In a stark declaration on the Monday of Orthodox Christmas, Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, warned followers about placing too much faith in … their smartphones.
What the spiritual leader termed “external forces” could track and control smartphone users whose “locations, interests, and fears” have been collected from their devices, a media report indicated. Kirill said he wasn’t opposed to technology, just wary of the potential consequences.
“Control from a single point is a harbinger of the coming of the Antichrist,” Kirill told Russia-1, a state-run television network, according to the Moscow Times.
“The Antichrist is a personality that will be at the head of the world wide web controlling the entire human race. Thus, the structure itself presents a danger,” he told the network interviewer. He declared, “if we don’t want to bring the apocalypse closer, there should be no single [control and access] center.”
A Worldwide Problem
The explosive growth of smartphone use on the planet—approximately 2.5 billion people will use the devices globally by the end of 2019 according to research portal Statista—might well be a cause for concern on several levels. And the trend shows no signs of slowing down. By 2020, according to emarketer.com, the user base for smartphones will number 4.78 billion people, more than half the Earth’s population.
Whether or not one buys and uses a smartphone will depend on many factors, some of which might trump budgeting concerns. Some of those least able to comfortably afford the devices might get dragged into using them just to keep up with their peers.
There’s also an environmental question: Making smartphones involves mining, and using a number of precious metals that are in hard-to-reach places on the planet. Extracting these materials can scar vast swaths of land and put miners—who often live hardscrabble lives in grinding poverty—in physical danger. Other environmental issues involve spillage of toxic chemicals and upsetting the planet’s ecosystem.
So even without the potential for the “central control” that worries Patriarch Kirill, there’s more than enough to be concerned about with the explosion of smartphone manufacture and usage. Add in data-related scandals such as the 2018 revelation that social network Facebook shared user data with smartphone makers such as Apple, and you’ve got even more to worry about.
But it’s one thing to worry about what Facebook, Google, or some other high-tech company can do with your information, and quite another to suggest that this vast data mining—that’s what they call the collection and harvesting of user information—will lead to one central power dictating what we can, and cannot do, with our lives.
How does the Mark of The Beast relate to buying and selling?
No One May Buy or Sell
Or is it? Your Bible says, in Revelation 13:17, that a time will come when “no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” Given the scanning codes used in many supermarket shopper’s rewards programs, is it that much of a stretch to imagine the ultimate “shoppers club” will use some form of technology to identify those who can, and cannot, “buy or sell”?
For now, we can only guess at the specifics of how the antichrist power—also clearly identified as the “beast” of Revelation 13—will carry out his evil plans. John did not foresee the advent of smartphones or computers, so his terminology is non-specific on the means used to identify those aligned with the beast at the time of the end.
While Christians can, and often do, speculate on such questions, what’s most important is to understand the basic details about the Antichrist—who he is and what he will do. Understanding this vital question is a major key to cracking “The Prophecy Code.”
You can start with Pastor Doug’s presentation, Revelation Reveals the Antichrist, which is part of The Prophecy Code series. You’ll learn whether or not the word “antichrist” even appears in the book of Revelation, and whether this prophetic text identifies who that being will be. It’s an information-packed seminar you don’t want to miss.
To reinforce your understanding of Bible prophecy, we also recommend Who Is the Antichrist?, which traces this mysterious figure through Daniel’s prophecy, written centuries before John wrote Revelation while on the Greek island of Patmos. This study compliments Pastor Doug’s presentation and gives even more detail on future events.
Should we mention that you can use your smartphone for both of these features? Well, it’s true, but we won’t tell anyone if you don’t!
Revelation Reveals the Antichrist