LIE: The planned ‘metaverse’ is okay to accept and use

Lie: The planned ‘metaverse’ is okay to accept and use.

Truth: The planned ‘metaverse’ is deceptive, vampiric, and totalitarian.[1]

From its inception in the 1960s until now, the Internet continues to shape the character of societies the world over. But the Internet is not one monolithic thing; rather, it’s a conglomeration of technologies designed to work together. It was built incrementally over time by adding hundreds, even thousands of technical standards. Most of these standards are invisible to us, but I’ll list just a few:

HTTP/HTTPS	Hypertext-Transfer Protocol
HTML	HyperText Markup Language
TCP	Transmission Control Protocol
ICMP	Internet Control Message Protocol
TLS	Transport Layer Security
FTP	File Transfer Protocol
SMTP	Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
SNMP	Simple Network Management Protocol
IMAP	Internet Message Access Protocol
LDAP	Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
SMS	Short Message Service
DNS	Domain Name System
NTP	Network Time Protocol

The growth of the Internet is obviously massive. From its obscure beginning as a government/military project called ARPANET until today, its reach, depth, and influence on our daily lives is inescapable. But it’s about to get a whole lot worse . . .

Cue the ‘metaverse’

metaverse — “the concept of a future iteration of the internet, made up of persistent, shared, 3D virtual spaces linked into a perceived virtual universe. The metaverse in a broader sense may not only refer to virtual worlds, but the Internet as a whole, including the entire spectrum of augmented reality.”[2]

Apparently the metaverse is going to be no small thing. Here’s how The Wall Street Journal journalist Sarah E Needleman, describes it:

Since the dawn of civilization, humans have had only one world in which to live: the real one. But tech visionaries say we’ll soon have an alternative: a virtual world where our digital avatars and those of people in our communities and around the globe come together to work, shop, attend classes, pursue hobbies, enjoy social gatherings and more.

Immersive videogames and virtual concerts have given us a taste of this world. But visionaries say the metaverse, as this world has been dubbed, will be far more engaging and robust, not only mirroring the real world in all its three-dimensional complexity but also extending it to allow us to be and do what previously could only be imagined. Walk on the moon in your pajamas? Watch a baseball game from the pitcher’s mound? Frolic in a field of unicorns—or be a unicorn yourself? In the metaverse, tech visionaries say, just about anything will be possible.

“The metaverse is going to be the biggest revolution in computing platforms the world has seen—bigger than the mobile revolution, bigger than the web revolution,” says Marc Whitten, whose title is “senior vice president and general manager of create” at San Francisco-based Unity Software Inc.[3]

I’ve made this point before, but it’s worth saying again and again — technology is not just an amoral tool that can be used for good or bad. Technology is a double-edged sword that changes the world, including who we are, for both good and bad. It’s a blessing and a curse at the same time. And in the postmodern era, it’s biased to the bad. Here’s an example of what I mean:

Take the automobile. We now routinely take this marvel of technology for granted. The good: by the car we extend our awareness and can see more of God’s green earth; the bad: it creates urban sprawl, smog, and fragmented families and communities. Now apply that same double-edge sword principle to practically every technology on earth — in medicine, communications, transportation, construction, food, farming, housing, etc. And what do you get? You have a radically transformed society, modernity and all of its associated benefits and ills.

So the continuous development of the Internet — the continual addition and upgrading of interoperable technologies — has continued to shape the character of individuals and whole societies. I’ve written about this in many articles.[4] And I would argue that, yes, there are benefits, but the risks and degradations outweigh them. Many of those detriments are unforeseen and unintended, yet many are intended by dark powers.

The Internet continues to grow and develop today, namely with three technologies that are just now, or will very soon, come into productive use:

• blockchain
• 5G cellular network and Internet of things (IoT)
• digital identities

Of course there are many other technologies and protocols that contribute and support these and still others that add other functionality. But I highlight these three because they combine to form the backbone of this major upgrade to the Internet as a whole. That upgrade is actually more than an upgrade; it’s a major advancement in how the Internet is used. That ‘upgrade’ is called the metaverse.

What I’m about to describe are the building blocks, (planned for years), to incrementally and methodically create what’s also been called the ‘embodied Internet.’

