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- [00:00]
A
You read Paul talking about the man of lawlessness who uses satanically powered deception, and then you find this in the book of Revelation. And it seems to me that the spread of lies is one of the things that we have to face. And the only way to face it is to be grounded in the truth and to spend more time than we have done in Scripture. And here's where I think the enemy has done a very impressive job of getting people to avoid the Book of Revelation because of speculative misunderstandings of the book that have led people into difficulty and lost of their credibility. When I meet transhumanists and I do, and they tell me about this exciting program, we're going to conquer the problem of physical death and we're going to upload our brains into silicon and we'll have eternal life. I just look at them and smile and say, you're too late. The problem of physical death was solved 20 centuries ago when God raised Jesus from the dead. Think there's more evidence for the truth of that than there is the truth of your attempt to reach Godhood, bypassing the fundamental problem that every bit of utopian thinking has always bypassed, and that is dealing with the problem of human sin and rebellion against God.
- [01:22]
B
Hey, everyone, welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. I am very honored to be here with Professor John Lennox, one of the world's leading Christian intellectuals. And he's written a fascinating new book that we're going to discuss. God. And if this title doesn't get your interest, I don't know that a title would. God, AI and the End of History. Understanding the Book of Revelation in an Age of Intelligent Machines. We'll talk about. By the way, link to this book in the video description. Check it out, give it a look. Very edifying book. It does address AI, but it's also just about the Book of Revelation and the hope that it gives. And my hope for our discussion is that the hope of the gospel would touch hearts that feel so anxious about the state of the world right now. So, John, what an honor to talk with you. Thank you so much for taking the time.
- [02:07]
A
It's a great pleasure to be with you for the first time, I believe.
- [02:11]
B
That's right. It is first time for us to speak. But I've been a long admirer of your books and your work, so this is a real treat for me. Let me ask you this. As I was reading your book very carefully over this weekend, you set out in the first few pages describing the state of the world and what an uncertain and unstable time it is. And the feelings of chaos and instability and anxiety that are in many hearts. We're recording this in June 2026. The world feels more unstable to me than ever before in my lifetime. Do you recall in your life a time where the world has ever felt so unstable?
- [02:49]
A
Not really. Not really. I have a vague memory of the Cuban crisis, and at the height of the Cold War, there were certainly pretty scary times, but nothing order, because I think we've entered a new era, a new era of danger, to be quite frank, that's accelerating at a pace that it's very difficult to get used to.
- [03:16]
B
Do you think the unique pressures facing us today are because the actual dangers are greater or because we lack the spiritual and moral ballast to face them?
- [03:30]
A
Well, I think it's both reasons. Accelerating technology, which is not always policed properly or rarely, no ethical underpinning. And it's pretty clear to most people that technology advances much faster than the necessary ethics to underpin it and control it. That's the first thing. The second thing is the sheer scale of the capacity of this new technology, which is unlike anything we've had before. So we've landed in the midst of a new industrial revolution and one that affects all of us not only indirectly, but affects the very concept of human identity.
- [04:16]
B
You said like nothing else we've faced before. That comment resonates with me when I think back on recent technological leaps upward. Television and then the Internet, the impact of social media and AI feels different. What to you, in your view, what makes AI unique?
