Scripture:
- Matthew 24:37-39 “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and swept them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”
- Genesis 6:1-9 “When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. … The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. … But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. … Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God.”
- Daniel 2:42–43 “As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.”
When the “days of Noah” are mentioned, most people visualize scenes of “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, buying and selling, planting and building.” Indeed, these were the daily routines of people in Noah’s time, just as they are in our world today. May the Lord have mercy on us and keep us watchful!
However, my purpose in bringing up the days of Noah today is not to focus on those things. When God says the days of the coming of the Son of Man will be like the days of Noah, I believe He is referring to more than just these recurring cycles of life. God destroyed that generation not simply because they performed these daily activities, but because something very extraordinary occurred.
That was the intermingling of angels and humans, which gave birth to the Nephilim (giants). This caused the vessel intended to manifest God—humanity—to fail to remain “after its kind,” potentially creating far-reaching consequences.
What about today?
The era we live in now is quite surreal. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is evolving at a staggering speed. For decades, AI development was relatively slow. However, from the emergence of the Transformer model in 2017 to ChatGPT entering the public eye in 2022, AI has achieved leapfrog improvements in an extremely short period. AI development does not just get stronger bit by bit; it leaps suddenly after reaching a critical tipping point and continues to accelerate. Now, the speed of AI evolution is no longer linear—it is exponential and constantly quickening.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, wrote an article on December 7, 2017, titled “The Merge.” He stated: “If humans and AI become two competing species and both want to dominate the world, the result is likely to be conflict. Humans either merge with AI or become irrelevant. A better way is to find a way to become ‘one entity’; merging (human + AI) is the best outcome.” To summarize: rather than having humans and AI oppose each other, it is better to merge into a new existence—this is what he considers the safest path for the future.
This inevitably brings to mind the fourth kingdom in the book of Daniel. When the history of the fourth kingdom extends to the toes, it marks the conclusion of human history. The Bible says:
“As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.” (Daniel 2:42–43)
Iron is the raw material for machines; clay is the raw material for man.
May we continue to meditate at the Lord’s feet. Lord, have mercy!