Blockchain[5] — also called ‘distributed ledger technology’ (DLT), think of this building block of the metaverse as simply a way to record the details of your life as a series of digital transactions, most of which you will be unaware of (more on why that is under Internet of Things). This way of recording life as a series of digital transactions is ‘distributed,’ (as opposed to centrally recorded), meaning each record is copied across the Internet in thousands of locations, and onto thousands of identical ledgers. This is significant because it’s a way to ensure the accuracy, integrity and authenticity of the data. In other words, to tamper with a record, you would have to simultaneously change thousands of identical records. So blockchain records are also considered to be ‘immutable’ — incapable of being changed.

In other words, this technology will record your life in fine detail as you live your life. And just as you cannot go back and change something that happened in the past, this technology mimics that. Like the passage of time, blockchain will simply record everything that happens, without exception.

You ask, ‘How could this recording of life events/transactions happen in real time?’ Good question. Let me introduce to you: the Internet of Things.

5G and the Internet of Things — Have you noticed the 5G towers that have gone up everywhere in your neighborhood? What do think they’re doing there? These towers and the microwave energy that they emit, form a massive mesh network of ‘smart,’ connected devices, many of which will simply ‘sense’ something — your location, your eye movements, your gestures, your words, your voice inflection, your facial expressions, your gait, your speed (if you’re in a car), your blood pressure, heart rate, etc.

To give you an idea of how far along this process of recording our data is — by the age of 18, the average person is now defined by at least 70,000 data points.[6]

It’s a massive, immersive, globally-connected (because it’s the Internet) data collection net, so that everywhere you go, everything you say, everything you do, eat, search, watch, ingest is automatically and instantaneously recorded, first locally, and then copied to a distributed ledger — the blockchain.

There will be no easy escape. If you carry a smartphone, use a Fitbit, wear a smart watch, have an Alexa smart speaker, drive a car, watch TV, use an appliance, take a walk, all of these devices collect data passively, no input required.

Digital Identity or Decentralized ID (DID) — When I first heard of the term ‘Internet of Bodies,’ my first thought was that it must be an exaggeration. But as I studied more and read source documents, I slowly realized this term — Internet of Bodies — is no exaggeration. It’s a rather graphic but still accurate description. That’s because the Internet is being constructed, not only by it surrounding the outside of our bodies (by electromagnetic frequencies) and attached to our bodies (with smart wearables, patches, etc), but the Internet will go inside of our bodies in the form of nanotechnologies.

I can prove this in a variety of ways, but one that is quite disturbing to me is what is found in the W3C DID Core Document[7] that describes to the computer industry, the standards needed to institute a digital identity.

A DID URL is a network location identifier for a specific resource. It can be used to retrieve things like representations of DID subjects, verification methods, services, specific parts of a DID document, or other resources. . . .

DID Subject — The entity identified by a DID and described by a DID document. Anything can be a DID subject: person, group, organization, physical thing, digital thing, logical thing, etc.

In other words, you, like a computer on the Internet, will have your very own Internet address, similar to the URL: http://www.davidherin.org.

This is not an abstract reference like an email address or a phone number. This is a unique, permanent, cryptographically-verifiable, globally-resolvable identity that is both an identifier and a locator. It combines the DID subject (you) with its information (DID document). Because this URI not only identifies you, but also locates you, it therefore is an Internet address for your body.

So what have we learned so far?

We’ve learned that the planners of the Internet, which most of us use habitually, have definite plans to continually collect the finest details (5G and IoT) of our individual lives (DID), and permanently record it all as digital transactions on a permanent ledger (blockchain).

This is the transactionalization of your ‘life.’

Why is the ‘metaverse’ bad?

Some will say:

‘How is this so bad? So they’re recording my life on blockchain — so what?

Well, if it was nothing more than a recording of our lives, it may not be such a big deal. But why is this necessary? Why are Internet planners so intent, spending billions of dollars to collect such fine detail on every living soul on earth?

Indeed why?

For most people the answer is not so clear.

The PR firms of the billionaire class who fund this coordinated move to develop the Internet typically sell this by marketing the benefits of individual devices:

‘This puts you in control of your privacy.’

