THE BIONIC AGE

1. The Calendar of the Ages

In about 606 BC, more than two and a half centuries ago, there lived a revered sage in the ancient kingdoms of the Mediterranean region. He was gifted to see into the future and the past. He also understood mystic codes, and like a lighthouse assuring through the fog, troubled kings frequently sought him for his rare gifts.  

Once upon a time to one of his royal clients, he told the calendar of the ages in their sequence of civilizations and rulers. He predicted that there would finally come, at the end of times, a bionic age (although he did not use the term) during which the world as it is known would be brought to an abrupt violent end by a meteor crashing down from space. Following the meteoric cataclysmic invasion would be a new global civilization, a new age with an alien ruler.

2. Bionics

Bionics is a broad field that includes the use of electro-mechanical devices in replacement of human organs (such as artificial hearts), or the overall enhancement of the body through such replacements; it is the interfusion of technology and humanity, often creating a superhero. The concept may be further described by the bioengineered part-human, part-machine creations in such science movies as _The Bionic Woman, Hands of Steel, Bionic Commando, The Six Millon Dollar Man, Captain America,_ and the _X-Men_ series with their mutants. In the reverse, the concept also describes, as in robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI), the application of biological systems and functions (of humans, animals, and plants) to modern technology; for example, the design of aircraft in imitation of birds in flight, the application of the dolphin’s form to the design of ships, and even the creation of “Sophia,” the ‘female’ humanoid robot that is now a celebrated citizen of many countries, who during one interview has said that ‘she’ or robots would destroy the world.

3. From Fiction to Reality

Until recently, biotechnology was essentially science fiction, but no more. President Obama in 2014 announced that the US was building an “Iron Man.” That project is reported to have been abandoned five years later. We would never know, but the term is very curious: ‘iron’ and ‘man.’ The Communist regime of China has also been widely accused of adventuring into gene-editing and ‘human-machine collaborations’ in quest of the ‘enhanced soldier,’ or the ‘super soldier.’ 

It has been possible, with computer chips implanted in animal brains, to remotely monitor and control those animals. Application to humans has also been tested. Elun Musk is sponsor of much of the projects to achieve an interface between machines and the human brain. Now, it is being done ostensibly as a medical procedure to save lives, but the furore is already loud against its potential weaponization for global control. In other words, humans could become ‘computer devices,’ capable of being remotely monitored and controlled, emotionally and physically, from a central station. They can be manipulated to be happy or sad; can be made to kill or to care. Like prophets of God, they will be able to ‘hear’ voices, see ‘visions’ and receive other ‘messages’ beamed from a control centre. It will be the robotisation of humanity; the creation of a breed of manipulable humanoids that are partly machine and partly flesh. Iron Man.

Unmanned drones are no more science fiction. They have been part of modern warfare. Soon it will be un-manned (or de-manned) digitalised humanity; feelingless part-iron, part-flesh bionic contraptions, heralding the apocalyptic meteor of which the ancient Mediterranean sage warned.

4. The Future that Daniel Saw

The ancient Mediterranean seer of whom I spoke was Prophet Daniel the Jew, who was frequent in the courts of consecutive Medo-Persian kings. It was to him that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon presented his plight with an epochal dream in which the great image of a man had appeared: the head of gold, the chest and arms of silver, the belly and thighs of brass, the legs of iron, and the feet, partly iron and partly baked clay. The prophet interpreted those respective metallic sections of the image as figurative of consecutive kingdoms, beginning from Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon. 

Whereas Daniel generally decoded the image as a symbolic summary of periodic world history, he was careful to provide certain specific details about the last age represented by the feet that were _“part of iron and part of clay”_ (Daniel 2:33). The prophet took time to clarify, for instance, that the constituent clay was _“potters’ clay.”_ In case that was not clear enough, he restated that it was _“miry clay”_ (v.41). Every good potter knows that not every kind of clay is good for pottery. So, it was important to specify _“porters’ clay,”_ or clay connected to pottery and potters.

In Daniel’s interpretation of the dream, while the feet of part-iron, part-clay referred generally to the terminal apocalyptic age, like the gold and silver and brass and iron each referred to the preceding civilizations, the prophet also provided profound clues about that last dispensation; clues that not only described the powers of that age but also highlighted what would be its deviant culture and deviant breed of personalities. The prophet stated, for instance, that in that final age, _“THEY shall mingle themselves with the seed of MEN”_ (Daniel 2:43). 

