Revelation {13:16-18} And he* causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number [is] Six hundred threescore [and] six. * the false prophet

Ever go to a retailer, make your purchases, get out the credit card and have it declined when you know it’s completely valid? For some reason a technical glitch or a human error has caused you to be shut out of the system. Have you ever gotten a glaring late payment notice in the mail because somehow the postal service misplaced the remittance you sent a month ago? Or found that your checking account was debited for a large check someone else with a similar name wrote? How about getting a scam phone call supposedly from the IRS that you are getting sued (I’ve been there!). If you have, you know exactly what a sinking feeling it causes.

Usually these problems can be solved by using another credit card, contacting the creditor who sent the late notice, or in the case of the phony IRS call, a simple hanging up of the phone. Still, in cases where identity theft is involved, the process to make things right can be prolonged and torturous.

Let’s now take this to the extreme. Suppose a system is devised that can be used to deliberately cut off your access to your finances unless you “play ball” with whoever is running it, making you totally subject to their whims. Suppose further that it becomes universal leaving you with no recourse. Now imagine completely ruthless individuals controlling it all. According to the Bible there will come a time when this nightmarish scenario becomes a hard and fast reality when the last world ruler and his henchman known as the false prophet establish absolute rule over the planet.

Before we look at the “Antichrist Economy” described above, we should first take a look at the man that will be its enforcer. To do this, we’ll need to back up a little in chapter 13 of Revelation:

Revelation {13:11-15} And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,  And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by [the means of] those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

It would seem reasonable to assume that this second beast (the Antichrist being the first) will come across as a benign and gentle individual, like a lamb, and yet having the speech of a dragon. When we think of a dragon, we often think of the fearsome reptilian beast of mythology breathing fire. But the real dragon is much worse. Maybe we need to take a look at two interesting passages from the Bible which at first glance appear contradictory. We have Revelation 12:9 where we learn “the great dragon” is a real entity:

Revelation {20:1-3} And I* saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.  *John, the apostle and writer of Revelation.

This passage from the apostle Paul shows that the “old serpent” can appear to be something other than what he actually is:

2 Corinthians {11:14} And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of  light.

This particular dragon, the devil, doesn’t necessarily look like a monster at all. Quite the opposite. In fact, if we look just one verse further we see this ability is common to Satan’s minions as well:

2 Corinthians {11:15} Therefore [it is] no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

Therefore since both Antichrist and false prophet are working for the devil, it would make perfect sense that they do not at all appear to be the evil beings that they really are. As for the “speech of a dragon” what’s that all about? An important clue is found in what Jesus told revealed about Satan as he was excoriating the Pharisees for their hypocrisy:

John {8:44} Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of [your] father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

Considering all this, having charismatic individuals who can appear  to be pillars of virtue and yet convincingly lie through their teeth really isn’t a surprise at all because history is full of them. Many have been elected to public office right here in America. That’s unfortunate enough in itself, but I think the most insidious of these are those that have found homes in the organized religion. I can think of any number of “televangelists”  who are pushing a “prosperity gospel” that taps into human greed to support their extravagant lifestyles. Then there are those who are the leaders of any number of modern denominations today preaching such false doctrines as pluralistic salvation claiming Jesus is not the only way to be saved (which refutes John 3:16-18; 14:6, Acts 4:10-12), acceptance of homosexual behavior even within their own clergy, and the portrayal of the Bible in these modern times as outdated and irrelevant. Some have even gone as far as the incorporating paganism into their services. Jesus himself warned his disciples of these deceivers:

Matthew {10:16} Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.

If anything, deceptive clergy have increased to such levels that they are becoming the norms rather than the exceptions populating the pulpits of today’s increasingly liberal churches in North America and Europe. I see this all as a “softening up” process of the masses, getting both the religious and secular worlds ready for the man who will one day rule them both.

The Antichrist and his spokesman will have persuasive abilities beyond anything the Earth has ever seen. Add to this mix the supernatural powers described above in Revelation 13:11-15. This coming False Prophet will even have the ability to call fire from the sky. The significance of this particular ability is that with this counterfeit miracle I believe the False Prophet will delude people into thinking that he is Elijah (Kings 1:5-12), whom the Bible said must precede the Messiah (Malachi 4:5-6; Mark 9:11-13). The “False Christ” therefore will have his own “False Elijah” to help usher him into power – one more huge and successful deception made possible because most of humanity will be totally unaware of the biblical warnings regarding both of these men. Sadly, this is already true, even by those attending church every Sunday.

These two, according to Revelation 13:16-18, will ultimately be in charge of virtually every financial activity on Earth. However, until the advent of modern technology, such absolute economic control over a global scale was simply not possible. That is no longer the case because the resources available today can be used to make it a reality!

