We live in days of peril. It’s as if someone put a special door in the Pentagon along with a sign that says, “Terrorists enter here.” They have their own entrance at the White House, too. And at your house.
It started in the first half of the 20th century when many of the world’s elite believed that improved communications technology might finally bring an end to war. In the 1930s, H. G. Wells predicted that something he called a “World Brain” would help bring peace on earth.
Even earlier, in a 1926 interview with Colliers Magazine, Nikola Tesla said, “When wireless is perfectly applied, the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain… Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”
Belgian peace activist, Paul Otlet, predicted complete connectedness. He believed individual human beings would be assimilated into a world brain, and through it achieve a kind of godhood. He wrote, “Man would no longer need documentation if he were assimilated into a being that has become omniscient, in the manner of God himself.”
As the years have passed, we still have not achieved many of the things people predicted for the future. We have only prototypes of flying cars. We don’t have giant space station hotels orbiting the earth, or earth colonies on distant planets. But we do have supercomputers in our pockets. The most important thing about today’s computers — whether giant server farms or lowly smartphones — is not their processing power. It is the thing foreseen by Tesla. It is their connectivity. Together, in a very real sense, they form a world brain.
Their connectedness provides amazing levels of convenience in our lives. But it also represents one of the gravest, most immediate threats ever faced by civilization. Hackers regularly hold banks, hospitals, corporations, schools, and government agencies hostage. The hackers sometimes lock away data so that an institution can’t even open its own files. In a hospital or law enforcement agency, this can be deadly. At other times, they steal private data that might be embarrassing, damaging, or even something that could lead to war.
We recently saw the government of Fulton County, Georgia suffering from both of these kinds of attacks. The hackers compromised systems used by county officials and residents. And they threatened to release damaging information unless the county gave in to their demands for a massive ransom payout.
But the dangers of computer vulnerability get much worse. Supply chains that bring essential goods to your grocery store and life-sustaining pharmaceuticals to your drugstore are connected and vulnerable. The power grids of all the nations are computerized and internet connected. That makes them vulnerable to cyberattacks. The potential damage done by a sustained power outage over half the United States is incalculable, but the threat is real. Even more important, every level of national defense has some dependence on connected computers.
If you are trusting in science for your security, you may be beginning to see the unsoundness of that position. Computer vulnerabilities are just one area where modern societies stand on the brink of disaster. Now is the time to put your trust in God. The concerns I express here may never come to fruition, but you will die one day. You will stand before God, and you can be ready. Christ died for you.
Put your trust in Him and in His grace. Put your life in His hands. When you are His, He will say to you the same thing He said to a man named Joshua long ago as he entered a time of severe danger. “Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9, NASB)
In Matthew 28:20, Jesus said, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
