Last night, watched an episode of Ancient Inventions on the History channel. It described all the fancy tricks ancient Roman/Greek/Egyptian cults used to attract worshippers. There were doors that opened and closed by themselves (steam powered doors), statues that 'talked' using tubes built into the statues, water into wine tricks, statues that moved mysteriously by their own power (magnetism), people given (unknowningly) certain drugs to mimick symptoms of illness and they go to the temple to get 'cured'. There were thunder machines and even early forms of robotics and early froms of computer programming, not to mentions statues that wept. I wonder if John in Revelation was not only referring to our time, but the time he lived in, warning early Christians againist being decieved by temple tricks. Many of the most sophiscated can be attributed to Heron of Alexandria. http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/HeronAlexandria2.htm If only the ancient world had an abolitionist movement againist slavery, Heron could've single handedly started an industrial revolution back then! Brilliant guy no doubt. I search the Bible for mentions of some these tricks, and the most obivous finds are in the Old Testament, where the Egyptians 'did the same with their secret arts' only to out done when GOD does the real thing. I wonder if the constant referrence to idols being just wood, stone and metal is a way of telling ordinary people that whatever they see is mere trickery. The other possible referrences to these ancient fake mircacles may be found in Revelation, although warning about our time and our future, Revelation could have been warning early Christians to not be taken in by ever more elaborate temple 'shows' like talking statues, fake thunder storms, fake healings, and who knows what other more elaborate inventions that they had in their own time lost to us due to the burning of the Libary of Alexandria. What do you think? No doubt the temple trickery of modern times will make the past tricks child's play.