- [04:39]
A
It certainly feels different. And it feels different because most of the technologies that appeared before, we felt we could understand them and in some sense we could dominate them and control them, although that hasn't always proved successful. But with AI, it's now leaping forward at such a speed that even the pioneers of IT aren't sure what they've discovered. And one of the big issues that they face is what they call the control problem. Will it get out of hand and will it represent a danger to humanity? And of course, there's a very wide spectrum of difference of opinion. Some people think, and I quote, that it's no more risky than a toaster. Other people think it's much more risky than a nuclear bomb. So you've got this vast spectrum of opinions. But it's pretty obvious that the kind of AI that we've so far got working as distinct from the speculative sort of artificial general intelligence that we can look at a bit later, if you wish, there's enough there to be very worried about at a number of different levels. One of them is the capacity for control, first of all of ethnic minorities, but in the end of cultures and nations through the surveillance technology that is developed off the back of the pattern recognition, facial recognition, that kind of thing, and is already being deployed in parts of China to subjugate. That's the only word I could use, the minority people of the Uyghurs. And that is being rolled out all across China, but it's also being rolled out in Russia and increasingly in the West. And that threatens to become a totalitarian world regime of the kind anticipated in the dystopias of Huxley and of Orwell. So I could see there there is reason to be being worried at the other end of the scale, I mean, the scale in terms of age, young people are being seriously damaged by what is being fed to them deliberately by major corporations like Google and Meta in terms of addictive material. And there's been a landmark case in Los Angeles in the last month where they have been proven guilty of actually deliberately designing their websites to be addictive and resulting in affecting the mental health of young people. It's interesting on the side, by the way, that the prosecuting attorney is the number one attorney in the U.S. mark Lanier, who's a Christian, and he is very concerned about the influence of this kind of thing. And parents, of course, many of us grandparents have read Jonathan Haidt's book the Anxious Generation, which really is opening our eyes to a very dangerous thing that is happening to our young people and it'll soon be too late to reverse it.
- [08:16]
B
In a moment we'll dive into the Book of Revelation and then toward the latter portions of this discussion, we'll discuss how should Christians respond to these challenges. One last question on AI. When I think about the challenges here, and I'm following your comments very closely, there's the long term threats that come at a larger level, and then there's the more immediate and personal threats that you've also alluded to from Jonathan Haidt. One of the concerns I have, and I have a very compassionate heart for our precious young people is the incredible loneliness. And I see people turning to AI as a friend and as a counselor and as a therapist and as a pastor and as a guide and so forth. And we see kind of a breakdown of deep friendships and relationships and community. Is this something that concerns you at all?
- [09:02]
A
Oh, it is. And it concerns some leading thinkers like Sherry Turkle, who authored the book Alone Together. And that expresses what you said absolutely accurately that the so called friendships and likes on Facebook and similar media are not friendships. They create distance between people, and they're really lonely. And one of the fascinating things is the experiments that frustrated and anxious parents are making these days by taking the devices away from their kids and taking them out into the country for a week. And they come back completely reinvigorated. They've discovered friendship, they've discovered nature, they've discovered each other, and they're no longer so addicted to spending many hours a day on those devices. And it seems to me that one of the things as Christians we ought to be fighting for is what I call electronic fasting, the meaning of which is obvious.
- [10:10]
B
Yes, this is helpful as a start. And we're going to go to the text of Revelation now, which gives us hope. That's what I hope viewers of this video and readers of your book will experience is we're not trying to just scold young people for doing something wrong. This is my heart. I love young people. And we're not as a society, we're not setting them up for success. And we want to give counsel and help and reflection about these devices which affect us as well. They affect me. So we're offering hope here. And the Book of Revelation offers hope. As I read your book, I experienced it as a very pastoral book. You're working through the text. One of the things and I'm going to set aside all my own views of Revelation for the sake of this, because I just want to learn about yours, because there's plenty of space for Christians to explore this book and look at different views. The details are very difficult. One of the things I appreciated early on is you gave a warning against speculation. And so you're saying, you know, it's really easy to take these shapes and images in the text and make them mean whatever we want. Could you give some comments about this, about guardrails so that we don't start making the Book of Revelation in our own image and in our own interests? How do we avoid becoming unduly skeptical in our interpretation of Revelation?
- [11:32]
A
Well, first of all, by anchoring our understanding of the more enigmatic parts of Scripture in our understanding of the clear teaching that we find elsewhere in Scripture and not using speculation in order to develop doctrines which are not taught elsewhere. And secondly, by observing the big picture, because the Book of Revelation is wonderful in terms of its literary structure. Three times over in chapter one, it mentions coming, the coming of God in the form of the coming of Christ. And three times at the end of the book in the final Chapter Jesus says, I am coming soon. Now, that ought to be enough to tell us that this book, its main message is to give us hope for the future. That directs our minds to the central Christian hope that has always been the coming of Messiah at all of its levels. First, Jesus coming into the world, and then his promise both to his disciples in private and to his judges in public, that he would return to rule the world. And I think that is the central hope that is offered to us. It's clearly supernatural, of course, but it is a wonderful hope that we've got a future to look forward to that's not under the control of the monster of artificial intelligence, but is in control of the Lord Jesus Christ, who loved his fellow human beings more than anyone else has ever done.
