility. I've already been amazed at how blind the average Christian has been to last-days events. All we need is a global financial meltdown to trigger the implementation of a world financial system.
The Bible says that anyone who refuses to take the devil's mark will be locked out of the financial network. I can't imagine
being put into a position where you can't buy the necessities of life. Adding to this misery, is the fact that there will be
no place to hide for people who refuse the mark. Most tribulation saints will find martyrdom to be their only option, which makes
being rapture ready now all the more important.
“And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast
and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name” (Revelation 14:11).
-- Todd
Quakes of Diverse Sorts
The past week produced quaking, if not exactly apocalyptic in dimension, certainly portentous of things to come. Tribulation birth pangs continue to contract and convulse, even though the full emergence of that devastating era awaits Antichrist’s confirmation of the covenant that prophecy says will be made with death and hell.
Jesus foretold about the time leading up to His second coming: “For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places” (Matt. 24:7).
Again, the past week produced quaking of diverse sorts that indicate tumultuous times ahead. Shocks of two completely different varieties shook up the status quo. Two were geophysical, the other was economic.
ICA, Peru - The death toll rose to 450 on Thursday in the magnitude-8 earthquake that devastated cities of adobe and brick in Peru’s southern desert. Survivors wearing blankets walked like ghosts through the ruins. Dust-covered dead were pulled out and laid in rows in the streets, or beneath bloodstained sheets at damaged hospitals and morgues. Doctors struggled to help more than 1,500 injured, including hundreds who waited on cots in the open air, fearing more aftershocks would send the structures crashing down. Destruction was centered in Peru’s southern desert, at the oasis city of Ica and the nearby port of Pisco, about 125 miles southeast of the capital, Lima. ("Relief flows in after Peru quake kills 450," Americas, MSNBC.com, 8/16/07)
The earth continued to convulse in other places, at almost the same time.
An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7 struck in the Solomon Islands on Thursday evening, the U.S. Geological Survey, which monitors world quakes, said on its website… The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said no destructive widespread tsunami threat exists based on historical quake and tsunami data. But it cautioned that quakes of this size sometimes generate local tsunamis that can be destructive along coasts located within 100 km of the epicenter. (AP, 8/16/07)
The financial markets of the world shook and shuddered violently, seemingly at the same time the grounds and ocean islands quaked.
Global share prices tumbled again on Thursday, with a brutal round of losses in Asia and Europe as investors took flight on fears of fallout from the US housing market crisis. Traders are worried about a global credit squeeze as more banks and investment funds around the world reveal their exposure to the slumping US subprime or high-risk home loan sector, analysts said…Markets in Amsterdam, Madrid, Milan and Stockholm all registered steep losses of around 2.0 percent in early trade. "There has been no let up in the financial market turmoil with equity markets in the US last night and Asia today all lower underlining the fact that fears and uncertainty remain to the fore," said economist Derek Halpenny at The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi. ("World stocks plummet yet again," AFT story, 8/16/07).
Even when there is relative calm in the geopolitical world, the planet continues to be pregnant with painful contractions of every kind, and in many places. Jesus prophesied that just such times will be prevalent while the end of the age approaches. About these conditions, the Lord said: “All these are the beginning of sorrows” (Matt. 24:8).
Conditions are prophesied to get much worse during the tribulation period. The type disturbances presently experienced are not without precedent.
Thinking upon the days when Noah was preparing the Ark, and the times in which Lot and his family lived in Sodom, we can draw somewhat of a comparison with the conditions of our time. Business was being conducted, and society –as corrupt as it had become—continued as usual, despite wickedness and upheaval. Jesus said it would be like this when He comes back to intervene in the affairs of rebellious mankind:
And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed (Lk. 17:26-30).
Jesus said to watch, to observe the times. He said that when certain things –in birth pang-like fashion—begin to come to pass, we are to look up, for He is drawing near.
--Terry
