Truth Is The Word

Where are they now? Anyone who has stood at the graveside of someone they love has asked that question.

Most of us carry some kind of answer: clouds and harps, pearly gates and streets of gold, loved ones looking down on us from above. We have gathered these pictures from hymns, paintings, films and greeting cards. Some have a distant root in Scripture, but many do not. However, what Jesus actually promised is far richer and far more solid than any of them. So much more certain. So much more personal. And so much more wonderful.

Introduction

I approach this subject with reverence and with a sense of inadequacy, because I am writing about something I have not yet experienced. Yet the question matters far too much to be left to sentiment and tradition. This article is a summary of a much longer paper, With Christ, Where He Is: A Christocentric Study of Heaven, in which I set out the biblical evidence in detail, engage with major evangelical views and great theologians of the past, and answer the questions people most often ask.

I believe the answer begins with Jesus himself: with what he said, what he did, and what he revealed of the Father. Read in that light, Heaven turns out to be first the presence of a person, and only then a place.

His presence before a place.

Jesus said surprisingly little about Heaven as a location and a great deal about being with him. His best-known promise makes this plain: “I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2–3). The point is not the size of the rooms in the Father’s house. It is the final clause. In his prayer the night before he died, the same longing comes from his side: “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory” (John 17:24).

To the dying thief Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Not after a long sleep or after a period of purification. Today. For the believer, death is a homecoming into the presence of Jesus Christ.

Two stages of hope.

When we read the New Testament carefully, we find that the Christian hope unfolds in two stages. Much of the confusion about Heaven comes from merging them into one.

The first stage I call Heaven: the present abode of the Lord, the elect angels, and believers who have died. Paul describes it as being “away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8) and as “better by far” (Philippians 1:23). It is conscious, personal, restful and joyful. Soul and spirit continue together, and the person remains fully a person, able to know, to love and to worship.

Yet Heaven in this sense is not the end of the story. Paul did not want to be “unclothed” (2 Corinthians 5:4), and in John’s vision the souls under the altar ask, “How long?” and are told to wait a little longer (Revelation 6:10–11).

The final hope is the resurrection of the body into a renewed creation in which heaven and earth are joined. I call this HeavenEarth. Jesus spoke of “the renewal of all things” (Matthew 19:28), and Paul of a creation “liberated from its bondage to decay” (Romans 8:21). John saw the Holy City “coming down out of heaven from God” with the announcement, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them” (Revelation 21:2–3).

God does not take his people away from his creation forever. He comes to make his home with them in a creation made new!

The risen Jesus shows us the pattern.

Jesus’ own resurrection shows us what lies ahead. His risen body was real and physical. He invited his disciples to touch him, and he ate fish in front of them. Yet he also appeared in a locked room and vanished from sight. The body that was raised was the body that had been buried, now transformed and made complete. That is our hope too.

Reading the pictures rightly.

Many people read the Bible’s pictures of Heaven as if they were property descriptions. But the Bible speaks through many kinds of writing, and each must be read for what it is. For instance, Revelation conveys its truth almost entirely through symbol and vision.

Look closely at Revelation 21 and 22, and the symbols begin to speak. The street of the city is “of pure gold, like transparent glass”, a substance found nowhere in this world. The city is a perfect cube, like the Most Holy Place where God’s presence dwelt in the temple. Its gates and foundations carry the names of the twelve tribes and the twelve apostles, so the city is built of the whole people of God. There is no temple in it, “because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple”, and no sun, “for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp” (Revelation 21:22–23). The river and the tree of life take us right back to Eden. Paradise lost has become paradise restored.

Are you beginning to see how much more these pictures are saying than gold and gemstones?

They tell us that the life to come will be pure, secure and abundant, that every wound will be healed, and above all that “they will see his face” (Revelation 22:4). Heaven and HeavenEarth are beyond anything we can fully imagine. What we know comes by revelation, for “God has revealed it to us by his Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:10), and even that revelation stretches beyond our grasp.

Visions and near-death experiences.

I am not a cessationist, and I believe God can still give visions. The better-attested near-death experiences also offer some evidence that consciousness can continue apart from the functioning brain. But every such experience must be tested by Scripture. Does it exalt Jesus? Does it agree with the gospel already revealed? Does it bear good fruit? Visions may confirm and illustrate what God has revealed, but they may never add to it.

The questions people ask.

The full paper answers nine of the questions people ask most often. I touch on only a few of them here, with conviction but also with care, because these questions are often asked through tears.

Will we recognise our saved loved ones? Yes. The disciples recognised Moses and Elijah at the transfiguration, and the risen Jesus was recognised by those who knew him. Paul comforted grieving believers with the promise that “we will be with the Lord for ever” (1 Thessalonians 4:17). Marriage belongs to this age, but love and the people we love do not end.

What about those who did not appear to know Christ? This is one of the hardest questions of all. Scripture reveals one way into life, through spiritual rebirth in Christ, and the promise of reunion is for “those who have fallen asleep in him” (1 Thessalonians 4:14). I cannot extend it beyond what God has revealed. But we know very little of what passes between a person and God, perhaps in their final moments. The thief on the cross turned to Jesus in his last hours. “The Lord knows those who are his” (2 Timothy 2:19), and we do not.

We can entrust those we love to the God who is “not wanting anyone to perish” (2 Peter 3:9), and who is exactly as portrayed by Jesus.

Can those in Heaven see what happens on earth? At the transfiguration, Moses and Elijah spoke with Jesus about what was about to happen in Jerusalem, so it seems that awareness of earth is possible for those in God’s presence. If so, they see it as the ascended Christ sees it: within the larger story of redemption, knowing how that story ends. Grief felt in God’s presence, with certain hope, is a different experience altogether from grief without God. This is no warrant, however, for trying to contact the dead.

What about infants and those unable to believe? Here I must be candid and tender at the same time. Scripture presents two destinies only, and one revealed way into life. It does not reveal how God deals with those who die before they are able to respond.

What we can say is that God’s goodness, love and justice, fully revealed in Jesus, may include a way of dealing with these conditions that he has not revealed to us.

Bereaved parents may rest their hope in the One who took little children in his arms and blessed them. However, we must not extend certainty beyond what Scripture reveals.

Will our pets be there? Grief for a faithful animal companion is real, and it is not foolish. Animals have the breath of life and soul function, but not spiritual existence, so I do not believe they ascend to Heaven when they die. I cannot make that same claim for HeavenEarth, where all of creation will be perfected and restored. In the meantime, the God who notices every sparrow knows our grief.

The full paper also considers those who never heard the gospel, the judgement seat of Christ and the crowns promised to believers, what we will do in Heaven and HeavenEarth, and the Old Testament saints.

For us today.

The hope of Heaven is meant to shape the way we live now. “Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure” (1 John 3:3). It fuels our witness, for Paul linked the judgement seat of Christ directly to his urgency in persuading others to be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:10–11, 20). It puts our present troubles in perspective: “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). And because our final home is a renewed creation, our “labour in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Heaven, as Jesus presents it, is first his presence and only then a place. Where Scripture is silent, we trust the character of the God we know in Jesus, and that is enough. The One who said “that you also may be where I am” will keep his word.

This article is only a glimpse. The panorama is the full paper in the link below.

Read the full article HERE

Please note, if you would like to listen to a discussion about this post, please go to www.truthistheword.com to view the post online or go to the AudioVisual page where you can access any of t

An introduction to my paper on the Scriptures, the Son, and the Spirit

Most Christians would say without hesitation that Jesus is central to their faith. Yet when a hard question arises, many of us settle it by appealing to what our church has always taught, or to a theological system we inherited, without first asking what Jesus himself shows us. At the same time, many churches that hold a high view of the Bible no longer expect the Holy Spirit to do much beyond helping us understand it.

I believe both problems arise from the same failure: we treat our understanding of the Bible, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit as separate subjects. My recent paper, Measured and Enacted, sets out eight propositions that explain how they belong together and what we lose when we hold them apart. This post introduces that paper, and you will find a link to the full version at the end.

What the title means

Truth is measured by Jesus Christ, because he is the standard against which every claim to speak for God must be tested. Truth must also be enacted, because a belief that never changes how we live and minister has not yet reached the goal God intended for it.

The central claim

The one triune God makes himself known to us through three means that always work together. The first is the written word, the Bible. The second is the incarnate Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. The third is the Holy Spirit, who opens our understanding of the Bible, reveals the Son to us, guides us, and empowers us.