Today’s Technology for Tomorrow’s Economy

E-banking. We all are involved in this one way or another. Swipe a credit card, have direct deposit and direct withdrawals from your bank account, and you are already a part of electronic banking. And even if you could somehow sidestep all of this, the bank uses electronic means to move cash around as standard operating procedure. They can do all of this without touching one piece of legal tender just by sending a bunch of ones and zeros electronically from one data storage system to another at virtually the speed of light.

Credit cards. In the “old days” a merchant would take your card, put it in a mechanical device, pull a slider across it to make a copy of its embossed numbers and letters onto a paper slip for you to sign. These got physically sent to the credit card issuer who would charge your account appropriately and send you a paper invoice every month. The next step was to create credit card readers that would collect this information from a magnetically coded strip on the card and process it instantly and electronically. Now it has moved even beyond this.

Smart Cards and Speed Passes. About six months back I received my first “smart” credit card as a renewal. There’s a little chip inside that stores all the relevant information and can be read remotely by a radio-frequency device. Speed passes work the same way and have become popular on the roads for automatically paying tolls. You don’t have to stop to toss in the change. You don’t even have to slow down because the fastest car is nothing when it comes to the light velocity of the electromagnetic energy used to activate the speed pass. I’ve seen this capability on self-serve gas pumps as well.

Chipped products. In order to cut down on theft and automate inventory and shipping, many products now are being embedded with chips that work on the same principles as the smart cards and speed passes. A product comes into the warehouse, the system knows it has and where it’s stored. When it leaves, it knows that, too. Once in the truck (or ship, railroad, airplane, etc.) the vendor knows where it is and when it finally reaches its destination. It is becoming increasingly more common for a customer to be able to track his or her own package via the Internet via this capability.

But tracking merchandise is only part of the story. Pets are commonly becoming “chipped” with names, owner’s names, medical history, just about any other pertinent information. The same technology is already being used today to chip people. The uses are many. Some grant easy access to employer’s facilities and allow a log on to company computers. But this was not all. Back as far as December 2004 the FDA produced the following document entitled:

Guidance for Industry and FDA Staff – Class II Special Controls Guidance Document: Implantable Radio frequency Transponder System for Patient Identification and Health

It opens with the following introduction:

1. Background

This guidance document was developed as a special control guidance to support the classification of the implantable radiofrequency transponder system for patient identification and health information into class II(special controls). The device is intended to enable access to secure patient identification and corresponding health information in humans. This guidance is issued in conjunction with a Federal Register notice announcing the classification of implantable radio frequency transponder system for patient identification and health information.

There is even a provision in the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) on page 1014 to establish a registry for implantable devices:

The Secretary shall establish a national medical device registry (in this subsection referred to as the ‘registry’ to facilitate analysis of postmarket safety and outcomes data on each device that – (A) is or has been used in or on a patient; and (B) is a class III device; or  a class II device that is implantable,  life-supporting, or life-sustaining.

As we can see, this legislation can apply to both medium risk (Class 2) devices such as hearing aids, or the more involved Class 3 high-risk ones such as heart valves and pacemakers, but it doesn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to see this one day include the implantable RFID devices which already exist and more sophisticated ones likely to be developed.

At the present time, such devices can be accessed only at short range. To make them capable of long range use, such as the GPS tracking abilities cell phones and high-end automobiles now have, requires a power source which is at present too bulky to be practically implanted. However, it would not be unexpected to find this problem remedied in the near future as technology continues to produce smaller and more efficient batteries.

Concluding Thoughts

We cannot know for certain just what kind of “mark” people will receive as part of the “666 Economy.” It may have more than one component, say, an implantable chip and a visible tattoo on the forehead, right hand or all of the above. Magnetic ink already exists which could be employed in the latter and here is an excerpt about this ink from the eHow website:

(http://www.ehow.com/facts_6813216_magnetic-ink_.html)

Magnetic Ink Character Recognition Technology

• Magnetic ink contains particles, usually iron oxide, which are magnetized and read with special equipment compatible with Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) technology. Because there is a unique signature associated with each magnetized character, MICR equipment identifies each character very quickly and with a very high degree of accuracy, even if the characters are visually obscured by other marks or have been altered with ordinary ink.

Commercial Uses of MICR

• Financial institutions worldwide use MICR equipment and protocols to accurately and quickly process vast quantities of personal checks and other financial documents. MICR technology, comparatively speaking, has a very low instance of misread characters.

Interesting how the first use it mentions is for financial purposes, don’t you think?

Next time we’ll explore in greater detail how various economic systems have evolved over time and even some more alarming possibilities that may be used to “control the masses” in the not-too-distant future.