‘With the Ring device (‘smart’ doorbell with camera) you can catch the thief in the act.’

‘Alexa, play my Fleetwood Mac playlist.’

But what the PR firms don’t tell you is that these devices and hundreds or thousands more collect thousands of pieces of data without our knowing, including things we really don’t want anyone to know.

In the following section I will try to answer the why — why the Internet planners are doing this, and then consequently why it’s bad. In the end, I hope to make a solid case that we may need to distance ourselves and may even ultimately need to disconnect from the Internet because of it.

Here then are seven reasons the planned ‘metaverse’ is bad. Really bad.

The metaverse:

• is deceptive
• is vampiric
• transactionalizes the lives of human beings, that is, it tokenizes and gamifies ‘life’
• is totalitarian
• is designed to assimilate you
• blurs reality
• attempts to counterfeit the spiritual world

1  It is deceptive

To the average person the Internet appears only to be a huge, largely-free library and treasure of resources, designed for our benefit. But actually, from its inception, the Internet was designed and built as a military surveillance tool. It’s like a two-way mirror designed to give full view of everything we do and at the same time conceal the people who hide behind it.

Since the revelations of Edward Snowden in 2013, it became clear that US intelligence agencies — CIA, DIA, FBI, NSA, etc — use major tech companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft as massive dragnets to collect and analyze data on the American people. So all electronic communications — emails, SMS, comments, emails, web posts, voice calls, video conferencing calls, etc — are collected, stored and analyzed.

For decades, this massive data collection was unknown. Most people did not think that our government would spy on us. Whether this apparatus was put in place from the beginning to intentionally surveil us is open to debate; but what is not debatable is how it turned out. Now, no one disputes that we have a massive, dragnet surveillance system, largely hidden, and one to which most people have signed onto passively, unaware that these ‘free’ services (like Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, etc) were actually designed to capture thousands of pieces of our personal data and build detailed dossiers on all of us. Most people are only vaguely aware, if that, of this ‘agreement’ and are way too casual with their personal data. This system is an orchestrated, massively-successful deception from top to bottom.[8]

2  It is vampiric

The fact that the Internet was built as a huge, dark, data collection system of systems, sucking in thousands of points of data from our lives, is not only deceptive, it is vampiric and exploitative.

Now imagine what can be done with all of that data. What do you do with it? What do you do with the data that describes the debilitating weaknesses and vulnerabilities of every living soul? Most people have never heard of human capital markets, but you can tell by its very name what it intends to do — using human beings as investment capital.

Human capital markets are markets specifically built on and around the data of vulnerable populations. Investors and the NGOs that build the markets claim to invest in helping the people, but in fact ‘make bets’ — invest or short — on data metrics.

Here’s an example of how this works:

A government entity or NGO will seek investors in a medical patch technology and promise a 10% return on their investment in the technology IF 5% of those that use it will lower their A1C for one year. Or, the investors will only invest on the condition that only 10% raise their A1C, despite the technology. Either way, the investor is making investments off of people’s misery, addictions, diseases, and aberrant propensities. With human capital  ‘markets,’ the predator class who invest in them have no motivation to lose the source of their investments; rather, they’re motivated to milk them for all they’re worth and then quickly discard them when they’ve used them up.

Now compound these kinds of investments around every conceivable data profile that needs to be ‘remediated,’ or ‘retrained.’[9]

3  It transactionalizes the lives of human beings, that is, it tokenizes and gamifies ‘life’

Blockchain, the Internet of Things, and digital identity set up an individualized continuous chain of transactions, from the time we wake up until we go to bed, and even through the night as we sleep. Right now, a large part of that data transaction happens through the smartphone.

It’s no secret that the smartphone has taken the world by storm. Since Apple’s launch of its iPhone in 2007, the world has never looked back. No nation in any corner of the world, in any economy, culture, language, urban, rural, is free of its rule. Even remote and relatively primitive areas with no other infrastructure, now have cellular towers and smartphones.

The smartphone is not only everywhere, it’s also taken up, absorbed, and co-opted more and more of our lives.

