Giants have always fascinated me. That’s probably why I reacted so quickly when Laura, my administrative assistant, asked me to go online and look up “The Giant.”
“Did you say ‘Giant’?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Go to the website thegiantcompany.ie. You’ve got to see this.”
“Awaken the Giant in You,” the website declares. The promotional material from the Ireland-based Giant Company calls its creation “the world’s tallest moving statue”—an ambitious cultural and commercial project that combines art, amusement, virtual-reality robotics, and artificial intelligence. Each Giant will stand more than 10 stories high. But there’s more.
These giants are programmable and capable of speaking, singing, and moving their heads and arms. They also shape-shift, assuming the forms of people. For example, in an instant, a Giant can look like Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jordan, or Superman. It can even produce a Giant version of you! The ultimate selfie. Can you say, “Revelation 13:14–15”? The technology has arrived.
The Giant Company hopes to install 21 of these statues (or “billboards,” as the company claims they can be used), at a cost of $18 million to $24 million each, in 21 cities around the globe. It estimates they will attract 500,000 visitors a year and generate millions of dollars.
Not only will they be huge and able to speak and move, but these Giants also will be able to communicate with one another: “While every Giant is bespoke for its city and country, each is also a member of a family that can digitally communicate with other Giants around the world,” says the website.
This behemoth is the brainchild of entrepreneur Paddy Dunning, who envisions his Giants leading the charge “on promoting sustainable living and climate action,” as well as “other philanthropic endeavors.”
Dunning’s vision for The Giant will undoubtedly thrill many; but frankly, it gives me the creeps. His hope The Giant will become “part of a movement for change” and “save the planet” stems from the belief that man is innately capable of doing so. This is humanism. It attaches prime importance to human beings and sees technology as mankind’s salvation.
Today’s unregenerate masses are no different than they were thousands of years ago, when they tried to construct a tower called Babel (Gen. 11). In defiance of God, they worked to build the biggest, tallest ziggurat in an attempt to reach the heavens. Inherent in that build was humanism. It elevates people and denigrates God.
To those of us who know Scripture, The Giant probably conjures up visions of a future “giant,” one the Antichrist will authorize when he rules the world during the seven-year Tribulation:
And he [the False Prophet] deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast[Antichrist], telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast. . . . He [the False Prophet] was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed (Rev. 13:14–15).
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