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Chadron SDA Church

Eric Walsh

2 Artificial Intelligence

Our scripture reading for this session comes from Romans 1, verse 22.

It says, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

And our message for this Sabbath morning service is entitled Artificial Intelligence.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your word and yes Lord, I ask that you just make me a nail on the wall, a rusty, sorry nail Lord.

But upon that nail Lord I ask that you hang a portrait of Jesus Christ.

I don't need to be seen or heard today Father, We need a word from You.

So we're going to go to the book of Genesis, the 11th chapter, to start our sermon off this morning.

And 1 of my favorite stories, it's a fascinating 1, that we kind of pass over sometimes.

Genesis 11, 1 says, "'And the whole earth was of 1 language "'and of 1 speech.'" This is an introduction to the world after the flood.

You can only imagine what it must have been like for Noah, his 3 sons, and their 4 wives to come through an experience like the flood.

My parents are Jamaican and the beautiful island has been destroyed.

I've been talking to the Adventist University there.

But imagine that 1000, maybe 1000000 times worse.

And there is evidence, not really the point of our talk today, but there is good scientific evidence for a global flood.

Everything from the fact they find seashells on the tops of mountains, you tell me how seashells got up there.

To even some of the other things, there's a great documentary on Netflix.

I don't normally recommend Netflix stuff, but I saw 1 called the Ancient Apocalypse.

The guy's not a Christian, and doesn't necessarily maybe even believe in God, but in this documentary, I actually was doing a Bible study with someone on the flood and creation, I said if you watch this, this guy is literally describing the Antediluvian world's transition into the world after the flood.

If you watch it and you know the Bible it's very obvious.

The flood, these people who lived before the flood were very intelligent, large people, able to do great things, but they were overcome with wickedness.

1 of the things that is puzzling, and I can't wait to get to glory to ask Jesus about this, when the 8 come through the flood, somehow still corruption follows them.

So somewhere in the 8 of them it comes out.

And Genesis 11 tells us that of course if there were only 8 people, they were all speaking, you know, eventually as they began to multiply and fill up the earth as is happening here, well really not the earth, they were just in 1 area, they only had 1 language.

And look at what the Bible says in verse 2.

And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there.

Shinar is associated with Babylon even to this day, that word.

Verse 3, and they said 1 to another, Go, go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly.

And they had brick for stone and slime they had for mortar.

These guys come out and the first thing they say is, look, let's get building materials.

We're going to do some construction work.

Where did they know how to do this construction work?

The guy in the documentary actually asked that question a lot.

This is something that these great minds had before the flood that now their descendants are using after the flood.

Verse 4, And they said, Go, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

So they wanted to escape the idea of another flood.

So they were thinking, okay, we can build this tower.

We'll build it tall enough so it gets to heaven.

If there's another flood, we will be safe.

We want a tower to reach way up into heaven and let us make us a name.

In other words, name in the Bible represents character.

They wanted their own way of seeing things.

And they were worried they would be scattered around the earth.

Verse 5 tells you how God deals with his people.

Verse 5 says, and the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men built it.

Based on our last talk, I'd have to believe this again was the pre-incarnate Christ.

Then the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men built it.

Notice they're the children of men, not the sons of God.

We'll say at a time, but there's a reason that term is actually used there.

Verse 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is 1, and they all have 1 language, and this they begin to do.

And now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do at the beginning and this is literally you know somewhere around 4 000 years ago rough numbers they said listen god says if we leave them alone anything they imagine, they will be able to do.

Now remember, man was created in the image of God.

That gives man a creative and an imaginative aspect to his being.

That all sits again in their frontal lobe, the front third of the brain, the prefrontal cortex.

The mind is able to see things, build things, plan things, strategize.

And God said with enough time, If they all work together, there's nothing they can't do.

In the New Testament at Pentecost, the Bible says they were all in 1 place, on 1 accord, and the Holy Spirit fell.

Even whether it's for good or for bad, man has the ability to do amazing or incredible things when he's unified.

So 1 of the reasons the devil wants the church in disunity, the devil wants the church fighting itself because the Holy Spirit can't fall on a divided church and a divided church cannot do what God wants to do in building up not a tower but building up the kingdom of God so the devil works hard to sow in animosity and hatred and anger.

Because when God's people are in 1 place and on 1 accord and the Holy Spirit shows up, God's people can do incredible things.

Verse 7, Go to let us go down and there confound their language that they may not understand 1 another's speech.

How did God stop man from accomplishing whatever his mind would think of and then recreate the world that existed before the flood basically it'll all come right back language he made it so that people couldn't communicate with each other He made them confused in their language.

That's where we get the word babble from.

Verse 8, So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth, and they left off to build the city.

So they stopped building this city and scattered around the world.

And you can imagine, this explains probably how you get different types of people, different looks of people as people began to move around the world.

The epigenetics of those earlier humans would have probably been even more potent today.

They'd go to an environment and their body would literally begin to say, okay, how do we adjust to this environment?

So man would have been getting to scatter, walk, travel, and begin to populate the entire world.

The Bible says in verse 9, Therefore is the name of it called Babel.

And today, this is where we get the word Babylon from, that same confusion.

Because there the Lord did confound the language of all the earth, and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

So the flood happens, they settle down, they begin to, people begin to grow, begin to go back to their old ways and God has to confound their language.

This story is a statement of man's possibility.

It is a statement of man's ability to build, to create, to develop, to advance science, technology, all of it is wrapped up in this story.

And what the Bible tells us is that when God saw man's potential would be again misused like it was before the flood, God put the brakes on it.

But we live in a time when it seems the brakes are off.

I want to submit to you, you live in a time when technology is doing things that when I was a kid, and I don't feel like I was a kid that long ago, my wife might say I'm still a kid, but not that long ago, this stuff was science fiction.

I mean, just your smartphone is more complex than anything they had on Star Trek.

Science fiction Star Trek, they had no device on Star Trek as complex as a smartphone is today.

Man has outpaced his imagination is my point.

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2 Artificial Intelligence

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