Let’s compare some of the basic things that we do, before smartphones and after:

We humans used to . . .	But now with smartphones we . . .
write letters (using stamps to mail them)	check email
shop in stores	browse Amazon
converse in person	use FaceTime or Duo
do research in libraries	do keyword searches using Google
go to the library	do keyword searches using Google
take pictures with cameras	take selfies and post to Instagram
read books	download podcasts/watch YouTube
scrap book/photo albums	post to Facebook/Instagram
pay with cash	use PayPal/Bitcoin/credit card
go to banks	do online banking
pay bills	check automatic bank account drafts on the bank app
play board games/card games	play Angry Birds, Fortnight, Minecraft
go grocery shopping	get groceries delivered by Instacart
use a road map	use GPS
have intimate, dinner conversation	talk casually while showing each other pics
see a doctor	use telemedicine
talk to neighbors	use Facebook or NextDoor app
play records/stereo/radio	use Spotify
talk on the phone	use SMS text messaging
go to the movies	watch YouTube and NetFlix
use a flashlight	use the ‘flashlight’ app on the smartphone
join a business networking group	use Linkedin
hail a taxi	use Uber

Just to be clear I’m not saying that this means we should go back to ‘the good ol’ days.’ No. The point is that we need to wake up and recognize what this monopolization by smartphone means.

Right now in 2021, most of these transactions are not on blockchain, nor are they tied to a decentralized digital identity. They appear benign and are fragmented across diverse, NON-interoperable platforms. But imagine the opportunity when a unified, integrated system collects and processes it all. This is the promise of blockchain and its system of systems.

Whitney Webb, in her article, Ending Anonymity: Why The WEF’s Partnership Against Cybercrime Threatens The Future Of Privacy, describes the push for digital identity under the pretext to control rogue uses of cryptography, which allows criminals to remain anonymous and out of reach of law enforcement.

In addition to the effort to regulate crypto, there is also a push by WEF [World Economic Forum]-partnered governments to end privacy and the potential for anonymity on the internet in general, by linking government-issued IDs to internet access. This would allow every piece of online content accessed to be surveilled, as well as every post or comment authored by each citizen, supposedly to ensure that no citizen can engage in “criminal” activity online. This policy is part of an older effort, particularly in the US, where creating a nationwide “Driver’s License for the Internet” was proposed and then piloted by the Obama administration. The European Union made a similar effort to require government-issued IDs for social media access a few years later.[10]

What will this transactionalization of life look like? One example that I can point to going on now is the growing ubiquity of QR codes. Although they’ve been used more widely in some parts of the world for quite a while, since the COVID pandemic, QR codes are appearing everywhere. They have many uses including[11]:

• displaying multimedia contents
• shopping virtually
• making payments
• logging into websites
• ordering from a restaurant menu
• joining a Wi-Fi network
• playing video games
• using loyalty programs
• detecting counterfeits
• tracing products
• activating GPS locators

Since QR code processing is now native in nearly all smartphones, essentially QR codes provide a convenient and touchless way to process practically any kind of transaction. It connects you and your physical world with the virtual world.

Now imagine practically everything you do requires a digitized transaction where you prove your credentials, and that either accrues or debits, points or credits in a gamified ‘life.’ Imagine that practically everywhere you go, on every building store item, on every natural object, every person, is a QR code to scan that decodes its mysteries. Drive by a house you like? virtually scan its code; wonder who that person is you see in a crowd with your smart glasses? Scan their code if you have the right privileges. Hungry for a steak? peruse a virtual directory for restaurants nearby. Want to get away to the beach but don’t have enough points to physically go there? access its virtual portal for just 40 points right now!

The QR code is just one ‘access device’ that connects your physical world with the millions of digitized portals in the virtual world. All you need is enough points and the world of the metaverse is at your fingertips.

4  It is totalitarian

This technology is ‘going for all the marbles.’ This is a totalitarian system because it’s designed to constantly track you ‘from womb to tomb,’ capture everything about you, track everything you do and say and even think. Why? Because it wants to assimilate and remake you — all of you.

