(Notes from a paper presented to the International Order of St. Luke, Melbourne October 1, 2002.)

by Rowland Croucher

Text: Daniel 12:1-4 (NRSV)

These verses describe one of the greatest breakthroughs in religious thought in pre-Christian times. It’s a passage about two periods of history – the times of Antiochus Epiphanes, and also the end of the world as we know it.

The Book of Daniel is an ‘apocalyptic’ book. Its message: The God of Israel is in complete control of history.

So in this chaotic world, which may soon come to an end (probably not with a whimper, but with a bang) what suggestions does our text have for us? Let me suggest three:

1. Let us turn knowledge into wisdom
2. Let us turn garbage into compost
3. Let us turn technology into opportunity.

INTRODUCTION

A question in John Mark Ministries’ seminar on creativity asks: ‘If you were to reach more people in the world via one communications medium, which would you use?’ (One answer: Coca Cola containers – they’re in more places than radio!). What would your message say? (Mine: ‘If you have God and everything else, you have no more than having God only; if you have everything else and not God you have nothing!’ Medieval mystic).

As a teenager, having just made a ‘decision for Christ’, I dreamed about reaching millions with the Christian gospel. The motivating text was ‘Preach the word; be instant in season and out of season…’ (2 Timothy 4:2 KJV).

So I put gospel tracts into letterboxes and left them in library books. Later I wrote a large slogan on a storm-water drain near a railway line; ‘witnessed’ on talk-back radio; conducted evangelistic missions in universities and colleges; pastored a church where at least two people were converted every week for nearly nine years (Blackburn Baptist Church in Melbourne)… One of my books GROW! is an attempt to explain the Good News to thoughtful young people and adults.

My ‘evangelistic hero’ was Billy Graham – who’s probably spoken face to face to more people than anyone in history.

Some of this I would not do again, or would do differently. The gospel tracts probably turned a lot of people off; my apologetics was often simplistic or even plain wrong!

But I still have a strong desire to reach those Jesus and Paul called ‘lost’. Now anyone can do it, from a home computer, via the Internet – part of the third great human revolution (after the agricultural and industrial revolutions). Vast amounts of information – to and from everywhere – can now be moved very quickly: faster than mail and cheaper than faxes and long-distance phone calls. And ‘cyberspace’ technology is developing at break-neck speed.

WHAT IS THE INTERNET?

Imagine a huge village square, with several hundred million people milling around. Some are in groups – small-talking, arguing, telling jokes, laughing, buying and selling, hugging, or fighting. Some are deep into one-to-one philosophical – or romantic – conversations. (Others are lurking in the bushes doing just about anything you can imagine – and more). Many groups have a sign indicating they’re a special-interest club: some have a ‘moderator’ who won’t let you join unless you meet their conditions. Around the square people are browsing in shops and libraries, where books and papers on any subject are offered free!

The Internet is the biggest network of information in the history of the world.

(Unaware of it at the time, Nicholas Negroponte got the ideas that led to his eventual everlasting fame as the “Father of the Internet” from an afternoon in late October, 1925, spent touring Ford Motor Co.’s Rouge facility in Michigan. His escort was none other than the “Father of Modern History”, Henry Ford.)

For as little as a few cents an hour, if you have a telephone line and a computer with a modem, you can get onto the ‘Information Superhighway’ from home or office, and ‘talk’ about anything that’s on your mind, or get free information on just about anything.

About nine years ago when I became a ‘Net user I imagined reaching a million people a day. Now that’s quite feasible – probable in fact, these days.

• Current Worldwide Internet Population: somewhere between 445.9 million
  (eMarketer) and 533 million (Computer Industry Almanac). It is widely assumed
  that at least half of the world’s population will have some form of Internet
  access by 2010 and that wireless access will play a growing role.

• The number of e-mails sent around the world will grow from the present
  level of 31 billion a day to 60 billion in just over three years.

• Every Western university and almost all our schools are ‘on-line’.

• Australia (population nearly 20 million) had (March 2002) 5.6 million Internet
  users, 718 ISPs (Jupiter Research).

• 228 million users worldwide access the Internet in English (40.2%) Non-English
  339 million 59.8% (GlobalReach).

• In late 1999 General Electric (U.S.) estimated it saved up to $500 million
  U.S. a year by using Internet and email to save on the costs of postage, telephone
  calls and faxes. Horticultural growers who used to spend up to $60,000 a year
  to send sample trucks around the retail nurseries now display their work still
  in the ground on websites.

• Of course, the Internet is just one of our common recent technologies.
  A lot of communication also takes place via hi-tech devices such as mobile
  phones, handheld computers and pagers. Australians send more than 250 million
  SMS messages each month. Worldwide more than 1 billion SMS messages are sent
  each day. In Britain more than 1 million SMS messages are sent each hour.
  Websites are appearing devoted to SMS poetry, including of course, love poems.
  (Source: The Art of Flirting, Melbourne: Sunday HeraldSun, September 29, 2002,
  p. 11). Negroponte’s idea became tangible in the 1960s. The US Defence Department
  wanted a communications system which could survive a nuclear holocaust. Then
  the academic community used it to transmit and access information. For a while
  it stayed that way – bureaucrats and technocrats and academics swapping ideas
  and software etc. Then, from about 1990, with cheaper computers and improved
  software even the semi-computer-literate have been getting in on the act.

WHAT’S ON THE ‘NET?

Actually there’s no one ‘network’, but lots of them – like Fidonet, Compuserve’s for-profit network, denominational networks (PresbyNet, EpiscoNet, SBCNet) etc. The Internet is really a network of networks.

What’s on them?

Mailing-lists of people who pray for one another; newspapers and journals
(Time Magazine, Christianity Today); email where you can talk one-to-one to
a friend in Zimbabwe or Poland or Antarctica or Iceland (some have met and courted
– and eventually married – via email!).

You can buy stuff with a credit card; browse through university libraries;
converse in ‘real time’ on the IRC (Internet Relay Chat); exchange ideas in
‘fan clubs’; read the latest US Congress legislation or talk to the US president
(at least you could with Bill Clinton); watch movie previews; chat with a monk
at the New Norcia Benedictine Monastery in W.A.; get a free email titled ‘How
to find the most beautiful women in your town!’

Kids can get help with homework (through Geometry’s Online Learning Center
– http://www.geometry.net). Or you can
argue about vintage cars or atheism or movie stars or, well, anything…

Or this: on a Christian newsgroup I read an urgent message from missionaries in Kazakhstan. Their 3-year-old, Nathan, had fallen into scalding water, and was in a critical condition. Local medical facilities could not help. They’d emailed mission HQ in Oregon, and a plea was ‘posted’ around the world asking for prayer, and help to get Nathan air-lifted to a German burns unit. All this within minutes! Amazing! (By the way, if the cross-cultural missionaries you support haven’t got a modem in their computer give them the $ to get one. Many emergencies can now be publicised, prayed for and dealt with almost instantly).

In fact, it’s impossible for a country to be ‘closed’ to the ‘Net. After failing to regulate faxes and TV satellite dishes the Chinese government bowed to the inevitable and opened China to the ‘Net, installing commercial links to the outside world. We learned first-hand about the dramatic 1989 events in Russia via email from private individuals in Moscow.

SO WHERE DO I START?

Well, get a computer – the more powerful the better – with a modem, and hook up to a telephone line. If you want several months or 100 hours of free access to the contact AOL or – in Australia – Ozemail and ask! Consider broadband – it’s faster. Also: join an adult education class in computers. Windows, the Internet, web-page production etc.: these courses are cheap and now offered everywhere.