getting really hot in this room. And I was wondering whether I was having premenopausal flushes or something. And
then I realized, no, I’m not a woman, so it can’t be that. And so I thought, maybe I’m getting a midlife crisis for a
man. And then I started asking rounds, and a lot of people were feeling very hot in here. Are you feeling hot now?
You’ve coo we’ve cooled down a bit. Yes. Yes. All right. Well, that’s a real blessing. Uh so uh anyway it’s a
privilege to come and share with you here this evening and uh this morning I spoke about digital dungeon one. Uh this
evening I’ll speak about digital dungeon 2 and as I said this morning um part of our role as pastors is to prepare people
for what lies ahead. And so I take that very seriously because we are living and
we are about to enter um a time of trouble such as never has been. And so
we need to think about how we’re going to get through these times and what is our source of strength and what is our
source of hope. And so uh tomorrow I have two um quite different talks lined up. Uh but this evening I’m going to um
continue with this concept of the digital dungeon. And as this morning I spoke about digital dungeon one, I’ve
imaginatively entitled this digital dungeon too. So um I invite you to bow your heads with me and we’ll invite the
presence of the Holy Spirit. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the blessings of life. We thank you that the
Sabbath hours are upon us. Lord, thank you that we can step aside from um the
world of work and for many a world of worry. And I’d ask Lord that as we step
into your presence now that your Holy Spirit will whisper into our ears, this is the way. Walk ye in it. Uh Lord, we
know we’re living in troubled times, but you’ve given us the prophetic voice as a as a flashlight to guide us through dark
and troubled times. And father, you’ve promised uh that the gifts of the church will be operative from the time of the
apostles through to the second coming. And we pray Lord for tonight for the gift of wisdom and for the understanding
of the times in which we live. Uh so Lord, we give the rest of this evening into your hands. Please speak through me
and for me. This is my prayer in Jesus’ name. Amen. All right. So this is our
journey this evening. Um I’m going to speak about smart cities. Have you heard of smart cities?
Yes. Um, have you heard of 15minute cities? Yes. Yes. They kind of started to get rolled
out during the pandemic and they really started to take off in parts of Europe. Oxford, the um university town in
England, uh they decided to divide their town up into 15minute zones and
everybody was restricted to a certain zone. And they kind of figured that for most people um other than in northern
Maine obviously um they’re within a 15inute drive of their medical care, their education and their food supply.
Obviously not in Maine. Yes. But for most part most people in the world they’re within about 15 minutes journey
of um education, food, health, and employment. Those four things. And so um
the the planners in Europe started picking up on an old Soviet idea which was um for 15minute cities. And this
idea does come from the Soviet Union. And it was designed not to facilitate life. It was designed to restrict life
and restrict freedom. And so um the uh this is our journey this evening. We’re going to look at some smart city goals.
We’re going to look at some smart city projects that are underway. We’re going to look at some smart city dangers that
are out there. We’re going to look at some of the choices we have to make relating to smart cities and then smart
city dilemmas before we come to our conclusion. So that’s our journey here this evening and um do any of you
remember Shanghai in the pandemic when people were locked into their apartments
by the police and the doors were sealed shut from the outside and people
literally starve to death in their apartments. Um, it was a terrible, terrible thing. And in different parts
of the world, we saw government lockdowns that were literally locking people down in their own homes, in their
own apartments. And so, um, out of the pandemic, um, we now have a surge of
interest around the world in what are called smart cities. So um if parallel
to the rollout of CBDC’s and digital IDs uh many governments around the world are investing heavily in smart city
technology and just a few weeks ago in Barcelona there was um the fourth uh the
the smart city expo world congress attracting over 20,000 attendees
and they were they included national governments and global corporations IT giants and they all came together to
discuss how to reshape the urban paradigm so that we have what they call more sustainable, more more efficient
and what they call more human- centered cities. But smart is is synonymous with the word
surveillance as we’re going to see. So what are some of the smart city goals that we see
around us today? Well, the first is that governments talk about equitable access to resources and to amenities uh such as
for instance dynamically adjusting the public transport um or utilities to
underserved areas as you go through the day. Um, another goal of smart cities is
what they call enhanced citizen participation, which means you have online platforms so that people can
directly vote on local urban initiatives um give their feedback on local decisions and ideally the the goal is to
increase people’s engagement and involvement in the urban planning process. So that’s the second goal that
we you hear spoken about in these conferences. The third is what they call more inclusive environments and that is
designing smart infrastructure to be inclusive of women or minorities or
migrants or the elderly or the disabled. And examples of this would be improved lighting in public spaces to increase
safety for vulnerable groups. You know when I was in northern Iraq in 2014 15
when ISIS was conquering out there um I was uh going through some camps. These
are mostly Christians. They’d fled from ISIS in in Urbal in in Mosul. And uh we
we asked in the camps, “What is your greatest need?” And it wasn’t food and it wasn’t medical care. The number one
need for the ladies was they said, “We need latrines that are well lit and are
in the center of the camp because we have to leave the camp at night to take care of our personal needs
and we get captured and trafficked. So we want well-lit latrines in the center
of the camps so that we can go and take care of our personal hygiene needs without risk of kidnapping and
trafficking. And so while I was with AFM, we raised some money. And that’s what we did. We built in a number of
camps, shower in the train blocks right in the center with walls around them and plenty of lighting. And the ladies were
delighted that there was a more inclusive environment for them. Um that I’m not sure that’s smart city planning.
It’s just kind of um having a concern for your neighbor, you know, doing unto others as you’d have them do unto you as
Jesus said in Matthew 7:12. Then you have um another goal of smart cities is
combating disinformation. Well, you know, the uh the state
newspaper um uh the the the the newspaper of the Communist Party was known as Pravda, which means truth. And
of course, everything you read in it was not the truth. And I’ve come to the conclusion today that if you want to
know the truth, listen to what Fox, CNN or BBC are telling you and assume exactly the opposite and then you know
you’re on the right path. Uh if you want to know the truth, if they say this is a debunked theory, then you know it’s
probably true. And the more viferously they attack a certain interpretation of the news, the more certain it is that
that is true. But in smart city goals, there is a g a goal of combating disinformation. So for instance, they
say when there is a public emergency, we want to be able to inform the people immediately so they need they know how
to react. If there is a fire like in um um Paradise, California, if there is an
earthquake in Tokyo, um if there is a tsunami in Southeast Asia, we need to be
able to inform the citizens within seconds so they know what they can do and take life saving life-saving actions
within the next 90 seconds or minute so they avoid whatever catastrophe is coming upon the city. And then you have
the idea that governments want to optimize best living conditions.
That is using technology to minimize traffic, reduce pollution, and allocate
urban resources efficiently so that the quality of life is maximized for its citizens. All of this sounds pretty
nice, doesn’t it? You don’t sound convinced.