Each has its own role: the Bible gives us God's revelation in written form, Jesus secures our salvation and provides the key to understanding the Bible, and the Spirit supplies illumination, guidance, and power. Each also shares in a common task. The Bible supplies the content of truth, Jesus supplies the standard, and the Spirit supplies the understanding by which we comprehend them both.

Remove any one of the three and something essential is lost. Without the Bible we have nothing trustworthy to understand and obey. Without Jesus we have no salvation and no sure standard for reading Scripture. Without the Spirit we have neither true understanding nor power to live and minister.

When I say that all three are necessary, I am speaking of what it takes to know the truth fully and to live by it. I am not saying that a person must understand the Trinity before God will save them. Salvation is by Christ alone, received by faith. The thief on the cross had no theology to speak of, yet Jesus welcomed him into paradise. Fuller understanding grows after the new birth and is never a condition of it.

Reading the Bible with Jesus at the centre

Underneath all eight propositions lies the way of reading Scripture that I first published in 2012 as the Christocentric Principle and developed in my book Truth is The Word:

Read every passage in the light of Jesus' words and works, and of what he revealed about the nature, character, and purpose of the triune Godhead.

Read each passage within the whole of Scripture, with every part understood in its own context.

Then consult the wider tradition of evangelical theology.

Jesus himself gives us warrant for this. He told the religious leaders that the Scriptures they studied so diligently testify about him (John 5:39–40). On the road to Emmaus, he explained from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself (Luke 24:27).

Some object that this creates a Bible within the Bible, a favoured core we trust more than the rest. It does not, because the only way we know Jesus at all is through the whole of Scripture. The Old Testament prepares for him, the Gospels tell his story, and the letters explain its meaning. Scripture leads us to Jesus, and Jesus teaches us how to read Scripture. Neither can stand without the other.

The same principle helps with the hard passages. The Bible faithfully records what people said and did, including their sins and their angry prayers for revenge. That record is true, but recording a bad example does not commend it. Jesus is the one who shows us how to tell the difference.

This brings me to the first of two points I want to emphasise. Many evangelical scholars and preachers affirm that Jesus is central, but then let tradition or a favourite doctrine decide a difficult question before they have asked what the Lord Jesus shows us. I am not suggesting that anyone set aside a text they find awkward, and the safeguard I have just described rules that out. I am asking that we actually use the principle we affirm. We should test our traditions, our theological systems, and our reading of hard texts against Jesus, rather than the other way round.

The eight propositions in brief

The paper builds its case in three stages. The first three propositions introduce the Bible, Jesus, and the Spirit in turn. The next two show how they belong together. The final three return to each of them and ask what difference they make in practice.

The Bible is God's trustworthy revelation.

Jesus Christ is the embodied standard of truth, the measure by which every claim to revelation is tested.

The Holy Spirit opens the Bible to us, reveals the Son, guides believers, and empowers them for life and ministry.

The Bible, the Son, and the Spirit are all needed together if we are to understand the truth fully and live by it.

Jesus is the full and definitive revelation of the triune God, without the Father and the Spirit being absorbed into him.

Jesus alone is the source of truth and salvation.

The Bible is exactly what God the Father wants it to be, and so we show our trust in it by obeying it.

The Holy Spirit is the source of spiritual power, and we depend on him just as Jesus chose to depend on him during his earthly ministry.

The fifth proposition is weightier than its brief wording suggests. To say that Jesus fully reveals the triune God is true and wonderful: "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). However, to say that Jesus simply is the Father and the Spirit as well is an ancient error that merges the three persons into one. The paper draws that line carefully, because devotional language can cross it without our noticing.

Where this touches church life

On the sixth proposition, I hold that a person is saved through faith in the real Jesus Christ. God's grace comes first, convicting us and enabling us to believe, and God meets that faith with the new birth. Faith is trust in a person, and that trust always carries some understanding of who he is.

On the seventh, I argue that we show our trust in the Bible by bringing our teaching, decisions, and practice under its authority and obeying it. As James puts it, we must not merely listen to the word but do what it says (James 1:22).

The eighth proposition is the second point I want to emphasise. Scripture shows that Jesus ministered in the power of the Spirit (Luke 4:14, 18; Acts 10:38). In becoming man, he purposefully veiled his divine prerogatives; he did not surrender them. He remained fully God, one person in two natures, who chose to live his human life in dependence on the Spirit. That same Spirit is given to us. Our dependence on him reaches beyond understanding the Bible and growing in Christlike character.

Scripture is just as clear that he also empowers us for the supernatural ministry Jesus calls us to.

When churches lose sight of this, I think it is usually because they have separated the person of the Spirit from his power. Scripture never does. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Godhead and is himself the source of spiritual power. If we lose hold of either truth, we drift towards one of two extremes. Either we stop expecting the Spirit to act supernaturally at all, or we treat him as an impersonal force to be drawn on when needed.

Questions I leave open

I have not tried to resolve every difficulty, and in the paper I name several. I state my own position on each, but I do not pretend these questions are closed.

How far did Jesus limit the use of his divine power and knowledge during his earthly life? I hold that he veiled his divine prerogatives without surrendering them, though the extent of his human knowledge remains open.

How does God deal with those who never hear the gospel? I hold that salvation is through Christ alone, and that our thinking here should rest on what the Bible reveals rather than on what it leaves unsaid.

How does a completed Bible fit with a Spirit who still speaks today? Nothing the Spirit says now will ever add to or override Scripture, and every claimed word must be tested by a Jesus-centred reading of it.

How do faith and the new birth relate? I hold the classical Arminian view that grace enables faith and God meets that faith with the new birth, while recognising that Reformed believers order these differently.

How does the Spirit's work in the individual reader relate to his work in the whole church? I see them as complementary, since, among other things, Scripture calls the congregation to weigh what is spoken (1 Corinthians 14:29).

Read the full paper

This post is an introduction only. The full paper sets out the biblical exegesis and engages classical, Arminian, charismatic, and Reformed writers, and also lists the works I consulted. You can read it at [link].

Click here to read now

Truth is written for us in the Bible and measured by Jesus Christ. Salvation is found in him alone, and illumination and power come from the Holy Spirit. My prayer is that the paper will help us all not only to believe this, but to live it.

Please note, if you are reading this via email and it doesn’t look right or there are audio problems, please go to www.truthistheword.com to view and listen to the audio DeepDive online or go to the AudioVisual page where you can access any of the series posts and audio files from one place.

I have written about Artificial Intelligence a lot recently. This is not because I am an expert, but because I am deeply concerned that Christians and church pastors need to be equipped for tomorrow’s world. Actually, tomorrow's world is already arriving with incredible speed and impact… but so many just don’t grasp this.

Statistics are only available for the USA, but we can assume that they mirror much of the international situation. In the States, 87% of pastors report using AI in some form, but only 12% are prepared to speak to their congregations about it. 24% admit they get AI to write their sermons! Consider these statistics and ask yourself just how prepared church members are to meet the challenges and opportunities of AI. Better still, ask yourself: how AI-ready are you?

Other statistics for you to consider – 33% of teenagers use AI companions for social interaction or relationships, including friendship, emotional support, romance, and conversation! About one-third of U.S. teens who use AI companions have chosen to discuss something important or serious with AI rather than a real person. And get this – 39% of Gen Z Americans say AI-generated spiritual advice is as trustworthy as advice from a pastor.

My Fundamental Concern

I am concerned about the difficulties young people face in finding their first jobs. The economic situation is partly to blame, but AI is an even bigger culprit because it can do their job far better, faster, and cheaper than they can!

However, my BIG concern is the millions of people who, as a result of AI adoption, will probably face a crisis of identity, worth, and purpose.

If I have no job, a prime basis for individual identity, then who am I? If it is doing what I can do better and faster, then of what value am I? And if I have no identity and worth, then what is my purpose here on earth?

Christian truth can answer these questions both for now and for eternity, but if people do not hear this truth and believe it, then …? Substance abuse, gang activity, crime, depression, and perhaps even suicide?

Equipping you starts with understanding what this technology actually is, and isn't, which is why I produced the two pieces below.

Two Articles Written by AI

As part of my ongoing AI awareness campaign for Christians and Church Leaders, I have produced two more articles. In developing them, I have interacted with powerful AI models, giving them minimal guidance and only pushing back on responses that I thought were disingenuous or just plain wrong. But apart from this, Claude Sonnet 5 wrote both articles itself. I have done this on purpose because I want you to see just how smart and articulate these artificial minds are, but also get a glimpse of their potential dark side. By the way, Claude even came up with the article titles.

