I Cor. 3:19-20 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God: for it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, the Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.
	This evening, I felt that it was imperative to share some things that are going on in our world. The reason behind this is that we, as Christians cannot afford to “have our heads in the sand” at any time in our lives, especially not in the age in which we live. We need to have a sense of the urgency of our calling. We need to know why it is so vital that we are seeking after Christ, seeking after an ever increasing measure of Christ each and every day of our lives. We need to understand the momentousness of our testimony of Christ in relation to those around us, especially our children. We can’t be complacent, thinking that there is time enough for spiritual growth in the future. That is what many of us, including myself, have been doing for many years. We have been taught well of the things of God, but are putting off the Lord until this or that gets done. Our priority has been somewhat spiritual with the idea that there will come a time when we will fully commit ourselves to God, someday. Well, my brothers and sisters in Christ, we must go on in Him today, because the times in which we live will not bring a tomorrow, we are already on the brink of the fullness of time. Time is swiftly being depleted for today, and we are at the point of whether we are fully, deeply, dependently rooted in Christ, or being washed away by the pounding waves of spiritual erosion.
	Our considerations of the past weeks have dealt with the fact that we are come to Zion. We are citizens, born in Zion! We, the Church, need to seek after God more and more, each and every day, to increase the measure of Christ, for His sake and for His testimony and for His glory in this so-defiled realm. We need to call out to God, in the earnest travail of our being born from above, to know only Christ and Him crucified. We have seen that there are world powers dead set against the reality of Christ in the Church. There have been actions throughout the history of the true church, instigated by the influences that would eradicate the testimony of Christ in the Church, and those powers have only increased in craftiness and vileness and insinuations into even the organized church in every effort to derail what God has instituted in Christ.
	With this driving plea as an introduction, it becomes vital that we glimpse the course of this world power, to know the time in which we live. I was sent to a conference for teachers at the beginning of December. At this conference, we were shown the future, the image of the future envisioned by the economic powers of this present age. The speaker greeted us with the statement that he was there to “afflict the comforted”. He was there to give teachers an insight into what we needed to teach our students in order for them to be successful in the next years. He works with mega-corporations, as an educational consultant, in order to build the intellectual basis of these corporate industries in the kids of tomorrow. What he had to share was what the future holds for our children, and how, without the proper preparation, our children are going to be doomed to poverty and annihilation.
	He began with the illustration that change is subtle. We don’t notice, day-to-day just how rapidly things are changing. When you live with growing children, their day-to-day changes just happen, we live with it, we don’t often recognize it. But, when we meet a young relative or a friend that we haven’t seen for months or years, we realize just how drastically the change has been. The world is an increasingly altered place, today, and will be thoroughly transformed in the next decade. We are on the brink of a new society, that none of us can even imagine. It is a world in social, economic and political flux. We can’t even use our current perception to assess the alterations that are here, today, much less in the years to come. As our presenter stated, we are on “the dawn of a New Age, engulfed by change which is mostly technologically driven, but if you think you are being overwhelmed by the change now, understand that the surf’s up! Either ride it or run the risk of becoming part of the beach.”
	We are just at the beginning of the technological advancement of society. Technology is the infrastructure of every company and industry in the marketplace and has become the world’s largest economic sector in just 20 years. The strategic import of technology surpasses oil and steel and is driving fundamental changes in business and in communities - it is the new reality for the 21st Century.
	Think back just ten years and the changes that we have seen in fax machines, computers, printers, cellular telephones. The change has been phenomenal and pervasive. Consider how that, when Faxes were first developed, most people thought they were useless. Now, businesses can no longer function effectively without these advancements, and neither can many homes nor vehicles, which rely very heavily upon computer guidance and monitoring systems. Technology is driving our society, and every alteration in technology means more change in the world in which we live, and in the attitudes, and in the values of our society.
