The brave new world of information technology.

Iris scanning technology is apparently nearing a tipping point. Soon it will be possible to automatically monitor thousands of people moving through public places in order to pick out individuals for, shall we say, special consideration.

Jeff Carter, chief business development officer at one of the world’s leaders in the technology, Global Rainmakers, Inc. (GRI), believes the day is near when sensors “the size of a dime in the ceiling” will be able to scan (or “acquire” in the chilling lexicon of his industry) the eyes of hundreds of people at a time as they move through a room. In fact, Carter believe this will be possible on “probably thousands [of people at a time] as computer power continues to increase.” What happens after that technology is perfected?

According to Carter, “Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected [to the iris system] within the next 10 years.”

If this sounds like just another case of media alarmism, consider: Carter’s company already makes a machine which can scan the irises of up to 50 people per minute . . . in motion. GRI also sells a smaller model which can be retrofitted to work with existing card actuated security systems, and scans up to 20 people per minute while they move at one meter per second.

The technology is available right now. And governments have big plans for it.

According to one report, the Mexican city of Leon plans to install “miles of fiber optic cable, creating a central database that will contain of all convicted criminals (as well as any good citizens who wish to ‘opt in’), and a network of iris scanners.” Leon’s population is about 1,000,000.

India is in the midst of a similar program which dwarfs the Mexican effort. They are already scanning their citizen’s eyes, face and hands, and intend to add 600 million people to their database in the next four years, all of whom the government will be able to identify with iris scans. India has, of course, the second largest population on earth, at about 1,184,600,000 people. At this rate, they should be able to put all those people in their database by 2020.

When combined with existing biometric technology capable of recording palm and fingerprints and matching the scans with “databases of up to tens of millions of records,” this technology sounds eerily like the prophecy in Revelation 13:16-17:

“He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.”

For nearly 2,000 years skeptics pointed to these words as proof that John’s Revelation on Patmos was merely a hallucinogenic dream. It was simply inconceivable that everyone on earth could be identified this way.

Welcome to the inconceivable.

Similarly, they said the many Biblical prophecies that Israel would be restored as an independent Jewish nation could never happen, but of course nearly 2,000 years after Rome destroyed it, Israel came back. And they said it would never be possible for the entire earth to see a single event simultaneously, such as the martyrdom of the two “witnesses” in Revelation 11, where it says “men from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies.” Yet because of television, estimates of the number of people around the world who simultaneously observed the opening of the last Olympic games are in the billions.

There are several ways to think about this coming universal invasion of our privacy via iris scanning technology. For many people the ramifications range from bad to catastrophic. But for a Christian it is a sign of hope, because “such things must happen” before the end, when Jesus comes. They are yet another recent proof that the glorious day is approaching when . . .

The wolf will live with the lamb,

the leopard will lie down with the goat,

the calf and the lion and the yearling together;

and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear,

their young will lie down together,

and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

The infant will play near the hole of the cobra,

and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest.

They will neither harm nor destroy

on all my holy mountain,

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.

(Isaiah 11:6-9)