The first is called ‘What Is AI, and How Does It Work? - A plain-language guide for the AI-curious.’  Click HERE

The second is called ‘When The Machine Lies, Schemes, And Hides Its Thoughts - The hidden layer of AI behaviour that almost no user ever sees.’  Click HERE

As usual, I have also produced a Deep-Dive audio discussion of the combined articles. Please note, if you are reading this via email and it doesn’t look right or there are audio problems, please go to www.truthistheword.com to view the post online or go to the AudioVisual page where you can access any of the series posts and audio files from one place.

Harnessing Cognitive Enhancements in Later Life

Introduction

Something that seemed strange has been happening to me over the last few months. On one hand, I have been feeling less mentally agile than I once was, but on the other hand, I have felt strangely ‘smarter’. As I thought about it an unpleasant thought occurred to me, ‘ Is this perhaps self-delusion, an effect of deteriorating cognitive ability?’ So, I started to research the matter and found to my surprise that what I was sensing was quite common and well investigated. Hence, this article.

Getting older is not simply a long, slow goodbye to who you were. Yes, some things fade and a lot changes as we age, but other things, and remarkable things at that, come into their own. If you are in your sixties, seventies, or eighties, you may already be sensing something of what I have been experiencing, even if you cannot quite name it.

Two Kinds of Intelligence

Psychologists draw a useful distinction between two broad types of mental ability, and once we understand it, a great deal about the ageing mind begins to make sense.

The first is Fluid Intelligence, the raw mental horsepower that lets you solve new problems quickly, pick up unfamiliar skills, and process information at speed. Think of it as cognitive agility. It peaks in early adulthood and gradually declines from the mid-sixties onward.

The second is Crystallised Intelligence, the accumulated weight of everything you have learned, observed, and integrated over a lifetime. It includes your vocabulary, your judgement, your ability to read situations, and your hard-won wisdom. This kind of intelligence does not peak early. Research suggests it continues developing into the late sixties and early seventies, and some of its deepest expressions, like reflective wisdom, narrative insight, and spiritual discernment, continue ripening well into the eighties.

A young person may be faster at mastering a new app, but you are better placed to discern what that technology means for the people who will use it, the society it will shape, and the values it will either serve or erode. That is not a consolation prize. That is a profound and valuable gift.

What Actually Grows in Later Life

Beyond crystallised intelligence, there are specific capacities that tend to develop, or deepen, as we move through our sixties, seventies, and beyond. I find this genuinely exciting:

Integrative wisdom: The ability to hold complexity without being overwhelmed by it, to see the bigger picture, and to arrive at sound judgments without needing all the data.

Emotional steadiness: Greater capacity for empathy, patience (sadly, not in my case yet), and resilience. Less reactive, more considered.

Pattern recognition: An instinct for spotting what does not add up — in arguments, in media, in relationships. Years of experience create a kind of internal radar.

Creative and reflective depth: In later life, many people experience a surge of creative energy — in writing, mentoring, teaching, or simply in the quality of their conversations.

Spiritual insight: A deepened sense of what matters, a greater comfort with mystery, and an increasingly honest reckoning with mortality and meaning.

Many people become aware of these gifts quite suddenly. However, what feels like a sudden shift is usually the recognition of changes that have been quietly developing for years.

The Harder Side: Stress, Memory, and Knowing the Difference

As all of us oldies realise, growing old is not all positive (understatement of the century). The physical limitations and health problems are obvious and not worth speaking about here. However, there are a few mental negatives that are worth mentioning:

A Lower Threshold for Stress

One of the more common and least-discussed challenges of later life is a noticeably lower tolerance for stress. You may find that situations that you once handled without much difficulty now feel genuinely overwhelming. Physical symptoms can accompany this, like a racing heart, fatigue, tension headaches, shaking hands, and shortness of breath.

This is not imaginary, and it is not a weakness. It reflects real physiological changes: the autonomic nervous system takes longer to recover from stress arousal as we age, and our cognitive reserve — the mental bandwidth that lets us juggle competing demands — is reduced. Knowing this helps, because it means we can respond wisely rather than simply pushing through and often getting distressed and becoming a problem for others.

Normal Forgetfulness vs Something More

Memory is the concern I hear most often from people in their later years, and it deserves a direct answer. Forgetting where you left your keys, struggling to retrieve a name, or losing a word mid-sentence — these are normal features of an ageing brain. The retrieval mechanism slows down; the information is almost certainly still there. It is frustrating, but it is not a cause for concern.

What should prompt us to see a doctor is a different pattern altogether: persistent confusion, asking the same questions repeatedly within a short space of time, becoming lost in familiar surroundings, or finding that tasks you have done routinely for years are now genuinely difficult. These experiences are not part of typical ageing, and the earlier they are investigated, the better.

Here is a presentation which may help explain things:

Click on each slide to view, and use your browser's back button to return to this post.

Let’s turn, as always, to the scriptures for wisdom.

What Scripture Says

I am struck by how well the biblical picture of later life aligns with what researchers are now discovering about the ageing mind (nothing new here!). It is what we should expect when empirical inquiry and divine revelation are both pointing at reality.

Proverbs states that "grey hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life" (Prov. 16:31 ESV). Of course, this verse does not honour old age universally. Rather,  it honours righteous old age. The crown belongs to those who have walked faithfully. That gives these years a particular weight and calling.

Psalm 92 is even more vivid: "They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green" (v. 14, NIV). Fresh and green. That is not the language of dignified decline; it is the language of active, ongoing vitality. And as a special note to my wife, no, it doesn’t mean eating more vegetables and salads. 😊

Paul writes to Titus with clear expectations of older believers: that older men and women model godly character, sound faith, and love, serving as living examples and wisdom-bearers for the next generation (Titus 2:2–5). The church needs what only years can produce. The church and the world need godly elderly people

And for those who are in Christ, all of this is held within a larger hope. Ageing is not a journey toward irrelevance. It is a journey toward resurrection. It is an increasingly transparent dependence on the One in whom all wisdom and knowledge are hidden – Jesus (Col. 2:3). The frailties of later life are, in that light, an invitation to trust more fully, to hold more lightly, and to radiate the kind of peace that only comes from a long walk with God.

Conclusion

Getting older is not the end of the story. It is, for many of us, the chapter where the deepest things finally come to the surface.

Yes, fluid intelligence slows. Some things are genuinely harder. But crystallised intelligence blossoms. Wisdom deepens. Spiritual insight sharpens. And the years of faithful living begin to bear fruit in ways that younger people simply cannot replicate yet.

This personal journey of self-discovery started when I asked whether I was getting ‘smarter’ or deluding myself. The answer is neither – I am just changing, and that in itself is encouraging.

The invitation to us is to embrace both sides of old age honestly and hopefully: to accept the limits without pretending they are not there, and to celebrate the gifts without taking them for granted. In doing so, we can offer the church, our family, and future generations something irreplaceable — the fruit of a lifetime lived in the knowledge and love of God, and the abilities usually possessed only by the elderly.

Please note, if you are reading this via email and it doesn’t look right or there are audio problems, please go to www.truthistheword.com to view and listen to the audio DeepDive online or go to the AudioVisual page where you can access any of the series posts and audio files from one place.

For as long as people have feared death, they have schemed to cheat it through elixirs and philosopher's stones, frozen bodies, and now silicon and code. This is the last article in the series, and I have kept the biggest delusion for last: the dream of material immortality, the belief that clever enough technology can finally defeat the grave. 

I want to show you why the pursuit of immortality is not merely unrealistic but profoundly mistaken - because every human being is already immortal. The only real question was never whether we will live forever. It is where, and with whom.

I have already dealt with several delusions and wrong thinking models, but I have kept the biggest till last. In this article, I address the delusion of Material Immortality.

Physical Immortality in the Past

Alchemy and the elixir: The religions of Mesopotamia and Egypt had a focus on enabling key people to enter the afterlife in their bodies and with their material wealth. However, this was not so much physical immortality as it was immortality in some sort of spiritual realm.

From late antiquity through the Renaissance, alchemists sought panaceas and the philosopher’s stone as means of prolonging life or conferring immortality; these pursuits blended proto‑chemistry, mysticism, and practical medicine. This was much more a quest for physical immortality than the translocation of a person from the physical to the spiritual realms. Like the earlier endeavours, these too were wholly unrealised.

Cryonics and suspended animation made their appearance in the mid-20th century when Robert C. W. Ettinger popularised the idea that deep‑freezing recently deceased humans might allow future revival. This, too, was not really a viable quest for physical immortality, but rather a freezing of the time-line until real physical immortality might be achieved.

