Watchman on the Wall

Narrator: Welcome to Watchman on the Wall, a daily outreach of Southwest Radio Ministries and SWRC.com. Today, Josh Davis will share the latest headlines from the end times.

Josh Davis: Friend, when was the last time you visited SWRC.com? If it's been a while, you're missing out on one of the most valuable Bible prophecy and Christian resource websites available today. At SWRC.com, you'll find daily Watchman on the Wall broadcasts, Prophecy in the News television programs, timely articles, podcasts, conferences, books, DVDs, and resources all designed to help you understand God's Word and the times in which we live.

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Signs of apostasy appear as woke churches have replaced powerful hymns like "Amazing Grace" with new, unsacred songs that praise LGBTQ and social justice. Plus, a network of surveillance cameras installed on utility poles across the US can watch and listen to each passerby. Over 100,000 such cameras are active across America. Where will this lead, and how does it connect to the biblical end-time scenario? I share the details on today's edition of Headlines from the End Times.

Greetings, fellow Watchman on the Wall, and welcome to another Headlines from the End Times. The woke church continues to slide down the slippery slope away from God's authority. When you untether yourself from scriptural authority, you become the creator of your own new religion. It's not biblical Christianity, and it should not be labeled as Christianity because it is anything but.

The woke churches are denying the central tenets of the Christian faith, the central doctrines that make a Christian really a Christian. We understand that apostasy is happening within certain churches and within certain entire denominations and groups of churches. In mainline churches, that slide continues.

The report tells us that if you walked into many mainline churches today after being away for 30 or 40 years, the first thing that you would likely notice isn't the sermon; it's the sanctuary. Banners proclaiming Jesus, proclaiming doctrines of the faith, and proclaiming the authority of Scripture have been torn down and replaced by rainbow flags. Pride colors decorate the church auditorium and the foyer. In some congregations, even the clergy will wear a rainbow stole or vestments. There are visible declarations of affirmation before a single word is ever preached.

The architecture may look familiar. The stained glass is still there depicting a little sheep and Jesus holding him. The pews are still in place. The architecture is still there, but the message has certainly changed. The scriptural authority has been denied. This transformation towards this modern-day expression of woke religion has happened step by step, bringing us to where we are today, where it's now even influencing the church's worship and the music that the church is singing.

The classic hymns of the faith, like "Amazing Grace," how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, have become anathema to some people in woke churches today. They feel they do not need to be saved, and to call themselves a wretch is the exact opposite of who they are. They believe they are beautiful the way they are, beautiful in their sin, and beautiful as a sinner. That is what the modern progressives would often boast.

As sinful humanity, we want to deny the fact that we are sinners. When you try to share Christ with someone, one of the hardest things that you come up against is people being willing to admit that they are a sinner and that they have done something wrong against a holy God. That is just anathema to our modern sensibilities in much of the unbelieving world. They don't want to admit that they have sinned because that means they are submissive to some authority outside of themselves and that there is some law higher than their own truth.

So much of our generation today wants to say, "Live your truth," "You do you," and "Do whatever makes you feel happy." Dear friends, that's the pathway to death. That's the pathway to brokenness, away from healing and away from hope. Churches that are affirming these kinds of sinful behaviors are just affirming how wicked these places and their leadership really are.

We understand that they started by blessing same-sex marriages, and it didn't stop there. Now clergy can be openly LGBTQ. Then they started changing the church ordinances: baptism and the Lord's Supper. These are sacred acts of worship that authentic followers of the Lord Jesus Christ hold to be very special. Now they've changed baptism into trans-baptism. They're baptizing people who want to change their gender and saying that if you were a man, you are now a woman.

They've changed the communion bread into shades of the rainbow. Rainbow-colored communion bread is presented on the Lord's table as a symbol of inclusion and pride. Do you see the irony of that? The Lord's Supper is about remembering the body and the blood of Jesus that was broken for our sin. These people are celebrating their blindness, not their spiritual sight. They're celebrating their sin, not the Savior, and they're using the Lord's table to do it.

The transformation has reached the music itself. Throughout church history, our hymns have taught great doctrines and inspired worshippers. Those beautiful hymns have stood the test of time. The lyrics convey the truth of God's Word, and we can proclaim that truth to one another as we're gathered in worship together. It's a beautiful thing. Sadly, these woke churches are replacing songs like "Amazing Grace" with social movement-oriented lyrics, bringing identity politics into their modern woke hymns.

Consider some lyrics from a song in a woke church: "For gay, bi, and straight, a place at the table, invited to wed, to baptize and preach, a rainbow of race and gender and color, for queer, trans, and ace, God's justice in reach." That's the new hymn they're singing at the local woke church. No more "Amazing Grace." Now it's all about wokeness. We are all welcome at the cross as sinners, but God has come to redeem us from our sin. We do not celebrate sin; we celebrate the Savior and the fact that He has redeemed us.

This is Headlines from the End Times brought to you by Southwest Radio Ministries. I want to invite you to connect with us at our ministry website, SWRC.com. I'll be sharing some more headlines in just a moment, showing how a surveillance state is right here, right now, in the USA and around the world. These things are startling. I want to bring you some information about cameras that can collect biometric information.

