Is this a precursor to the Mark of the Beast?

It will be very hard to resist if you live in China or if you want a job after AI takes all the jobs

I shudder to think what your blood pressure must be...

Everybody here already knows about it and you're not going to be able to either stop or hasten it by one day, so you might as well get on with your life.

My blood pressure is healthy, why does that make you shudder?

Christians are witnesses and it is our job to let everyone know what is going to happen and warn them. If we do that we have life and peace. If we don't everything makes us shudder, and we are in our mind a lot thinking about things that have nothing to do with us, in fact we can even start doing harmful, negative things like telling other believers to stop witnessing and warning.

Witnessing and warning is one thing. Gloom and doom is quite another, and can drive people away in droves.

I mean sure, there are other people who are attracted to gloom and doom. You can draw them. That's why almost every town diner has the old men's table where the guys sit around with coffee and complain about everything all morning.

But in general it won't help reach the lost.

People want the truth, they have to make a decision for the Lord and it is not fair if they are not given all the facts and all the truth.

The truth is that the is world has been condemned. That when the judgement comes everything that you built with wood, hay and stubble will go up in flames and you will suffer loss. The only thing that is eternal is gold (the pure word of God), silver (the Lord's redeeming work on the cross) and precious stones (testimonies of being transformed by the Spirit working within you).

The best coach I ever had was very up front and honest about our opponents. He scouted them and he prepared us for them.

If you don't talk about what they will have to face how can they possibly be ready for it. Watchman Nee said a martyr has the attitude and mindset of a martyr long before they get martyred. Paul said he had been crucified with Christ and it was no longer he that lived long before he was martyred.

The worst coach I had told me I would be the starting goalie in our championship game right before the game. He could have told me two days earlier and I would have been better prepared mentally.

I don't feel any gloom and doom, Jesus Christ has already won the victory. But every athlete knows they will prepare for the competition mentally and physically. You can feel the adrenalin running through you. Before every swimming match I would have to use the bathroom. Our football team had a curfew the night before to make sure we had enough sleep.

Jesus was out praying the night before the crucifixion and told the disciples repeatedly to watch and pray with Him. If they had perhaps Peter wouldn't have denied Him, maybe they wouldn't have struck the ear of one of the soldiers with a sword, maybe the one guy would not have run away naked.

This is what I mean about our interpretations of the times. As things change, so do our interpretations of prophecy. This is why I have a problem with this kind of prognosticating. You do this regularly, ZNP, and I do not think it serves you, the Body, or the Lost, to do so.

Well I think that when they actually do roll out the mark of the beast it will be too late. John told us about this 2,000 years ago, there is a reason for that. I think you can look at Hitler as a type of the Antichrist and therefore the Nazi insignia as a type of the mark of the beast.

In 1980 I could not imagine anyone having the power to control what every person on the planet bought and sold. What many said at the time was that John was only referring to Europe. Well now we have Starlink, RFID, and quantum computers so it is feasible to implement this worldwide. We also have neuralink.

So the words that John said have not changed, and their meaning has not changed, all that has changed is that we can now see how this could happen today. No longer science fiction, but could be implemented now.

Yes... but things keep changing. We not know what it will look like until it is here or... even just inside our rearview mirrors. Hal Lindsey and others have botched it so badly, I seriously advise caution in saying "It's here! In this form!" Because, a year later, that thing is gone and something new now looks like the prophetic fulfillment.

(This doesn't mean that I don't entertain my own speculation. I find it quite interesting that some Muslims believe in the arrival of a 12th Mahdi (or whatever it's called), and this dude's eerily similar to the Beast in what he will do. I also think that it's highly likely that a cashless society that a global, fascistic order could control would be greatly facilitated by virtual money. After all, cash you can hold in your hands. Power structures however ultimately control bitcoin and its siblings. But, again, this too may fade and something else will replace it that will then look like "this is it!!")

I never read Hal Lindsey, nor did I listen to all the other Christian prognosticators. However, we didn't ignore these verses. Where I met we went through every single book of the Bible verse by verse. There are many Christians who don't know anything and that is why they have been so easily duped by so many things in the last few years like illegal vaccine mandate, closing of schools, and all the other things that have gone on.

It is alarming to me that they don't know about the Antichrist, don't know about the mark of the beast, and don't even know what the Lord said about who is raptured and who is left behind.

You sure the Antichrist is a guy that will show up?

The Bible said the spirit of the Antichrist, that which is by definition against Christ, was already at work in the world at the time of that book's writing.

I think the antichrist is the devil. And I'm not looking for him to show up as some guy. Only one I expect to show up is the false prophet. And the Bible does not say anything about him being the Antichrist.

Well... perhaps this is why we need a new great awakening.