This excerpt from the Book of Revelations, with its destructive monster being given complete control over mankind is frighteningly appropriate today …

Then the Dragon encouraged the Creature to speak great blasphemies against the Lord; and gave him authority to control the earth for forty-two months. All that time he blasphemed God’s Name and his temple and all those living in heaven. The Dragon gave him power to fight against God’s people and to overcome them, and to rule over all nations and language groups throughout the world. And all mankind—whose names were not written down before the founding of the world in the slain Lamb’s Book of Life—worshiped the evil Creature.

Revelation 13.5-8