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Now let's return to more headlines. We're picking up with stories about the coming surveillance state. These things are already here. America's streetlights are changing into surveillance towers. For years, Americans were told that the greatest privacy battles would happen online. The debate centered around social media, smartphones, and internet tracking. Very few people imagined that one of the most controversial surveillance technologies would appear quietly on our neighborhood streets.

They are mounted atop telephone poles at busy intersections and neighborhood entrances. Today, these light poles and red-light camera poles have become a flashpoint in a much larger debate over technology, artificial intelligence, and the future relationship between citizens and government. This growing controversy is surrounding a company called Flock Safety. They have cameras installed on a lot of these poles.

It illustrates that Americans are becoming increasingly uneasy with the rapid expansion of surveillance technology. There is an estimated network of over 100,000 Flock Safety cameras active across the United States. These cameras can process an estimated 20 billion vehicle scans every single month. But Flock Safety cameras are capable of much more than scanning vehicles, tracking license plates, and sending tickets in the mail. These cameras are built to also capture audio.

Eyes are watching, and now ears are listening. This recent story took a crazy turn. The company, Flock Safety, recently experimented with what it calls human distress detection. This is capturing audio. If someone is near a pole where one of these cameras is installed and they're yelling, the camera can capture that and potentially report it to the authorities. There was a lot of overwhelming public backlash, and the company canceled this experiment, but the technology is here. It is in your neighborhood and mine.

The Antichrist has all the tools at his disposal that he would need to create this kind of surveillance state during the tribulation period. The pieces of this puzzle are falling into place. The tools needed to govern, surveil, and control this world are in place. I'm not saying these cameras are the mark of the beast, and I'm very careful about this language because I don't want you to get confused or live in fear. But I want you to open your eyes to what's happening.

We understand the privacy concerns, but we also need to think in terms of the stage being set for the biblical end-time scenario. Someone like the Antichrist could take advantage of this kind of system already in place when he comes into power. If the tools are here that he would need to govern this world, how close could the rapture of the church be? I believe the rapture of the church is the next event on God's prophetic calendar. We don't need to know who the Antichrist is, but we see the tools in place.

There are several other pieces, like the slide into wokeness that the Apostle Paul warned us about in the New Testament: that in the last days perilous times will come, for men will be lovers of their own selves. If you're looking at the moral and spiritual decline, the technology, and Israel, you see how it's all coming together.

Last week, I told you about a new technology called Facewatch. It is an AI-powered biometric camera system that alerts police when certain notorious shoplifters enter stores in the United Kingdom. Facewatch captures live facial recognition and is used by over 125 retailers operating thousands of stores across the UK. They will soon begin sending alerts to police within four seconds. The camera scans a face, runs it through the database, and notifies the police.

Those technologies aren't limited to the UK. Similar systems are being tested and deployed in the United States. Facial recognition systems are scanning shoppers as they enter Grocery Outlet stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. These cameras are used to compare people's faces against a watchlist of people suspected of theft, violence, or "other unlawful conduct." Now you see how this could be used to surveil people and control their movements.

During the tribulation, those who don't have the mark of the beast could be easily identified and arrested. You can easily see how someone without the mark can be watched by these eyes in the skies and in the stores. They have signs posted at these Grocery Outlet stores in and around San Francisco. This technology is powered by a company called SAFR Ground. It's an AI-powered security solution for retail loss prevention to prevent shoplifting and retail crime before it happens.

Retailers are trying to fight back by installing these biometric cameras that capture facial images as customers enter the store and create an encrypted biometric template inside each camera. Those templates are compared with a watchlist. Retailers provide this system with images and descriptions of people suspected of illegal conduct. People suspected of violence or high-dollar thefts could be added to this watchlist, and retailers in the same geographic area could communicate with one another.

I don't want these things to alarm you. As Christians, we need to open our eyes so that we understand the signs of the times and can biblically stand firm. But I want you to remain hopeful. The story of Bible prophecy is not one of defeat for the Church of Jesus Christ. For the followers of the Lord, it is a story of victory. Bible prophecy culminates in Jesus' victory over every single enemy, and the last enemy to be defeated is death itself.

One day, we will be with the Lord. Until that day, let's be watching, praying, and ministering every way that we can while we still have a window of opportunity and the ability of free speech to proclaim God's truth. Open your eyes to the signs of the times and the reality of eternity. Continue to watch and pray, and please keep in mind that God is still on the throne and prayer changes things.

Narrator: Friend, for more than 90 years, Southwest Radio Ministries has faithfully proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ and the truth of God's Word without compromise. Through Watchman on the Wall, Prophecy in the News television, books, DVDs, conferences, magazines, podcasts, our mobile app, and digital outreach, we're equipping believers and reaching hearts with the hope of Christ in the certainty of Bible prophecy.

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Together, we can keep shining the light of God's Word until the day our Savior returns. Lord willing, we'll be back here Monday, ready to once again bring clarity to the chaos. Head into the weekend with the encouragement that God is still on the throne and prayer changes things. Watchman on the Wall is a production of Southwest Radio Ministries and is supported by faithful friends just like you. Visit SWRC.com to learn more. That's SWRC.com.