	The major target of bringing about a change, as openly expressed by the business interests is our children, the Nintendo generation. They are receiving and relying on the latest technological developments in the games and toys available at our local K-Mart at the price of a “good pair of sneakers”. Our presenter made no effort to disguise the obvious, that our children are being brain-washed into accepting the changes that business craves through the cheap availability of today’s games and toys and media, which are opening their minds to the technology and the values of the coming age. 
(Microsoft ad for Encarta CD-ROM)
	Today, we are in an era of technological overdrive.
(OVERHEAD)
	In 1995, every 15 seconds saw the development of a new technology with 10 high tech services created to support it. By the Year 2000, every 1 second will see the development of 15 high tech products with virtually unlimited high tech and changing services. We have already seen a fundamental change in our business environment in which one used to have a job, and keep that job for life. Our parents used to work in the same industry for their entire life. Today, many people may have had two career positions, but our children must be prepared for learning to work in at least 7 career job changes. Fluctuations will take place so rapidly that jobs for which our children train will cease to exist, and they will have to be able to adapt and to learn a new trade until that job, as well, ceases to exist, and so-on. Think of the social implications that we have experienced with the job volatility of this present day, and then compound that effect upon our children for their livelihood.
	We are moving into an age of hypermation (mass quantities of information), hyper-learning, hyper-retention that will revolutionize every aspect of our society. Sony has developed, and should have available at your local K-Mart within the next five years, a video store that we will carry on our hip. It is a pair of virtual reality eye-glasses, with inserts in the ears for stereo-sound, connected to a  Walkman-type disk player, clipped to the belt, that will hold up to 30 full length movies that can be watched anytime, anywhere. Think of the head-aches this will cause to traffic officers! This type of technology will allow students to easily carry full libraries of research materials with them. They will not need to be taught information, just how to access it from their reference source. There are processes being explored to do away with even the eye-glasses and to develop interoccular lenses to be fitted directly into the eyes to allow this type of information access directly through the human eye. A doctor in Canada developed a crude basis of this type of interoccular technology to counteract the visual impairment he was suffering because of cataracts. That design is now being refined to expand its further medical and recreational capabilities.
	Virtual Reality , the toy of yesterday, is now being converted into practical, and ever more critical uses. Time Magazine reports on the development of “telepresence surgery”, surgery being performed without the actual presence of the doctor. Arthroscopic brain surgery where the doctor is transported, via virtual reality, into the actual patient to explore and discover and fight the cancerous cells, one-by-one. These were the games of the past years, and are heading to a hospital near you. “We will have to embrace partnerships with non-human electronic assistants without the option of either/or and this makes the older generation uneasy, but not so for our Nintendo generation.”
	Does this sound too fantastic? How about a more practical example of the change that is here. Virtual Reality is now in use in the business community. It may surprise you, maybe not, but, increasingly, the first actual flight of more and more commercial airline pilots is with paying customers on the plane. Flight simulators are more and more being used so that pilots no longer train in actual airplanes. The cost savings are tremendous, and the realism is beyond belief. All types of situations are programmed and encountered by the pilots as if they were actually in flight. The industry feels that pilots trained in this manner are far more reliable and far more safety conscious.
Another aspect of the value of technology to the business community is that today, in business, key-boarding, which is the basic entering of information into computers for use comprises 20% of all paid hours and over 40% of all workers. The average words-per-minute is 120. IBM has developed voiceprint, which is being refined to allow computers to accept oral communication at 1000 wpm and to translate that information into 600 languages instantaneously. Hitachi has committed itself to make such a system available via phone system by the year 2000, International communication without hassle. Currently available, in the size of Franklin Electronic instruments are interpreters which one can speak into, and have, in your voice, the proper translation $190.
	We are on the dawn of Smart devices that will become the great equalizers. They will allow ordinary people to do extra-ordinary things
(Fun with Electronics Ad)
This reliance on Smart devices will create a new power elite, the “digerati”. There will be a major shift in the concept of being disabled with the newly disabled being those who are unable or unwilling to change as the world changes around them.
