Technology Is Not the End-Time Crisis Revelation Describes: Two Errors about Technology and the End

Revelation does not describe a crisis waiting on the right technology to arrive—it describes three pressures the church has faced from the beginning and will face until the end: false teaching, coordinated social pressure, and the seduction of comfort and power. Both techno-apocalypticism (which treats technology as the coming catastrophe) and transhumanism (which treats it as the coming salvation) load technology with theological weight it cannot bear.

Key Takeaways

The seven letters of Revelation 2–3 disclose three enduring pressures the church must resist: false teaching (Pergamum and Thyatira), coordinated social and economic pressure (Smyrna and Philadelphia), and the seduction of comfort and self-sufficiency (Laodicea)—none of which require a specific technology to operate.

Apocalyptic is a genre of disclosure, not a code for future prediction. Revelation unveils the true character of spiritual powers already pressing against the church and gave its first audience in Asia Minor an intelligible way of seeing their own situation under the gaze of the enthroned Lamb.

Christian transhumanism, exemplified by the Christian Transhumanist Association and Caleb Strom's "A Christian Transhumanist Confession," claims technology can deliver "spiritual and moral enhancement." This crosses from therapy into a revised theological anthropology that treats human finitude as pathology rather than as the condition of creaturely dependence on God.

Scripture's first named human technology is the fig leaf (Gen 3:7)—a response to shame rather than an expression of imaging God. God replaces the leaves with skins (Gen 3:21), signaling that technology can ease the fall's effects but cannot reverse them. Technology is better understood as responsive than as redemptive.

The Christian response is neither technological avoidance nor technological decoding but counter-formation through ordinary means of grace: communal worship, Scripture, prayer, shared meals, confession, and service to neighbor—the constraint system Christ has given his church.

Introduction‍

Revelation presents three pressures the church will face until Christ returns. The first is false and deceptive teaching that gives Christians the reasons they need to abandon their convictions. The second is coordinated social pressure that makes faithfulness costly enough to tempt compromise. The third is seductive relationships that trade Christian conviction for worldly comfort or power.

Christians living in the Roman empire were already experiencing economic pressure through the incorporation of pagan worship in trade guilds and the social expectations surrounding them. As New Testament scholar David DeSilva observes, Christians were under pressure to compromise their Christian convictions by conforming to Roman norms through the imperial cult and "the ever-present economic pressure of the trade guilds." Technology may amplify such pressures. It is not the root cause, and it is not the most immediate danger.

Techno-Apocalypticism

Techno-apocalypticism reads Revelation as a prediction waiting on the right technology to arrive. On an episode of Tipping Point, Scott Townsend suggests that the Beast's system would likely need some sort of superintelligence to implement the oppressive economic system described in Revelation 13. The Beast's economic system requires a specific technology, normally identified as the mark of the Beast, to subject God’s people to his rule. Techno-apocalyptic interpreters often describe the false prophet's signs as somewhat dependent on technology. On this reading, Revelation is a code, and each generation tries to identify which current technology the code is pointing to. Implantable chips, blockchain, and now artificial intelligence are the candidates du jour. When the current candidate fails to match, a new candidate is found and the conspiracy theorists produce some new panic around some new technology.

This way of reading Revelation misunderstands the book. Apocalyptic is a genre of disclosure. While it points forward, it isn’t always prophetic in the sense of predicting the future. It unveils and in doing so reveals patterns that reflect the connection between the sacred order and the social order. The spiritual forces pressing against God are manifest in the embodied world. Revelation unveils the true nature of the powers the church already faces. It must resist the empire that claims worship belongs to it, the economy that makes faithfulness costly, the cultural reward structure that makes compromise feel like maturity. The visions reveal the recurrence of historical patterns repeating itself in the present. It also assumes this pattern will be evident in the future.

The letters to the seven churches make this plain. Revelation was a book meaningful and intelligible to the churches when it was written. Its symbolic visions gave the churches of Asia Minor a way of seeing their own situation under the gaze of the enthroned Lamb. A book whose meaning required a future technology to arrive would have been unintelligible to its first audience. The visions addressed the Christians at Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Philadelphia, and Laodicea by disclosing the reality of the powers pressing in on them. They address the church today by doing the same thing.

The cost of techno-apocalypticism is formational. Christians who focus their attention on tracking technologies to decode prophecy are not spending it on the three pressures that are actually operating on them. False teaching, social pressure, and the seduction of comfort and power arrive in the ordinary rhythms of life, including the rhythms mediated by the technologies people already use. A posture of watching the horizon for a future beast is a posture that risks missing the deforming work of the present.

On February 25, 2025, Kristian Gkolomeev broke the world record in the 50-meter freestyle as part of a time trial sponsored by the Enhanced Games. The Enhanced Games claim to be “pioneering a new era in athletic competition that embraces scientific advancements to push the boundaries of human performance.” The Enhanced Games will host their inaugural event in Las Vegas over Memorial Day Weekend of 2026. Athletes who have utilized a medically supervised performance-enhancing drug protocol will compete in various swimming, track, and weightlifting events.

If you think that any world records broken by enhanced athletes should include an asterisk or that the whole concept of the Enhanced Games is wrongheaded, you have already denied the basic premise of transhumanism. The Enhanced Games are a visible, popular-level expression of transhumanism’s philosophies. While we might find fault with this particular application or, for instance, to “upgrades” to the human body via various technological implants, the underlying assumptions of transhumanism, particularly of so-called Christian transhumanism can be alluring (For more on transhumanism listen to “How Should Christians Think about Transhumanism”).

