Earlier this year, pastors across the United States began warning their congregations about a disturbing new problem: videos that looked and sounded like them, but were not.

Artificial intelligence was being used to impersonate religious leaders, putting words in their mouths and exploiting the trust they had spent years building with their congregations. Catholic priest and podcaster Mike Schmitz, who reaches more than a million people on YouTube, was among those targeted. Fake versions of him appeared online delivering messages he had never recorded and directing followers toward fraudulent solicitations.

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For now, many of these impersonations appear designed to make money. But the same technology could be used for something far more dangerous. Foreign adversaries already know that the most effective propaganda often does not look foreign at all. It comes through a person, institution, or community the audience already trusts.

THE SPIRITUAL SICKNESS BEHIND TRUMP’S BLASPHEMOUS AI JESUS POST

That is what made a social media post I recently encountered so striking. It claimed that AI, data centers, the U.N.’s 2030 agenda, and CERN, the European particle physics laboratory, were converging to activate the “Beast System” foretold in Revelation 13.

The post offered no evidence. Instead, it linked several complex and poorly understood subjects to biblical prophecy, transforming technological and political anxiety into a spiritual warning. It then treated the connection itself as proof that prophecy was already unfolding.

Recent events show how easily religious fear can be attached to something people already see online. On July 31, Reuters documented social media claims blaming Muslims for a fire at St. Andrew’s Church in Leicester, England, even though the fire service and parish priest said they believed the blaze was accidental. Then, this week, old footage of a church fire in Quebec resurfaced online with claims that an immigrant had deliberately set it. Local authorities said the fire had actually occurred in 2025 and was caused by lightning.

There is no evidence that those claims or the “Beast System” post are part of foreign influence operations. That is........

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