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Your Barcode, Please
By Jack Kinsella
In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration approved an implantable chip technology known as the Verichip for implantation in human beings. According to the FDA, VeriChip could be implanted in a person’s body and scanned for electronic information.
Since 2006, new U.S. passports include radio frequency identification tags (RFID) that store all the information in the passport, as well as a digital picture of the owner.
In June 2007, the American Medical Association declared that "implantable radio frequency identification" (RFID) devices may help to identify patients, thereby improving the safety and efficiency of patient care, and may be used to enable secure access to patient clinical information.
Production of VeriChip was mysteriously discontinued in 2010 when a connection was made between the implantable Verichip and cancer in test rats. When the report was released, Verichip's stock dropped 40%.
In 2010, VeriChip officially changed their name to "PositiveID" but discontinued marketing the product for now.
Biotech company MicroCHIPS has developed an implantable chip to deliver medicine to people on schedule and without injection. But the problem with RFID chips is that they are vulnerable to hackers.
Consequently, the technology company BIOPTid has patented a noninvasive method of identification called the “human barcode.”
Barcode technology has been in use since the early 1970's. Barcodes were developed into the Universal Product Code symbol and have been on every product purchased worldwide for decades.
There are so many different kinds today for so many uses that it would be pointless to try and list them all. Instead, find something that DOESN'T have a barcode.
If you go to the hospital, the wristband has a barcode. Maybe it has your name, but all the important information is embedded in the barcode.
If you bought it, there will be a barcode on it somewhere. Everything you purchase at retail has a barcode on it.
I can buy movie tickets online and flash a barcode on my iPhone at the theater. Amazon has just released a mobile barcode app for making "one click" Amazon purchases.
PayPal quickly followed suit with a method for using PayPal to make bricks-and-mortar purchases.
Here's how that would work. You take your purchase to the counter, whip out your phone, log in to your PayPal account, let the cashier scan the barcode displayed by the app, and you're all done.
Last week, science fiction author Elizabeth Moon gave an interview to the BBC in which she advocated the idea of using barcodes instead and barcoding each baby at birth.
“I would insist on every individual having a unique ID permanently attached — a barcode if you will — an implanted chip to provide an easy, fast inexpensive way to identify individuals,” she said on "The Forum".
"And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark (charagma)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)
The word translated as "mark" in our English Bibles is the Greek word, charagma meaning "a scratch or etching, ie a stamp as a badge of servitude", rather than stigmata, which refers to scarring left by a puncture wound.
A barcode would be tattooed or otherwise etched on the skin, like a stamp, whereas an implantable RFID chip is implanted by puncturing the skin. Mark on the right hand
The Bible says the Mark will be etched on the right hand or forehead, not implanted under the skin. So isn't it interesting that Verichip went off the market in 2010 after being linked to cancer?
"Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six." (Revelation 13:18)
Among unbelievers, this is probably the most-often quoted verse in Scripture. Remember the Omen Trilogy? Damien had three little sixes hidden in his hair to identify him as the antichrist.
But the Bible says the mark will contain the number of his name and that number is six hundred and sixty six. The mark isn't on the antichrist -- it will be etched on his followers.
I wish I had a dollar for every time somebody said dismissively, "When a Mark shows up using the 666 symbol, then I will believe!"
The symbols of three sixes have been part of the UPC for almost forty years. I always get hammered at this point by purists pointing out that the three dividing lines are not "sixes" -- they just look like sixes.
But THAT's my point. It doesn't matter if they are sixes. Barcodes use machine-readable symbols. The Bible isn't written from the perspective of a machine. We look at the same symbols with our eyes and the three long separators look like the symbol for "six."
So to all intents and purposes, there is already a universal, economic Mark that incorporates three visible "sixes" without which, retailers couldn't sell, and consequently, you couldn't buy.
But it isn't the Mark of the Beast, anymore than an implantable RFID chip is the Mark of the Beast.
The Mark is a symbol of worship. You obtain it by submitting to the False Prophet's demand that the Beast be worshipped. Those that refuse to worship are refused the Mark, which excludes them from the economic system, which makes them easy to identify and round up.
But what I want you to see this morning isn't that the Mark of the Beast is upon us. It isn't. First you need a Beast. Then you need a Mark. What I want you to see this morning is the technology.
It was never possible prior to this generation. Don't let that blend into the background of white noise. Pull it back out and dwell on it.
Prior to this generation, the whole prophecy was impossible. . . yet for two thousand years, there it was, in black and white.
Generation after generation puzzled over what the prophecy could mean. The preterist argument that Revelation's "Beast" was really Emperors Nero and Domitian collides with the Mark of the Beast, something they could credibly claim was all 'symbolic' only when it was impossible.
But the Mark of the Beast is not only literally possible, for this generation, something like it is inevitable. There is no denying the reality that for this generation, cash is unnecessary, anonymity is impossible, and centralized government is inescapable.
There is only one possible explanation for John's detailed description of this exact scenario, set for a single generation somewhere in time, to the exclusion of all other generations, since it must come at the same time as the restoration of Israel and the revival of the old Roman Empire.
Read that last paragraph through one more time. Don't allow its familiarity to diminish what it says. This is the time forecast by the Lord Jesus and all the prophets that every generation has looked for since the Lord ascended back into Heaven.
We are the generation witnessing the greatest interaction between the natural and supernatural since the Apostles roamed the known world preaching the Gospel of Peace. It is happening right now, all around us!
One of our members wrote in the forums yesterday, "I'm tired of all the killing. I'm tired of reading about faces getting eaten off, of moms killing their kids. I'm tired, tired, tired."
So am I, Warren. I get up every morning determined to find something cheerful and optimistic to write about. If only I could find something.
But keeping things in perspective, these things point, as does everything else, to a time when evil will run wild, unhindered by the social and spiritual restraints which any honest observer can plainly see have already reached a breaking point.
Looked at from the perspective of today's news, one need not ever crack a Bible or ever have heard of Bible prophecy to arrive at the same conclusions forecast by the prophets for the last days.
The difference is, however, that the Bible not only told us what would happen two thousand years in advance, it also tells us how it all turns out in the end.
"And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh." (Luke 21:28)
Under the circumstances, that is about as cheerful and optimistic as it gets. Don't let fear steal your victory! The scarier it looks, the closer our redemption.
The Lord is coming!
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