I should get a different job. I’m not a good salesman for smart cities, am I? Anyway, these are the goals of the smart
cities and at the recent smart city expo held over there in Barcelona um where
there were over 850 major world cities represented. Um these are the goals they were talking
about. And when you think of something like the mayor of Mexico City with 30 million
people within his city, these mayors are incredibly powerful. They have huge
resources at their disposal and they’re partnering with global IT and tech
companies to radically um change how life takes place within the smart cities
of our world. So, so what are some of the smart city projects that are happening now? Well, I’m going to give
you some examples here and one of those is mo relating to mobility and uh
transport. So, for instance, traffic lights are now AI controlled and they are now learning to adapt in real time
to congestion, which can really reduce idling or commute times. I’ve noticed as
I drive through through towns, if I have a long a long um road and there’s 10
traffic junctions on it, if I can get through the first one on green, I can get through them all on green. But if I
hit the first one on red, guess what’s going to happen? They’re all going to be red. It’s it’s better just to idle at
the side of the road till you’re green and then race through because you’re going to get through all the remaining lights um because you otherwise you’re
just going to miss everything. But AI is already being used in places like London and Dubai to to um on a dynamic basis
alter the traffic lights um so that the the traffic flow is optimized and we’re
looking at connected public transport. Um so commuters are now starting to get
live updates on bus and train locations. Routes can be rerouted on demand based
on demand. For instance, in London, New York, they provide um real time open
data for developers to create transit apps. And Dubai is testing autonomous
vehicles in geoenced areas with responsive routing. We also see the roll
out of EV electrical vehicle infrastructure with smart grids and park parking sensors integrated with
electrical vehicle charging stations and some cities are adjusting prices by the
minute based on supply and demand to balance it out. We’re also seeing the use of autonomous vehicles and drones in
our cities. We are seeing designated corridors or test zones for autonomous
vehicles and and and buses or delivery drones and the use of of digital twin
digital twins is allowing cities to sim simulate traffic scenarios. So Singapore
as an example has a digital twin and when the government wants to know what’s going to happen in Singapore if we do
road works on this road over the next two months they run it through the digital twin and then the AI simulates
what’s going to happen to the traffic flow in that particular city and so they know in advance what they need to do to
minimize the disruption to the city. So you have the physical city but you also have a digital version of the city and
the city planners use that when they’re planning what to do about things. When I used to live in Dubai um I noticed that
um sometimes you get up in the morning and three or four major um roads are just blocked off.
Anybody here live in Dubai? Yes. Okay. It’s an incredible place.
Yes. The architecture is they know how to build fancy buildings out there. And
um so I asked somebody there, I said, “Well, how come how come that the we’re
reading in the news that the population has dropped in the last couple of years significantly, but how come the roads
are just as busy? How does that work out?” And the answer I got from this guy who was the head of
road engineering in Dubai, he was an Adventist. He ran a business called the um 7-day engineering company. And he was
a head of road engineering. He says current he said in order to give people the illusion that the city is doing well
when the population drops they just cordon off key corridors so you they maintain the same levels of
congestion so you don’t realize that there are fewer cars in Dubai they’ve just cordoned it off for artificial
repairs so this is a a smart city you might say deceiving its own inhabitants
that things aren’t as bad as as you hear on the news by um cordoning off roads so you think that there’s just as many
people on the Then you have energy and environmental initiatives. Um, cities now putting in
place smart grids. Um, those have sensors to balance supply and demand autonomously. So they’re incorporating
renewable energy with and so they can isolate outages. So for example, the city of Copenhagen uses smart grid
technology to manage wind and solar inputs and to remove um, waste products. I was flying once from um, Spockan in
the morning to Dubet to Denver on my way back to Chicago. I always seem to get these 5 a.m.
flights, but I was flying back from 5:00 a.m. from Denver to to um from Spokane
to Denver and at 5:00 a.m. in the morning, I’m not, you know, I’m not really interested from a long
conversation, but anyway, um I was blessed to sit next to the national director of a company
that manufactures 70% of the smart um electrical meters in America.
And it was a fascinating conversation. And um he was evangelistic about why we
should all get smart meters in our homes. And he was saying he said he said we can we can track your activity
through the day just through your electricity usage. We can predict your electricity usage through the day. He
said, “We know when you go to church. We know when you go to the the gym. We know when you go on vacation, and based on
that, we can predict and know when you’re getting a break-in in your house, and we can let 911 know because we know
you’re gone. We can predict your patterns on the smart meters.” He says, “We can learn an awful lot about just
your consumption of electricity with these smart meters.” Well, uh that I I mean, it was a fascinating conversation.
I kept me awake at 5:00, but we went on to another conversation after that. We spoke about casting out demons and that
was a very interesting conversation. Um but anyway uh when it comes to energy and the environment we have now
intelligent waste management. So Cincinnati uses smart trash bins that reduce unnecessary collection trips. So
in Cincinnati, your trash may not be removed this week because the bin tells the bin company there’s not enough trash
to stop and pick it up. And so they’re making the the the trash collection more
efficient down there in Cincinnati. Uh we also have intelligent water management. So Singapore’s um Singapore
has a smart grid for the water system. It detects pressure anomalies instantaneously and that allows them to
dispatch crews to repair um um brakes in in the water system saving millions of
gallons of water every year. And we also have with the environment air quality monitoring. If you go to Delhi in India,
the capital city, New Delhi, um they there’s an app there and you can track
air quality in every district of Delhi on the app. And you say, well, why is that
important? Well, you go and spend some time in Delhi. It’s disgusting. the air at 7 o’clock in
the morning because um there are millions of people live on the streets and they go to the toilet on the streets
and when you come out of your house at seven or eight in the morning the place stinks like an open air sewer and you
have the the the the concentration of pollution in the air is so bad that you
can almost kind of reach out and touch it with your hands. And so there there are apps in Delhi that tell you from um
some are from the government, some are private that tell you this is the air quality in this district at this moment
and this is what’s projected to happen given the the wind projections for the rest of today. Then you have smart city
projects related to public safety and security. So for instance um uh you have
CCT cameras now coupled with AI can detect anomalies in crowd movement so
that if somebody falls off a train platform or if there are people gathering for a fight um the smart TV
the smart TVs coupled with AI means that the police can be directed to that location even before people are calling
for assistance. We also have disaster response um being put in place for
public safety. So there are now AI systems analyzing social media for distress signals to improve emergency
response. So for instance, Tokyo now has an early warning system attached to
people’s phones so they can warn people seconds before a disaster takes place, an earthquake, so people can take
shelter before the earthquake actually hits the city. And then you have smart street lighting. So the street lights
dim or they brighten if there is nobody walking through or if you arrive that that street the lights suddenly go
bright on you and as you walk through them the lights go off after you. And so these are some examples of smart city
projects. Then you have citizen services and egovernance.
So you now you’re seeing around the world digital citizen portals uh or apps that do everything from applying for
permits, applying for school for your kids, checking your health records, uh registering for public services and
paying your taxes. Estonia leads the world in this actually and in Estonia
about 99.9% of all government services are now accessed from one app on your cell phone and they are leading the
world in Estonia in the rollouts of um digital um citizen services. And then
there are 247 AI chat bots. Have you ever chatted with a chatbot on the internet?