(Timex Watch Ad)	
	Our presenter calculates that we are in day 15 of the Information Revolution. The explosion of what is can’t even begin to explain what will be. Today’s high tech is just a hint of our future world. If we look at it with our vision of today, we will be left alone with our dream of yesterday, while the world rockets on. The technological power is doubling every 16.7 months. What does this mean?
	(Chart)
	Sony currently develops 250 new products each day. It figures that what it sells today will be obsolete in 90 days. That new Walkman for Christmas will be improved and better by March. However, by the year 2000, Sony’s target is to have its obsolescence factor at 18 days.
	We are on the edge of a fundamental value change. Information will be the new medium of exchange. Over 200 years ago, people bartered for necessities. The dollar was not even developed. Goods, and precious metals and minerals were esteemed above currency. Today, we live by credit based on currency, but the currency is changing. Articles in current newsmagazines are even now mentioning the creation of Cybercash services with the value of this Cybercash based on information. We are on the brink of a credit-card society with technology in place to use phone lines to receive credits at home, from central terminals. No more paychecks, or cash. Simply a card, encoded with our vital information which can be charged up with credits, like the long distance phone cards or copy machine cards that are more and more common. 
	Again, our speaker did not hold back the obvious. The reason for all of this is GREED. “We have a blueprint for a global revolution which explains the current turf wars among and over diverse corporations. They are fighting to shape the digital future. It is not just the consumer electronics, media industry, computer/phone and cable operators, but even the gas and water and other utilities are involved with everyone looking for a piece of the action and the pot of gold at the end.” These companies don’t want to be left out and they don’t want to become extinct. 
	Consider how telephones led to the emergence of the FAX, which is leading to the death of the postal service and its snail mail. 1990, 80% of telephone traffic was voice transmission, in 1995 only 49% with 51% used for data transmission. 
	Much of the current talk and articles today are about the Internet with the interconnectedness of millions of computers. But, while this information highway is the rage, it is currently like “sucking peanut butter up a straw.” It is slow and unreliable. By 1997, however, the access will be more readily available and reliable, and the vehicles to send and receive information will have the ability to transfer 1 trillion bits of information per second down a single glass fiber. That is equivalent to 200 CD-ROMS per second. But even this is already outdated.
	We are on the horizon of a new Communication Age. MCI has banded together with a number of other large corporations to set up a network of satellites to cover the globe. It will create a global, digital, wireless network which will connect everyone to everything anytime, anywhere and will forever alter the way we work, play, move about and view fellow citizens. All global barriers will cease. Political communities will lose their value. As an added aside, the International Association of Travel Agents have proposed a universal passport system which would encode all the pertinent data about an individual on a credit-card type passport. It would also use a digitized thumbprint recognition system which would supposedly prevent the card’s improper usage. When one entered or existed a country, one would simply swipe this card at a terminal and push one’s thumb against a screen and receive clearance. With rapidly improving technology, all social, political and economic barriers will be absolutely redefined. No longer will languages be a problem because the technology already exists to eliminate divisions of linguistic communications remember the voiceprint and the pocket translator of today, and how it will affect worldwide instant communication with anyone from anywhere. In preparation for the satellite network, AT&T already has patents for earrings, watches, glasses, ring and nose cellular communicators. Today, we may not consider them practical, but, our lives will be forever altered by this explosion of technological communication. We are dealing with a conceptual force that will forever transform life as it was. It will over shadow the shift from steam to oil, from trains to planes, from radio to TV with the difference in intensity as from gunpowder to a nuclear weapon. 
	This technological revolution is a development on par with light, electricity, the motor, the telephone and the printing press, and will fundamentally change the nature of economic and social activity. It will usher in a New World Order of power from the “literati to the digerati”. It is the evolution to a real global community, geographically separated, but electronically connected with an extraordinary impact on political, social and economic climates.
