Earlier this month, the following essay was given as a keynote address at Theology in the Raw’s Exiles in Babylon Conference. If you’re interested in hearing the entirety of my comments, and the subsequent dialogue between myself, Preston Sprinkle, and Jay Kim, please visit the conference website.
Today, I want to offer an apocalyptic reading of our current media environment. I don’t have space to explore how one should interpret and apply apocalyptic literature (I’ve done so here and here) other than to say this: Revelation was written for a first-century audience and applied to their concerns. It does not predict distant future events (with a few exceptions), but instead unveils the normal pattern of life between the time of Christ’s ascension and return. My goal is to pull back the curtain on our modern-day digital Babylon, false prophet, and beast and show how an apocalyptic imagination might interpret our moment.
With that said, we need to talk about Taylor and Tiberius. The pop star and the emperor. The Swift and the Caesar. Let’s start at the end of the story: when Taylor Swift endorsed Donald Trump.
Just in case you missed it, she wasn’t alone. Even Swifties joined the cause.
Of course, none of these images are real. They’re AI-generated. And it’s not at all clear whether the former president knew this was the case when he posted. But it is clear that the original deepfakes, especially of “Swifties for Trump,” duped hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter.
The Reality-Distortion Machine
We live in a reality-distortion machine. Fake videos of drunk Nancy Pelosi. Snoop Dogg reading Tarot cards. And my personal favorite: a dripped-out pope wearing a puffer coat—an idea the image’s progenitor imagined on shrooms.
Lest we blame AI or the right, human-generated reality distortion thrives online on both sides of the aisle. The New York Times recently reported that the Harris campaign launched a disinformation campaign claiming former President Trump lost his whereabouts. Billionaire democratic fundraiser Reid Hoffman started conspiracies about Trump staging his own assassination. MSNBC host Joy Reid suggested there was a coverup. Myriad celebrities and leftwing journalists spread false rumors about Project 2025.
None of this is new. According to the MIT Technology Review, 19 of the top 20 Christian Facebook pages in 2019 were run by foreign troll farms that used the pages to spread disinformation to destabilize the 2020 elections. Christians aren’t alone: the Black community and the Native American community were also targeted on Meta platforms. The false stories included claims that ISIS caused a chemical explosion in Louisiana, there was a deadly phosphorous leak in Ohio, Ukrainian fighter jets shot down a commercial flight, and Alaskans were petitioning to secede from the union. Each of these stories went viral.
But it’s not just AI, drug addicts, presidential candidates, and foreign governments distorting reality online. Deceptive rumors bubble up from everyday accounts: like conservatives claiming Cornel West had endorsed Trump and progressives claiming that Matt Walsh admitted experiencing pedophilic desires.
You might laugh at the inane insanity of it all, but there are real-world consequences. Just ask the people living in Springfield, Ohio. According to The Wall Street Journal, Neo-Nazis began online rumors about Haitians eating pets. These rumors eventually made their way into a presidential debate, despite there being no evidence of petniverous illegal migrants. But followers of the reality distortion machine don’t care: there were 36 bomb threats within a week of the debate.
J.D. Vance told CNN that no one paid attention to migrant problems until their campaign started talking about cat memes. With astounding honesty, he admitted, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” He should be grateful that he’s running in a media ecosystem because it’s perfectly designed for perfectly dishonest politicians like him.
I could add countless examples, but I think I’ve already achieved my goal: to undermine your sense of reality online and prove that agents of unreality can be found in every party and class. They range from charlatans to presidential candidates, from dudes tripping on shrooms to serious journalists. But more importantly, I want you to see how this is more than politics and technology: this is a spiritual battle.
The False Prophet
In Revelation 13, readers encounter three monstrosities. First, a dragon, who summons a second beast from the water to rule as a tyrant over the people. The third beast, which John later identifies as the “false prophet,” rises to speak on behalf of the beast and the dragon. He is a master of deception, misinformation, and disinformation. The spiritual powers of darkness grant him the remarkable ability to generate false gods—images that can speak.
Revelation 13:11 Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. 12 It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. 13 And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. 14 Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. 15 The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. 16 It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, 17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.
You don’t need to squint to see how the spiritual power of the false prophet, though it takes many shapes, is at work online. I’m not saying there are demons in the AI, but I am saying that the algorithmic, deceptive, image-based universe generated by recommender algorithms (i.e., your news feeds on social media) is perhaps the most powerful magic ever wielded by the false prophet.
As important as all this is, there are two more critical observations I must make. First, the false prophet is a distraction. He’s the mouthpiece of the “first beast,” and in many ways, distracts the world from that beast’s existence. Second, the false prophet serves the first beast by applying tyrannical economic powers. John writes, “They could not buy or sell unless they had the mark.”
