The Mark of the Beast is Here
by Thomas R. Horn
Before we discuss the science behind transhumanism (a “scientific” goal that merely repackages eugenics’ drive to “create a better human”), let’s briefly look at Gen Y.
Simply put, Gen Y children are “millennial babies,” or the grandchildren of baby boomers. Boomer children are often referred to as “Generation X,” so the “Y” babies are those born to the “X” children. Perhaps not coincidentally, X and Ychromosomes determine infant gender, a concept that has become deliberately blurred during the years since World War II. Respectively, XY and XX no longer define male or female. Transgendered individuals, or even those who simply choose to identify with a particular “sex” option, have convinced many schools, workplaces, and even politicians to protect their “choices.” A child born as an XY male may choose to “identify” as a girl—even going so far as to join girls’ basketball teams and shower in the girls’ facility. God’s design for distinct male and female roles has been corrupted into “fifty shades of gray.”
Generation Y is sometimes called “the echo boom,” as it is the largest generation since the postwar boomers. In fact, some statistics list Gen Y as numbering 80 million or more. Beyond this group is Generation Z—or those born after 1995. Today’s media culture is already targeting this generation as rising consumers, customizing advertising to reach gender-neutral, tech-hungry, post-human individuals. Perhaps even more than their parents, Gen Y youth look to genetics to take the next step in human evolution. What is that step? Consider popular culture and the memes Gen Y and Gen Z young people are exposed to every day. Graphic novels, films, television, and video games constantly and consistently teach that mankind is about to “level up.” Young men and women (and those in between) can become werewolves, vampires, super soldiers, and spider men. The old human paradigm of two genders and five senses can be replaced with an infinite number of gender choices (or none at all!) and extra senses that allow the transhuman to hear colors, smell sounds, or tune into the very fabric of space and time. The biblical promise that we will “rise up as eagles” is twisted into promising wings that permit the new human to take physical flight. Generations Y and Z could live forever. At least, that is the lie they are being told.
Cybernetics and synthetic genomes will soon merge into the sexy Cylon of Battlestar Galactica. The post-human will be beautiful, perfect in form, and capable of superhuman feats. And he/she will live forever. “Ye shall be as gods” is the oldest lie, spoken to Adam and Eve by a garden snake long ago, but it is echoing once again in the promises to a generation of lost, unhappy youths. The Antichrist will play upon this inner need for perfection, this constant yearning to become a god. The youth of Hitler’s day believed they would join their leader in the coming thousand years of Aryan rule over the Earth. Is it so far-fetched to say that coming evil one, foreshadowed by Adolf Hitler, will also promise his followers a plum part in his kingdom?
Remember this important fact: The Antichrist will claim to BE CHRIST. He will arrive as a peacemaker—as the answer to all of our worldly problems. It is also quite possible that he will claim to be an enhanced—or “trans”—human. It might be more accurate to call him a “trance” human, for the Antichrist will cast a spell upon today’s youth, luring all those who do not call the true Christ their Savior to take his special Mark. This might be a chip inserted into the body used to track each person’s location, but it may be much more. This Mark of the Beast might actually rewrite DNA.
Read/Write/Genomes
Many of you may remember the early days of computers and computing power. Commercially available computers arose about the same time as Watson and Crick’s hallmark discovery. The US Census Bureau received the first UNIVAC computer on March 31, 1951, for a cost of nearly $1 million. In all, the government purchased forty-six UNIVAC computers, which is remarkable considering that each machine required its own small room! Back then, computing power for these monsters paled in comparison when measured against the tiny computer inside your cell phone.
In just fifty years, computer technology has advanced incredibly fast, solid-state hard drives have replaced old magnetic tape, and chips have replaced vacuum tubes. It’s very likely that the computer in your hand today is flash-based, containing no hard drive at all. Cloud computing will soon mitigate the need for “local storage,” although (for now) you can still buy laptops with more than a terabyte of storage! One of the first computers one of these authors had was an old Commodore 128 that had 128 kilobytes of RAM. The laptop I’m using this morning has 6 gigabytes of RAM.
