Foreknowledge

Computers used for gaming include a graphics card (GPU) separate from the CPU (central processing unit). How many calculations do you think your graphics card performs every second while running video games with incredibly realistic graphics? Maybe 100 million calculations a second?

Well, 100 million calculations a second is what was required to run a Mario 64 from 1996. Today we need more power. Maybe 100 billion calculations a second? Well, then you would have a computer that could run Minecraft back in 2011.

In order to run the most realistic video games in 2024, such as Cyberpunk 2077, you would need a graphics card that can perform around 36 trillion calculations a second. This is an incredibly large number, so let’s take a second to try to conceptualize it.

Imagine doing a long multiplication problem, such as a seven-digit number times an 8-digit number, once every second. Now let’s say that everyone on our planet does a similar type of calculation, but with different numbers. To reach the equivalent computational power of our graphics card and its 36 trillion calculations a second, we would need about 4,400 Earths filled with people, all working at the same time and completing one calculation each every second. It’s rather mind boggling to think that one device can manage all those calculations.

Now, let’s move from gaming to the world of Artificial Intelligence which were trained using a large number of GPUs. A flagship Nvidia A100 GPU can perform 5 quadrillion calculations per second (a 5 followed by 15 zeros). In 2024, a medium sized AI will be trained using at least 8 GPUs. Very large models can use hundreds or even thousands of GPUs. In 2024 Elon Musk showcased Tesla’s ambitious new AI training supercluster named Cortex in Austin, Texas. The supercluster is made up of an array of 100,000 GPUs, each one performing 5 quadrillion calculations a second, using as much power as a small city.

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Omniscience of God – While artificial intelligence has made remarkable strides, it cannot compare to God’s omniscience which far surpasses any human creation. He sees all, knows all, and understands the intricacies of every life. The hairs of every head are numbered (Matt. 10:30), the length of our lives is known (Psa. 139:16), and not even the smallest bird falling to the ground escapes his attention (Matt. 10:29); 2) Knowledge of God; Wisdom of God – AI can only process events after the fact, and perhaps anticipate some possible actions. But God knows all things, past, present, and things to come before they even happen (Isa. 46:10)

Editor’s Note: For an excellent statement of the omniscience of God, see A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, (Harper, 2009) p. 62 “He knows instantly and with a fullness of perfection that includes every possible item of knowledge concerning everything that exists or could have existed anywhere in the universe at any time in the past or that may exist in the centuries or ages yet unborn….”

In a fictional YouTube video, the main character, Eric, is walking his dog Nova. The dog sees a rabbit, runs after it, pulling the leash from Eric's hand. The dog is soon lost and Eric spends several days frantically searching for Nova. After a week Eric is devastated. He is upset about the bad luck of a rabbit jumping out just at the wrong time and leading Nova on a wild chase.

After another week a woman, Vanessa, rings Eric's doorbell with Nova in tow. After the emotional reunion with Nova, Eric slowly gets to know Vanessa and they fall in love. Eric realizes how lucky they were that Vanessa was at the right place at the right time to find Nova.

Two months later as Eric is driving to visit Vanessa, he is T-boned by a negligent driver. He suffers a severe head injury and tests are immediately done at the hospital. He is furious that his life could be ruined by this random accident when he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The next day the doctor tells him of the results of the CT scan. There is a tumor growing in his brain. It had nothing to do with the accident, from which Eric would make a full recovery. The tumor was discovered because of the accident and the CT scan. It was in its early stages, and could effectively be treated. Normally the tumor is discovered when there are symptoms, when it is almost always too late. The doctor tells him the car accident saved his life.

A week later Eric has successful brain surgery. Days later Eric is at home, recovering, with Vanessa. To get some fresh air he takes Nova out for a walk.

You can watch this 6 min. video here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This short story video is quite compelling and an excellent illustration for Bible verses like “All things work together....” (Rom. 8:28), facing trials (Jam.1:2-4) and restoration after suffering (1 Pet. 5:10). Christians are often perplexed by the things happening to them but God intends that good should come out of evil. (Gen 50:20)

Intel employed a futurist named Brian David Johnson whose was to determine what life would be like ten to fifteen years in the future. Johnson was the first futurist to work at Intel. Johnson said:

It takes around 10-15 years to design, build and deploy a new chip. This is why Intel needed someone who can look 10-15 years into the future and tell them what the world they are designing for will be like. The work that I do is very pragmatic. I am judged on my ability to tell people what is coming so they can do something about it. … Let’s design futures that are designed for real people, and the futures of real people.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Of course, there is only One who truly knows the end from the beginning. We need not fear the future, but trust our God who knows our future. It is right to plan, but wrong to seek to control our lives.