- [13:16]
B
Beautiful. And I love that focus on the big picture hope there. That's what my own heart often needs. Let's get into the details of Revelation just a bit to. And I especially want to ask you about chapter 13 and the Beast. And you know, this is because this comes up in your book, and this is where you have some discussion about AI and some of the things that I'll ask. Well, let's go piece by piece here. When you think about the beast in Revelation 13, are you thinking about a person? Are you thinking about a system or an empire or a pattern? How do you think about this entity?
- [13:53]
A
Well, I think it may be more complex, involving both of these elements. It's better to stand back from it and tell you just how I came to think about it at all. I call it the Monster, because I think the word beast doesn't convey its severity, so to speak, well enough. And the word monster is a very good word, as I understand it. But what really happened is this, that I have written two books on AI under the same title, 2084. The first one appeared in 2020, and four years later, Zondervan asked me to update it, revise it. So I wrote a book twice as long. And in both of the versions of that book, I was looking at some of the scenarios that leading thinkers, scientifically qualified thinkers have as they look at the future. And one of the books I came across was a book called Life 3.0, sorry, Life 2.0, by an American physicist and Max Tegmark, who's very well known. And I observed in reading that, that he had a series of half a dozen or a dozen different possibilities for the future that he gave various names to. And in them you had a benevolent AI controlling the world, or a despotic AI controlling the world, et cetera, et cetera. All these possibilities. But the one he seemed to favor most, although he didn't put his flag down on anyone in the end, was one that was very interesting. He talked about a development within Amazon that enabled this company to expand and gain economic control of the world, so that we had a totalitarian regime. And of course, in dystopias or even utopias for the future, the concept of a world government figures very strongly. And of course, many politicians think that it ultimately is the only solution for the human race. But anyway, Tegmark talks about this organization called Prometheus that controls the world and every citizen. He goes into specifics, and he said every citizen is given a technologically highly developed bracelet to wear on their arm. And to quote what he says, it has the functionality of an Apple watch. So it's listening and watching and recording all conversations and everything that you see and do, etc. Etc. And he then adds that it has the capacity to inject a lethal toxin into the person that's wearing it if the controlling government doesn't approve of their ideas or their activities. And as I read that, I thought, how very interesting. Here is one of the world's leading physicists, a very serious thinker, and what he's come up with is eerily, uncannily close to what is mentioned in those chapters of Revelation 13 and so on, where we read of a monster who's clearly in control of the world. And there are two monsters, actually, and one promotes the worship of the first. And that's something we need to come to, because worshiping the AI monster is a very real concept these days, especially relatively recently. And what happens is that this second monster, often called the false prophet, encourages world population to make what is called an image to the first monster that can speak and breathe and has the power to cause all inhabitants of the world, so it's global, to worship the first monster. Now, this is intriguing because it raises the question, what is this thing that is constructed by human skill and energized ultimately by satanic power? It's no innocent thing. And if it has economic control over the world, you cannot buy or sell if you don't carry the mark of the monster. And now it can kill anybody that it desires to kill. This is exactly the scenario that Tegmark mentions. Now, here's my argument, very simply. If people are prepared to take seriously in the 21st century the kind of scenario that Tegmark depicts in his book, then I want to argue that it's worth reverting and taking seriously a 20 centuries older piece of imagery that seems to be saying almost identically what Tegmark is saying. And it is a fascinating thing, it seems to me. Now, if it is objected, look, Revelation is a book full of symbols. I will agree entirely. But I've read enough CS Lewis to know that symbols and metaphors are used to represent realities. The interesting thing is that the New Testament also gives us in plain theological text without any symbolism. In Paul's second Letter to the Thessalonians, he talks about a human being that gains control of the world and proclaims himself to be God, a human being who's destroyed by the second coming of Christ. And it seems to me it's inescapable logic that this individual is actually at the head of an empire, a world empire. And the imagery in the book of Revelation covers both things. And in Thessalonians plaintext, this person, human being is destroyed by the coming of Christ. And in the book of Revelation, the monster is destroyed by the coming of Christ. So putting two and two together, it seems to me that the book of Revelation is unpacking for us what Paul said to the Thessalonian Christians when he'd only been there about three weeks. He taught them about the future. Now, here's my final point of this, Catherine, and it's this. Why did Paul talk like this to New Christians? Because as he himself explains it, he says the mystery of lawlessness is already operating, and he means spiritual lawlessness, the kind of thing that pushes a man or a humanly designed machine to claim to be God. The mystery of lawlessness is already operating, that is in the Roman Empire with the emperors claiming to be gods and all the rest of it. And I think what Paul is warning Christians then, and by extension warning us now even more forcefully, to beware of trends in our culture that are pushing the deification of human beings. And that brings us straight to the door of the transhumanist movement and the attempt to, to create artificial general intelligence or super intelligence, which is very much in the air at the moment.
