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.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record by looking only at COVID19. But it’s obviously the big story, and maybe a game changer.

COVID19 is not one of the pestilences we read about in the Bible. Those occur during the Great Tribulation.

If it has a sinister, Satanic, spiritual purpose, it is that it 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.

McKinsey & Company posted an article back in May titled, The COVID-19 recovery will be digital: A plan for the first 90 days.

Excerpts:

As one CEO of a large tech company recently stated, “We are witnessing what will surely be remembered as a historic deployment of remote work and digital access to services across every domain.”

Indeed, recent data show that we have vaulted five years forward in consumer and business digital adoption in a matter of around eight weeks.

Banks have transitioned to remote sales and service teams and launched digital outreach to customers to make flexible payment arrangements for loans and mortgages.
Grocery stores have shifted to online ordering and delivery as their primary business.
Schools in many locales have pivoted to 100 percent online learning and digital classrooms.
Doctors have begun delivering telemedicine, aided by more flexible regulation.
Manufacturers are actively developing plans for “lights out” factories and supply chains.

The list goes on.

Fully 75 percent of people using digital channels for the first time indicate that they will continue to use them when things return to “normal.” Companies will need to ensure that their digital channels are on par with or better than those of their competition to succeed in this new environment.

Digital laggards will be substantially disadvantaged during the recovery.

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/asia-pacific/how-chinese-consumers-are-changing-shopping-habits-in-response-to-covid-19

McKinsey & Company projected COVID19 as a 90-day pandemic, followed by a return to a new, more digital and global “normal.”

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that the WHO hopes the coronavirus pandemic will be shorter than the 1918 Spanish flu and last less than two years.

According to Ezekiel Emanuel, vice provost for global initiatives and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and Wharton professor of health care management, a full return to normal isn’t likely to happen until November 2021.

Biologist Sarah Coby of the University of Chicago said, “The question of how the pandemic plays out is at least 50 percent social and political.”

We could return to normal, as if COVID19 never happened. OR, the so-called ‘new normal’ may be the digital 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!