Christ The Terminator: Half Man Half Machine
“I’ll Be Back”
By Author Eli Kittim
End-Time Visions of the Messiah’s Robotic Enhancements
What if Jesus paid a steeper price for our salvation? What if Christ is “revealed at the final point of time” (1 Pet. 1.20 NJB)? What if his sacrifice “in the end of the world” (Heb. 9.26b KJV) is more costly than previously assumed?
In his vision, the prophet Ezekiel saw certain heavenly creatures who “were of human form” (1.5 NRSV). Notice what he says about their legs (1.7):
Their legs were straight, and the soles of
their feet were like the sole of a calf's foot;
and they sparkled like burnished bronze.
As you read further, you will come to realize that this imagery runs throughout the entire Bible. Remarkably, Ezekiel’s description sounds very much like modern bionic prosthetics, which redefine and enhance human amputees. Let’s not forget that the heavenly figures whom Ezekiel had seen were supposedly human. Two other interesting clues were that “their legs were straight” (unlike human legs that bend) and that “their feet were like . . . burnished [Hb. קָלָֽל׃ qalal] bronze [Hb. נְחֹ֥שֶׁת nechosheth].” This is a running theme throughout the Bible whose imagery is associated with the end-time Messiah! Similarly, in Revelation 1.13-15, John describes his vision of Christ as follows:
I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with
a long robe and with a golden sash across
his chest. His head and his hair were white
as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were
like a flame of fire, his feet were like
burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace,
and his voice was like the sound of many
waters.
Notice the imagery pertaining to Christ’s “feet [which] were like burnished bronze [Gk. χαλκολιβάνῳ].” By comparison, in Daniel 10.1 we are told that “In the third year of King Cyrus of Persia a word was revealed to Daniel.” Remember that, in the Bible, Cyrus represents the Messiah (see Isa. 45.1). Daniel sees a vision of the end times, described by a glorious man who looks awfully similar to John’s “Son of Man” (Dan. 10.5-6):
I looked up and saw a man clothed in linen,
with a belt of gold from Uphaz around his
waist. His body was like beryl, his face like
lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his
arms and legs like the gleam of burnished
bronze, and the sound of his words like the
roar of a multitude.
Daniel gives us additional information by saying that “his arms and legs [were] like the gleam of burnished [Hb. קָלָ֑ל qalal] bronze [Hb. נְחֹ֣שֶׁת nechosheth].” In other words, it wasn’t just his legs, but his arms as well were seemingly made of burnished bronze! It sounds like a combat soldier who had lost all his limbs and was wearing a metallic or robotic prosthesis. And Daniel employs the exact same Hebrew words for “burnished bronze” that are used in Ezekiel’s vision. Furthermore, in Revelation 2.18, Christ himself identifies with this biblical image, demonstrating categorically and unequivocally that it refers to him and him alone. Christ says:
And to the angel of the church in Thyatira
write: These are the words of the Son of
God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and
whose feet are like burnished bronze.
Chalkolibanon: The Messiah’s Feet Were Like Burnished Bronze
καὶ οἱ πόδες αὐτοῦ ὅμοιοι χαλκολιβάνῳ
https://biblehub.com/greek/5474.htm
Strong's Greek: 5474. χαλκολίβανον (chalkolibanon) -- chalcolibanus (fine copper, bronze or brass)
The Greek word chalkolibanon is translated as “burnished bronze” and refers to “a fine metal,” such as “fine copper, bronze or brass,” similar to what the Hebrew term for bronze (i.e. nechosheth) represents.
https://biblehub.com/hebrew/5178.htm
Strong's Hebrew: 5178. נְחֹ֫שֶׁת (nechosheth) -- copper, bronze
These images that are therefore uniquely related to Jesus strongly suggest that they’re part of his human makeup and physical appearance. Why else would the Bible contain these metallic images? All these prophets from both the Old and New Testament seem to suggest that the Messiah’s “sacrifice” entails the loss of his limbs, which are replaced by modern metallic substitutes, turning him into a kind of Cyborg. An article from the Australian Academy of Science expounds on this type of modern technology:
What’s different about the new generation
of prosthetic limbs is their union with bionic
technology, and the way they combine
fields of study as diverse as electronics,
biotechnology, hydraulics, computing,
medicine, nanotechnology and prosthetics.
Technically, the field is known as
biomechatronics, an applied
interdisciplinary science that works to
integrate mechanical elements and devices
with biological organisms such as human
muscles, bones, and the nervous systems.
https://www.science.org.au/curious/people-medicine/bionic-limbs
Advances in human bionics may require us to rethink our concepts of what it is to be human.