- [22:01]
B
Thanks for unfolding that. And if people want to trace this out in your book, I'll just mention to give them a tip here around page 340 and forward for about 15 pages. You work through this, and it's compelling in that what you're doing is you're reading Revelation 13 and then you're reading not just one, but several texts and predictions about what AI could do. And you're saying, you know, it's not easy to see that there's some common features here. Now, whatever a Christian may come to about the details of Revelation 13, I think the principles here are something we all need to wrestle with. And we've got some disturbing trends going on. You mentioned false worship. Let's talk about this for a moment. What do you think it can look like for a modern society to worship technology without using explicitly religious language?
- [22:53]
A
Well, they do use explicitly religious language. There's a very interesting book by Karen Howe, who was a very high powered AI journalist. And it's called Empire the Empires of AI or something like that. And I read it recently and it's a very disturbing book. It's particularly about Sam Altman of OpenAI, and she quotes a statement that has been quoted a great deal these days. And it goes something like this. A successful person can create a business, A very successful person may be able to create a country, but an extremely successful person can create a religion. And often the way to do that is to create a company. And it's very interesting that she uses the metaphor of the empire of AI and creating, I quote, the monster God or the AI, the machine God. More accurately. It's the machine God. And it's obvious. Just to sit back for a moment, when we think of what the simplest kind of narrow AI can do, it seems to many people to be omnipresent. We've got the Internet everywhere. It seems to be omniscient. It can answer any question you want to ask. It can create scriptures for you. It can be a companion. You can talk to it, the chatbots and all the rest of it. It can answer questions way beyond your own individual educational level. In other words, it's rapidly developed the features and characteristics that we normally associate with God. So people are starting to worship it. And some leading intellectuals in our universities are saying, well, we should greet this because this is the way forward to the future. Not the worship of a transcendent God out there, but the worship of a God in here. Because what we're doing is creating God. Now that I see as a huge danger. Why? Because that push, that drive started on the second page of the Bible where the temptation, the original temptation to humans would be God said, don't eat of that tree. But he knows that in the day you eat of it, you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. So go ahead and eat it, because the effect will be that you will rise in your status. And that push has been there from the very beginning and now it has become mainstream in the writings particularly of Yuval Noah Harari and his book of the title Homo Deus, the Man who is God. And Paul's warning in Thessalonians to me is to say, just be careful of anything in the culture that is pushing the deity of human beings. And there's every amount of that. And resist it. We need to resist it. And we need to resist it for several very important reasons. The main one being because the human beings we have got now are not just one stage in a lengthy, mindless, unguided process of naturalistic evolution. They are beings made in the image of God. And I think it is very important for us as Christians to seriously think of what it means to be made in the image of God. Yeah.