In the year 1900, a German chocolate company released 12 postcards predicting what life would be like 100 years in the future. So how close were they to predicting our life today? Well, you decide based on these descriptions of the postcards from 1900:

• Personal airships (a picture of couples flying around in their personal hot air balloons).
• Watching a live drama performance while not in the theater. (You mean, kind of like television?)
• An X-ray machine for police officers. (To detect crimes in progress within buildings).
• A roofed city. (Like a football stadium under a dome).
• Underwater ships for tourists. (Like taking a Carnival or Norwegian cruise vacation in a submarine.)
• Easy excursions to the North Pole. (Hey, honey, let’s spend the weekend at the North Pole.)
• A machine for creating good weather.

Possible Preaching Angles:

The future is uncertain. Humans will always get some predictions right and some very wrong. But Jesus said he knows the future and he holds the future already.

The radio program, This American Life, tells the story about the late writer David Rakoff, who had a hard time believing what was right in front of his eyes. In 1986, Rakoff’s company in Tokyo was working on a computer program that would allow expats like himself to write short little messages to one another after logging on to the network.

David was not impressed. He thought, “What kind of loser would log onto a computer [just to] talk to someone?” And in a moment of decisiveness, he went into work and quit. “Sayonara, suckers! Good luck with your ‘network’!” Of course, we can all guess what that network became. It was the beginning of a little thing called the internet.

David has other stories too. Earlier in the 1980s, he went to a dance club and heard a young blonde singer from Michigan and thought, “Boy, is she lousy!” That singer was later known by the name, “Madonna.” Again, working in publishing, he was handed a manuscript and passed it off as “subliterate drivel” and an “easy pass.” That turned out to be a book called Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, which went on to sell 15 million copies as one of the best-selling works of the 1990s.

Apparently, seeing isn’t always believing--even when it’s right in front of your eyes.

Samuel Kempf was in Spain representing New Zealand in the Fistballing World Championship when he took a break to ride a rollercoaster. While he was on the ride, he showed off his considerable coordination and fist skills.

During the beginning of the ride, Kempf noticed that another man had dropped his phone on the floor of his car. Because of the ride’s safety restraints, he was unable to pick it up. While pointing out the man’s predicament, Kempf joked to his brother and others around him that they should “get ready to catch.” Sure enough, that’s exactly what he did.

Kempf said, “The ride started and I totally forgot about it because I was just in the moment. And then after the first drop we rose up and I just saw the phone drift across my view, so I reached out and managed to catch it.”

After the ride, Kempf reached out to give the grateful man his phone back, and was surprised to find that the ride’s reaction video apparatus had recorded his miraculous catch. As a token of gratitude, the man purchased the video memento.

Potential Preaching Angles: Even things that seem like blind luck are within God's control, because God is sovereign and all-powerful and rules of all things and people. That said, both the righteous and the unrighteous suffer setbacks and triumphs alike. God's ways are not always completely understandable to mortals like ourselves.

A Korean War veteran by the name of Laurel Hunsinger told friends and family that, "When I worked on the flight line in Korea and flew combat missions, there was a post set in the ground that everyone had to walk past. Someone had carved into the post these words: “You always have two chances.” When I asked what that meant, I was told that when you fly a combat mission, you have two chances: You'll make it back to the base or you'll be shot down. If you are shot down, you have two chances: You'll survive the crash or you won't. If you survive the crash, you have two chances: You'll evade the enemy or you'll be captured. If you are captured, you have two chances: You'll live through being a prisoner or you won't. If you die as a prisoner, well, you still have two chances.

(In 1953, Laurel's plane was shot down 15 miles inside North Korea. Though severely injured, the entire crew survived and was rescued. Laurel died January 6, 2018 and is buried in Little River, KS).

Possible Preaching Angle:

Life might seem like a series of events controlled only by random chance (Ecclesiastes 9:11 “time and chance happen to them all”). But for the believer there is the absolute certainty that God is at work behind the scenes of our lives to bring about his perfect will (Jeremiah 29:11, Ephesians 1:9-11) for our good (Romans 8:28).