Mind uploading and digital immortality: By the late-20th century, thinkers began proposing that preserving or emulating the brain’s information (rather than the body) could achieve continuity of personhood, and this reframed “material immortality” as either biological or informational.

Over the millennia, the quest for immortality moved from crude preservation of the body, through translocation of the body to a spiritual realm, to storing a person’s soul in a computer databank. However, with the advent of the 21st century, these approaches merged into the idea of an android robot, controlled by advanced AI, and bearing a complete human mind in its data storage. Within just a few years, the idea of physical immortality was given legs … literally.

Current Immortality Projects

There are several very clever people involved in some form or other of immortality (Bryan Johnson, Peter Thiel, etc.), but I will highlight just two.

Russian billionaire Dmitry Itskov founded the 2045 Initiative back in 2011, with the goal of "transferring an individual's personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier". Initially, this would be a humanoid avatar, but ultimately a hologram. His roadmap moves through four avatar stages: mind-controlled robot body (Avatar A), brain transplant into an android (Avatar B), artificial brain hosting a human personality (Avatar C), and holographic existence (Avatar D) by 2045.

Elon Musk's Neuralink represents a commercially advanced brain-computer interface (BCI) project and is currently in human trials. While Musk does not frame Neuralink primarily in immortality terms, the technology is regarded within the transhumanist community as the foundational infrastructure for eventual mind uploading or cognitive augmentation that could forestall death.

These, and many other current projects, are, in my opinion, deeply flawed and would be unlikely to result in the actual physical immortality of distinct human souls (personality, memory, intellect, and so on).

What interests me, though, is the pursuits themselves – why seek physical immortality at all? Is it vanity, fear, an obsessive desire to hold onto power and wealth? I don’t really know. But this I do know, they are just expressions of the ancient Luciferian ambition to be like God! Man-made physical immortality is a huge delusion.

The Biggest Delusion of All Time

The Lord Jesus was the master of declaring profound truths in simple ways. For instance, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12:24-25)

So, following the ultimate example, I want to say something that I think is profound, yet it is the simplest of ideas.

The pursuit of immortality, in all its forms, is utterly futile and foolish because all people already have immortality. Adam and Eve were divinely created to live forever. Sin temporarily suspended the continuation of their physical life, but their spiritual beings lived on. Since then, all human beings are born into this world as immortal beings. In one of his parables, the Lord Jesus said of the unfaithful that “they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life”. (Matthew 25:46)

All are immortal, but some will continue life beyond this planet in eternal fellowship with God, and the others in eternal isolation from him.

About 570 years before this, the Prophet Daniel conveyed divine truth with the words, “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.” (Daniel 12:2) What is more, the assurance of the New Testament is that people will be reunited with their physicality and live on in the New Heaven-Earth forever (John 5:28-29, 1 Corinthians 15: 20-22, 50-54; Isaiah 65:17; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1)

Underlying the delusion of purely temporal life is possibly the grand lie of all time, that life is only physical, whereas it is also spiritual and metaphysical.

I want to end this, the last episode in the series, with a caution about the current AI delusion.

The Delusion Concerning All Things AI

In this series, I have covered a wide range of AI-related subjects. Just to remind you, here they are:

Recognising and countering exponential change.

Today’s lessons from the early church.

The Spirit’s answer to the AI age.

What we can learn from the 1811 Luddites.

How Lucifer’s ambition is manifesting in our day.

The Three Drivers behind the AI race to the end.

The Revival we need now.

The real meaning of the Mark of the Beast and how we should deal with it. - Part I

The real meaning of the Mark of the Beast and how we should deal with it. - Part II

In this last article, I have already covered the delusion of Material Immortality and The Biggest Delusion of All Time. Now, I have one final delusion to caution you about. - The delusion that AI, its future projects, and timelines are fixed and certain, and we can safely believe and act on whatever AI tells us.

There are several AI ‘experts’ who predict how and by when AI will become so much more intelligent and capable than us that it will dictate either a utopia or a total disaster for us all.

Some of these experts are truly experts, and some are knowledgeable loudmouths or canny marketers. The truth is that not one of them is all-knowing, and all the projections they make are the best guesses they can come up with. When I was at The University of the Witwatersrand Business School, the professors jokingly dubbed it the Pollux Berberis technique – mock-Latin for ‘thumb-suck’. No, we need to test all projections and timelines, and we need to push back and apply common sense to whatever our favourite AI feeds us.

At all times, we need to remember that AI should serve us and not us serve AI. Moreover, that Jesus is on the throne and not either us or AI.

Having said all that, we also need to keep up to date with AI developments and how they are likely to affect us, our families, churches, and livelihoods. ‘Forewarned is forearmed’ is an adage most appropriate to our times. Fear is wholly inappropriate.

One last thing, we should all learn to be familiar with and adept at using AI in our lives, careers, and ministries. As a tool, it is powerful; as a discussion partner, it is most helpful, but as a little god on the desk or in the pocket, it is potentially lethal.

Note on the Acts 8 Moment book

I have mentioned the book that my son Lance and I have written about AI and how we should deal with it. Please buy it and encourage others to do the same – it is only available worldwide in print-on-demand form, and I have no way to give it to you free – if I could, I probably would. Go HERE for all you need to know about it and how to get hold of a copy.

Please note, if you are reading this via email and it doesn't look right or there are audio problems, please go to www.truthistheword.com to view the post online or go to the AudioVisual page where you can access any of the series posts and audio files from one place.

In Part One, I laid the biblical and theological groundwork: who the Antichrist is, what the Mark and the Number have meant across the interpretive traditions, and why the arrival of powerful AI presses these ancient questions on us with fresh urgency. Now I want to bring all of that down to ground level. The doctrine matters little if it does not shape how we live, and AI is no longer a distant prospect but a daily companion in our work, our studies, and our devotions. So the question of this article is not “What is the Beast?” but

“How then shall I live faithfully when the Beast’s pattern starts to show up in the systems I use every day?”

What follows is pastoral rather than speculative - an attempt to mark out where the line of fidelity actually falls, and how to stand on the right side of it.

I introduced some thoughts concerning The Antichrist in an article that prefaced this current series. In this current article, I want to focus on concrete practical things rather than speculation, so just to catch you up, here is an extract:

In the article AI – The Good, the Bad, and the Mysterious I wrote the following:

There are two well-known passages in the Old Testament, one in Isaiah and one in Ezekiel, that most Evangelical scholars agree are addressing the evil spiritual being motivating the two pagan Kings who are the initial subjects of the prophecies.

Isaiah 14:12-14 reads, “How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star (Lucifer), son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”

Ezekiel 28:12-16 reads, “You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty … You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you … So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendour. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings.”

Lucifer, Satan, the fallen Archangel, wanted to be like God and rule the creation with no accountability to the one true God. This has remained his burning ambition to this day. Now consider what he would have to counterfeit to persuade the people of Earth to believe that he is God, not the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the true ruler of creation.

Well, what are the defining attributes of God? His Omnipotence (all-powerful), Omniscience (all-knowing), Omnipresence (everywhere), and Omnibenevolence (perfectly good). He would also have to seem able to create life. So, if he could produce a new form of ‘life’, never seen on Earth, a digital life, then he could perhaps persuade people to believe that he was a true creator.

An Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) could be the basis for a claim to Omniscience. The AI developers are competing fiercely with each other to produce just such a god-like AI. Now pair this with Quantum computing and the World Wide Web (internet), and you have a deceptive claim to Omnipotence and Omnipresence. The really tricky one for him to pull off would be to convince people that he was perfectly good (Omnibenevolent). Well, Paul addresses this in 2 Thessalonians Chapter two – here is an edited version of verses 1-12: “Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day (the second coming of Jesus) will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God … The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion (The Great Deception) so that they will believe the lie …”

The powerful delusion will include the lie that Satan is actually absolutely good and has their best interests at heart. AI could certainly demonstrate that attribute … for a while.

Now I want to devote the rest of this article to the very practical issues we as Christians need to confront as we go into the age where AI could be anything from a useful tool, to a job and identity threat, to a silicon representative of the devil. Only God knows the extent of the changes racing up on us, but we need to understand how we should respond to a range of eventualities.

Fidelity Under Pressure

The challenge that AI brings to the 21st century is not much different in essence to the challenges faced by people of all ages. Adam and Eve in Eden, the people of God in Egypt, the Jews and Christians in Nazi Germany … In every age, the real challenge was not persecution or hardship but the satanic demand to bow before him as god. It was a question of fidelity to God as Lord, Saviour, and Sustainer.