Oh, believe me, they’re really good. They’re really good. So, um what if if I
if I’m flying somewhere and um I need to change my flight for whatever reason.
Let’s say I’m flying with my wife somewhere and I go to the United web page and um I the flight I’m flying some
with my wife on Thursday. We’re coming back on Sunday, but she needs to take an earlier flight back on Sunday, which if
you go through the old route means we’ve now got two separate um codes for our flights. And it can take a while to do
that if you bought if you bought it on one ticket. Now you just go to the United Chatbot
and they can do it with you and you’re talking to an AI system and it asks you questions and you chat and tell you what it wants and it does it for you. It’s
incredible. Even on my own website, um I haven’t done it yet, but my son
keeps saying to me, “Dad, you need a chatbot to respond to queries. Like why are you answering your phone? just put a
chatbot on your website and if people ask questions the the the AI can answer the questions for them. I’m not sure
whether I’m going to do that just yet. Maybe it’s good for marriages. Yes, talk to the chatbot, please. But
anyway, um we have other examples of uh electronic governance. So um London runs
a data store and New York has what they call open data and that has hundreds of data sets from monitoring air quality to
contract expenditures and citizens of these c cities are able to upload data
and gather data from these open data sources these online databases and they’re able to develop apps that
improve the quality of life in that city. So um in in London somebody developed an app for reporting rat
sightings based on the public health records that now matter of public interest. I think in San Francisco
there’s probably an app for reporting human waste on the on the streets. Okay. And but in London you can now track the
movement of rats on an app based on this open data that the government is making available to the people. And then you
have buildings and infrastructure maintenance. I’ve got one more after this. These are examples of smart city
projects. So, um, new buildings are being constructed in some parts of the world with multiple sensors in them
controlling lighting, heating, and ventilation, and it’s assessing occupancy and outside temperature and
indoor temperature, and they’re adjusting the systems continually to maximize comfort for people inside the
building. Incidentally, the pursuit of comfort is detrimental to your health.
Just as a side note, the pursuit of comfort is detrimental to your physical
health. Think about that for a minute. The pursuit of comfort, buying that nice
lazy boy, becoming a couch potato, it’s detrimental to your health. Comfort
isn’t such a good thing for us as human beings. But we like comfortable buildings. And so I’ve already mentioned
digital twin cities. Um, but Dubai has smart skyscrapers that claim significant
energy reductions via their automated systems. And there’s also predictive maintenance. So, sensors on bridges,
roads, rail lines, they monitor structural health. They detect vibration patterns and cracks and they alert
before a failure takes place in a bridge or a railroad. So, Chicago now has sensors on its key bridges to measure
stress in real time and indicate to authorities when repairs need to be made. Then you have smart cities
relating to health, health and well-being. So for instance, we have tele medicine. Any of you use
tele medicine during the pandemic? Yes. Anybody use tele medicine today? Probably. Yes. Uh we we like to use tele
medicine. So now tele medicine cities uh tele medicine systems are used so that
you can have medical care at home without leaving your home without going to the hospital and this reduces
hospital visits and transport in the city. So many cities now such as Toronto and Seoul provide um um smart wearables
to the elderly and so they alert they can alert the doctor if something’s wrong with that person. You know, they’re dead, the heart stopped or
whatever. They can they can tell the doctor this person needs help. You also have environmental health tracking. So,
um you know, you now have apps such as in Los Angeles that tracks not just air quality, but noise levels, urban heat
islands, and uh real time noise complaints. So the authorities can m can
dispatch mediation teams to figure to figure things out. And so um what we
what these are some examples of smart city projects that are happening around us. But what are some of the dangers of
this? Because when you when you when you listen to the reports of these smart city expos and you have Microsoft and
Oracle and the big um IT companies and you have the major transport companies of the world and these mayors of the
largest cities of the world all gathering and talking how they can make life more efficient. Um it all relies on
24/7 data collection. That’s what it relies on. It relies on millions of
sensors spread across the city sensing different things. And you may say, well, that’s kind of cool and this is nice and
that’s really helpful. But the aggregate impact is to turn a smart city into a
surveillance city. That’s where this goes. So, smart city dangers, let’s just
look at some of these smart city dangers. So, um the smart city infrastructure is
essentially the skeleton of a surveillance state if it’s misused. When the city’s CCTV cameras, public
transport scanners, payment systems, and even waist bins are all feeding data into a central database, it creates a
datariich environment. When that’s combined with your digital ID, it can be used to track every movement, every
transaction, everything you do within that smart city. And the integration of a personal phonebased digital ID which
has been rolled out in Britain for instance with smart city it magnifies this problem. Then you have continuous
movement tracking. When you have dense um facial recognition camera systems scattered all
the way through the city, the authorities can just lock into you and track you wherever you go through the
day. So I have some drones at home and um I was in Toronto a few weeks ago
and um you can’t buy certain drones in America right now, but you can buy them in Toronto. So, I came back with a bunch
of drones and and Christmas is coming up as you know and
uh so I came back with a bunch of drones because you can’t buy certain drones in America right now because of our dispute with China, but you can buy them in
Toronto. So, um with these drones, they’re quite remarkable. um you can
hover these drones um like 300 feet in the air and it will and you can program it to lock in on your face and wherever
you walk that drone will just follow you around and just follow you through the crowd and it just just locks into you
and and it will send a data feed to whoever’s watching the data and you can’t escape those drones. The drones
will have thermal imaging and they’ll have night vision and they’ll have just regular optics and so these things are
quite remarkable. I think my mother-in-law must be watching me sometimes um because she seems to know
what I’m doing. But the this drone technology really is incredible. But
with facial recognition and linking it to a digital ID in a smart smart city,
simply walking down the street would ping various sensors. So you’re always visible to the system. You have no
privacy left anymore. And so you then have geo fencing and travel restrictions. So location data enables
the government to do what they call geo fencing. That is automatically enforcing geographical location rules on
individual citizens. So for instance, if certain zones of the city are are deemed
off offlimits to high-risk individuals, the system can alert the authorities that you’re coming in close to the
limits of the offlimit area or they can disable your access. So for instance, you could lose access to public
transport, your vehicle could be shut off or your fin credit cards could just stop working when you come within a
certain geographical zone within a city. And we we saw we mentioned it this morning during the pandemic. Um China
rolled out a vaccination app that was abused to control movement. protesters
found that their green vaccination status turned to red and they were told to get off buses and public transport by
the conductors because the conductors knew this person is refused entry to the certain area. So those digital IDs
became digital handcuffs for those Chinese citizens just in the last couple of years. This example demonstrates how
a public health app can be used to squash public descent to government policy. a city-wide digital IC digital
ID system would likewise be weaponized to restrict movement of certain people by zone or by time. And then you have
purchasing power compliance.
I’ve already covered that purchasing power tied to compliance. This is what
we call a social credit score. You’ve heard of social credit scores? These are very real. If a digital currency is
linked to your digital ID, then what you are allowed to purchase is programmed by the government. Digital currencies are
programmable currencies. The government can determine what you can spend on, where you can spend it, and how often
you can spend it. With these digital currencies that are being rolled out around the world and over 150
governments are actively rolling out digital currencies as we speak here tonight. The governments can determine
for instance in a smart city if they want to preserve the environment they may say that you can use 10% of your
digital currency outside your 15-minute zone each month. What does that mean? It means you can never travel.
