In today’s column , Richard J. Mouw comments on recent remarks by prominent pastor Pat Robertson:
Regarding the Snowden revelations about government surveillance, Robertson observed that these practices were setting the stage for the “End Times.” We seem to be approaching an epoch described in the Bible, he said, where “there is no freedom” and where “Big Brother monitored everything.” The Bible points out, he went on, that there will be a day “when you can’t buy or sell without the Mark of the Beast, you have to be part of that world system and a very, very few can escape because right now they can go down into the bush in the darkest Africa and hunt you down.”
Mouw remembers James Houston’s warnings against abuse of technological power in 1971:
James Houston and Pat Robertson were both looking for biblical guidance for what we might expect to see in the unfolding capacities of advanced technologies in our world. I wish Robertson had encouraged the same corrective strategies that Houston recommended four decades ago. One important way of countering the “beastly” threats of our time is to engage in the kind of activities Houston proposed, especially a mindful Christian scholarly focus on the practical concerns that advanced technologies raise.
Read the full On the Square here .