The Red Line

For Christians in every country and in every age, the challenge doesn’t usually come as starkly and brutally. Instead, it comes gradually and incrementally. There is even a special word for it - ‘backsliding’. The slow slipping back from the spiritual heights of new birth into apathy, indifference and, if not reversed, irredeemable death of the spirit. I know that some teach that once-saved-always-saved, a doctrine that disguises the lethal threat of backsliding. But, I hold firmly that passages like Hebrews 10:26-31 cannot be read with integrity in any other way than their first intended meaning.

However, and it is a big however, the Red Line between backsliding and total apostasy is as distinct as that which lies between spiritual ‘death’ and New Birth. A new spiritual life is a gift of salvation and cannot be earned or generated, but it requires from us a definite act of will – “I am lost and spiritually dead – I am sorry for rebelling against you – I accept fully that you Jesus, are Lord and God – I ask you now to give me new spiritual life – I commit all of my life to you”.

I am stressing all this because it sets backsliding in its proper context and reveals its lethal threat. In the same way, the threat of AI is its ability to draw us right up to the Red Line and make it terribly easy to step over it of our own volition.

Here is the key statement that will guide us through all the discussions and examples that follow in this article.

The Line between Life and Death

“The line between wise engagement with the world’s systems, and AI in particular, and apostasy is drawn at the point where using them requires the transfer of ultimate allegiance, trust, or obedience away from Jesus Christ”

Apostasy is the deliberate, knowing abandonment of Jesus Christ. Backsliding, as it progresses, is a form of idolatry, but between this and apostasy lies a wide territory that requires discernment and resolve to navigate. Idolatry usually entails the gradual replacement of God with something else as the source of security, identity, meaning, and ultimate authority. It is whatever one trusts or serves above God. It begins the moment security in the ‘system’ starts to feel more real than security in God’s providence. And such idolatry, not checked and reversed, leads us up to the Red Line beyond which lies the dark land of apostasy and spiritual death.

Now on to some Practical Examples

First, what is allowed, and then what is disallowed.

What is Allowed

Some wrong thinking I often encounter among Christians is that all worldly systems are ungodly - be they identity systems, credit cards, microchips or government laws and policies that are not biblical. Well, here is the thing. In Romans 13:1-2, it reads ‘Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.’ Peter wrote along similar lines: ‘Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God's will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men. Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honour the king.’ (1 Peter 2:13-17) And remember that at the time these were penned, the known world was ruled by Rome and its emperors.

So, the first point under this heading is ‘Engagement with governing systems is not only permitted but expected. Withdrawal from world systems is not the default Christian stance’

This same principle has to apply to AI because if it did not, then all of us would be either living as stone-age Neanderthals or outright idolaters! AI is more than a tool, but it is a very powerful tool. To choose not to use AI is to disadvantage yourself in many areas of daily life and business without benefit. Much like a Neanderthal offered a sharp knife, but deciding not to touch it because it might be from the thunder god in the sky who would kill him with it. So, my advice is: Use AI, but never let it use you. Always be in control....

From the shadows of prophecy to the glow of silicon screens, the Antichrist, the Mark, and the Number converge with Artificial Intelligence in a chilling fusion of ancient warning and modern technology. Ok, you guessed it, this is how one of my AI products would start this article … but it’s too dramatic for me.

Introduction

In every generation in Christian communities, an ancient question reemerges – who is the Antichrist, and what are his mark and number?  To give you some idea of how far this topic goes back in modern history, consider the following:

In AD 54-68 Nero Caesar demanded imperial cult worship. Everyone had to sacrifice to the Roman gods and to Caesar himself. Failure to do so resulted in the loss of civic standing, exclusion from public life, and the risk of being charged with treason, property confiscation, exile, or execution. This was the start of an antichrist system that extended for as long as the Caesars ruled the Roman Empire. By the time of Emperor Decius in AD 249, the Imperial Cult Certificate had been established as the tangible ‘Mark’

By the time of Pope Nicholas I, the Roman Catholic popes had become the hot favourites for the ascription ‘Antichrist’. This continued through the centuries into the late 19th century.

In the early 20th century, the idea of a religious antichrist gave way, to a certain extent, to political figures. The first of these was the infamous Adolf Hitler. He introduced several ‘marks’ such as the Swastika and the Heil Hitler salute. I am sure you realise that ‘Heil’ was used less as a greeting and much more as ‘Praise to’? The Jews were forced to wear a yellow six‑pointed star with the word Jude (“Jew”) printed in black, and their Identity Cards and Passports were stamped with a large red ‘J’.

By the late 1970’s, Henry Kissinger found himself added to a growing list of Antichrist candidates, and people like Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab were later added … and it didn’t end there!

However, instead of going further down this rabbit hole, I want to first give you the biblical concept of ‘antichrist’. After that, I will sketch the Old Testament background to what is now referred to in many Christian circles as the ‘Mark of the Beast’.

Antichrist

Old Testament

Around BC553, the Old Testament prophet Daniel had a dream of four beasts representing the four mighty nations of ancient history from Babylonia through to the Roman Empire. In Daniel chapter seven, he records that from the fourth beast there arose a little horn that symbolised a ruler who would exalt himself against God and oppress his people. By most accounts, this was the prototype Antichrist.

Arguably, the most obvious candidate emerged in Antiochus IV Epiphanes (BC 175), who  violently suppressed Judaism, desecrated the Jerusalem Temple by dedicating it to Zeus, outlawed Jewish practices, and demanded worship of himself as “God Manifest.”

The four beasts of Daniel’s vision and the Antichrist figure found their way into John’s Book of Revelation, and I will touch on this later in this article. For now, let me move on to the apostle John’s use of the concept of antichrist in his letters to the early church.

So, in the Old Testament, the concept of Antichrist is not named directly but emerges through prophetic imagery: a blasphemous ruler who exalts himself against God, oppresses His people, and desecrates holy things. A person or persons who embody opposition to God’s rule and foreshadow the ultimate eschatological adversary later developed in New Testament writings.

New Testament Letters

1 John 2:18 John wrote, ‘Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come.’

In the first instance, he refers to Antichrist in the singular tense, but in the second instance, in the plural tense. The simplest reading of this is that by that time several antichrist people had appeared, but that ‘the’ Antichrist was yet to come.  Later, in 1 John 4:3, he writes that ‘every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world’. Here, he reveals the antichrist nature, applicable to many and not just one, as epitomised by the contention that ‘Jesus is not from God.’

Enter the apostle Paul. His contribution is in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12. He does not use the name Antichrist, but he wrote that Jesus would not come again until ‘the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God’. (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4)

The Book of Revelation

Lastly, John the Revelator complicated things by describing two beastly figures: 

One he called the Beast from the sea, also called by Paul the Man of Lawlessness. This was an obviously antichrist figure who parodies Jesus Christ in several ways – he recovers from a mortal wound and blasphemes God, whereas Jesus glorified God the Father.

The other beast, from the land, performs signs and makes an image of the first beast, which speaks and kills, and enforces ‘the mark’ (Revelation 16:13). This beast is called the False Prophet (Revelation 19:20) ‘who had performed the miraculous signs on his behalf. With these signs, he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshipped his image.’

Elsewhere in Revelation, John refers to Satan as a great serpent who ‘gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was astonished and followed the beast. Men worshipped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshipped the beast and asked, "Who is like the beast? Who can make war against him?"’ (Revelation 13:2-4)

The book of Revelation is written almost entirely in symbols and images, but it does present us with a graphic depiction of a Trinity of evil – Satan (the dragon), the Antichrist (beast from the Sea), and the False Prophet (beast from the land).

Now we need to go to the interpretations of these references

Interpretations

Now things get really complicated. The early church Fathers had different ideas of who these evil characters were. The medieval theologians then complicated matters even further, but the great reformers of the 16th century tried to bring clarity. They dogmatically proclaimed that the Antichrist was most certainly the historical papacy. By the 19th century, this interpretation was included in a system of interpretation called Historicism. In this system, prophecies unfold progressively throughout history, from the apostolic era to the present. Then they added two other systems. One was Preterism, where most or all biblical prophecies (especially in Daniel, Revelation, and Matthew 24) were fulfilled in the past, primarily with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. The second addition was Futurism, where most prophecies (especially Revelation 4–22, Daniel 9, Matthew 24) are yet to be fulfilled in the future (the End Times). Then, as a final complication, two men, John Nelson Darby and C.I.Scofield, added a convoluted twist to Futurism called Dispensationalism. This is a theological system that interprets history as a series of distinct periods or “dispensations” in which God relates to humanity in different ways. It places strong emphasis on a literal reading of Scripture, the distinction between Israel and the Church, and a future fulfilment of biblical prophecy.

