Several weeks ago, I shared that my “day job” is designing computer software for healthcare providers. I’ve been in technology now for over 30 years. (I’m sure there’s a joke in that, and that you’ll share it with me.)
Hang with me for a second. This will absolutely connect to the mark of the beast discussion I promised in the subject line.
One of the things that I spend a decent amount of time thinking about is security. The software I create generally doesn’t deal with the money side of healthcare… but there are a metric TON of rules and regulations about keeping patient data safe.
So security is a big deal. Remember that.
Throughout the ages, Christians have been fascinated with the mark of the beast. It gets referenced a bunch of times in the dramatic and apocalyptic book of Revelation. You get a sense of it in Revelation 13:17 as…
“so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.”
So, bearing the mark of the beast is equated to being able to participate in the economy, according to that verse.
The number of the beast is famously “666”. And for millennia, that captured everyone’s attention.
But in the 1970’s the collective imagination took a left-turn. People started to think that the “mark of the beast” would be a tattoo. Revelation 14:9 references getting the mark on hand or forehead (I’m not really down with facial tattoos). Would it be the number 666? Or something else.
Then barcode technology took over. Barcodes are visual ways to represent numbers and letters. You see it in the UPC code of literally everything you buy in the super market.
Enter the…. Barcode Tattoo as the mark of the beast! I’ve seen people with barcodes tattoo’d on their skin. I know it’s a thing.
But as the technology guy, I have to say that there is NO WAY this is secure enough to be the cornerstone of a global economy. When everyone has a smartphone with a multi-megapixel camera, no publicly exposed tattoo is going to be secure enough. It would be all too easy to counterfeit.
But back in the 70s, that was a real theory! Cutting edge technology that was so compelling.
Scroll forward through time a bit and you come to the day of the “implantable chip”. Yes, Katniss gets one in the hunger games. My dog has one too. That was the cutting edge of technology back then. Scan your hand (or forehead???) with a wand and suddenly your identity is confirmed – and maybe even your bank account.
But how easy would it be to steal the code on your chip? All I would need is a spare reader wand and I could know what your code was and duplicate it as a counterfeit.
This just continued the trend of making a connection with any “cutting edge technology” and the mark of the beast. But looking back on on it, I kind of have to laugh. Yes, it seemed ominous at the time. I worried about it back in the day. But the reality is that it never would have worked – we just didn’t get that in those days.
Well…. guess what. Technology moves forward. Now I’m starting to hear about “Blockchain technology”. It’s the latest, hottest thing. And you know what? I think it could work for the mark of the beast.
Of course I reserve the right to be wrong.
But this technology – which we see in the mainstream culture in the crypto-currency craze today – could be a tool for regulating global commerce. Probably not in the infantile forms we see it now. But I’m thinking give it a few more years to mature and a few governments to create state-sponsored crypto currency and we could be well on our way.
This time, I think the security side of it is much more realistic. Blockchain was built to be secure. Just like it was built to be public. So it that’s the case, then the mark of the beast could be a very public, discoverable thing – like as obvious as on the back of your hand or the middle of your face…
Stop and think about this for a moment. If John the Apostle, in maybe 90 AD had been told about anything that happened today, he would have laughed. It would have seemed so impossible.
But God, fully aware in His sovereignty of what would be available today (or whenever these events occur) didn’t make John figure it out. He translated it into terms that John could understand. Numbers, marks on hands or foreheads.
Who’s not to say that it is a regulated crypto-currency wallet?
My goal in writing this is not to alarm or come out against crypto-currency.
I want to humorously point out the Christian tendency to link the “new technology of the day” with the mark of the beast. It just goes to prove that we don’t know what it is. Just like some were convinced in the 70’s and 80’s – and equally wrong. Even today we still don’t know.
But God does.
He knows exactly how this will come about. He knows specifically which technology will be used for the mark of the beast. Maybe it will be nanobots… We don’t know.
And that’s the point. God knows, we don’t. So there is no point in getting all stirred up about it.
It does seem clear that there will come a point of decision and people will have to declare who they will put their trust in. But that’s no different than today. Every day, people wake up and decide who they will put their trust in.
How do you decide?
That’s the important question at the bottom of this humorous look at the history of “666”. And I hope that you are doubling down on God as the only thing worthy of placing your trust in.
Until next week…
Dennis
