On 12/14/97, I read a write-up on what has been called the millennial
bug in which many computers have been found to lock up when their clocks
turn over to the year 2000. Besides not being able to distinguish between 2000
or 1900, 1800 etc, some computers have been programed such that
when they see "9999" in the date position, they are to perform some
function completely unrelated to a date.
Now that the governments and industries of the world are finally realizing
what a dilemma this seemingly trivial software and hardware problem actually
presents for their integrated computer networks, it is too late for them to
make sufficient remedy in time for the year 2,000 and even for several years
beyond. There are not enough computer programers, not enough resources to
replace the affected hardware and software.
People have procrastinated acting on this problem, supposed that the best
minds of the world could come up with a simple solution in time (no pun
intended). The question is not whether or not this will present a global
crisis, but just how severe that crisis will be. Even small segments being
shut down can cripple the entire economy. What will happen when major blocks
of the global network experience failures?
After reading this well-documented article, "Computer Crashes May
Cause Chaos," by David M. Price (Vision #26, Oct. 1997), I
decided to pull out my Old Testament
Hebrew and New Testament Greek
lexicons to read the entries for word # 2000 in Hebrew and Greek. What
parallels might they have in relation to this particular phenomenon?