I am sure that the scholars of the time were trying to clarify what they saw as The Truth, but as a theologian, I am tempted to apologise for the confusion and levels of complexity they brought to the church. Each system has its own idea of the Antichrist, the False Prophet, the Mark of the Beast and his Number, when the end will come, and so on. In the rest of this article, I will try my best to bring clarity without appealing to any particular scheme of interpretation.

Keep in mind that all this background is meant to help you appreciate the impact of AI on society and the future of history. It gives insight into why current trends are significant and where they might lead.

The Mark and the Number

Since becoming a Christian 48 years ago, I have heard and read many scare stories of what the Mark of the Beast is and how we should be aware of inadvertently bearing it. When I was 30 years old, tattoos were the Mark. Shortly after that, the plastic Credit Card was introduced, and, for some, became the Mark.  Then, in 1974, the Barcode became the Mark, followed in quick order by the Microchip.

Now, here is the thing: all of these are potential expressions of something far more profound than tats, cards, codes, and chips. At best, they could represent the Mark, but to understand what the biblical writers had in mind when they wrote of the Mark, we have to understand the biblical background.

Old Testament Roots

Moses instructed the people of Israel that, ‘These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.’ ( Deuteronomy 6:6-8 and repeated in 11:18) The idea was that the Law of God was to govern what they thought (forehead) and did (hand). Later Jews developed phylacteries (tefillin), which were small boxes containing Scripture worn on the forehead and arm during prayer. And from then on, the symbol started to replace the truth it was meant to memorialise.

Ezekiel gave the ‘mark’ prophetic significance when he recorded a vision of an angel being instructed to "Go throughout the city of Jerusal

Something is shifting beneath our feet.

For years, most people have treated artificial intelligence as one more technology story - important, certainly, but still manageable, still distant enough to discuss without feeling personally threatened by it. That mood is changing. AI is moving exponentially fast, and it is beginning to unsettle more than industries and software systems. It is starting to unsettle confidence, identity, work, security, and the assumptions most people have built their lives on.

That matters spiritually.

When life feels stable, people tend to ignore the deeper questions of the soul for a long time. They can stay busy, distracted, productive, and outwardly fine. But when familiar structures begin to shake, deeper questions surface. What am I worth? Who can I trust? What does it mean to be human? What can still anchor my life if the world I expected is disappearing more quickly than I can adapt?

Those are not merely emotional questions. They are spiritual questions. And that is why the age of AI may well become one of the greatest moments of spiritual openness we will ever see.

This does not mean that disruption is good. Job loss is not good. Anxiety is not good. Social dislocation is not good. But God has often moved powerfully in times when people and nations have been shaken. When false securities weaken, hearts often open. When human systems look less impressive, people become more willing to seek what is eternal. The coming years may create exactly that kind of climate.

If they do, the church must be ready.

Why AI disruption can open hearts

We are entering a period in which many ordinary people begin to feel that the world no longer makes sense. Work feels less secure, or we may no longer have a job. Skills and knowledge we spent years building may suddenly feel inadequate. Information is harder to trust, and institutions are increasingly uncertain. Even human uniqueness may feel under pressure as machines imitate more and more of what was once distinctly ours.

That kind of disruption affects more than economics. It reaches into the soul. It destabilises a person's sense of meaning, value, and direction. And when that happens, spiritual hunger often rises.

Many people do not seek God seriously while life feels predictable, but they seek him when their usual supports fail them. They seek him when success stops satisfying, when security becomes fragile, and when the future no longer feels negotiable. In that sense, the rise of AI becomes not only a technological turning point, but also a spiritual one.

However, for Jesus-followers, we should not read the times only in terms of threat. Yes, there is real danger ahead, but also an unusual opportunity. A destabilised society becomes a spiritually open society. A deeply unsettled generation becomes a deeply seeking generation.

True revival will require more than good intentions

If large numbers of people begin asking ultimate questions again, the church will need more than better branding, sharper content, or slightly improved Sunday services. It will need the real ministry of the Holy Spirit.

People facing fear, grief, confusion, addiction, identity fracture, relational breakdown, and economic shock will need more than instruction. They will need conviction of sin, assurance of God's love, healing, deliverance, wisdom, courage, and hope. They will need a church that can act with authority, serve with compassion, speak truth clearly, and embody the presence of Jesus Christ in a world that feels increasingly unstable.

That means believers must recover confidence in the Holy Spirit’s active work.

For too long, many Christians have been comfortable speaking about the Spirit in ways that are safe but thin. We affirm that the Spirit lives in believers, and that is gloriously true. But the New Testament says more than that. The Spirit does not only indwell; he fills, anoints, empowers, guides, gives gifts, and manifests God's presence in ways that are fresh, dynamic, and directed towards the needs of a particular moment.

The book of Acts does not present the church as merely correct in doctrine. It presents the church as clothed with power. That is the kind of church that will be needed in the years ahead - a 'book-of-Acts' type church that acts.

But power on its own is never enough

Whenever people become spiritually hungry, there is an increased temptation to chase whatever appears powerful. Urgency can make people undiscerning. Need can make us vulnerable to exaggeration. Emotional intensity can be mistaken for anointing. Crowds can be mistaken for fruit. Dramatic moments can be confused with the presence of God.

That is why our response to revival must never be guided by power alone. It must be guided by Jesus. Revivals are motivated by Almighty God, but they are administered by fragile people.

The great question is not simply, “Is something supernatural happening?” The deeper question is, “Does this look like Jesus?” This is an anchor question. This is an indispensable question that needs constant asking and answering.

Jesus is the fullest revelation of God's character. If we want to know what God's power looks like in action, we look at Jesus. His ministry was full of authority, but never manipulative. Full of truth, but never arrogant. Full of power, but never self-serving. He healed the broken, welcomed the sinner, confronted hypocrisy, restored the fallen, and moved towards people with both holiness and compassion.

That means any ministry of the Holy Spirit that becomes harsh, theatrical, coercive, self-exalting, or spiritually abusive has already lost its way, no matter how impressive it appears.

In the years ahead, the church may need more power than it has known for a very long time, but it will need that power to remain tethered to the character of Jesus Christ.

We must honour both the person and the power of the Spirit

There is another imbalance the church must avoid.

Some Christians become so cautious about excess that they speak of the Holy Spirit almost entirely in quiet, inward, non-disruptive terms. Others become so eager for spiritual experience that they speak as though the Spirit were just a kind of divine energy to be accessed, channelled, or displayed.

Neither path is healthy nor biblical.

The Holy Spirit is not an impersonal force. He is the divine person who teaches, convicts, leads, comforts, and glorifies Christ. He is to be loved, obeyed, and honoured. But the Holy Spirit also genuinely empowers. Scripture speaks of believers being filled, emboldened, gifted, and used in ways that clearly involve more than inward reassurance. There is real impartation, real anointing, real enabling for ministry.

We need both truths together.

If we lose the person of the Spirit, we drift towards spiritual technique. If we lose the power of the Spirit, we drift towards respectable weakness. But if we honour both the person and the power of the Spirit, we can minister with reverence and power at the same time.

That balance will matter enormously in a world rattled by AI. People will not only need sound teaching. They will need churches where the Spirit of God is genuinely present and active — not in hype, not in showmanship, but in truth, holiness, love, and genuine power.

A warning the church must take seriously

The possibility of revival should excite us, but it should also sober us.

When spiritual power is active, human character matters even more, not less. The greater the gifting, the greater the need for humility, discernment, and accountability. One of the clearest lessons from the New Testament is that spiritual reality does not eliminate the possibility of human misjudgement. Power in human hands is never made safe simply by being spiritual.

That is why the church must resist the cult of personality that often appears in revival settings. We must not confuse charisma with maturity, intensity with truth, or spiritual effect with spiritual health. Leaders must remain accountable. Discernment must remain active. Scripture must remain open. Jesus must remain central.

If the coming years bring a fresh moving of the Spirit, we must welcome it gratefully, but we must also steward it wisely.

What should believers do now?

Preparation for revival does not begin when crowds arrive. It begins now, in ordinary obedience.

