Our Guest Ed Hindson

Sid:  My guest by way of telephone is Ed Hindson. I’m talking to him about his brand new book “Future Wave.” He’s the assistant chancellor at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia and the dean of their new school of prophecy, the Tim LaHaye School of Prophecy. What you do in this book Ed is you’re really a futurist because you team up with a high-tech guy by the name of Lee Fredrickson and your knowledge of prophecy, put the two together and have some sanctified speculation as to what will happen in the future. Would you paint me a picture of what we can expect right here in the United States in the next few years?

Ed:  One of things we did in the book was we interweave what we call “Future Stories,” little novelettes that are scenarios of what the future might be like based on the technology that’s already being developed today, and our knowledge of Bible prophecy and how the two might interface. If we’re looking at the world 5 – 10 – 15 – 20 years from now you’re talking about a world in which there are mini computers small enough to fit on something the size of your watch that you can carry on your wrist. We’re talking about implanting computer chips in the brain, in the body to that control and influence the way we think. The whole function of the human body we’re talking about the development of artificial intelligence, not just in a computer or a computer game, but in robotics so that eventually robots that are being used today like a robotic arm used in surgery by a doctor will develop into an independent robot that can come in in place of a doctor and perform surgery. Not just come in and vacuum your house, although they can do that, but could actually take the place of a companion. Somebody that can talk to you, can interact with you. There are science fiction movies out today about all this kind of thing that ar even popular this summer that the robot can suddenly think for itself.  We’ll have cars that can drive themselves. I have a friend who works for Ford Motor Company he’s been with them over 30 years. In those 30 years he’s spent his entire career working on cars that’ll drive themselves.

Sid:  But what happens at the traffic light? What happens a car jumps a traffic light?

Ed:  Electronically you pull the car out of your garage, you drive down the street and connect to a highway that is an electronic highway, an electronic computerized device in the car locks you in so to speak.  Just like you see these guys in an airplane jet fighter, they lock in and shoot the rocket at the other plane. You lock into the electronic highway and the car drives itself so that the traffic is all controlled from that point on.

Sid:  Just out of curiosity how will we fuel these cars?

Ed:  Most of these cars I think will be fueled by alternative energy sources, either by electric or hydrogen fuels. You’ll see less dependence in the future on gas and oil, and more and more dependent on how electronically this whole grid will work in order to move traffic through cities. Of course it will be done to unlock the traffic patterns and all the rest of that. One of the issues he’s raised to me is it’ll change what people do in a car. You could sleep on the way to work, you could read a book, you could eat a meal, you don’t have to drive the car, the car will drive itself until you get to the end of the electronic highway you disconnect and then pull down a couple of blocks or so into the building where you work. If you’re in a big city you might be electronically be connected all the way to the garage. We’ve got glimpses of this right now. People can get an electronic device put on their windshield if they live in a city like Los Angeles and they’re paying a toll to go on a certain highway, a machine electronically reads that device as you go by you get a bill at the end of the month for how many times you used a toll road. You didn’t have to stop and pay and get out the change. This was all done electronically. Well eventually that kind of thing will change the whole pattern of how we do traffic. The development of instantaneous language translation, you can talk to somebody in another country and hear them in your own language. We have a commercial running this summer on television in which that occurs somebody in Eastern Europe calls a home in America where a guy has an office in his house. His daughter answers the phone, she’s a teenager, they speak in their language, let’s say it’s Russian or Ukrainian, she hears them in English. She tells her dad what the problem is that they’re calling about he doesn’t even go to the phone he tells the girl how to answer. “Oh yeah we sent that package yesterday it’ll be there by latter today. Tell him don’t worry about it I already took care of it.” She speaks in English they hear her in Russian, they’re satisfied the package is on the way. Everybody smiles. The technology makes all of that happen.

Sid:  Now it seems to me we could eliminate crime because if you can control where everyone is and what they’re doing, no one is going to get away with anything.

Ed:  You have an instantaneous report on people. Yeah you can speak, and if somehow if you try to go too fast the thing will electronically record that you broke the speed limit and send you a ticket. There could be a much greater ability to control crime in the future, the problem is you’re controlling every aspect of life. Pretty soon you can’t function without “Big Brother,” so to speak, watching your every move. If they get a computer chip that can be implanted in the brain where you can download information by your thoughts you can access the whole internet mentally. With a verbal command you couldn’t get away with anything. Now the good news is your husband couldn’t be sneaking around looking at pornography without you being able to read his mind so to speak. But at the same time…

Sid:  Wait, wait how would that play out I’m not sure I understand that.