Hard-disk storage—in the old days—consisted of ROM, or “Read-Only Memory,” which held chips or areas of storage that included operating software that must remain permanently available but rarely or never required updating. As computers advanced and “floppy disks” were added, most of these disks were “write once,” which meant data could be written to them only one time. They could not be rewritten.
At one time, scientists considered our DNA as “Read-Only Memory.” The code within each of our cells contains instructions for making the machinery that runs the complex operations that keep us alive. However, beginning in the twentieth century, early geneticists discovered a process called recombination that allows the insertion of new genetic material into a cell’s genome. Recombination makes “gene therapy” possible, using a bacterial or viral vector, or “truck,” to deliver the new genetic sequence to the target cell (perhaps in the lung or muscle). Scientists see nothing ethically wrong with “editing” our God-given genome; they merely see this as another form of self-directed evolution. Of course, one can only begin to edit what one reads first. Enter the Human Genome Project (HGP).
It is now possible to splice genes, modify DNA
It might be said that the HGP actually began on December 9, 1984, when a group of scientists gathered in the Alta, Utah, ski resort area high up in the Wasatch Mountains. There, David Smith of the Department of Energy and Mortimer Mendelsohn of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory gathered with seventeen genetics scientists to determine whether or not the time might be right to commence serious measurement of the mutations within the human genome. Joining Smith and Mendelsohn were David Botstein, Ebert Branscomb, Charles Cantor, C. Thomas Caskey, George McDonald Church, John D. Delaharty, Charles Edington, Raymond Gesteland, Leonard Leman, Michael Gough, John Mulvihill, Richard Myers, James V. Neel, Maynard Olson, Edwin Southern, Sherman Weissman, and Raymond L. White.
Of this stellar list of respected names, one stands out: George McDonald Church. Church is a self-professed transhumanist and author of the recent best seller, Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves. He’s a dedicated vegan, an entrepreneur (having established nine genomics-based businesses, including Knome,Pathogenica, and Gen9Bio—a synthetic biology company), and an avowed transhumanist who would love to see revived Neanderthal, assuming a human female volunteers to be the surrogate mother. (Oh, and by the way, Church was also instrumental in kick-starting the “race for the brain,” discussed later in this section.)
Initially, the Alta group had discussed finding a repeatable and affordable means to quantify mutations within the Hiroshima offspring. Two years later, in 1986, Mendelsohn joined several others from Alta, as well as panel chair Arno Moltulsky of the Center for Inherited Disease, to present a report called “Office of Technology Assessment, Technologies for Detecting Heritable Mutations in Human Beings.” This report had followed a meeting of leading molecular biologists in the spring of that year organized by James Watson (yes, that Watson), and held at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Cold Spring, if you remember your eugenics history, was the site for the Eugenics Records Office (ERO).
Are you beginning to get a nagging twitch at the back of your neck? Me, too.
Excerpted from 'News with Views' Thomas Horn is the CEO of RaidersNewsUpdate.com and SurvivorMall.com.
Over the last decade, he has authored three books, wrote dozens of published editorials, and had several feature magazine articles. In addition to past articles at NewsWithViews.com , his works have been referred to by writers of the LA Times Syndicate, MSNBC, Christianity Today, Coast to Coast, World Net Daily, White House Correspondents and dozens of newsmagazines and press agencies around the globe. Tom's latest book is "The Ahriman Gate," which fictionalizes the use of biotechnology to resurrect Biblical Nephilim.
Thomas is also a well known radio personality who has guest-hosted and appeared on dozens of radio and television shows over the last 30 years, including "The 700 Club" and "Coast to Coast AM." When looking for a spokesperson to promote their film "Deceived" staring Louis Gossett Jr. and Judd Nelson, "Cloud 10 Pictures" selected Thomas as their spokesperson to explain the Christian viewpoint on UFO-related demonology. Web Site: RaidersNewsUpdate.com E-Mail: RaidersNewsUpdate@gmail.com