Maybe Today ..

End Time Bible Prophecy Fulfillment, Part 3: Showing Them The Money

He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads,  and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.  

Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666.

Revelation 13:16-18

The end times, as we have been stating throughout the duration of this blog, are a period of time in which the rebellion of humanity against the knowledge and will of God as spelled out through the Gospel of His Son, Jesus Christ, will arise to lead global society towards a full blown apostacy from all that He has revealed about life, death and the future.  These cataclysmic seasons where mankind's rejection of His light for the darkness of its' sin and Satan's alternate reality in the fallen human world order have been described throughout the Old and the New Testaments by the prophets and apostles of Bible.  We've been talking about what are the prophetically foretold warning signs that the Scriptures plainly describe for us to understand these times.

The third end time Biblical prophecy we must examine is that of the warning of the "Mark of the Beast" in the book of Revelation written by John the apostle. Revelation 13's account of the emergence of a totalitarian super-power that dominates and controls global governance is ended by the plain truth of this prophecy. It has been the source of untold amounts of speculation throughout history and not a few bad Hollywood movies but just considering the minimal reading of it, in context with the rest of the book, is blood chilling enough.

That super-power is personified by the rise of a literal personage, a world leader whose influence will harness the known geo-political currents swirling on the earth in that future time on a blazing ascent to power - energized by the evil malevolence of Satan himself to establish his own antichristian agenda. He is called "the Beast" and his human charisma and well placed position in human events - in conjunction with the power of Satan's deceptive influence - will enable him to become the final world ruler in the end times as man's grotesque inability to lead itself gets worse and worse.

This ultimately is the final manifestation of fallen humanity's search for a lord, an authority under which it may seek refuge .. completely apart from God. This is what we've been talking about for years on this blog behind what cultism is and here we see the entirely secular emergence of this tragic dynamic of human existence. Let the video below give you a glimpse into the ongoing slide into anarchy the frightened nations, seeking a Hero, are looking for ..

It all sounds like a cheap horror story from Syfy or a ghost story to frighten little kids by, doesn't it?

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but this is the Gospel truth (as we've seen in Matthew 24) behind a future coming so fast at us, we're all largely ignorant of it and we would dismiss it readily as "extremism." But as we've said, it is the hard-hearted dullness of heart and mind that evil will readily slip around to establish it's new beachheads of horror among the nations.

And as part of the machinery this Beast will exploit, to gain the unimaginable and absolute control over humanity he will achieve, the economies and commerce of humanity will come under his power. His utter obsession is for the people of the world to literally worship of him as divine.  For the skeptical who might find worship of a demonically driven human being distasteful, they will immediately find that there's no greater way to compel their allegience by taking control of its banks, markets, payrolls and all other forms of digital infrastructure to the degree his rule will achieve.

The Scripture warns just what degree of sovereignty the Beast's control will pull off - that those who submit to his agenda must "receive a mark"  simply to live under that kind of new world order.  In a world where the love of money and self becomes underscored by self-preservation itself, the Scripture makes clear that the masses of dominated humanity will become nations of sheep bowing to the scepter of rule that tracks their coming and going, the operation of their online banking and their employer's ability to toe the new line of social orthodoxy.

The ability to marshal this kind of domination and make it as personal as a punch in the nose, as Robert Heinlein might have described it, has of late come up in the recent decision of a Wisconsin business to invite its employees to be given insertions of microchips in their left hands to facilitate operations there. Purely voluntary, the employer stated. No way personal identification or privacy breaches can occur, they informed us. Mm hmmm.  Just like the personal Social Security number is America's way to identify its workforce for benefits "securely."

In a not too distant future world devastated by the judgments of God that include plagues, wars, violence and destruction beyond belief, the longing of rebellious man for someone who will turn them around will arise to a religious fervor upon which the Beast will seize and ride for all he can .. and this won't be any dystopian novel to thrill bored readers with. It will be reality itself.

And the Beast's journey toward global control began long ago in the innovations of financial and social engineering we see all around us, things that we see frankly delight modern man in search of "convenience" .. remember, this is indeed a world wide phenomenon. We conclude this entry with a couple of recent news stories about how the cashless society and the "office of the future" have helped to drive man down its broadband road to perdition:

With our relinquishing of our independence with a trust and naivete that is beyond surreal, we can see how readily a world that increasingly desiring security and convenience is being primed for the emergence of a new world order, a social system upon which they think life will become better.

How rude this sign will shatter them with a surprise for the ages. And Jesus said it will be like this!

Anyone listening?

End Time Bible Prophecy Fulfillment, Part 2: Signs In The Heavens, Not SFX ..

And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come ..

Acts 2:19-20

People in the last days live in such a way that the spectacular and the amazing is mundane. The eye popping special effects of popular entertainment, the thrills of theme parks, the jolt of extreme sports of all kinds and the on demand access to a blizzard of social media and personal photography originating on billions of smartphones and websites is an immersive reality that so permeates our life that even the materialization into our natural world order of natural phenomenon that is completely beyond our control gets readily viewed, downloaded, oohed over and then promptly forgotten. 

Eclipses, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and the like are predicted, observed and promptly filed away in the cultural POV as just another fireworks display in a perfectly predictable, orderly natural universe subject to human editing. "Natural phenomenon" seen in the skies are just light shows these days.

Yet it is this very thing that Christ said would be a herald of his Coming as the Scripture has said. And it has taken the past generation to develop the media machinery of mass communication that will shout it all down.

The coming total solar eclipse that will span our entire nation this August certainly qualifies. It's been turned into a teaching moment for kids in science classes and a cottage tourist industry. Skeptics of all varieties will snort mockingly that this stuff has been going on since this third rock from the sun came into existence .. just as the apostle Peter wrote in 2 Peter 3:3-6 prophetically almost two thousand years ago:


 .. knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.”

Watch a great example of this kind of human laxity in a couple of news spots on the recent approach of asteroids within miles of the earth and the general spirit of the day.

It's breakfast time patter and fill in to the next segment. However, as we will see, it can get very real and very fast when a sign from heaven departs from the script .. 

And Jesus said it would be like this.

We're not ignorant of the very things He's warned us of. We're just bored with them. This is how the great "millenium" of human life is shaping up. The signs in the heavens are all around us. And we yawn as we talk about it.