There is no boundary, no limit; it respects no barrier, no ‘holy.’ And in its totalitarian march, it becomes idolatrous — an absolute god that must be obeyed. It (claims to) know all, see all, hear all, and make all things new. And like all totalitarians, it also lies continually.

Enough said.

5  It is designed to assimilate you[12]

Because this system of systems deceptively seeks to surround you and transactionalize and tokenize your life, it also has the power to literally assimilate and swallow you up into its system. You belong to it (or so it desires to get you to believe).

I realize this may seem fantastical and even impossible. You may say:

David, you must be crazy! You’re dreaming all of this up! How could this be?

Believe me, I wish it were not true.

These things are very easy to prove. All of what I’m saying is easy to find. As they say, it’s just ‘hiding in plain sight.’ You just need to go read the documents, watch the major players and listen to what they’re saying. They’re not bashful about any of this. But they say it with a sophisticated PR spin, compassionate-sounding language and beautiful imagery. But we also know that the devil ‘transforms himself as an angel of light.’[13]

I also realize that the global powers may not be able to pull this off. So do not overestimate them; but at the same time, do not underestimate them either. Nothing is set in stone. It is an ambitious agenda and we must not forget that our Lord in his wisdom and power could easily put a permanent end to it at any point in time. HE IS our salvation. And of course he will eventually put an end to all evil and make all things right at the end of the age. The psalmist David knew this:

Why do the nations rage,
And the people plot a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying,
“Let us break Their bonds in pieces
And cast away Their cords from us.”
He who sits in the heavens shall laugh;
The Lord shall hold them in derision.
Then He shall speak to them in His wrath,
And distress them in His deep displeasure:
“Yet I have set My King
On My holy hill of Zion.” — Psalm 2:1–6

Yet we should listen to and take seriously what they intend to do. For example, here is Klaus Schwab, the executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, stating the goal of the Fourth Industrial Revolution:

Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third, the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. . . .

Already, artificial intelligence is all around us, from self-driving cars and drones to virtual assistants and software that translate or invest. Impressive progress has been made in AI in recent years, driven by exponential increases in computing power and by the availability of vast amounts of data, from software used to discover new drugs to algorithms used to predict our cultural interests. Digital fabrication technologies, meanwhile, are interacting with the biological world on a daily basis. Engineers, designers, and architects are combining computational design, additive manufacturing, materials engineering, and synthetic biology to pioneer a symbiosis between microorganisms, our bodies, the products we consume, and even the buildings we inhabit.

In other words, this is the same old transhumanist/eugenics agenda, updated for the twenty-first century. But the fundamentals have not changed. And as we near the two-year mark of the COVID-19 ‘pandemic,’ the pieces are slowly and methodically moving into place. It is wise and prudent to be aware of their plans and their devices, yet at the same time, never losing sight of the Lord and his glorious plan.

6  It blurs reality

In my article, Passive Use of the Internet is Harmless, part 3, I focused on the growing ubiquity of electronic screens and how, for over 60 years, the screen, and therefore the world of images, have become dominant in our world.

Here’s a quote from that article:

How reality is being transmuted into a false world

It may seem far-fetched that our entire world is being transmuted – completely transformed, but look how far we’ve come in the relatively short last one hundred years.

1  The ubiquity of screens. Since the advent of the silent screen in 1895, to the ‘talkies’ in the 1920s, to the television in the 1950s, the sophistication, quality and functionality of moving pictures has steadily advanced. Higher resolutions, flicker rates, colors, controls, moving from strictly social affairs in theatres to the home to complete privacy, screens have steadily progressed, until now they have become highly-individualized and powerfully-transformative experiences. Although they’ve become familiar, they nonetheless are powerful; we just don’t fully understand how powerful they really are.

But we all knew that TV was not to be the ultimate in moving pictures. In 1984 Apple introduced the Macintosh personal computer and suddenly a new kind of screen was born. About the same time, the first generation of mobile phones hit the market, spawning still another kind of screen. Game consoles came around and then in 2007 Apple introduced the iPhone, and the smartphone hit the market. Then, the most-recent mass-market screen to arrive was the rudimentary robot, released in 2016, and euphemistically described as a ‘smart speaker.’ Amazon released its Echo Look, its first smart speaker with screen in April 2017.