Your your your money is only good for a certain geographical zone. They can also say with with programmable currency that
as in Europe they literally have this restriction that with a digital euro you’re only allowed so many euros in
your account at any one time. So if it costs €4,000 to live in a month but
you’re only allowed to save 3,000 at any one time in your bank. It means you’re a slave to the system. You can never build
up wealth outside of the system to live on because you can never have more than 3 weeks supply of financial reserves in
your bank account. um if the government decides that they need you to start spending money um to to stimulate the
economy, they can start taxing or putting negative interest rate on your savings. When I lived in in in Cyprus in
200 when was it? 2005 2006 the Greek government was going through a financial
crisis and on the instructions of the European Central Bank, we all woke up one morning and found that there had
been a haircut given that night. You know what a haircut is? It’s where the government just takes five or 10% of all
your current accounts bounces overnight. It’s just gone. There’s nothing you can do about it. And so I had a haircut when
I was in in in in Cyprus because I was banking with the the the National Bank of Greece at the time. So these things
are very real. And when you get on a government watch list, it’s very hard to get off a government watch list.
As a general rule in America, if you go on a no-fly list, there is no judicial procedure to get off the no-fly list.
And once you get put on certain lists, it’s very, very hard to get off those lists. So, you may say, well, we don’t
have that in America just yet. But the key is in the question just yet
because we do have a social credit scheme and it’s informal. We’ve just lived through it for the last 10 years.
Is known as cancel culture. And had anybody here in the state of Michigan posted, I mean, maybe you still do it
today. If you post, if you’re an employee of the state of of Maine, if you post on social media and say, I
believe that marriage is only between a biological male and a biological female. See how long you keep your job for the
state of Maine. So, we do have a social a social credit
system. It’s not as formal as it is in China, but it’s there nonetheless. So,
um, then you have the monitoring or censoring of online speech. And so once you have a digital ID linked
to your SIM card as in Thailand today, um all internet login can be tied to the
your to your digital ID, it means that every tweet, every post, anything you
post on social media is tied to a verified identity. This will lead to
online censorship of speech. And in Britain, we’re seeing this happen in real time right now.
Last year um there was um um a local citizen um he was uh he came from a
refugee immigrant family and he decided to take out his anger on society by um
by knifing to death a bunch of young girls at a ballet class and it was a brutal killing
and there was an immediate upsurge of public anger because in that city the
governments have been importing many men from the Middle East and other parts of the world who viewed the local women as
prey and the government wouldn’t do anything about it. To complain about this is racist. So there was an immediate
upsurge of public outcry and anybody who was caught saying let’s meet in the public square at 4:00 this afternoon.
The government was using um AI and it was tracking down every British citizen that was calling for protests and many
of them are have now facing long prison sentences. This is happening even now in Britain.
uh you know in Britain uh just recently um a woman was imprisoned because in the law it’s it’s against the law to protest
within I think 100 yards of an abortion clinic and so she was standing about 50 yards away from abortion clinic silently
and the police asked her what are you doing and she said I’m thinking
they said what are you thinking about she said well I’m actually praying in my head and for that she now is in prison with a
multi-year prison sentence for the crime time of thinking or praying in her head.
So when President Trump goes to Britain just a few months ago, he starts complaining, you are shutting down free
speech in this country. So the monitoring or censoring of online speech
is spreading in different parts of the world. You then have resource
smart meters enforce use restrictions for electricity, gas and water. This
brings the prospect of rationing and automated enforcement. So, if the if the city declares an energy emergency, an
integrated AI system might automatically restrict your home’s thermostat or simply cut power after you’ve used your
quot of energy. And how much power you’re allowed is tied to whether you are a compliant citizen or whether you
are a dissident citizen. Then you have conditional access to health care
in a in a in a connected system. skipping a mandated health appointment or vaccine now flags your status in the
city systems. We saw this all across the EU when they rolled out um vaccine passports. And if you didn’t if you
weren’t up to date on your vaccine passports and no vaccine, no digital pass, no entry to restaurants and no
entry to travel. It happened in Europe just two, three years ago. And what they
did in Europe, they explicitly said this is a model for what can be rolled out worldwide.
The these digital IDs and conditional access based on your healthcare. Then you have employment opportunities and
conditional access to employment based on AI profiling. What does this mean?
Employers might use social risk scores drawn from your integrated data. If AI
analyzes your data trail online and finds you to be high-risisk, you’ll be quietly filtered out of job shortlists
and this kind of algorithmic discrimination would occur without your knowledge. In fact, um somebody raised a
question about this with a British airline and they said, “How come all your um stewards and stewardesses are
young and fit?” They said, “Well, because you can’t discriminate on, you know, whether
somebody is, you know, tall or short or broad or thin. you can’t discriminate on those grounds. And the answer from the
airline was, well, we don’t look at them phys physiologically. We just take a look at what sports they’re engaged in.
And once we’ve developed a profile of your lifestyle, we can have a that’s a pretty good predictor of how you going
to look physically. And there’s no law against discriminating on whether you do marathon running or not, but that’s a
good indicator of whether you are physically fit or not. And so the airline was using um profiling of
individuals on totally things totally unrelated to whether you were going to be a good steward or stewards or not um
to decide who was going to be serving in the airlines. And then you have the erosion of private privacy.
Ultimately if all devices and services feed data into the centralized systems
tied to your digital ID personal privacy as we know it is eroded. Every smart
light bulb, every fitness tracker, every car sensor becomes a data point about
your life accessible to some central authority. What this means is that your privacy evaporates. And you may say,
well, what’s the problem with that, Pastor Divine? The problem is when you know that you are under 247 digital
surveillance, it profoundly affects your behavior. It affects your mental health.
It affects how you treat other people. It affects who you’re willing to meet because everything is being monitored. I
used to live in the former Soviet Union and um the uh in a place called Nakivan
which was an autonomous republic between Azaba and Iran and Turkey and Armenia
and um it was it was a very small place and I was there with two other workers for Adra. They now live in Tennessee and
we were aware that the KGB because that was still KGB back then, the Soviet secret police. We were aware that every
email was read and every phone call was monitored. Our driver and our translator were both KGB.
Nothing I did was unknown to the government authorities. Everything I did was known to the government.
And does that change your behavior? Yes, it does. I used to send my mother because they’d
have to translate all my emails. So I would send my mother in England via we used to have CompuServe. Some of you
remember CompuServe. We used the the internet was so bad I’d leave my computer on auto redial on
Friday afternoon. I’d leave the office and I’d try and send my mom a chapter of of I don’t know patriarchs and profits.
Hey mom, I found a book. This looks really good. Take a look. What do you think? Knowing that some poor KGB
officer has to read this and translate it. I thought you once read my emails. I’ll give you emails to read.