Something remarkably similar is happening in our current moment. The reality distortion machine (the false prophet) is the flashy object Big Tech lets us see. Most of us already knew something about misinformation/disinformation online. What Big Tech would prefer us to miss is the first beast. The economic beast dominating reality. While we’re fixated on the problems of conspiracies and mainstream media, Big Tech pulls a trick in the hand we’re not watching. Here’s the trick: they’re operating the single-largest monopoly in human history. A monopoly designed to coerce and control our entire population.
The Prostitute Babylon, the Beast, and the Monopolists
To tell the story of monopolies, we must turn to the beginning of that story: to the age of Tiberius Caesar, an age long before Taylor Swift. Tiberius is perhaps best known for reigning during the life of Jesus, but today we will remember him for something different: his implementation of a historically novel idea—the monopoly.
Tiberius was the first to understand what later tyrants would take for granted: if you granted individuals monopolies on certain goods (especially necessary goods!), then those individuals would become wealthy and powerful thanks to your benefaction. The monopolists would thereby become dependent on the emperor, who could revoke said monopolies at will. Thus, Tiberius began to arbitrarily gift monopolies to nobles and senators in such areas as shipping, salt, marble, cereal crops, and public construction—all in order to consolidate power.
So it should surprise no one to discover that monopolies are, at their core, economic systems of domination and discrimination designed to consolidate power into the hands of the few so they can control the hands of the many. In fact, monopolies work precisely by dominating through discrimination. A monopolist has the right to arbitrarily set prices and give or withhold goods. How he discriminates—be it religious, ethnic, economic, or social—is up to the individual. Thus, those dependent on the monopolists (ordinary people like you and me) have no choice but to dance to their tune lest they withhold what we need.
In Revelation 17, we meet the whore of Babylon, who rides on a beast with seven heads. John later clarifies in verse nine that “The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits.” His first-century audience could not miss the allusion to the goddess Roma. She represented Rome itself and was often depicted sitting on the seven hills of Rome. A common coin included just such a depiction:
Thus, it becomes clear that the beast and the prostitute called Babylon are an apocalyptic, spiritual description of the entire Roman system of tyranny, domination, and coercion. In Revelation 18, the Babylon-Beast falls and the world mourns it. Their lament reveals what characterized the Beast's beastility. While one might expect descriptions of Rome’s military might, the leitmotif of Revelation 18 is economic oppression. The word “luxury” is repeated three times. The Babylon-Beast’s former lovers miss her wealth and the promise of wealth more than anything. In verses 11 to 13, they recall all the goods they made a profit on, many of which are the goods Caesar gifted to merchants as monopolies. In other words, the apocalyptic imagination also understands monopolies as spiritual tools of tyranny. They are the evil, discriminatory means by which the powers of darkness dominate humanity.
The End of Monopolies?
It took over 16 centuries for the power of monopolists to be challenged and dismantled. Seventeenth-century British parliamentarians were the first to remove the power of monopolies from a monarch. Shortly after, they removed his head. Early Americans followed in their stead, erecting some of the most robust anti-trust legal structures in human history. Why? Because they valued freedom and understood what monopolies are: imperial systems of control and domination.
But in the 1980s, everything began to change in America. The federal government began to deconstruct those legal structures, framing monopolies not as anti-freedom but as anti-consumer. Thus, as long as a monopoly wasn’t anti-consumer, it was no problem. We lost our vision of monopolists as dominators. Instead, we began to see them as our greatest entrepreneurs.
This movement was heavily influenced by the work of Robert Bork, who defended monopolies even though he knew they were systems of control and discrimination. He wrote in his book The Antitrust Paradox, “The better guess, it seems to me, is that antitrust policy would do well to ignore price discrimination.” He understood that monopolies are arbitrary, discriminatory systems of control. And discrimination is precisely what he defended in order to maximize shareholder value.
Thanks to his work and his acolytes, our robust protections against monopolists were dismantled, and we were unwittingly sold into the hands of individuals with so much power to control reality that Tiberius himself wouldn’t believe it.
How Modern-Day Monopolists Dominate Reality
The Babylon-Beast is alive and well. The powers of darkness now exert themselves through communication, monopoly-seeking not merely to submerge us in unreality but also to control reality itself. The Babylon-Beast is the reality-domination machine behind the reality distortion machine.
The Babylon-Beast is Big Tech. It resides in the headquarters of Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon. Together, they operate different cogs in the most invisible, draconian monopolistic system of domination in human history.
Simply reflect on your own life: just 30 years ago, not one of these corporations mediated any significant portion of your life. Now they mediate how you communicate with family, friends, and coworkers. They mediate how you get the news. They tell you how to drive from place to place. They recommend what church you should visit. They determine which friends' lives you will see online and which friends' lives you will not. They service you the goods you buy. The entertainment you watch. When you type “Plumbers in Denver Colorado” into Google, Google chooses which plumbers win and which plumbers lose. The machine mediates your documents and spreadsheets. It guides your business partnerships. It decides what health research and health decisions you will see and make. Just ask those who wrote the Great Barrington Declaration.