So I count eight then – eight distinct screen devices and all of them continue in some form: movies, TV, computers, tablets, mobile (basic) phones, game consoles, smartphones and smart speakers (robots). We are now surrounded by screens, one of which is our preferred personal screen (the smartphone). You’re likely even reading this from that screen.

One more screen is worth mentioning. YouTube is the screen within a screen, or the screen of all screens. YouTube consistently ranks as the number two trafficked site, eclipsed only by Google.com. That alone should tell us something about the importance of the screen.

The amount of time we pay attention to these screens continues to increase. In 2018 The Nielsen Company – a major media research firm – released its total audience report and blared: US Adults Now Spend Nearly Half a Day Interacting with Media.

But if the would-be world controllers get their way, the real world is about to get a whole lot blurrier. How? By the fact that the flat 2D screen is so ‘old hat.’ It’s so 2020s. We are now on the verge of a virtual/augmented reality through the use of smart glasses, smart soft contact lenses, direct brain interfaces or other hallucinogenic-technological methods, of which we know very little. These technologies overlay a tokenized virtual layer onto the real world. It will be that world — an ‘augmented,’ ‘better,’ ‘improved’ world, a world full of labels and QR coded experiences and built-in directional arrows, and immediate transport and people with their social credit scores visible to you (if you have the right permissions level), to either welcome or warn you. And on and on and on.

It will be a Ready Player One or even The Matrix world.

Mark Zuckerburg recently said he wants to transform Facebook from a social media company to a metaverse company. In describing his conversation with Zuckerburg, Verge writer, Casey Newton, writes:

As June came to an end, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told his employees about an ambitious new initiative. The future of the company would go far beyond its current project of building a set of connected social apps and some hardware to support them. Instead, he said, Facebook would strive to build a maximalist, interconnected set of experiences straight out of sci-fi — a world known as the metaverse.

The company’s divisions focused on products for communities, creators, commerce, and virtual reality would increasingly work to realize this vision, he said in a remote address to employees. “What I think is most interesting is how these themes will come together into a bigger idea,” Zuckerberg said. “Our overarching goal across all of these initiatives is to help bring the metaverse to life.”

The metaverse is having a moment. Coined in Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson’s 1992 sci-fi novel, the term refers to a convergence of physical, augmented, and virtual reality in a shared online space. Earlier this month, The New York Times explored how companies and products including Epic Games’ Fortnite, Roblox, and even Animal Crossing: New Horizons increasingly had metaverse-like elements. (Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has been discussing his desire to contribute to a metaverse for many months now.)

But what is a metaverse? Newton continues:

In January 2020, an influential essay by the venture capitalist Matthew Ball set out to identify key characteristics of a metaverse. Among them: it has to span the physical and virtual worlds; contain a fully fledged economy; and offer “unprecedented interoperability” — users have to be able to take their avatars and goods from one place in the metaverse to another, no matter who runs that particular part of it. Critically, no one company will run the metaverse — it will be an “embodied internet,” Zuckerberg said, operated by many different players in a decentralized way. . . .

And even if tech regulation stalls in the United States — historically not a bad bet — a thriving metaverse would raise questions both familiar and strange about how the virtual space is governed, how its contents would be moderated, and what its existence would do to our shared sense of reality. We’re still getting our arms wrapped around the two-dimensional version of social platforms; wrangling the 3D version could be exponentially harder.

This blurring of reality and fantasy leads us to a final counterfeit ‘reality’ — the dark powers’ attempt at a counterfeit ‘spiritual’ world.

7  It attempts to counterfeit the spiritual world

So not only does the metaverse blur reality, it attempts to remake it. It is the devil’s counterfeit salvation — the remaking of the world.

We can never forget that this is precisely what the Lord is doing — he is recreating the world and ourselves and all creation through Jesus Christ.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. — 2 Corinthians 5:17

If we are awakened to the Lord, we know that the visible world is real, but it also points to both an unseen glorious world and a dark infernal world. And it is to both worlds that, as Christians, we seek to grow in awareness and confidence in our Lord. We desire to see not just the physical face of our neighbor, but his internal hopes and fears, his desires and even his secrets — to be able to listen to his words, but also to the meaning of why he says them. It is love, divine love, that unlocks this spiritual world, the world of the Spirit.