So sometimes you turn it to your advantage. But I can tell you um I I I never I used to say to my colleagues,
don’t worry about when you’re under 247 surveillance. The locals know you’re under 247 surveillance as well. Nobody’s
going to touch you or attack you or harm you or steal from you because the KGB have got two eyes on you at every moment
of time. So nobody’s going to give you any trouble because everybody knows these are KGB guys right here. They’re
not just drivers and translators. These are KGB. And KGB are a law unto themselves. They can kill at will.
So having 24/7 surveillance, I’ve lived under it. It is a
it changes how you behave. And we planted a church in that area. There was
nothing and we planted a church and there were all Muslim background and uh we were busy doing this on the side and
there was there was a local doctor and he was an Adventist and uh wonderful man
and um but he was under 247 surveillance as well. And I remember going to visit
with him and we’d go for walks outside. We leave our phones at home. We go for walks out and along the the city roads
with cars whizzing by us so nobody could hear the conversation. And he would talk about what it was like for him as a
national to be interviewed by the KGB and what it was like for me to be interviewed by the interviewed by the KGB. I could walk into a KGB interview
knowing that I had a foreign passport. That’s a whole lot different to walking into a KGB interview knowing that they
can do what they want to you and there is no law can stop them. And the pressure and the stress this precious
brother in Christ was under knowing that as the head elder of that local church plant that was growing rapidly among
Muslims, he was under immense pressure from the government and they knew everything about him and they had what
they call a papka. Papka is like a a brown file and everybody in so you had a
papka held by the secret police and um he said if there’s a mark on your papka your kids don’t don’t go to university
they don’t go to college um the government will direct them into cleaning cleaning out rats in the underground or something of your life
work but if you if you stray outside what the KGB thinks is acceptable then
you and your family are marked forever and so he said just meeting with you is
a threat. And so I um what I realized out there
was that the government was interested in young men but they weren’t so interested in grandmas becoming
Christians. So we focused on ministry to grandmas
because they can spread the faith in their homes. But the men were afraid to come to church because of the social
consequences when you’re living under 247 surveillance. So living under living in uh under 247
surveillance from the KGB or living under surveillance in a smart city is kind of the same thing. It’s more to in
for a smart city it’s more like 1984 um with George Orwell. Um so in a sense we
all have to make decisions about smart cities and are we going to move or live in a smart city or in a city that is
going smart or are we going to follow another direction in life? Now, I’m not sure how many smart cities
you have here in Maine. I mean, uh, that’s a serious question.
You know, um, how many, sister? You don’t know any? All right.
This one tonight is smart. This one tonight. Yeah. This is a smart city here tonight. Yes. But, uh, may maybe Portland, Maine, maybe Freeport. I
mean, maybe some of the larger towns will go smart in the passage of time, but the large urban areas of America are
already well down this path. So we all have to make decisions when it
comes to smart cities. And I I my parents live in England where almost everybody lives in a town and those
towns are becoming smarter or more um surveillance and prone with every
passing year. We see this all the time and it’s like the frog in in the in the pot, you know, how what hot does water
have to get before you decide I don’t want to do this? The intention of discussing these risks tonight is not to
enjoy induce paranoia or fatalism, but it’s to help us as Adventists to make informed decisions as we go forward to
recognize the trends that are happening around us. We are moving towards a world of tighter digital controls. And so
there are some practical things we can do to retain a measure of independence and personal resilience. And so I’m
going to give you a list now of some things that can be done to help us um in the choices that that we must make. So
the first thing is actually to relocate to a less surveiled area otherwise known as the countryside
because there are there there are um um smart cities start by their name in
cities and we’ve yet to have smart country. But we are moving in the in the
direction of smart urban environments. Those are under complete surveillance.
And so um you know in England that the mayor of London brought out this these these cameras to check who’s driving
into the center of London and they automatically penalize you for this is going to improve air quality. Of course
it’s utter nonsense. You know me paying10 a day isn’t going to change global climate patterns as far as I know
but this is what they do. So, there are these heroes in England who go around with vans and and and cutters and and
they kind of saw down these um saw down these these these large cameras and they’re kind of viewed as local folk
heroes. Um but they’re viewed as folk heroes because people are tired of the surveillance and it’s only getting
worse. So, one thing you can think about is relocating your family to an area that doesn’t have so much digital
surveillance. Urban areas are the first to implement smart infrastructure and digital enforcement. Living in rural or
remote areas might offer more freedom from constant monitoring. And self-sufficiency is generally easier in
the countryside than it is in Manhattan. Secondly, start growing your own food.
Sister White specifically councils moving to the country because she says when no buy no sell comes in the problem
of buying and selling the problem of buying food will become particularly acute.
And there are there are Adventists in America today who have one day of food in their fridge in Manhattan and that’s
it. They’re completely dependent on the system. There’s no resiliency. There’s no ability to survive any shocks that
happen to our urban centers. And so um living in an urban in a rural environment allows us to grow our own
food. What does that mean? It means that you’re beyond the control of the digital system when it comes to the basics of
life. Self-sufficiency is easier in the country than in the urban environments. Um you can have home gardens, you can
have community farms and seed saving. Uh these are all experiencing a renewed interest in America among non-adventists
because people see what is happening in our urban environments. It strikes me as strange that
non-adventists are often more awake to what is happening in our cities than Adventists are.
And it’s almost like like Lot’s wife, we don’t want to give up the comforts of Sodom and Gomorrah. Come on.
And yet when Jesus warned the disciples in Matthew 24 that when you see these things happen, you know, flee when when
the Romans circulated Jerusalem in AD66 and then they withdrew back to Syria,
all the Christians fled from Jerusalem across the river Jordan. And the next time the Romans came and took the city of Jerusalem in AD70, over a million
people died in that process. And it’s believed from the historian Eczebius that not one Christian died because they
took seriously the voice that the words that Jesus gave them. So I want to encourage you to think
about these things here tonight. Um because we can’t stop urban cities but
we can choose where we live and we can choose therefore how much personal freedom we want to retain.
Maintain digital boundaries. Some people have app creep.
So, how many people here do you not need to raise a hand? How many people here use the same login for all their apps?
I’m not asking you to admit to it tonight. How many people here use their facial
recognition or their thumb or their finger to get into their apps or their smart devices?
Once you’re in, you’re in. And so we need to think carefully about
these. Using separate accounts and separate devices for different purposes
helps create air gaps in our social media infrastructure that makes it harder for someone to track and build a
unified profile about who we are, what our interests really are. I encourage you also to avoid unnecessary app
permissions. So if you must use a smartphone, avoiding linking your health apps to your location services or social
media to a biometric login and so forth.
Maintain an active connection with your heavenly father.
