We reserve a few minutes Sunday morning to suggest news, or trends, that seem to be predicted by a literal, futurist reading of the Bible.
We are careful to use recognized, reliable sources for news. There is a lot of sensationalism surrounding unfulfilled Bible prophecy, and we don’t want to add to it.
We’re not saying the things we report are the definite fulfillment of prophecy – only that they are the things you’d expect by holding a Bible in one hand, and a newspaper in the other.
Bible futurists have long understood that, in the Last Days and going into the Great Tribulation, there would be a global system of personal identification. It involves what the apostle John described as a “mark” on the hand, or on the forehead.
It sounds a lot like biometrics, which is defined as, “physical or behavioral human characteristics that can be used to digitally identify a person to grant access to systems, devices, or data.”
Three-and-one-half years into the Tribulation, the man Revelation calls the Beast will demand everyone swear allegiance to him. Since everyone is identified and linked to the system, refusal will mean being cut-off from participating in society. A person won’t even be able to buy or sell anything.
COVID19 is pushing the world population towards a global, digital biometric system. It is the kind of system futurists have been predicting since the apostle John wrote the Revelation.
Listen to these headlines, and a brief summary, from the website BiometricUpdate:
Brainworks and Gibraltar Technologies develop biometric apps to support COVID-19 recovery… Brainworks has launched an application with “ambient biometrics” and artificial intelligence capabilities to detect COVID-19 symptoms
Facial recognition temperature scanning, wearables and voice biometrics deployed for COVID-19 spread prevention… Facial recognition and temperature-checking systems have been implemented by a hospital in South Korea, and are reported to be in consideration by stadiums around the world. Wearables have been adopted for similar purposes by a U.S. fire department, while Sonde Health has developed a workplace safety tool with voice biometrics.
U.S. colleges incorporate biometrics for covid-19 monitoring… The University of Alabama and the University of Arizona are testing Bluetooth-enabled apps to monitor the virus on campus by tracking students who tested positive and their encounters, while Molloy College in New York will use kiosks with thermal scanning to take students’ temperature and will use biometric facial recognition to confirm student identity and track their health. On the other side of the country, the University of California Irvine has developed a Wi-Fi system that keeps track of the number of students and their moves in buildings.
I don’t really need to go on, do I? We are headed, it would seem, to the world foreseen by John.
Meanwhile, every few months a new article is posted about Elon Musk’s project, Neuralink, by which he hopes to implant a chip in your brain to… Well, we’re not sure.
We could return to normal, as if COVID19 never happened. OR, the so-called ‘new normal’ may be the precursor to the dreaded Mark of the Beast mid-way through the seven year Great Tribulation.
Biometric technologies are not the Mark of the Beast. But they are, perhaps, the underlying mechanism that will be in place when the Beast demands to be worshipped.
We believe the resurrection and rapture of the church is imminent. It could happen any moment; nothing needs to happen before it. It will happen before the Tribulation.
Jesus will come, in the clouds, and raise the dead believers of the Church Age. He will transform the bodies of living believers to glorified, resurrection bodies. We will join Him in Heaven while the earth endures one final seven-year campaign of severe evangelism.
Are you ready for the rapture? If not, Get ready; Stay ready; Keep looking up.
Ready or not, Jesus is coming!