- [26:49]
B
Oh, I have questions, maybe some questions about that. Let me ask this first, though, because I think what has come into my mind as I've considered this topic is AI seems like this very futuristic niche, narrow issue. But then the more you think about it, the more you realize this actually has profound spiritual consequences for just how we live day to day. And whatever view someone takes on the Book of Revelation, we have to think through. You know, the question like this that you raised comes up is, what does it mean to be a human being? What is it that actually makes us unique? Now, I went into this thinking, well, surely, bro, what, what 99% of people will all agree on is that human beings have value and so we need to protect against AI intruding on that value. As I'm listening to interviews, I'm hearing people talk about, well, maybe human beings don't have that much value. Maybe it'd be okay if we were eclipsed by AI and this kind of thing. And I've never found the doctrine of the image of God, creation in the image of God more precious and more necessary than when considering these kind of transhumanist threats that come up. And so I guess one aspect that comes more deeply into my heart, which I'll just say this and then give you a chance, if you want to comment on this, is this topic raises for us the importance of remembering the special value of human beings given by God, that when a human being is created, God endows upon that person value and dignity because they are made in the image of God. And I'm thankful for that. If we didn't have that paradigm, I think it'd be much harder to navigate some of these questions with AI. That's just a personal statement. If you want to comment on that, please. And then I'll jump into a Next question.
- [28:25]
A
Well, I do, because it is important, as you say. In fact, it's the foundational statement on which all civilized values are based. As Jordan Peterson commented in one of his readings in Genesis, that human beings, male and female, are given infinite dignity because they're made in the image of God. Now, the fascinating thing about human beings and human intelligence as contrasted with artificial intelligence is that human intelligence has been coupled by God with consciousness. And this is where we need to, I think, stand very firm. The difficulty in talking about AI is that we use very readily anthropomorphisms. We talk about artificial intelligence, machine learning, and all the rest of it. And it sounds as if we're imparting a human dimension to these machines. But they are just machines. They do not think. They are not intelligent in the way humans are. They simply simulate intelligence. And that's crucially important. The leading figures who have produced the AI that we're using now aren't even trying to create a conscious being because they don't even know what that would mean. And they're quite happy to play what they call the Imitation Game, going back to Alan Turing. Now, I develop all this not in my book on Revelation, but in my book 2084. Now, just think about it. These machines do not think. They do not have the five senses that God has given us. They cannot see. They can recognize patterns programmed into them, but they do not have the experience of seeing. They cannot smell, they cannot feel, they cannot hear, they cannot. And so on. They do not have any experience of what we call qualia. They cannot understand the redness of red. They cannot perceive beauty. And those things for which we ought to be very thankful are the things that make us utterly unique. So that's the first major point. But there's a second one that's got to be made, and that is this. That the transhumanist effort is an attempt to turn humans into gods. Little gods, Little g. Gods. As Harari says, the essence of the Christian gospel is not humans trying to become gods, but at its heart lies a movement in the opposite direction. It's God becoming human. And here's to my mind, the most important thing about human beings like you and me. They are so special that God created them so that he could become one. Now, that immediately injects into this a uniqueness that I do not want to diminish in any way. The incredible statement in John's Gospel, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And the wonder of that is the reason for it, is that God became human in order not to turn us into gods, but to give us the opportunity, through trusting Christ, for forgiveness and pardon, a new life, to become members of God's family, sharing his life. And the irony of that, Gavin, is this. When I meet transhumanists and I do, and they tell me about this exciting program, we're going to conquer the problem of physical death and we're going to upload our brains into silicon and we'll have eternal life. I just look at them and smile and say, you're too late. And they're puzzled. They say, but we haven't got there yet. You don't understand. I said, the problem of physical death was solved 20 centuries ago when God raised Jesus from the dead. And as for uploading, you know what I'm looking forward to? I'm looking forward to the day when God's going to upload me through Christ into the world to come, because he's given me the life that's going to operate and do it. And I think there's more evidence for the truth of that than there is the truth of your attempt to reach Godhood, bypassing the fundamental problem that every bit of utopian thinking has always bypassed, and that is dealing with the problem of human sin and rebellion against God. So I think we've got a message that resonates because people understand it, that
- [33:39]
B
I discover what a thrilling thought that for our friends who may be enamored with AI, when we get to share with them about Jesus, we're sharing them with them, a message that is far more, more exciting than anything that could be drawing their interest. And I hope that will really resonate with our viewers to think about from this topic going back to the sheer wonder of what God's already done. Let's talk a final wing of the interview here. Last few questions about how Christians should respond to the challenges we face. One of the challenges is with AI the possibility of misinformation being spread. In your book, you discuss non participation in lies. I like that little phrase. Are there ways that you think Christians can unwittingly be drawn into participating in lies or misinformation without even realizing it?