You know what got me through the pandemic was my morning devotions. It was the assurance that God is on his
throne. No matter what this world does or says to me, God is my heavenly father and he
knows when a sparrow falls to the ground. He knows the hairs on my head. And Jesus says in the sermon on the
mount, little children, do not worry about these things. The Gentiles worry about what you’re going to eat and what you’re going to wear and where you’re
going to live and all the rest of it, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other
things that the Gentiles worried about. God is going to take care of that for you. And one of the greatest ways of reducing
stress is to pray and is to give everything to God in prayer. And you know uh if you have your
Bibles with you just uh one verse I’d like to look at here. It’s a I found this verse to be very pertinent uh
during the pandemic. It’s in Eph um Philippians 4. Maybe some of you got
this list um underlined in your Bibles. Philippians 4 and verse um six. It
says,”Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving, let your requests be known unto God, and the peace of God which passes all understanding will fill
your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” So when you do your best during the day, and at the end of the day, you kneel and
say, “Lord, I’ve done my best. Whatever imperfections are in there, I’m asking you to give turn it into a perfect
sacrifice. Uh I’m going to give it over to you tonight. As I go to sleep tonight, I’m giving this problem into
your hands so that when I wake up in the morning, I’m going to see what you’ve done on my behalf. And I’m going to
sleep peacefully tonight because it’s in my heavenly father’s hands. When when my
son was one, two, and three, used to fly in his area airlines, the theme tune was nearer my god to thee because there were
so many crashes on that airline. So people used to pray a lot when they went, at least I did, went on that plane
and uh sometimes the pilots were drunk, sometimes they couldn’t speak English. They invite me into the cockpit because
we’re flying into Baku with Lufans from British Airways and United coming in and the pilots couldn’t speak English and
you’re supposed to speak English. And sometimes the pilot comes in and he’s drunk. He’s been celebrating his
birthday and he wants someone to translate for him. or sometimes um we’re
flying and once we flew in the cabin depressurized on us as we were coming into land. It was a scary scary
experience and so forth. And I would get onto that plane with a certain amount of prayer and my little son would be
sitting next to me in a car seat fast asleep. Why is he fast asleep? Because he’s with
his daddy. And because he’s with his daddy, he knows that as long as I’m with my daddy,
I’m going to be okay. And so as we think about these smart cities, think about renewing and
reviving your relationship with your heavenly father. A, it reduces stress. It builds trust and it provides guidance
as we pray about things and ask for the guidance of the holy spirit as to the decisions that we must make. Prepare
prepare for cav travel constraints. When COVID struck, I spoke with my mom
and dad in England and all all the planes were being cancelled and uh my mom said Corin, she says, “We may not
meet this side of heaven, so we’re just going to say goodbye now.”
And we just had to make as a family, yes, we may not see our parents again in England. My father is in his 80s and he
had some frailties. And so, uh, we recognized that because of the travel restrictions, we may not see each other
again. and we just realize that this world is not our home. We need to be prepared for
a future where you cannot simply hop on a flame plane and drive freely without a digital permission.
This means cherishing the ability to travel now while we can and maintain the relationships that are truly important
in our lives. It also means that we take measures so we can survive in a world of
digital control. So I travel a lot across America and when I was in Alabama last year for men’s retreat um there was
a storm blew through and knocked out all the power to town. All I had was a debit card and a credit card and I couldn’t
get gasolings. I had no cash and the stops the shops didn’t have any cash reg any registers. You couldn’t process
anything. If you didn’t have cash, you were basically left alone. So there was a bunch of us guys, 15 of
us stuck in this house. We were out hunting pigs for an Adventist farmer actually. Um, and we were thinning the
herd and um, but we were stuck on this farm out in 7,000 acres of woods wondering
where we going to going to get our next food from because everything had collapsed. For 4 days, nothing worked in
that city. And I realized out there how fragile our civilization really is. And
from that moment on, I carry an atlas in the back of my car because I was driving around there. My phone was dead. I
didn’t know where I was in southern Alabama. I was using an atlas, a local map. So, we need to think about how
we’re going to prepare for when travel restrictions come our way. I want to talk about the health message for a
moment. Let’s call it here optimize your health status. But if you take care of your health and
you live the principles of the avenous health message, you’re less reliant upon regular visits to the doctor. And in a
smart city with digital IDs, that means you’re less susceptible to control by the state.
So maximizing and optimizing your health status is a great way of minimizing government control in a smart city or in
another kind of crisis. The reason is not to shun medicine by keeping your
body healthy, but it’s to avoid being put in a position where you must comply with some mandate in order to unlock
your your digital ID for access to healthare. So, I want to encourage you tonight to keep a stock of basic
medicines, learn some basic first aid techniques or holistic remedies for minor issues and build a network of
trusted health practitioners. You know, I’m not sure if the doctors would approve of this, but um you know, I keep
a stock of medicines at home. I kind of pick them up in various places
and I don’t thrush I don’t give give them back to anybody. And if the doctor prescribed them when I broke my leg, you
know, two little things full of some high-powered morphine substitute,
they’re stashed away silently somewhere just in case I really need them one day. And when I was in Mozambique during the
pandemic, I would come home with a couple of suitcases full of um dog dewormer. You know what I’m talking
about. And when they asked me at Chicago O’Hare, why do you need two suitcases of
ivormect? And I said, “I have a bad case of worms.”
But the point is, take advantage while you can of picking up things while you
can because you never know when you need them. When people knock at your door late at night and they see, “My
grandma’s dying of COVID. I hear you have ivormectin.” You have to make a decision. Are you
going to help save somebody’s life? Or you maybe break the law? I don’t know. You have to make that kind of decision.
And so I learned in the pandemic that um in in a surveillance era, you have to know who you can trust and who you can’t
trust. And so as we’ve come out of the pandemic now, we see how authoritarian
governments can be. We’ve seen how the world, you’ve been living your life in America, and the next day you’re
suddenly part of a hated minority, vilified by every branch of government.
And it just happens almost overnight. Think, what happened to me? I’m now hated by the majority of my fellow
citizens. And so we need to build not just maximum maximize our health, but we also need to
be maximizing the network of people who we can really trust. The best way to do that is to be in a Bible study group or
a prayer group. Be in a small group. Start a house church. Start a Bible fellowship in your
home. And within two or three weeks, you’ll get beyond high and by and how you’re doing. and you’re going to have
some real spiritual intimacy and trust building up. And at the end of time before Jesus comes, we’re not going to
be worshiping in big cathedrals. We’re going to be worshiping in house groups. So I’d encourage you now, not I
encourage you, yes, go to church on Sabbath, but start building those during the week as well and learn who you can
really trust because in the pandemic, we realized that nobody was coming to our rescue. There was no denominational
caval cavalry galloping over the hill to save those Adventists who stood up for liberty of conscience. We were on our
own. And it was you. And it wasn’t somebody you knew in California who you could
trust. It was do you know of anybody within your immediate radius geographically who you can trust. That’s
who you’re going to hang with. That’s who you’re going to pray with. That’s who you’re going to invite into your home. That’s a place of refuge if you
need to go somewhere. So, I’d encourage you as we think about these the rollouts of smart cities to be thinking about
building networks of spiritual community and trust in your local churches. It’s preparing for what is coming upon
us. It will bless you spiritually today and it will prepare for what is coming
later. I want to encourage you to practice digital detoxification. We used to do this with missionaries in
the Philippines. When the young people come out to the Philippines, we’d say, “Everybody hand over your cell phones,
please, and you get them back in a month’s time.” Oh, do you know how traumatic that was
for 19, 20, 21 year olds? Anybody here get anxiety when you can’t
find your smartphone? There’s a few people admitting to it here. Um, I I drove home from from
somewhere the other week and I and I I thought this my phone was on the on the seat in front of me to my side, but it
wasn’t there when I got back in the car and I was driving home and I put it on um I’d switched off the volume for some
reason and I asked um uh my wife texted me on the screen. So, I texted back and okay, the car’s the phone’s in the car
cuz I’m still texting but I can’t find it anywhere. And so, it took me a best part of a day to figure out it was
wedged underneath one of my seats up under the electronics there. And for those 24 hours, the anxiety I felt, it’s
it’s true. We we’re almost addicted to these things and the dopamine hits that come with them. So, practice digital
detox. Why? Because this builds your emotional resiliency and enables you to
become a human being once again and not a human doing. Many years ago in in um in Azaba, I keep
referring to that tonight, but was a good example. I was in a city where there was no electricity at night and I
was very busy during the day. I’d come back to my apartment and I was about 23 years old and I’d come back into this
little Soviet apartment and the only light I had was a candle and I’d sit on my bed in the freezing cold in my
sleeping bag shivering waiting for waiting to fall um to get tired enough to fall asleep.