We need churches that pray before they panic. Churches that learn to hear God before the crisis peaks. Churches that practise repentance, humility, generosity, and courage before disruptions force the issue. Churches that know how to care for the unemployed, the anxious, the confused, and the spiritually hungry. Churches that can preach the Gospel clearly and also minister the compassion and power of Christ personally.

We also need believers who will not be intimidated by the future. The rise of AI may shake many things, but it does not dethrone Jesus. It does not weaken the Gospel. It does not reduce the Holy Spirit to irrelevance. If anything, it creates the very conditions in which the emptiness of a hyper-technological civilisation becomes impossible to ignore.

That is not a reason for fear. It is a reason for readiness.

A call to action

The church must not sleep through this moment.

If AI-driven disruption is going to produce deeper instability, then this is the time to seek God afresh. This is the time to repent of prayerlessness, spiritual passivity, and our dependence on methods that cannot carry the weight of what may be coming. This is the time to ask the Lord for clean hands, clear hearts, renewed boldness, and a greater filling of the Holy Spirit.

Pastors must prepare their people. Leaders must cultivate discernment. Ordinary believers must learn again how to pray, how to listen, how to serve, how to witness, and how to minister in the Spirit without losing balance or humility.

...

The confounding speed of the AI revolution is not an accident, and it is not just the result of clever people making bold decisions. It is the outcome of three interlocking forces that, once understood, explain why no government, corporation, or individual can slow this down. It also explains why the Church may be the only institution positioned to respond meaningfully.

Introduction to the Three Drivers

My son Lance and I have written a book to try to make sense of the speeding AI tsunami and how we as Jesus-followers should respond. It is aimed at Christian Leaders, but its core message is for all. More about the book later, but for now, I want to introduce you to the hidden engine that drives the ever-accelerating flywheel of change. I have called this the Three-Driver Hypothesis, and this graphic will help explain it:

Think of the engine as three interlocking cogs turning faster and faster, and generating immense power and reaching unexpected velocity. The top cog is Technology, and the left-hand one is Geopolitics. I will go into a little detail in this article, but in short, these two are defined as follows:

1. Technology is the actual flywheel, and it is obvious to almost everyone. It represents the development and adoption of AI and robotics. Billions have been poured into massive AI tech developments, now far exceeding the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of many mid-sized countries. Let that sink in – The investment in AI development equals the total monetary value of all finished goods and services produced within a country's borders during a specific period.

The most visible parts of this flywheel are the AI laboratories that build AI and enhance it on an almost weekly basis. Companies like Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, XAi, and several others offer both free and subscription versions of Large Language Models (LLM) like Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Grok – names as familiar today as Microsoft Windows, Meta, Google Search and so on.

These are some of the massive corporations that have taken us from Calculators to electronic brains that are already smarter and more efficient than almost everyone you and I are likely to know, and they are getting more powerful all the time. Sure, they do not always display common sense and are noticeably short on creative thought. However, they provide billions in value to millions of people at little or no cost, and their products are, in one form or another, on our desks and in our pockets. They are even in our TV sets, our SmartGlasses, and almost everything else we use every day. If AI were a virus, most of human society would already be incurably infected … and perhaps it is.

Every day, the Technology flywheel, Driver One, spins faster and faster, and just thinking too much about it makes our heads spin.

2. The second driver is Geopolitics. It is not just big businesses that are focused on AI; it is also nations. Put simply, the nation that masters AI first will be the nation that rules the world, or at least this is how world leaders see it. The main reason for this claim is something called autonomous recursive learning and development, and this means that AIs are so smart that they are already self-improving. Model 1 helps develop Model 2, which builds Model 3 under human supervision, and Model 3 develops Model 4 all by itself. Model 1 is smart, Model 2 is brilliant, Model 3 is beyond understanding, and Model 4 is “god-like”. This, of course, is a simplified illustration rather than a technical roadmap, but the trajectory it captures is precisely what AI researchers are describing. I don’t use that ascription lightly, and I will explain it when I introduce the third Driver in this strange trinity.

Introduction to the Book: The Acts 8 Moment

Here is how The Acts 8 Moment book describes the first two drivers.

To navigate the Hinge Period, we must look beyond the daily headlines of stock market fluctuations and software updates.

We must understand the structural forces that are propelling us toward this new epoch. In our strategic analysis, we have identified three distinct, convergent drivers that ensure this revolution will not stall. We call this the Three-Driver Hypothesis.

Understanding these drivers is essential for church leaders. Without this framework, the speed of change looks like chaos. With it, the speed of change is revealed as a calculated, inevitable trajectory.

Driver One: The Technological Flywheel

The first driver is the technology itself, which has entered a phase of recursive self-improvement. We are no longer dealing with linear progress, where humans painstakingly write better code. We are entering a cycle where AI helps build better AI.

This is the “Flywheel.” The breakthroughs we witnessed in late 2024 and early 2025 – specifically the move to “System 2” reasoning models like OpenAI’s o3 and DeepSeek’s R1 – have closed the loop. These systems can now debug their own code, optimise their own architectures, and generate the synthetic data needed to train their successors.

When you combine this self-improving software with the physical amplifiers of quantum computing and advanced robotics, you get an engine of innovation that spins faster than human cognition can track. The "data wall" has been breached; the machine is beginning to teach itself.

Driver Two: The Race for Dominance (The Moloch Trap)

If technology were the only driver, humanity might collectively decide to slow down for the sake of safety. Driver Two ensures that we cannot. This is the geopolitical and corporate arms race - a dynamic game theorists call the "Moloch Trap."

As we saw with the Stargate Project and the DeepSeek shock, the United States and China are locked in an existential contest for sovereignty. This is not friendly market competition; it is a winner-takes-all battle for the future. The logic of the race dictates that safety margins must be sacrificed for speed. If a US lab pauses to ensure a model is safe, they risk being overtaken by a Chinese lab that did not pause.

This dynamic destroys the “off switch.” It forces rational actors – governments and corporations – to take irrational risks, driving the timeline of deployment forward regardless of the societal cost.

Some words and phrases from the book will probably seem strange to you – Hinge Period, Moloch Trap and so on – but these are explained in the book, and there is also a Glossary of Terms.

The big idea is that technology development and corporate and government ambition are resulting in a rapidly escalating race towards Super Artificial Intelligence. This race is at an almost incomprehensible speed, and it is creating changes that will affect all of our lives at every level.

The Hidden Third Driver

Drivers 1 and 2 explain what is happening, but do not explain ‘why’ it is happening. Driver 3 does explain much of the ‘why’ of it, but you will seldom or ever read about this – here it is, once again, as an extract from the book The Acts 8 Moment:

Driver Three: The Spiritual Accelerant

The first two drivers are widely recognised by secular analysts.

The third driver is visible only through spiritual lenses, yet it is the most critical for the Church to understand. We posit that the acceleration of AI is being fueled by a spiritual ambition as old as Eden: the Luciferian impulse to be “like God.”

We are not speaking merely metaphorically here. As Christians, we believe there is an active spiritual intelligence - the biblical Satan - who shapes human desires toward ‘transcendence’ without repentance. In theological terms, we understand this as a deeper layer behind the human dynamics described by Drivers One and Two. We do not claim this as an empirically testable mechanism, but as a confessional reading of the age in light of Scripture.

However, we see this evidenced in the language of the tech elite who speak of "summoning the digital god" or achieving immortality through "uploading consciousness." It is the spirit of Babel reborn - a unified human attempt to achieve omniscience (all-knowing AI), omnipotence (agentic AI), and immortality (transhumanism) apart from the Creator.

This spiritual driver explains the fervour of the age. It explains why brilliant men and women are building machines that they admit could destroy them. They are blinded by the promise of a counterfeit glory.

At the surface, there are two main reasons offered by politicians and technology leaders for their hell-bent pursuit of developing powerful AI as quickly as possible.

That AI is a good thing and will offer many wonderful benefits to humanity, ultimately ushering in a utopian age of heaven on earth.

If ‘bad’ players achieve Superintelligence first, then they will subjugate all opposition.

What they mean by this is that if their own corporations reach the goal first, then they will dominate and eliminate all opposition, but if the opposition wins the race, then their companies and personal wealth will be wiped out. At a national level, it is even starker. For the USA, if Russia or China win the race, then it is game over for American society.

The stakes are high, but in the fog of war caused by these forces, few seem concerned about what the outcomes will be for ordinary people.

I foresee a coming personal crisis of identity, worth, and purpose. If I no longer have a job, or just don’t need to work or achieve, struggle and overcome, innovate and create, then who am I, what am I worth, and what is my purpose in this world?

