The Smart Phone: Remembering The Tower of Babel and the Mark of the Beast?

 


       The story of the Tower of Babel has always intrigued me. I have wondered at the motives behind the building of it. Everyone wanted to be and stay connected. Imagine the potential of increasing knowledge if the whole world could speak one language.
  I think today and the world of internet and technology is the closest the world has ever come to rivaling the pre-Babel Tower connectedness. Just read the story:
  Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.  As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

   Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

  But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.  The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

  So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Genesis 11:1-3;5-9

It is amazing the unity of purpose and then the need God had seen to discourage such a effort. Technology has mushroomed in the last hundred and twenty years from horse and buggy-automobiles-planes-spacecraft-and now the internet. The internet apparently can even speed up communication so that great distances are as nothing. Interpreting languages via media is getting easier. And so on. Just thoughts...


  Now a little on the Mark of the Beast. I am in no way considering myself as having any authority at all in delving into the mysteries of Revelation. I only consider that every age and Christian can find some kind of Holy Spirit directed inspirations from this book. To me the verse on nobody can buy and sell without the Mark of the Beast has rolled around in my head when I hear Christians say they have to have the internet for their business. (even me) 

 It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads,  so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. Rev. 13:16-17

I will let me readers grab their own Bibles and read more if they care to. To me their is a power being unleashed like the world has not seen, at least as we know.

And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season. Rev.20:1-3

And Now Smart Phones....

  It was interesting to talk the other day about how they are tracking you every move. Persecuted Christians have to remove their batteries of their cell phones to prevent being tracked by government agencies when going to prayer meetings. If I understand Verizon can know every place you have traveled in the last couple years to the minute because your smart phone has a tracking device. Needless to say you internet and digital communication is recorded. For more info: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2019239,00.html

  The dangers of the device is that it is absolutely captivating enslaving the user with endless options and apps. Also the ability to do those things that are made available that we would not do if they were at our finger tips. Case study: a fellow I am aquainted with had up to 2,000 pictures on his phone which would not have been taken if it was not "so easy".  The major danger is the emotional attachment and dependency of the user. It is alot of thimes as omnipresent as God in their lives. Some stats:

Cell-phone texting has become the preferred channel of basic communication between teens and their friends, with cell calling a close second. Some 75% of 12-17 year-olds now own cell phones, up from 45% in 2004. Those phones have become indispensable tools in teen communication patterns. Fully 72% of all teens² -- or 88% of teen cell phone users -- are text-messagers. That is a sharp rise from the 51% of teens who were texters in 2006. More than half of teens (54%) are daily texters.

Among all teens, their frequency of use of texting has now overtaken the frequency of every other common form of interaction with their friends 

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1572/teens-cell-phones-text-messages

Read more from the Pew Center:  

• Half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month, and one in three send more than 100 texts a day, or more than 3,000 texts a month.
• 15% of teens who are texters send more than 200 texts a day, or more than 6,000 texts a month.
• Boys typically send and receive 30 texts a day; girls typically send and receive 80 messages per day.
• Teen texters ages 12-13 typically send and receive 20 texts a day.
• 14-17 year-old texters typically send and receive 60 text messages a day.
• Older girls who text are the most active, with 14-17 year-old girls typically sending 100 or more messages a day or more than 3,000 texts a month.
• However, while many teens are avid texters, a substantial minority are not. One-fifth of teen texters (22%) send and receive just one to 10 texts a day or 30 to 300 texts a month.

  Alot of numbers! As far as emotional attachment it is not figure of speech when people say they "love" their iphones. They have also become a " best friend, partner, lifeline, companion." People feel stressed out or somehow un-whole without their cell phones. They did brain imaging and the brain neurons firing showed not patterns of addiction when the subjects saw their iphones, but they showed the pattern of love and compassion as evidenced when in the presence of a girlfriend, boyfriend, or family member. These people actually "loved" their phones! I got this info from a article by Martin Lindstrom, New York Times. They conducted the tests on 16 people and I am not really into polls and stats, but these figures we have been studying are bringing out a point that you can observe on your own.

  What's the danger? These are the end times and satan has been loosed. If a device and power like this can rest in the palms of the hands of impressionable youth, where will this lead? If it has the magnetism of drawing such affection and keeping its captive so connected and dependent----what direction is it going in the future? The ability to call up distractions, media opinions and the temptation to view uncleanness. Not time for fear, but rather sitting down and counting the costs and taking the stand of "Watch and Pray". It is time to share caution about being on the cutting edge. We are not aiming to be Amish caught in the static of this date on the calender is where righteous living stops. Any advancement after here is sin. However we do need to sit back and watch developments. I am now thankful the Church has been slower to accept these things with a prayerful concern. May it continue. In the last days perilous times will come....If we believe that will we hold a device in our hand or on our lap that will keep us connected with the smorgasboard of the world every second of the day one click away from consciousnesses?

Of course I am typing away on my laptop on the internet. How connected am I. I have no desire to be hypocritical but to be less connected is better and I use this blog to share concerns and let the reader discern for himself --What is Truth. To that I point you to further Bible study guided by the Holy Spirit.