"The more things change, the more they stay the same."
- Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr
Throughout this writer's long life, he witnessed the
epiphany of old people, amazed and dizzy with new concepts and technological developments
they simply could not understand. He witnessed his own very smart grandmother
waving and trying to talk to the people on the television screen. Home from
college one Christmas, attending prayer services with his parents at our old
country church (built by great grandparents of both Mother and Father in 1874).
The prayer leader asked for concerns needing prayer. One lady asked that they
pray for one of the characters in a television soap opera who was going to the
hospital the next day. This is how real the soap opera and its personalities
were to her. I think of the young children I have seen in a play pen, the only
place a mother could control a rambunctious infant. The child learned early to
cry or throw a fit in the pen, restrained by the sides of the pen, although he
had his toys, and knew that his mother was close by. Man learned early in life
to throw off the "fetters" of boundaries. In Mesopotamia
he learned the necessity for writing and record keeping. In Egypt, our
earliest need for accounting-- probably the record keeping of Joseph-- gaining
control of the Egyptian people, their money, their animals and their land. We
know that Joseph procured the latest developments in water preservation. We
know he stored Egyptian wealth in vaults all the way to Babylon
(this proved beneficial after the children of Israel
left Egypt).
We know that the Great Library at Alexandria in Egypt contained
manuscripts with most of the world's knowledge. It is significant that
Christians burned down this library.
Today, more data is used each day than 5 stacks of paper
reaching to the moon. Today's world of data is accurate in predicting every
seat in every airplane. It has completely revolutionized the securities market.
With algorithm's we can predict political and weather outcome. We have paid for
the noose around our neck. We have braided the rope that will hang us. We must
have the humility to realize that our lives no longer have a psychological,
philosophical or even spiritual vent. Everything is numbers. No longer are we
concerned with the why or when of life, only the what. We are controlled by numbers and
predictions. There were 1 billion people involved in the 1918 Spanish Flu
epidemic-- 1/2 billion died. Already, starting with the first Bird Flu epidemic
in China,
we can accurately predict the rate of spread, and related deaths surrounding an
outbreak. Great knowledge came to us through the telescope, then the microscope.
You must put flesh and blood on the ancients-- even our own
ancestors. Just think what they could have done with a knowledge of
microbiology and DNA. Think what our grandparents could have done with a
computer, Google-ing 3 Billion searches per day. My great grandfather, elder P.T.
Lucas, who's family owned almost half of one Eastern North Carolina county, was
so convicted and convinced of the need to bring the gospel of Christ to the
people of the area, that he left the comforts of a fine farm home and traveled to
the surrounding areas by horse and buggy-- in a time of very few roads, maps
and no electric power or telephone lines. How did he know the direction in
which to guide his horse?
Today, this writer, P.T. Lucas' aging Grandson, who has been
involved in an internet business for many years, can upload an image, with a description
and price into his computer and the image, and everything about the article for
sale, can be seen around the world-- even the number of people looking at the
object. This is the modern way of doing business. You shop and bargain via the
air around us. The prices of airline tickets and the abatements of warfare are
all a product of data deifications.
Eighty-seven nations of the world now have drones. Can we
even imagine what future inventions might bring-- the killing of world leaders,
blowing up of strategic bridges, the dropping of weaponized biologicals. Does
anyone actually believe that nations, such as Tunisia
or the Ivory Coast,
are capable of manufacturing drones? These nations cannot put together a
bicycle. Greedy, money-hungry, military-industrial factories, such as American Lockheed
and Boeing are fattening their bottom lines by building and selling these
weapons of mass destruction to these 87 nations. In nanotechnology, everything
gets smaller. Our lives are being controlled by nanotechnology and now there is
more information on one cell phone than in the earliest explored modules, such
as the one going to the moon.
At Oxford University in England, there is an internet
institute. Children, just out of the playpen, learn to use the computer. If Satan
had wanted to bring a sewage line into your house, with pornography and every
conceivable whim or vice, he would have designed a computer. Has the computer's
regulation of your life and its activities, actually contributed that much to
your happiness or your general welfare? This writer so remembers the walls of
card catalogues the shelves of books in the "stacks" at Wilson
Library at UNC Chapel Hill. You sought knowledge and it stayed with you. I can
tell you, as one who specialized in the eye/ vision that light impulses leave
everything, register on the retina of the eye, travel through the nerve
structure of the eye and brain, and then are interpreted in the Calcarine Cortex
of the brain at the very back of the head. This is knowledge and learning. It
is not transferable to a nano-chip.
God knew about nanotechnology from the beginning. It is in
the essence of life, placed in animals and plants. He knew the supernatural
from the natural-- man's battle with Satan, demons, and powers of darkness.
With all our wisdom has come wanton-ess and decadence. Now comes survival. I
have just learned of a new way to survive when the grid goes down (no
electricity) from a nuclear incident (the world and everything around you,
poisoned). It is called a twig stove. You take a large metal coffee can, and
with tin snips, create an opening in the bottom. Start a fire with dryer lint
in a toilet paper roll and twigs, put a pan on top and you can heat water and
food. Remember that matches were not invented until 1805. My early ancestors,
who landed on the shores of America
in 1677, were accustomed to carrying hot coals with them everywhere in order to
have fire. They cooked in one pot, in a chimney they had built. While you program
your spam filters, attempting to cut out, and not consider such articles such
as this, remember that God set guidelines and established His rights. He wants
you to trust Him, not the wisdom of the computer.
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For
it is written, "He is THE ONE WHO CATCHES THE WISE IN THEIR
CRAFTINESS"
1 Corinthians 3:19
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