Just about every Sunday for the past ten years we have set aside five-minutes to present what we call a ‘prophecy update.’ The Bible is about one-third prophecy, and about 500 prophecies are yet to be fulfilled. Since we take the Bible literally, we believe that you should be able to see trends in the world that you’d expect from reading it as future history.

Prophecy is also quite practical. All the New Testament writers testify to the fact that living with the anticipation of the Lord’s return will motivate obedient living. For example, the apostle Paul wrote, “You know what sort of times we live in, and so you should live properly. It is time to wake up. You know that the day when we will be saved is nearer now than when we first put our faith in the Lord. Night is almost over, and day will soon appear. We must stop behaving as people do in the dark and be ready to live in the light.” (Romans 13:11-12).

The grand-daddy of unfulfilled prophecy is the Mark of the Beast. The apostle John, in the Book of the Revelation, saw a future in which everyone would be identified by, and conduct business using, what he described as a ‘mark’ on their hand or forehead.

It sounds a great deal like biometrics, e.g., facial recognition. One of the articles that caught my attention this week was titled, Police in China using facial recognition glasses.

Excerpts:

For the past two months police in China have been using dark sunglasses outfitted with facial recognition technology to scan faces of travelers passing though Zhengzhou train station. The glasses are linked to a central database which contains details of criminal records.

According to New Scientist… the firm that developed the GLXSS Pro smart glasses, says the glasses are very light so the police officers can wear them all day.

They have a small camera attached on the right-hand lens and are connected by a cable to a tablet device with software to search faces in the central database looking for a match with suspects.

Using the technology, police can view an individual’s personal details, including name, ethnicity, gender and address. They can also review if the suspect is wanted by the police, and according to a report in The Telegraph, even their recent internet history.

http://www.biometricupdate.com/201802/police-in-china-using-facial-recognition-glasses

Another article said the following:

Flip a coin. If you’re an American adult, that represents the odds that your photo has been enrolled to a law enforcement face recognition database, allowing you to be identified and tracked as you walk down the street, attend a protest, or visit a rehab center.

This isn’t speculation: It’s the result of a year-long investigation into police use of face recognition technology, published last October by researchers at Georgetown University. In at least 26 states, the report found, merely having a state-issued driver’s license or photo ID allows police to remotely search for and identify your face from photos taken on the street or posted to social media – without a warrant or any court’s supervision.

Sixteen states also make their residents’ ID photos available to the FBI, whose own face recognition databases now contain more than 411 million face images. And unlike with more traditional biometrics like fingerprints and DNA, the vast majority of the faces belong to innocent Americans, not criminal suspects.

In other words, the ability of police and government agents to identify and track people in public is no longer science fiction in 2017.

https://theweek.com/articles/678038/facial-recognition-governments-new-weapon

I’m not saying that facial recognition, or any of the other biometric indicators, are the Mark of the Beast. They aren’t.

I am saying that 2000 years ago the Bible predicted a world in which something that seems like biometrics would play a key role in the End Times.

I’m saying that things like facial recognition are what you’d expect from reading your Bible.

We are not looking for any particular sign, or prophecy to be fulfilled. Jesus promised He’d return to rapture His church – which entails the resurrection of the dead in Christ of the Church Age, then the translation from earth to Heaven of all living believers.
It is presented in the Bible as an imminent event.

Are you ready for the rapture? If not, get ready, stay ready, and keep looking up. Ready or not, Jesus is coming!