And lest you think your news media consumption somehow bypasses its systems because you read only the finest papers, remember that Google paid The New York Times $100 million to make the NYT its favored news source. You’d think it would be the other way around! Until you realize that the Times and many other media organizations have all been paid off by Google not to join journalists fighting against its monopoly on search and online advertisement. The Times knows they’re in Google’s pocket and can either enjoy its benefactions or perish. The Times is no different than the first-century merchant-lovers of the Babylon-Beast. Virtually every major media organization is compromised, because every media organization needs the favor of Big Tech (ads, search, news feeds) to survive.
Media is hardly alone. Big Tech can tyrannically deploy its arbitrary, discriminatory power over almost every business. It’s sunk its teeth into the world of education through its devices and platforms. It owns government officials through massive lobbies. Together, they can manipulate and control not only the people running our businesses and institutions but also the people serviced by them. In other words, you and me.
Indeed, it knows you better than you do. It tracks your every movement. Where you walk. Where you drive. Your every word online. It tracks your texts. Your emails. Your purchases. Your searches. It tracks your relational networks. It knows who you’re married to. Who you work with. It knows whether you’re having an affair or you’re faithful. It knows all your addictions—the greatest of which might be the reality distortion machine itself.
The monopolists know that addicts are the best customers. So they hire the best behavioral psychologists in the world to design their devices and platforms such that we cannot stop using them. Their algorithms are not designed not to give you truth, but to give you whatever lies and outrage you need to stay on-platform all the time so that the monopolists can sell you more stuff.
You see, you are not the customer of Big Tech. You are the product. You aren’t free to think on its platforms. You’re a precious resource mined for dollars. It sells you and your information and your wallet to its favored sons. In its hands, you become an economic puppet. Dominated and addicted and oblivious. As Barry C. Lynn, the director of the Open Markets Institute, wrote for Harper’s Magazine,
Most Americans today fear the power of the tech monopolies. … Unfortunately, it’s likely that what you’ve learned understates the magnitude of the crisis. The issue is not mainly that these corporations surveil you, not mainly that they intrude on your privacy. Not mainly even that they wield great political power. Rather, it is these corporations’ unique capacities to manipulate every person and company that depends on them, individually.
We all would like to think that we’re immune to the machinations of Big Tech, but how can we rationally think that’s the case? They have monopolies over how we communicate, collect information, transfer news, and make economic choices. If they control the means and modes of our speech—the very means by which we think—how can we rationally believe that we’re above their coercive power? The greatest magic trick of our modern-day Babylon-Beast isn’t that it can control us. It’s that we can’t see it.
Reality Domination and Revelation 18-19
And so, what does all this mean for our view of reality? What does it mean for human dignity? For human freedom from tyranny? The technological aspect of this particular conflict often causes us to seek out technological solutions. We turn to managerial strategies and techniques, hoping that if we set our phones on “do not disturb,” delete a social media platform or two, and take a weekly digital sabbath, then we’ll survive the shelling.
These are all important things, and they do help. But the reason why we need an apocalyptic interpretation of modern media is that the problem and the solution run deeper than technology and technique. If you pull back the veil, there is a Spiritual World War waging around us. The False Prophet spews his poisonous deception, distracts us from the beast, and forces us into economic cooperation. The Babylon-Beast behind the prophet dominates us by discriminatory, monopolistic means. It makes a few wealthy and leaves the rest of us bereft of our human dignity and volition.
The only answer to the problem is spiritual. Revelation 19 follows Revelation 18. In it, Jesus arrives to a battle pre-bloodied. His robe is covered in his own blood. This is because he conquers his enemies not by violence and coercion but by his word of truth and the power of his sacrifice. As the chapter comes to a close, the Babylon-Beast and the False Prophet appear for the last time in Revelation:
Revelation 19:20 But the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed the signs on its behalf. With these signs he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped its image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur.
Only Jesus has the power to defeat our enemies. He conquers them by walking the path of the cross. There is no technique or technology. Just a way of life. Indeed, where Christ goes in Revelation, his people, the martyrs, are always with him—at times almost interchangeable for him. And perhaps that’s the spiritual lesson we need: God’s answer to the digital false prophet and the digital Babylon-Beast is an embodied community actively seeking to remove itself from life online. An embodied community enraptured by doxology. By love. By worship. Perhaps the answer is found when we sing alongside the saints encircling the corpse of Babylon, heeding John’s command,
Rev. 18:20 Rejoice over her, you heavens!
Rejoice, you people of God!
Rejoice, apostles and prophets!
For God has judged her
with the judgment she imposed on you.
Rejoice. Jesus has triumphed. Jesus is triumphing. Jesus will triumph once for all.
If you want to hear a dialogue between myself, Preston Sprinkle, and Jay Kim on this topic at the recent Exiles in Babylon conference, please visit the conference website.
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