Once again we’re seeing the lengths many will go to in order to combat the coronavirus, all in the name of public health and welfare. I’ve made it clear in previous articles that I believe the coronavirus pandemic is being used to push certain agendas which is ultimately setting the stage for the 7 year tribulation.
We’ve seen calls for a global government, the creation and use of quantum-dot tattoos in tandem with vaccinations, and the ID2020 initiative along with Bill Gates coming up frequently whenever this is brought up. It’s no stretch of the imagination to say the pandemic is speeding things along significantly!
If that wasn’t enough we now have 3 US universities (University of Southern California, Emory University, and the University of Texas Health Science Center) creating a contact tracing app which is similar to China’s social credit system. I first wrote about this system in 2018 in my first article on the mark of the beast.
I encourage you to go to the article to read into it if you’re unfamiliar, but essentially the system tracks its over 1 billion citizens and gives them a social credit score based on how they live. If you follow government regulations, you get a good score and can live a peaceful life. If you don’t, your score suffers and you could be barred from traveling, going to certain colleges, receiving loans, etc.
Knowing this, it’s not necessarily a step in the right direction to see American universities employ similar methods for a coronavirus contact tracing app, raising privacy concerns which are well warranted.
Coronavirus and a Social Credit System
From Breitbart: China launched its notorious social credit system last year to watch over its own citizens and mete out punishment based on personal behavior and loyalty to the Communist Party. Now three prominent U.S. universities are using taxpayer money to create a similar type of surveillance network designed to monitor Americans and assign them scores based on their exposure to the Wuhan coronavirus.
Tech news outlet dot.LA recently reported that researchers at the University of Southern California, Emory University, and the University of Texas Health Science Center have received a federal grant to create a mobile app for contact tracing the novel coronavirus. The system will track a person’s real-time location and symptoms, and calculate a personal COVID-19 risk score.
USC’s Cyrus Shahabi, chair of the computer science department, told dot.LA that the universities hope to have a working mobile app by August, in time for the start of the fall semester. He said policymakers could use the system to warn the public to avoid hotspots of infection.
In other instances, people who have been assigned high personal risk scores might decide to stay home or get tested for COVID-19. But the project, whose federal grant money comes from the National Science Foundation, has already raised red flags in terms of privacy and the potential for Big Brother-style abuse.
There needs to be “a careful balance or privacy protection with public health benefits,” Bennett Cyphers, a staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights advocacy group, told dot.LA. “When you introduce ‘scoring’ that takes other factors into account, it complicates everything, and increases the risk that users will be misinformed or discriminated against due to factors beyond their control.”
The assigning of personal scores could also cause problems if an employer requires workers reveal them as a condition of receiving a benefit, entering a building, or returning to their office, Cyphers said. Read More
Prophetic Implications
Although this raises a host of privacy concerns for anyone who reads this piece of news, it’s only the believers in Christ that understand where this may be going. The bible clearly tells us that there’s a coming one world governing system that will emerge during the tribulation. We’re told there will be one man in charge of this system that will have control over everyone on earth.
- The whole world will worship and follow the beast (Revelation 13:3-4, 8)
- The beast is given authority “over every tribe, tongue, and nation” (Revelation 13:7, Revelation 13:16-17)
- The beast is given authority for 42 months – 3 1/2 years (Revelation 13:5)
As the bible paints this dystopian, totalitarian future for us, it shouldn’t surprise us that we’re already seeing a shadow of what’s to come. It’s this realization that prompted me to write about China’s social credit system 2 years ago. The technology for the realization of what the bible tells us isn’t 20, 10, or 5 years away. It’s here right now!
As believers, this should serve as encouragement for us as it shows us that our redemption – the rapture of the church – is fast approaching, but for the unbeliever it shows that the tribulation – the worst period in human history – is also around the corner. The purpose of writing this article is to stress the lateness of the hour and the importance of accepting God’s free gift of salvation today!
Sources
- USC, Emory Creating Coronavirus Surveillance System Similar to China’s Social Credit Scoring (May 4th, 2020) – Breitbart