Lore Sjöberg from wired.com just posted an article on the “Technology of the Beast”.
Did anyone else grow up hearing this stuff?
“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” — Revelation 13:16-17
One of the fun things about watching technology march by like a parade — one where all the bands get smaller and rounder as time goes on — is seeing new interpretations of the Bible based on the latest advances. Early last century, the Mark of the Beast was your Social Security card, which presumably was encoded into the Computer Punch Card of the Beast and fed into Satan’s Mainframe.
After that, the Mark of the Beast was your credit card, and in the ’70s the UPC symbol was the new Mark, presumably because of the passage in Revelations stating, “And the mark was placed upon the Wonder Bread, both white and the kind they call wheat, even though it’s basically a slightly more tan version of the white stuff.”
Now, of course, the Mark of the Beast is RFID chips. It’s not enough that they might get your purchases tracked or your identity stolen, they might also get you booked into the Hotel Inferno for all eternity. Thanks, Wal-Mart! Totally worth it for discount cotton balls!
This reminds me of when I worked for TBN, hearing Paul Crouch trying to say that the beginning of Zechariah 5 is referring to TBN’s satellites.
Anyway, Sjöberg goes on to demonstrate how you can tie different verses to specific technology, like MySpace, Blogs, and YouTube. Read the rest here.
Yep, I’ve been hearing this kind of stuff for years.
There was supposed to be some Cray supercomputer in the 80’s that was so large and powerful, it was nicknamed “The Beast”. And I remember some guy traveling around preaching about it, that this computer could hold so much information that it would allow control of all the world’s economies from one centralized point, or something like that.
Funny thing is, my current desktop system is hundreds of times more powerful than that computer was back then. Oh well.
What I always like hearing is on shows like In Search Of hosted by Leonard Nemoy, where they talk about evidence of alien visitations in the bible – the wheel within a wheel, the chariot of fire, etc. Great exogenisis.
Amazing article. I haven’t laughed that hard all day (I tend to be a fairly jovial person). Stephen, I don’t know how you find all this stuff, but keep it up. Was he serious about the Za 5 bit? If so, that’s just pitiful. I’m about as ambitious as they come, but even I don’t have hopes of ever being part of something mentioned specifically in the Bible.
There was a guy at this year’s maker faire who had 2 rfid’s in his hand. He uses them to unlock his condo’s front door and such. Walks up to it and just turns the knob. Not sure I’m ready to go jabbing bits of silicon into my hand, but it’s got keyless remotes beat all to pieces. It’s somewhere in the video here.