Transhumanist expressions are more than odd. They involve more theologically serious problems as evidenced by the underlying assumptions of so-called “Christian” transhumanism. These assumptions may be more alluring than a doped swimmer breaking a world record because they come through the church’s own language. For example, the Christian Transhumanist Association affirms that "God's mission involves the transformation and renewal of creation, including humanity, and that we are called by Christ to participate in that mission." Stated that way, few Christians would object. The more specific commitments are where the theological problems surface. Caleb Strom, in "A Christian Transhumanist Confession," argues that technology can deliver "not just physical and cognitive enhancement, but also spiritual and moral enhancement," and that "if managed well, we should welcome enhanced humanity, so long as we reflect the glory of God and fulfil our vocation to Christlikeness."

First, it is built on faulty assumptions. Human limitations are not problems to be engineered away. They are conditions under which we recognize our deep dependence on God. Therapy and accommodation have a long Christian pedigree. We treat disease, mend broken bodies, and ease the toil that the fall introduced. What transhumanism proposes is different. It treats finitude itself as the pathology, and the human body as a draft to be revised. Each assumes a different telos, or end and purpose, for humanity.

Second, the CTA’s assertion that science and technology are expressions of our being made in God’s image requires nuance (see statement 3 in “The Christian Transhumanist Affirmation,” as well as Article VIII: Technology in Strom’s “A Christian Transhumanist Confession”). For instance, Scripture does not depict humans using tools prior to the fall. The first tool it names is the fig leaf, fashioned to cover shame (Gen 3:7). The priestly service in the Garden, described with the same verbs later used for tabernacle service (‘abad and shamar in Gen 2:15; cf. Num 3:7-8; 8:26; 1 Chr 23:32), belongs to a different mode of human activity than the toil that follows the curse (Gen 3:17-19).

Arguably, the first human “technology,” the fig leaves fashioned into coverings, has little to do with participating in God’s mission or reflecting God’s image. This first technology is a response to shame and vulnerability. The fig leaves are a relatively meager expression of creativity that are ultimately replaced by God. Adam and Eve cover themselves with what they can gather. God clothes them with skins (Gen 3:21), which requires the death of an animal. The first divine act after the fall is a response to human shame that humans could not adequately address themselves. The leaves conceal something that didn’t previously need to be concealed. Technologies like the fig leaves can relieve the effects of the fall, but they can’t reverse them. Technology can ease our toil and offer some protection, but it can’t reverse the fall’s effects.

Transhumanism treats technology as redemptive. Though it can have positive effects, technology is less redemptive than responsive. It is, at least in the early chapters of Genesis, treated as a response to the fall. While we see technology in the form of clothing in Revelation, we must leave room for the symbolic nature of the genre. The white garments may be less like textiles and more like the glory of God in which we are symbolically clothed.

Finally, transhumanist commitments to technology lead them to adopt speculative and/or heretical positions. For instance, Strom suggests, “Although God will continue to have image-bearers and co-creators, the image-bearers may or may not be biological Homo sapiens. They may be a species that evolved from or was created by humans with the capacity to bear God’s image.” The image of God is, in part, a filial term denoting a sort of familial relation. Humans are made in God’s image (Gen 1:26-27), but they also pass on their own image to their progeny (Gen 5:3). Being made in God’s image also reflects an order of authority. God creates humanity as his vice regents to enact his rule on the earth. To suggest that humans could reproduce the image of God in other creatures assumes the delegation or extension of that vice regency to others who God has not determined. In this instance, transhumanism’s tendency toward self-determination or “self-transformation” ends up revising God’s order.

Two Errors about Technology

The question with any technology is not whether Christians use it. The question is what the technology uses its users to become. Technology shapes its users below the level of conscious choice. This is not a moral judgment. It is a description of how tools work. A hammer shapes the hand that holds it. A phone shapes the attention that holds it. A writing system shapes the mind that learns to think through it. Every tool enables certain ways of being in the world and closes off others. That is what it means for a technology to extend human capability. Extension is also narrowing. The capacity to move faster by car is also the capacity not to know one's neighbors on foot. The capacity to speak across continents by phone is also the capacity not to sit in silence with the people in the room.

When the technology is digital, the narrowing works faster and at a scale the user rarely notices. Platforms do not neutrally deliver content. They reward certain patterns of attention, emotion, and self-presentation, and they penalize others. The reward structure shapes the user even when the user believes they are merely consuming. A Christian who spends hours each day in the attention economy is being formed by the attention economy, whether or not they consent to that formation. The formation happens below the level of stated belief.

This is where techno-apocalypticism and transhumanism both fail diagnostically. Techno-apocalypticism watches for the technology that signals the end. Transhumanism waits for the technology that delivers salvation. Both are future-oriented postures toward technologies that are already doing formational work in the present. The Christian is already being shaped. The only question is by what.

Discipleship is not the opposite of technological engagement. It is the deliberate counter-formation that refuses to let technology's shaping go unexamined. Christians do not resist the three pressures by avoiding the tools through which those pressures now operate. They resist by ordering their lives around the practices that form them in Christ. Communal worship, the reading of Scripture, prayer, the sharing of meals, the confession of sin, the service of neighbors: these are not nostalgic add-ons to a digital life. They are the constraint system Christ has given his church. When those practices are displaced by the rhythms of the feed, the church is being formed by something else, whether or not it notices.

Conclusion

Techno-apocalypticism and transhumanism make opposite mistakes about the same thing. One treats technology as the coming catastrophe, the other as the coming salvation. Both load technology with theological weight it cannot bear. Both relieve Christians of the present work of discipleship by displacing it into a future the technology is supposed to determine.

Like the church in Philadelphia, we may be known as those with "little power" who "have kept my word and have not denied my name" (Rev 3:8). That is not an achievement of technological discernment. It is the slow work of discipleship under the authority of Christ.