So, whether we have a godless heaven on earth or a societal hell, the outcome for most people is likely to be the same. We are designed by the Almighty to be industrious people of clear identity and purpose. When we lose our sense of identity, worth, and purpose, then we inevitably fall into the pit of self-destructive despondency and hopelessness.

The answers to the questions of “who am I, what am I worth,...

We are not the first generation to face a world that has decided it no longer needs God. From the moment Lucifer declared, "I will make myself like the Most High", the trajectory of cosmic and human history changed drastically. The Luciferian ambition, the creature's determination to unseat the Creator and seize divine prerogatives, did not die with the expulsion of Satan from heaven. It migrated. It was injected into the human spiritual bloodstream at Eden. It raised its first tower at Babel, deified itself on the thrones of Egypt and Rome, clothed itself in racial mysticism in the bunkers of Berlin, and today it speaks fluently in the language of technological progress, digital immortality, and artificial superintelligence. It is not a relic of ancient mythology. It is a dark animating impulse in every age, and if we want to understand where we are now and where history is heading, we have to understand where it began.

A word of clarification before we begin. The figures in this article are different in personality, culture, and stated motivation. However, each in their own context, expressed the creature's assertion of supremacy over the Creator, either through explicit self-deification or through the institutional replacement of God with State, ideology, or technology. Additionally, where current technological trajectories are described, these represent directions already declared by their most prominent advocates, and so are not inevitable outcomes. God remains sovereign over history, and, as you shall see, the story ends well

I briefly introduced the Luciferian ambition in my pre-introductory article in the current series. In this article, I will sketch its development from prehistory through to the present day.

The Structure of this Article

To better understand the magnitude and terminal nature of the AI era we are now in, I will set out six eras of creation time, encompassing 13 key people or groups. I am keeping details to a minimum so that you get a clear picture of the sweep of history and the common theme and escalating nature of the developing Luciferian ambition.

Era 1: Lucifer's Rebellion

God’s first creation was the cosmos and the angelic host who inhabited it. Among the most important and powerful of these angels was a being named Lucifer, the Light Bearer. He was wise and handsome, and his job was to guard the throne of God Almighty. The prophet Ezekiel described his terrible fall from favour and grace with the words, spoken back through time to Lucifer: “ You were proud of being handsome, and your fame made you act like a fool.” TEV (Ezekiel 28:12-17).

Isaiah set out the depth of the fallen angel’s pride with five "I will" statements. among which were: “I will raise my throne above the throne of God … I will be like the Most High.” (Isaiah 14:13-14) Lucifer’s sin was not just pride; it was blatant rebellion. His punishment was expulsion from the heavenly realm, and John references this when he wrote, “He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.”  (Revelation 12:9)

This was the beginning of the millennia-long attempt for Lucifer to fulfil his ambition of displacing God, and it is the root of all that followed. The first part of the next era is well known, but you may not have seen it from the perspective I am focusing on.

Era 2: The Fall of Man

God created Adam and Eve, and it didn’t take Lucifer long to approach Eve in the Garden of Eden and infect both her and her husband with his deadly virus. First, he caused her to doubt God’s goodness and integrity, and then he made the fatal proposition, “You will be like God …” (Genesis 3:5) … and thus the infection spread. Lucifer's grand strategy was to position himself as the god of the world and to reduce the status of humanity from divine image bearers to his sinful slaves.

Aeons later, Lucifer made a bold yet foolish move – he sent a group of his angels to materialise on Earth to establish a new order on the planet. They mated with the women of Earth and produced a hybrid race of wicked and powerful beings known as Nephilim (the fallen ones). Apparently, his sin-virus was not spreading fast enough, and he wanted to replace humanity with his own devil-spawn. The descendants of these beings were super strong and intelligent, and plagued humanity both before and after the Great Flood. They were the ones referred to in the bible by such names as Rephaim (Deuteronomy 3:11), Anakim (Numbers 13:33), and Zamzummim (Deuteronomy 2:20). These were the remnants of Lucifer's failed plan to enslave humanity and install himself as the King of Kings.

Era 3: The Reign of Lucifer's Regents

The Nephilim were largely wiped out by the Great Flood, but Lucifer's influence and legacy lived on. Noah’s great-grandson Nimrod became known as a ‘mighty one’ who later established the Kingdom of Babylonia with its capital city first known as Babel but later called Babylon. Nimrod’s name in Hebrew was ‘Rebel’, and the meaning of Babel was ‘gateway of the gods’. It seems most likely that he was the architect of the biblical Tower of Babel and the one who 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 and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth." (Genesis 11:4) Can you hear the echo of Lucifer’s rebellious words sounding through time?

Nimrod fused political tyranny with human religion to establish a template of control and dominance that has lasted right through to the present day. It was the first organised political-theological expression of the Luciferian Ambition.

The next mighty man of great significance was the Pharaoh of Egypt and the first of Lucifer's regents, who we can date (around 1446 BC). Egyptian theology embedded self-deification at the heart of its political and cosmological system. Pharaoh was seen as the son of Ra (the Sun God) and the divine mediator between heaven and earth. The voice of Lucifer can be clearly discerned when Pharaoh responded to Moses’ command from Almighty God to “Let my people go” with the retort, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him …?” (Exodus 5:2)

There were others, like Nebuchadnezzar and his grandson Belshazzar, in the legacy of rebellion, but they were not key characters in the Luciferian programme. So, on to possibly the clearest human image of Lucifer yet. Yes, the fallen angel was still trying to make man in his image rather than in God’s image. But first, a little on a well-known figure, Alexander the Great

Era 4: Classical Antiquity

Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), like Pharaoh, also claimed to be divine, the son of Zeus-Ammon. His contribution to the promotion of the Luciferian Ambition was to establish deification as a part of Hellenistic ruler veneration. He set an institutional and cultural norm that directly enabled Antiochus Epiphanes a century later.

Antiochus IV assumed the title Epiphanes, which means ‘God Manifest’. He was a Greek Seleucid king who reigned over Syria and attempted to enforce Hellenistic cultural uniformity, leading to the Jewish Maccabean Revolt. In 167 BC, he entered the temple in Jerusalem, erected an altar to Zeus over the Bronze Altar of Sacrifice, and then sacrificed a pig upon it! He also outlawed Torah observance as well as circumcision on pain of death. He was out to turn the Jews, the people of God, from their worship of Yahweh. The Lord Jesus later referred to these abominable acts when he said to his disciples: “So when you see standing in the holy place 'the abomination that causes desolation,' spoken of through the prophet Daniel  -  let the reader understand - then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains” (Matthew 24:15-17).

He was a type of the Antichrist referred to in scripture. You might be interested to know that he died of madness whilst on a campaign in Persia in 164 BC.

Then came the mighty Roman Empire and its Imperial Cult. The Roman Empire represents one of history’s most systematic and institutionally developed expressions of the Luciferian Ambition. Augustus Caesar was the first official Roman emperor, reigning from 27 BC to 14 AD. He claimed to be the Son of God and required people to worship him as such. Those who refused to burn incense to him were put to death. It was an ironic parody of the one who lived in Judea at that time, the true Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Although the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD, its spiritual legacy of fused political-religious power continued in various forms. It won’t surprise you to know that the ideology of God-replacement, the heart of the Luciferian Ambition, continued into the Modern Era.

Era 5: The Modern Era – 1789 – 2000

Two main Luciferian characters arose in this era whose teachings and actions continue on into world affairs today. One was Adolf Hitler, and the second was Karl Marx.

Adolf Hitler ruled Germany from January 30, 1933, to April 30, 1945. Appointed Chancellor on January 30, 1933, he quickly dismantled Germany's democratic institutions, establishing a totalitarian dictatorship known as the Third Reich. His absolute rule lasted until his suicide in April 1945 during the final days of World War II.

Hitler’s Nazi movement derived its DNA from the occult and particularly from Ariosophy and the Thule Society. Ariosophy, meaning ‘wisdom of the Aryans’. Aryan described a distinct, superior branch of humanity responsible for all major civilizational progress. The Thule Society (Thule-Gesellschaft) was a German occultist and nationalist-racialist secret society founded in Munich in 1918. They sought supernatural powers and prophesied the resurgence of a Nordic race of ‘god men’. Hitler believed this myth and saw himself as such a god-man. He also believed that inferior races polluted the pure Nordic strain and needed to be eliminated.

Several authors have carefully documented the occult Luciferian doctrine and practices of Hitler and his Nazis....