I thought, what am I doing out here? And after a couple of months of sitting in silence at night in this this old
Soviet apartment, which wasn’t very nice, sitting in my sleeping bag, it was so cold that the cheese just sits frozen
on the table. You don’t need a refrigerator. Everything is frozen on the kitchen table.
So after a couple of months, I realized that this was an immense blessing from the Lord because as a young man, I think
that life must be must focus about being busy doing things I like doing. And God
was forcing me to slow down and realize that we’re not human doings and we’re not human acquirings. We’re human beings
created for a connection with him. And so as we move into smart cities in
different parts of the world today, we need to learn to live off-grid
without our cell phones, without the constant ping of messages and notifications.
So, I want to encourage you to practice digital de detox maybe every Sabbath on every Sunday. Just turn off your phones
on Friday night and switch them on on Monday morning and just enjoy a Sabbath days rest
without ping ping ping boom in the pocket or vibrate vibrate vibrate and learn to be a human being once again.
Amen. Learn to connect with people around you once again. When you go to restaurants
these days, you see three people sitting at a table. every one of them is on their phone. Like, why are you going to
a restaurant? Why are you meeting up like this? And so, we’re losing the
ability to communicate and connect with each other unless it’s via a cell phone. And we’re losing out on the richness of
human life and the depth of friendships that God has created us to be. Our capacity to love and to love and to be
loved by our friends is diminishing because we’re addicted to our digital devices. So I want to encourage you as
well to think about um thinking about BA or alternative economies. When I was in Afghanistan
many years ago when there was a total collapse of government systems, what I saw was that um everybody survived but
they survived in a non-cash environment. They survived because they had sheep to sell. They survived because they could
repair auto mechanics. They survived because they could um put um do the
electrics in somebody’s home. They survived because they had practical skills.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, and my wife lived through this collapse of the Soviet Union, the jobs that paid well
after the collapse of the Soviet Union were not doctors and nurses and university professors. It was
drywallers, auto mechanics and um and electricians and carpenters because everybody needed practical jobs being
done and the people that had the high status high wage jobs when everything collapsed, they couldn’t survive. But it
was the people with practical skills who learned to who who able to provide for their families. So while we can learn
how to fix appliances, learn how to produce canned goods, learn a practical skill that has a marketable value in a
world where people are forced to live outside of a digital environment in order to survive.
Think about signing up for a community barter system where you provide you trade in services one amongst each other
rather than just relying on dollars all the time. Think about how you asset allocate your resources.
Some people some people trust the digital system. I don’t trust the digital system. I’ve seen it in action
and it’s not pretty. So, think about what you can have that cannot be frozen by a digital system. I
discovered in uh in one war zone I was in that the most marketable currency was little shots of whiskey.
You know why? Because when men are injured, they’ve got infections in their wounds
and they want to take away the pain. Those little shots of Jack Daniels are worth their weight in war zones.
I’m not suggesting you rush out on Sunday and stock up on a thousand little shots of Jack Daniels,
but I’ve seen in war zones of my time with Adra, I’ve seen how Bart works. And
it’s things like um Bick and Fire, you know, cigarette lighters and alcohol and
um antibiotics. Those are way worth their weight in gold when when society
goes bad on you. So, and the important thing about those assets is they can’t be controlled by a
digital system. So, I’m not, you know, I just want to talk about these things tonight because
I’ve been around the block. I’ve seen many things in the world. I’ve seen men being killed in fighting. I’ve seen ethnic cleansing. I’ve watched it from
the my rooftop with a pair of binoculars. I’ve seen the government shelling this district or that district. I’ve heard the explosions. I’ve seen the
wounded. And it’s messy. And I realize that this world is a brutal place.
And one day it’s going to come here. We mentioned it. It was um brother Scott Rzzma gave us the quote already today
from um fifth manuscript releases I think it was about the civil war that’s going to come to America. So these
things are happening on one side. On the other side you have urban environments are getting smarter and smarter. By
which we mean they’re they’re restricting our um civil and religious liberties ever more. These are tools of
control that are coming our way. So what are some of the smart city dilemmas? Our time is moving on here. Well, the first
dilemma I would ask is this. Where is your red line? So, if a national digital ID app becomes
available and we somebody asked the question earlier today, should you just refuse it to use it from the beginning
or would you just um start to use it and say how does see how it goes? In other words, what is the point of no return?
Some say I’m just going to use it for uploading my tax returns. That’s convenient. I have to do it. It’s
legally required and it’s not harmful. But I’ll tell you this, initial acceptance will lead to to gradual
normalization and by the time your digital ID is required for something ethically objectionable, you’re already
deeply tied into it. So determining your red line is a very personal decision
that you need to take with prayer. And it also means that to what extent am I willing to go without today in order to
preserve my independence for tomorrow?
Can you opt out later? Suppose you enter a digital ID system in a smart city, but later there’s
overreach such as requiring a face scan to enter your church on Sabbath morning or just
to buy groceries. You say, “Oh, that would never happen. I’ve been in countries where the pastors have take
lists of everybody present during the worship service.” Whether it’s on paper or digital, it’s irrelevant. Would you
be able to back out at that stage? Technically, you could delete the digital ID apps and stop using it. But
what is the cost of exiting the system? By that stage, the government already has a detailed profile of who you are.
Your health, your shopping, your personal movements, your social connections, maybe even have a behavioral score for you. Just leaving
the app won’t make your profile disappear for the government. It’s very hard to live off the grid in a modern
society. It’ll be exponentially harder if everybody had a role in the digital ID system. Is there a graceful exit or
once you’re in, are you locked in forever? These are questions we have to ask for ourselves.
Physical implants. Have you heard of chimping?
Okay. So, um Bill Gates um that um paragon of a champion of civil and religious liberty.
