Days ago. (June 2026) Elon Musk touched trillionaire status, the first one ever to do so. This inspired on social media the observation (even if with shakey math) that if he gave a billion to every person alive, he would still be a billionaire. I couldn’t believe that he was so selfish so as not to do that—I could use a billion.
Others wished him well. Here he is creating the technological companies that will save the planet, if anything can save it. Humanists one and all once hailed him as a hero, even a savior. Then he began to weigh in on politics contrary to what many expected, so it became necessary to recast him as the Devil.
I’ve heard him likened to Nimrod, which I don’t think is fair. Nimrod was mean. Elon is nice—unless you work for him and don’t put out 200%. In that case, he will fire you in a heartbeat. But he won’t push you off the mountain like Nimrod did. I was explicit with my cover designer that the depicted Tower of Babel for ‘In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction’ feature a small figure pushing another off the tower to his death in the exact place that the ‘My Book of Bible Stories’ picture about Nimrod (Genesis chapter 11) does the same.
Moreover, Nimrod is described as “a mighty hunter in opposition to Jehovah.” Musk is not that. He said nice things about our Lord and the Bible when he was interviewed by the Babylon Bee host who asked him to do [From: ‘In the Last of the Last Days’]: a “‘quick solid and accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior . . . Personal Lord and Savior. It’s a quick prayer.’ You have to admire them for it—even as you reflect that absolutely no groundwork has been laid. Just how does the richest man in the world deal with that one? It’s a complete non sequitur from anything they have been talking about in a one-hour interview. . . . Musk is a great guy and all—don’t get me wrong—but he plainly has no background to commit. And he knows it. You can’t just dive into something knowing nothing about it. . . . He pauses. Upon processing the request, he allows how he ‘agree[s] with the principles that Jesus advocated, there’s some great wisdom in the teachings of Jesus, and I agree with those teachings.’ He mentions a few. ‘But hey,’ he adds, ‘if Jesus is saving people, I mean, I won’t stand in his way. Sure, I’ll be saved. Why not?’ Close enough, the host seems to feel. It’s not an out-and-out bullseye, but it satisfied him.”
See? So he’s “not in opposition to Jehovah at all.” Frankly, I’d like to get him on our side. After all, there will be a need to get things up and running quickly in the new system and he might be just the ticket. Yeah. Get him onboard—though I admit, I can’t quite see him sitting quietly as Oscar Oxgoad is stumbling his way through the meeting for field service, let alone taking part in it. It would be like Dwight D. Eisenhower (who was raised a Witness) holding aloft the Watchtower and Awake magazines in front of the White House, their covers emblazoned with ‘Can Politicians Bring Peace?’
Say, you don’t think he got that idea of sleeping on the center factory floor under a tent from Moses doing the same in front of the tabernacle, do you? (If he demands 200%, it is not as though he doesn’t give the same.) Could he be sued for copyright infringement? I mean, Moses did it first.
Nonetheless, he IS running six cutting edge companies, all for the direct benefit of humanity, all of which could be likened to building a tower in the heavens—with some exaggeration, doing what no man has done before, encroaching on the territory of the gods. It IS a lot in that respect like Nimrod building his tower to the heavens.
Watchtower publications seldom name names. Again, with some exaggeration (but not much), Elon Musk will be reduced to “one American businessman,” Donald Trump to “one American politician,” Vladimir Putin to “one Russian politician.” It used to frustrate me until I discerned the reason. It is the play they are watching. You don’t have to know the actors to follow the play. It can even be a distraction if you do. Moreover, naming the actors creates the illusion that taking out a hero or a villain would change the narrative. Instead, another actor who knows all the lines steps into the role and the play goes on.
Of course, another reason they don’t name names is that they don’t know them very well, that they follow names to an astonishingly small degree. Indeed, the one who likened Musk to Nimrod, though very perceptive, is outside the U.S in a developing country, fully engaged in the Christian disciple-making activity there. She will not be one to follow personalities closely.
So the actors are not the ones followed. But man-oh-man! are they ever larger than life today. Both the heroes and the villains (it will ever be in the eye of the beholder who is who) jump off the page today, perhaps in itself a commentary of where we are in the stream of time.
As for trillionaire Musk? A trillion’s small potatoes to him. He just posted: “In the future, a trillion times a trillion dollars will be spent on making antimatter to travel to other star systems.” Yep. big spending ahead, if the future goes his way. You’re not going to the stars on impulse engines, anymore than the forces that enable micro evolution to reach target are going to do the same for macro.
****** The bookstore
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