Incidentally, a wide variety of materials are used to create artificial limbs, including aluminium bronze and titanium bronze alloys, which are shiny metals. Copper, iron, silver, and gold have also been used in the past. Surprisingly, these are the exact metallic descriptions that we find in the aforesaid passages of the Bible (cf. Dan. 2.32-33: “head of . . . gold . . . arms of silver . . . thighs of bronze. . . legs of iron . . . feet partly of iron and partly of clay [human]”).
Robotics for Human Augmentation in the Visions of Daniel
Dual fulfillment is an important principle of Biblical interpretation. It’s associated with the concept of messianic typology in the Hebrew Bible. It refers to the notion that there are certain prophecies in the Bible that may have both an immediate and a long-term fulfilment. The gigantic statue of a man made of four metals, in the Book of Daniel, is such a prophecy, that might be a clue to the endtimes Christ. It has a short-term fulfillment in terms of the succeeding world-empires that will arise and rule on earth. However, Daniel 2.44 suggests that the prophecy also refers to the end of days (a long-term fulfillment) when God will set up his kingdom once for all! Daniel 2.31-33 (NRSV) explains Nebuchadnezzar’s dream as follows:
You were looking, O king, and lo! there was
a great statue. This statue was huge, its
brilliance extraordinary; it was standing
before you, and its appearance was
frightening. The head of that statue was of
fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its
middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron,
its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.
Let’s not forget that Daniel addresses the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar as if he’s the the king of kings, the Messiah (2.37-38):
You, O king, the king of kings—to whom the
God of heaven has given the kingdom, the
power, the might, and the glory, into whose
hand he has given human beings, wherever
they live, the wild animals of the field, and
the birds of the air, and whom he has
established as ruler over them all—you are
the head of gold.
There are messianic overtones, here, that go far beyond the historical context of the passage and suggest a future fulfillment. The dream features a towering statue of a man (Daniel 2.32-33):
The head of that statue was of fine gold, its
chest and arms of silver, its middle and
thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet
partly of iron and partly of clay.
Once again, we get the feeling this is more of a machine than a man. Notice that the legs were made of iron and bronze. What if Daniel 4.13-15 represents God’s judgment on the Messiah? (cf. 2 Cor. 5.21; Gal. 3.13):
I continued looking, in the visions of my
head as I lay in bed, and there was a holy
watcher, coming down from heaven. He
cried aloud and said: ‘Cut down the tree
and chop off its branches, strip off its
foliage and scatter its fruit. Let the animals
flee from beneath it and the birds from its
branches. But leave its stump and roots in
the ground, with a band of iron and bronze,
in the tender grass of the field. Let him be
bathed with the dew of heaven, and let his
lot be with the animals of the field in the
grass of the earth.’
Conclusion
There’s a running narrative throughout the Old and New Testaments that includes thematic parallels and verbal agreements between the visions of various prophets. The terminology has not only been surprisingly consistent from prophet to prophet, but its meaning has also been uniform from one language to another. For example, both Ezekiel and Daniel use identical Hebrew terms to describe what appears to be a Messianic figure, whose feet were “like burnished [Hb. קָלָֽל׃ qalal] bronze [Hb. נְחֹ֥שֶׁת nechosheth]” (Ezek. 1.7; cf. Dan. 10.6)! Astoundingly, the exact same meaning (i.e. χαλκολίβανον; burnished bronze) as applied to the Hebrew Old Testament is employed in the Greek New Testament (Rev. 1.15; 2.18) to convey a similar idea. This suggests that the Biblical books are inspired and in dialogue with one another.
Accordingly, the arms and legs of the purported Messiah do not appear to be human. Rather, they appear to be robotic metals for human augmentation, what we today would call modern bionic prosthetics in redefining and enhancing human amputees. The consistent thematic material (i.e. the canonical context) in the visions of the prophets, especially those of Daniel, is exegetically significant and cannot be simply explained away. What if Daniel 4.14 represents God’s judgment on the Messiah to cut off “his arms and legs”? (cf. Dan. 10.6):
Cut down the tree
and chop off its branches.
Given that the “tree image” in Dan. 4.10-12 is of paramount importance and immersed in messianic metaphors (cf. Jn 15.5; Rev. 22.2), it could certainly represent the Anointed one. All these prophets from both the Old and New Testament seem to suggest that the Messiah’s “sacrifice” entails the loss of his limbs, which are replaced by modern metallic substitutes, turning him into a kind of Cyborg or Bionic Man! The same shiny metals that are referenced in the Bible are the exact same alloys used in prosthetic limbs and modern robotics for human augmentation (i.e. human-enhancement technologies). A close reading of these end-time visions suggests that the Son of Man is part man part machine. This is called “transhumanism,” the merger of humanity with artificial intelligence. This would imply that Christ’s suffering on Judgment day is far more intense than previously thought, which also reflects the profound depth of his love for us!