	“If we find it hard to believe that this will change your life then consider TV, PCs, satellites, ATM’s, cell telephones, faxes, personal pagers, Walkmans, CD’s and camcorders and their effects on our lives, then just try to project ahead to what is yet to come. We have been in the toy age of technological development. The fact that was emphasized was that “only when technology is unremarkable will we be free to use technology without thinking, only when it is truly part of our lives, only then will we get beyond technology to empower ordinary people. The key to technology is its social power to fundamentally transform our society”. 
	We were presented with the following statements as our responsibilities as educators: “Start by acknowledging that adults live in an old paradigm (educationalese for a pattern, model or example) and that kids live in a new one. We simply don’t relate to their present, consequently the central issue that we must face is relevance, and must focus on bringing about a conceptual shift and get beyond our cultural and institutional biases. We need to change our mindset... we need to change our attitudes, change our organizations, change our perspectives, change our thinking, change the way we do business...understand that the trouble in life doesn’t come from aiming too high and missing the mark, it comes from aiming too low and hitting the mark every single time. We must teach our students that failing is good, and that they must be taught to value stupid, crazy, off the wall ideas.  The communication Age has shrunk the world to pocket size - there is no place to hide short of time travel back to the 50’s. We must change resistant people in the public and private sector who have no other options because change is inevitable.”
	We are entering an era in which the have and the have not’s will be fundamentally ordered by the ability to access and use information. Those with it will set the rules, while those without it will merely follow and try to survive. A Vice-president for Hughes Aircraft recently made the statement that by the year 2005, all work done from the neck down will be at minimum wage. After this presentation, one of my fellow teachers, who is not a Christian, made the comment that this technological revolution will surely lead to a major world-wide conflagration between the have’s and the have not’s. I couldn’t help but realize how true that statement could be. 
	These are some of the highlights of this educational conference. I don’t hesitate to say that I was constantly going to our Comforter throughout the presentations. I am, even now reminded of the Tower of Babel, with all of the scheming and the greatness of man, and how God set it to naught. The fact is, however, for us to consider, that our children are the direct targets of this New Age of the dawn of man’s intellectual abilities. They must be held in our hearts against the world power that is ruthlessly and blatantly struggling for their souls. I went home that evening and flipped through my Family PC Magazine, a magazine that refuses to allow advertising that is not considered to be part of the traditional family values of our society. Along with several of the early advertisements that I indicated this evening, these are a few of the ads that were printed, by a most reputable family software maker. The Beast Within” “Phantasmagoria” etc.
	As our children are such a vital part of us in Christ, and as we have been charged to direct them in the way in which they should go, so must we now, as a fellowship, take each and every one of them into our hearts for their very spiritual safety in Christ. There is no time to be wasted with the foolishness of this realm. They are never too young, or too old to be guided, by our testimony and our witness into Christ. We must give ourselves wholly unto them in Christ, by giving ourselves wholly unto Him. As He is the priority of our hearts, so too will they be grounded ever more fully in Him. There is no tomorrow, it is here and it is now. There is no more time to put off the Lord Jesus in our lives. We need to seek after God to have that desire after Christ worked into us, to be fully established in Him, in our birthright in Zion, for our sake and for the sakes of our young ones. 

	De 7:9 Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations.

EXPONENTIAL GROWTH OF TECHNOLOGICAL POWER
USING A PENNY DOUBLED EACH DAY
1. .01								9. 2.56
2. .02								10. 5.12
3. .04								11. 10.24
4. .08								12. 20.48
5. .16								13. 40.96
6. .32								14. 81.92
7. .64								15. 163.84
8. 1.28							TOTAL $327.67

16. 327.68
17. 655.36
18. 1,310.72
19. 2,621.44
20. 5,242.88
21. 10,485.76
22. 20,971.52
23. 41,943.04
24. 83,886.08
TOTAL $178,257.87
25. 167,772.16
26. 335,544.32
27. 671,088.64
28. 1,342,177.20
29. 2,684,354.40
30. 5,368,708.80
31. 10,737,417.00
TOTAL $21,485,320.00