AS AMAZON’S ALEXA PASSES 100 MILLION UNITS SOLD, IT WILL NOW BE ALWAYS-ON AND ALWAYS RECORDING AND STORING ALL CONVERSATIONS IN YOUR HOME by Geoffrey Grider for Now The End Begins
We accept that our laptops and smart televisions are recording the choices we make and sending them we know not where. If you’re already freaked out by the privacy implications of smart speakers like Amazon’s Echo,” says Gizmodo, “we have some bad news.” A headline in ScienceAlert is even more direct: “Newly Released Amazon Patent Shows Just How Much Creepier Alexa Can Get.” You get the idea.
Amazon’s patent application for an always-on feature for Alexa, its popular voice-activated personal assistant, has raised a lot of concern.
Understanding of Bible prophecy is a lot like driving into a smog-filled city like Los Angeles, where I lived for a time before getting saved back in the last 1980’s. When you view LA from a distance, it is very obvious that the whole city is ringed with a dark, brownish-gray layer of smog. But as you get closer, a funny thing happens. That same smog that was crystal-clear from a distance virtually disappears as you drive into it, and once inside, is nearly invisible. So it is with Bible prophecy as it gets closer to the time of its fulfillment.
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“And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.” Revelation 13:11,13-18 (KJV)
When I got saved and started doing Bible study, prophecy in particular, it seemed to me that nearly all of the Church was acutely aware of things like the coming Mark of the Beast. Writers like Hal Lindsey wrote and warned against the creep of technology, as did many movies of the time. We wondered would our televisions start spying on us, and really had a great awareness of things. Not so in 2019. In our day, billions of us wear and carrying global tracking devices which we call our mobile devices, and millions of us have put spy gear like Alexa and Google into our homes. Gone is the nervousness and apprehension of the One World Government and the Mark of the Beast. Now we openly embrace these things. And yes, our televisions are spying on us.