In his book Future Babble, journalist Dan Gardner explores our obsession with "experts" who claim to predict future events. Gardner relies on the work of Philip Tetlock, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who produced a massive 20-year analysis of 27,450 predictions from 284 experts. Tetlock concluded that as a group the experts did little better, and sometimes considerably worse, than "a dart-throwing chimpanzee."

Gardner's book lists a number of examples of these inaccurate predictions:

• In 1914 the British journalist H. N. Norman proclaimed that "there will be no more wars among the six great powers."
• In the late 1960s, the political scientist Andrew Hacker predicted that race relations in America would soon get so bad that they would lead to the "dynamiting of bridges and water mains" and the "assassinating of public officials."
• In 1968 the president of Anaconda Copper Mining Company predicted that his company would be successful for 500 years. Less than ten years later, fibre optics trumped copper and Anaconda was out of business.
• Also in 1968 Paul Ehrlich predicted that overpopulation would produce a total collapse in the world's food supply. Instead, the world's food supply has increased dramatically.
• In 1974 Ehrlich confidently asserted, "If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."
• In 1990 the MIT economist Lester Thurow declared that Japan was "the betting favorite to win the economic honors of owning the 21st century."
• In 2008 experts at Goldman Sachs predicted that oil prices would surge to over $200 per barrel within six months. Instead, the price for petroleum fell to $34 per barrel.

So why do we keep listening to these expert predictions even when they're wrong? According to Gardner human beings hate uncertainty. "Whether sunny or bleak," Gardner wrote, "convictions about the future satisfy the hunger for certainty. We want to believe. And so we do."

In 1993, [Philip Yancey] read a news report about a "Messiah sighting" in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. In an article for Christianity Today magazine, he wrote about the feverish response of over 20,000 Lubavitcher Hasidic Jews who lived in the region, many of whom believed the Messiah was dwelling among them in the person of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson:

Word of the rabbi's public appearance spread like a flash fire through the streets of Crown Heights, and Lubavitchers in their black coats and curly sidelocks were soon dashing toward the synagogue where the rabbi customarily prayed. The lucky ones connected to a network of beepers got a head start, sprinting toward the synagogue the instant they felt a slight vibration. They jammed by the hundreds into a main hall, elbowing each other and even climbing the pillars to create more room. The hall filled with an air of anticipation and frenzy normally found at a championship sporting event, not a religious service.

The rabbi was 91 years old. He had suffered a stroke the year before and had not been able to speak since. When the curtain finally pulled back, those who had crowded into the synagogue saw a frail old man with a long beard who could do little but wave, tilt his head, and move his eyebrows. No one in the audience seemed to mind, though. "Long live our master, our teacher, and our rabbi, King, Messiah, forever and ever!" they sang in unison, over and over, building in volume until the rabbi made a small gesture with his hand and the curtain closed. They departed slowly, savoring the moment, in a state of ecstasy. (Rabbi Schneerson [later] died in June 1994. Now some Lubavitchers [still await] his bodily resurrection.)

Later in his article, Yancey confesses he was tempted to laugh out loud as he read about Schneerson and his followers, thinking, Who are these people trying to kida nonagenarian mute Messiah in Brooklyn? But then a sobering thought came to mind for Yancey: I am reacting to Rabbi Schneerson exactly as people in the first century had reacted to Jesus. A Messiah from Galilee? A carpenter's kid, no less? He writes:

The scorn I felt as I read about the rabbi and his fanatical followers gave me a small glimpse of the kind of responses Jesus faced throughout his life. His neighbors asked, "Isn't his mother's name Mary, and aren't his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?" Other countrymen scoffed, "Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?" His own family tried to put him away, believing he was out of his mind. The religious experts sought to kill him. As for the common people, one moment they judged him demon-possessed and raving mad, the next they forcibly tried to crown him king.

It took courage, I believe, for God to lay aside power and glory and to take his place among human beings who would greet him with the same mixture of haughtiness and skepticism that I felt when I first heard about Rabbi Schneerson of Brooklyn. It took courage to endure the shame, and courage even to risk descent to a planet known for its clumsy violence, among a race known for rejecting its prophets. A God of all power deliberately put himself in such a state that Satan could tempt him, demons could taunt him, and lowly human beings could slap his face and nail him to a cross. What more foolhardy thing could God have done?