But the metaverse is the counterfeit of the spiritual world. It overlays hidden things onto the physical world, and seeks to deceive and replace the true spiritual world with the digital. And unless we have a firm grounding in the real spiritual world, we could easily forfeit our desire, our appreciation, and even our access to the visible world.

Jesus taught us to pray:

 . . . your kingdom come
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven . . . — Matthew 6:10

Zuckerburg:

I don’t think this is primarily about being engaged with the Internet more. I think it’s about being engaged more naturally.

What should we do?

Much could be said here. We should never lose sight of the Lord and his supremacy. Do not let the devil steal your joy in simply loving and serving him and those around you. But in terms of this tsunami that apparently is coming and, in some ways, already is upon us, I don’t think I would change much of what I’ve said before:

Can we extract ourselves from this monstrosity? Or is our place on the smart grid inevitable? Ultimately the answer is that each of us must evaluate our own use of these systems and earnestly seek God for answers. No amount of careful scrutiny or technical know-how will ultimately suffice. Our only answer is truly in the Lord God Almighty. Our answer is in seeing and worshiping his all-sufficiency. He alone can deliver us and if we seek him, he will show us how.

The danger is that, with each day of passive use and trust in these systems, it becomes more difficult to discern, to take action, to turn our minds from it. The danger is that, with each day that this system goes unchallenged, it grows in power and reach so that it eventually intimidates us into submission and mindless surrender, and in the process we lose our faith in God’s power to save us. We cannot resist or extract ourselves unless we engage, interact, participate actively in the kingdom of God. This system — the metaverse — is far from being benign. It is a cancer that, if not resisted, will capture, overcome and ultimately destroy our faith and even ourselves.

I believe many of God’s people are approaching that cliff or have already reached the point of no return. Yet there is always hope. Remember Abraham who hoped against all hope and called those things that were not as though they were.

God never promised freedom from pain or suffering or even death in this world. Jesus said:

These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. — John 16:33

We must brace ourselves for an inevitable take-over and a forced round-up of those who refuse to worship this beast (see the article: What is the Mark of the Beast? part 1, part 2 and part 3). The system in place now is already a ‘soft’ take-over of our most personal and intimate details. With their rendition of your data they claim to have and control your equivalent, a reduction of you. But never forget, the real you is a million times more complex, more real, and more valuable.

This system will not tolerate non-conformists. May God give us his wisdom, strength and courage.

God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear,
Even though the earth be removed,
And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
Though its waters roar and be troubled.
Though the mountains shake with its swelling.
There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God,
The holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved
God shall help her, just at the break of dawn.
The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved;
He uttered His voice, the earth melted.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge. — Psalm 46:1–7

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[1] See also Lie: Passive Use of the Internet is Harmless, part 3, which shows how reality is being transmuted into a false world.

[2] From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse

[3] See: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-amazing-things-youll-do-in-the-metaverse-and-what-it-will-take-to-get-there-11634396401 captured on 17 October 2021

[4] See Lie: Passive Use of the Internet is Harmless, part 1, part 2 and part 3.

[5] Bitcoin is often confused with blockchain, but Bitcoin and other digital crypto-currencies are only one use of blockchain technology. Blockchain — distributed ledger technology — can be used in any number of industries: medical, construction, transportation, etc.

[6] See https://www.weforum.org/events/global-technology-governance-summit-2021/sessions/we-the-people

[7] See https://w3c.github.io/did-core/

[8] For a history of the origins of the major tech firms, see episode 359 of James Corbett’s podcast: The Secrets of Silicon Valley: What Big Tech Doesn’t Want You to Know

[9] See also my article: Three Reasons I Will Refuse so-called ‘Vaccine Passports’

[10] Captured on October 15, 2021: https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/07/investigative-reports/ending-anonymity-why-the-wefs-partnership-against-cybercrime-threatens-the-future-of-privacy/

[11] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code

[12] See also my article: What is the Mark of the Beast? Part 3

[13] See 2 Corinthians 11:14