Total surveillance - All The Good Seed Daily Devotionals for 2025

He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Revelation 13:16–17

Total surveillance
Government surveillance in the Western world has increased significantly in the course of the war on terror. With the help of today’s technology, it is becoming increasingly easy to collect and evaluate digital traces that people leave behind: camera images are scanned, cell phones are located, messages on the Internet are decoded, and ID cards are equipped with chips that can be read. In view of this development, one journalist formulated the question: “What would happen tomorrow if an authoritarian or even dictatorial regime came to power?”

The total surveillance that our verse of the day describes is quite conceivable technologically from today’s perspective. And it will come! The book of Revelation reliably informs us that in the near future a dictator will control all of humanity – a frightening prospect!

But whoever belongs to Jesus Christ does not have to be afraid of this, for he is heading for a glorious future with God in heaven. This hope of believers is based on the words of the Lord Jesus: “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:1–3).

Today’s reading: 1 Samuel 21:1-16 · Philippians 1:1-11