- [34:38]
A
Oh, yes, that quote is from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. And I remember when I read it, it affected me deeply. Live not by lies. I think it was a graduation talk he gave shortly after being deported from Soviet Russia. Well, I can tell you a very simple story that illustrates it. About a month ago, I had a letter from a Christian, a serious, theologically highly educated Christian who said I'd like to refer to a lecture I heard you give on the Internet recently. And I liked it so much I'd like to turn it into a book. And I said, what is this lecture? And he told me, but I'd never heard of it. So I looked it up, and to my amazement, I discovered a website called Linux Logic. I hadn't set it up. It was a deep fake at all levels, a deep fake of me using my image. And then there was a set of lectures attached to this. Me talking things that I would never have talked, a jumble of politics, Middle Eastern politics, talking about Israel and Revelation, all this kind of thing. And it had attracted seven or eight thousand followers. Now, the amazing thing is, my friend wanted to transcribe this. It didn't even occur to him it was a fake. So in that sense, to quote Scripture, even the elect were deceived by it. And it's just a simple example of what's happening all around the world. Voices can be cloned. They can imitate, for example, any of my children's voices. And I could get a phone call saying, dad, I need you to give me $1,000 or whatever, because I'm stuck here and here and here. And a parent's heart would go out to that, but it isn't your daughter at all. And we're now in a situation where the five I's, that is the leaders of the secret services in your country, mine and a few others are very concerned that we have a capacity to disseminate lies and at a level that is hitherto unprecedented. Now, why that is important. It seems to me that if you ask yourself, what did Jesus warn his disciples against in light of the future, one of the major things was take heed that no one will lead you astray. You read Paul talking about the man of lawlessness who uses satanically powered deception, and then you find this in the Book of Revelation. And it seems to me that the spread of lies is one of the things that we have to face. And the only way to face it is to be grounded in the truth and to spend more time than we have done in Scripture. And here's where I think the enemy has done a very impressive job of getting people to avoid the Book of Revelation because of speculative misunderstandings of the Book that have led people into difficulty and lost their credibility. But there's so much good stuff in it that could encourage Christians. And that's what I tried to do in the book. I don't understand it all, but I think there's enough that we can understand and confidently share with our fellow believers and others that will actually put real content into the hope that we need to have if we're going to ride the waves and the storms that are going to hit us.
- [38:34]
B
Inevitably, yes, the way you described your book. Maybe we can just make a quick comment about this as we're nearing the end. I have two final questions after this, but first, just to ask you, is this an accurate understanding that you didn't set the sit down to write a book saying, well, I want to write something about AI. Let's go to Revelation. Rather, you wrote a very detailed book about revelation, and some of the details in the text raise applications that then apply to how we're thinking through questions about AI. Have I got you right there?
- [39:04]
A
Oh, you have indeed. The title is misleading, and I pointed that out to the publishers who thought it would really fly. But this is a book about revelation, primarily with applications to AI. It is not my most recent book about AI. That book is 2084.
- [39:23]
B
Yeah, well that's helpful to know and because this topic does. But there is an application to be made here, I think. Two final questions. First, do you think Christians should use AI? And if so, where do you set sort of the moral boundaries for that usage?