Ed:  Okay how that works is, that you can mentally and verbally download the information. The technology is going to make that…

Sid:  So I won’t have to lug my heavy computer, my 3 pound computer around with me?

Ed:  No you don’t even have to carry around your laptop anymore.

Sid:  Whoa! (Laughing)

Ed:  You can do all of this with the chip. It’s just amazing what they’re developing the ability to be able to do.

Sid:  But you know what I’m thinking is, some people are thinking right now “Oh I won’t be able to get away with anything.” It’ll probably be the best thing that ever happened to you because there’s a day of reckoning with what you think you got away with anyway and God’s got this judgment coming up. Anyway you’re much better being caught before the judgment than after.

Ed:  Actually help in that regard, make you behave because you’re gonna face all of this anyhow. He’s going to judge every other word and thought, and every deed and every action. God’s got a system that’s better computer than we’ll ever develop to play all this back and show you your life anyhow.

Sid:  Well we have… we that know the Lord know the Bible. We have some insight information. How could the anti-Christ system, and you don’t have to be a mental giant to figure this out, tap into this new technology and accomplish the end-time scenarios we read about in the Bible?

Ed:  The challenge with technology is its stuff, its God-given ability to use human intelligence to develop these things. The technology is a moral it can be used for the good to communicate the gospel, or make us behave as we said. It can also be used for evil to communicate the things of Satan. So the challenge is going to be this, I think the anti-Christ controls the world economically, he controls the communication systems, he controls the financial system and the world surrenders its military control to him. You do not have a picture of him in Revelation having to conquer the world initially. Now he ends up in a war trying to control it eventually, but comes on the scene promising to bring peace and prosperity. What greater way than to provide newer and newer elements of technology that enable us to have what we think is a going to be a simpler better life and ends up becoming a complicated mess eventually because once the technology is in place to control your thought processes, your physical processes even your transportation systems you can’t go anywhere, do anything, think anything that somebody else is not going to be to access that information and know exactly where you are, what you’re doing, and what you’re thinking.

Sid:  So it’s really a two-edged sword. Then there’s the other extreme and that is every time there’s something new in technology Christians have been lagging back because they say “It’s the devil,” like with television.  As a result look who controls television today.

Ed:  We fight the changes that are going to come anyhow and then inevitably are going to come. Instead of realizing “I have a wonderful opportunity here to use all of this to the glory of God.” I think we don’t need to be afraid of this stuff, we need to be discerning about it, we need to be wise in our use of it, but I think we need to say “God is giving us the opportunity to use these things to His glory and to His honor. What a wonderful opportunity to communicate the gospel faster, more effectively than ever before.”  We don’t want to hang onto our flannel graph board if we’ve got an overhead projector, and I don’t want to hang onto the overhead projector if I’ve got a PowerPoint computer presentation, and I don’t want to hang onto that if I have the ability eventually of one day to mentally transmit my thoughts to the computer, to the PowerPoint to the presentation on the screen and I don’t even have to sit there and type. It’s incredible what’s going to happen. The challenge is the whole that has been there from the very beginning the depravity of the human heart. The heart is deceitful, and wicked, and self-centered, and will use the best of technology to try to accomplish the worst of things. The change doesn’t need to come in the technology as much as it needs to come in the hearts of people.

Sid:  You know another thought is coming to mind, the Bible talks about meditating on God’s word so the word literally becomes part of us, becomes our flesh. But what if this same information is used to transmit anti-Biblical thoughts into the body, lustful thoughts anything they literally could. You know “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” If it starts coming in by being transmitted inside of us, unless someone’s a strong Christian they’re not going to survive.

Ed:  You have two scenarios of the future that were developed in the early 20^th century. Oral Welles 1984 where Big Brother watched and controlled everything, then you had Huxley’s Brave New World in which he said people are going to be driven pleasure, by self-gratification, and by the very thing you’re talking about the ability to control and manipulate the mind and the emotions gives you the ability to control life itself. That’s going to be the greatest challenge of all for believers. The Bible tells us you control yourself by filling your mind with the word of God. Satan is certainly smart enough to realize that if “I can keep the word of God out of people’s minds I can fill their mind with everything but that which God wants them to do.”