He and others are working on microchips to be entered under your skin.
That includes your vaccination records, your personal finances, your ability to travel, your vaccine records, etc., and
your passport and so forth. So, where do you draw the line when it comes to chimping?
Uh, are there philosophical objections to invading the the temple of the Holy Spirit? How far will you sacrifice
safety or principle in the name of convenience?
I want to encourage us tonight just to think about how much is convenience, how
important is it to us tonight. The pursuit of safety and the pursuit of
comfort is ultimately not good for our spiritual or physical health.
There comes a point of time where we have to say, “I’m not going to do these things anymore.”
And before things are taken away by by force or by mandate or by fiat, it’s
better to start learning to live simpler lives today. Lives of self-denial where you have the ability to bless those
around you and build what really matters, which is meaningful human relationships. Learning to go without today by choice
enables us to go tomorrow without because it’s forced upon us.
So we need to be thinking about these things. So what do we say in conclusion? And our time is coming to an end here.
Well, digital IDs, smart cities, central bank digital currencies,
these are all building the infrastructure for the roll out of the mark of the beast. We are moving into a
new digital dungeon sold on grounds of convenience, safety, and security. But
it will become a digital dungeon from which there is no escape. And so we can choose today how we will
respond when this digital dungeon will be used to enforce the mark of the beast. It will be a time of global
coercion of conscience just before the second coming of Jesus. The issue will be true or false worship, the Sabbath or
the papal Sunday, God’s commandments or man’s mandates. Revelation 13:16-17
says this also it causes all both small and great both rich and slave free and
slave to be marked on their right hand or on their forehead so that no one can buy or sell who do not have do who does
not have the mark that is the name of the beast or the number of its name and so when the mark of the beast is imposed
there is one word that keeps popping up in Revelation 12 13 and 14 I’ve put the
three texts right there the first is Revelation Verse 4 it says they worshiped it’s from
the verb um prosecune there they worshiped the dragon in that’s that’s false worship there and here you have
the coerced worship of the image to the beast and that who would not worship the
ver verb there is the same in Greek the image of the beast to be killed and god says in response to the coerced worship
of this world we are to worship him who made the heavens and the earth it’s the same verb here procio here so in
revelation 13 you have the worship of Satan. Down here you have the worship of
the image of the beast. And here you have the worship of the true and living God.
So the choice before us is um not you know uh you’re not going to be penalized
for buying a Ford or a Chevy and you’re not going to be penalized for voting Republican or Democrat. The ultimate
issue is who you worship. You know, when I lost when I walked away
from a from AFM, people said, “That’s that’s a great job you had.” And I said, “Well, actually,
AFM was my employer, but God is my provider.”
And God is our provider and he stands by his children. And I can
say in the last six months, God has provided for all of our needs. And we can trust our heavenly father to
be with us when we make decisions that we believe are the best decisions. the right decisions, sometimes the only
decisions. Um, we can trust our heavenly father to give us this day our daily bread. He doesn’t say give us this day
our daily, you know, wedding feast. He give us this day our daily bread. God will sustain us with what we need, often
more than what we want, but he gives us what we need so that we um give me neither poverty nor riches, said the
wise man. If God gives us riches, then we’ll forget about God and our wealth. If God gives us poverty, we tended tend
to envy and commit a crime to steal what we have. It’s better just to have what we need.
And the final issue is over worship. and everything I’ve spoken about today, the roll out of digital IDs and the
rollout of smart cities is just the infrastructure that’s being built around
us that will one day be used to to um um enforce the mark of the beast.
So, I’m not saying this to you because it’s popular or because it’s a nice topic to talk about. I’m saying this
because we need to be prepared for what is coming. And if we want to preserve liberty of
conscience for as long as possible, and if we want to preserve our ability to share the good news for as long as
possible, then we need to be best positioned to do that. Living in a one room bed sit in Manhattan with one day’s
food supply isn’t going to cut it. So, as I said this morning or this
afternoon, I said it sometime, the first angel’s message is um a
revelation of God as our creator and as our redeemer.
The second angel’s message is an expose on Satan as a deceiver and as a liar.
And the third angel’s message says, “Choose this day, who you going to serve. Choose this day
who you’re going to worship. Choose this day whose word is ultimate in your life. Choose this day whose
commands you will obey. Choose this day whose promises you will trust. Choose
this day whether the wages of sin is death, whether you want that, or whether the free gift of God is eternal life in
Christ Jesus. choose this day. And so if our choice is for God, then we want to
be best positioned to be soldiers of Christ and a light the lights to the world for as long as we possibly can be.
So think about what I’ve been sharing today. Maybe we need to make some changes in our lives. We’re not making
changes based on fear. We’re making changes because we want to be in the fight for souls as long as possible.
Because souls are precious and God died, Jesus died for every
person in Maine, not just for us. And we need to be positioned so we can best share the everlasting gospel and invite
people to receive the seal of God and not the mark of the beast for as long as humanly possible.
So don’t just choose God, but ask yourself, God, do I need to put
a new posture on my life, a new posture on how I live my life? Do I need to reconfigure my life? Do I need to move
closer to an urban center because I can better share the gospel there? Do I need to move further away because it’s
affecting my children and the the influences of the cities on my children? We all need to make these decisions for
ourselves. And nobody’s to be condemned for the decisions they do choose, but be intentional about it.
I get up every morning excited because I want to be in the battle for souls. That’s what excites me. When I’m 16, I
get up because I’m excited because there’s a soccer game going on. But you reach a stage in life where the only thing that matters is the battle for
souls. And if that’s what excites you, if that’s what drives you, then choose to
configure your life in such a way that given your health status and your financial status and your stage in life
and whether you’re a young adult or whether you’re middle-aged professional, whether you’re moving into maybe a second career in like your 50s, 60s and
70s, whatever stage of life you’re in, you are best placed to shine for Jesus Christ in the state of Maine.
Amen. For as long as possible. If that means making changes and decluttering and
simplifying and relocating, rep prioritizing and getting rid of some false gods in this world, so be it.
Because eternal life is worth it. Eternal life is worth it. When I was 16,
I thought I’d live forever. Now, when I get up in the morning, I
bend down to pick up something. I look for other jobs to do while I’m down there.
Life goes real quick. make use of the time that you have.
Amen. May I invite you to bow your heads and we’ll close with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father,
Lord, we we see these things happening around us. We see the golden statue
being built. We see those voices in our federal government saying there is no separation of church and state in the
constitution. And we know where this is leading. We see the rollouts of digital IDs, of central bank digital currencies,
of smart cities and smart urban centers. And Father, we know that we’re moving not just to a smart world, but a
surveillance state. So I’m asking tonight, Lord, that you give each one of us wisdom how we are to live, where we
are to live, in order not that we might seek to preserve our own souls, Lord, but that as many souls might be saved
through our ministry and through our witness. So, Father, give us the wisdom we need in our careers, in our
marriages, in our homes. Give us the wisdom we need that we will be a light on a hill for as long as possible. We
ask you for this mercy in Jesus’ name. Amen.