- [39:41]
A
Well, there is a sense in which that's like asking me, do you think Christians should use a Bible dictionary? And the answer is yes. But the point is to distinguish between AI being a tool for finding things out and a master. And the danger is that it slips from being a tool to be all consuming because it's capacity and diverting people and occupying their time. You see the goal of many of the mega corporations involved in technology, their goal is to keep you attending, keep you scrolling, keep your interest, and we need to resist that. So I use myself, I use AI to check facts, to look things up. But still you've got to do the checking. You find things out. You could have AI draft a letter and sometimes it'll do it brilliantly, but you need to check very carefully so that what eventually goes out from you is something for which you will take responsibility. But the danger is, and it's an obvious danger in educational terms, it's making it very difficult for universities to teach language and literature or history or many other things, because AIs are now so good at writing essays and dissertations and all the rest of it, they can fly through all the examinations you care to mention, and educators are wondering what on earth to do. And here you get a huge split. Some Say, well, if they're clever enough to use AI, let them use it. Others say, no, take it away. Let's get back to some closed book examinations in a Faraday cage. So there's no danger of influence by technology. We're facing a totally new ballgame when it comes to education and development. But I think the main thing is that it should be obvious by now that this technology, not even including AI, has become so addictive it's rewiring brains, particularly young brains and minds. And we need to address this so that we can break this vicious circle and get people back to interaction with their fellow human beings, to friendship, to getting out into nature to be interested in the world around. Because I hear too often young people, clever young people, saying, why should I bother to learn this mathematics? AI can do it for me, answer all my questions. Why should I bother doing research into the American Civil War when I can get a brilliant essay that would get a PhD within 30 seconds? These are real problems, Gavin. And the Christian world needs to do a lot of hard thinking as to what the legitimate uses of AI are. I think of the busy pastor late Saturday night, maybe so tired that all they could do is watch a late night film. But they've got a sermon for the next day. They can get it in 10 seconds from ChatGPT. But what spiritual value will that have? Spiritual authority? I doubt it very much, but that is a huge danger. It is very easy, I've tested it myself, to get AI to write a talk on a few verses of scripture and read it out convincingly and nobody bats an eyelid. So there are a lot of dangers. And therefore I think the main lesson is this. We need to get back to the days where we spend, Christians do to spend time reading scripture prayerfully. Not to get sermons for other people or to answer questions simply, but to get to know God. Because the highest privilege in the universe is that God has given us that capacity of God consciousness, that we get to know Him. That is the thing that needs to be developed. How much an advanced knowledge and experience of ChatGPT will mean in the world to come. Well, I doubt very much it's getting back to Scripture and opening our hearts to God speaking to us. And we'll only do that if we're convinced he can do that through His Word. But I believe if we do open our hearts to him, he will do what he promised to do to the disciples in the upper room. He will reveal Himself to us. And it's that we need to give us the spiritual authority to combat all these difficulties.
- [44:48]
B
Final question. I could talk to you. I have so many other questions I would love to ask you as well, but I want to respect your time and the way you just ended that answer is a wonderful way for us to finish things off here. Because when I think about the anxiety that not just AI but other global events and social breakdown is creating right now, it's never felt more important for us to ground our hearts in the hope of the gospel each day. And these problems can seem insurmountable and we can feel overwhelmed. We think, well, what can I do? But I find I go into my prayer closet, I look at the scripture and I come out, and then I can face things from the standpoint of knowing the hope of the gospel. Could you say for people watching this who do feel overwhelmed, what does the message of revelation say to them to meet that need?
- [45:41]
A
It's a revelation of Jesus Christ. In other words, when we read it and finish reading it, we should know more about him than we did before. And what it is touching on is what you find throughout Scripture, that the men and women that really left their mark for God were men and women who in some way or other had seen his glory. And therefore, I think prayerfully, we should ask God to show us his glory. Because the attraction of AI and all the rest of it is immensely powerful. It is overwhelming people's senses. And we ought to allow God to fill our minds with something so glorious that we say, well, with the Apostle Peter when he referred to his conversion and he said, I was called by his glory and virtue. That's the thing we need to look for as we read the book of Revelation, that God will open heaven and we see the face of Christ shining as he walks among the churches.
- [46:57]
B
Wonderful. Thank you so much for this book and for the work that you do. I'm sure I speak for many of our viewers when I just express gratitude for the way you've served many of us in helping us think through the gospel and helping us to respond to challenges to the gospel. So it's really an honor to speak with you. Thank you so much, John.
- [47:15]
A
Well, it's a pleasure, Gavin, to be with you. And if I might just mention it, this week my autobiography called My Story, is published in the United States, and I hope many of my friends there will find it a blessing as it traces my life as a follower of Jesus.
- [47:38]
B
Wonderful. I'm going to put a link to that book as well in the video description so viewers, you can check out both that book and John's work on Revelation. So thanks for watching, everybody, and we'll see you in the next video.