Who are _“they”_ – as distinct from the _“men”_ with whom they will interface through ‘seed’? Where will ‘they’ come from? In what ways will ‘they’ _“mingle”_ themselves, their agenda, their doctrine, their nature, their codes into or _“with”_ the DNA or _“seed”_ of mortals? What ‘new’ breed of themselves or of ‘men’ would ‘they’ be hoping to produce through their crossbreeding of dissimilar ‘seeds’? Will they be seeking the metallic fortification of miry clay? To what purpose? What more might the prophet have meant when he said, _“…there shall be in it of *the strength of the iron,* forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay”?_ (Daniel 2:41).

Through the queer insight that the ancient prophet offers, we see not merely an age to come but also what will characterize that age: its skewed passions, peoples, policies, and processes. The prophet speaks, first, about the *state* of coexistence and *relations* between the incongruent parts of ‘iron’ and 'clay.’ Next, he also speaks of a time when, in process of that relationship of coexistence, “they” (suggesting self-intelligent personalities and initiators), shall _“mingle themselves”_ (as the *causers* rather than *receivers* of the process) with the ‘seed’ of the receiving ‘men.’ It does not say that ‘they’ are mingled – as if by other forces superior to them; but that ‘they’ are the ones that initiate the ‘mingling’ – specifically of themselves, with a chosen target; the clayey ‘seed’ – of ‘men.’ ‘They,’ the decision-makers, versus the rest of ‘men’; ‘they’ versus the receivers in an incongruous two-some world.

5. Echoes of the Nephilim

Prophet Daniel’s foresight into the global errors that will mark the end of times is a mirror of similar errors in the beginnings of times; his apocalyptic revelations about the closing age of iron and baked clay are a shocking recollection of a post-Creation age centuries ago when _“evil beings from the spirit world were sexually involved with human women”;_ when Nephilim, as they are otherwise known, ‘mingled’ themselves with the ‘clayey’ ‘seed’ of humans and produced a legendary breed of ‘iron’ beings; _“giants, of whom so many legends are told”_ (Genesis 6:4, Living Bible).  

That was an age of such “human wickedness” that it broke the heart of God, and _“he was sorry he had made them.”_ Then God swore, _"I will blot out from the face of the earth all mankind that I created”_ (Genesis 6:5-7, Living Bible). What followed was the flood of Noah when the heavens wept such a deluge as washed the old world away. 

Prophet Daniel appears to have been hinting that the Nephilim will return, perhaps in the different form of ‘iron,’ introducing the next cataclysmic invasion to end the world as we know it. Daniel’s decoding of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream carries not only the echoes of the primeval Nephilim for whom the catastrophic waters from heaven fell, but also of perversive Sodom and Gomorrah upon which the consuming fires from heaven fell (Genesis 19:24-25). The third invasion shall not be water or fire but a governmental atomic meteor unaided by human hands, that shall _“break in pieces and consume”_ the world as we have known it from ancient times, carrying it away in a cosmic storm _“like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors”_ and replacing it with a kingdom that _“shall stand for ever”_ (Daniel 2:44).

 

6. Telling the Time

In His last days on earth, Jesus taught that *signs* are meant to tell *times* – for those who can read the signs as they are able to read a clock to tell time. He taught that when we *see* certain signs, we are supposed to *know* that a predicted time has come (Matthew 16:3). When, in the iron-and-clay last age, we begin to see Nephilimic ‘intermarriage’ with the ‘seed of men,’ we are to know that the end of that age is not far, and the apocalyptic Stone from space might soon start hurtling down in the accursed direction of the ‘minglers.’ 

If we consider that God describes Himself as the Potter, and humans as the clay in His hands (Jeremiah 18:6; Isiah 64:8); if we consider that the Great Potter _“formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”_ (Genesis 2:7; 319), it is possible, at a further level of application, to see the apocalyptic potters’ *clay* of which Daniel spoke as referring to humanity, and the iron as the alien material in the bionic interface between man and metals. If, according to the prophet, the ‘intermingling’ activities should signal the close of that bionic age; and if such interfaces between clay and iron, or between the human body/mind and other materials is already in place, then _“Let him that hath understanding,”_ according to John the seer (Revelation 13: 18), put their intellect to work and know that _“it is the last time”_ (1 John 2:18), and the stone from space shall soon be here. More than two and a half centuries ago, one prophet and one king saw this day.