Mark Of The Beast: Endgame Theory

Mark Of The Beast: Endgame Theory

I’m always wary about the default doomsday scenario panic mode that some Christians go into when looking things to do with the sign(s) of the end times.

You might have seen it before: the often generalised, doom-laden statements: ‘the world is coming to an end NOW!!! Pray, Pray, Pray!!’

Or: XYZ (insert current high profile mainstream personality here) is a Freemason who in turn is of the Illuminati who in turn are going to bring the entire planet into slavery and then hand us ALL over to Satan!!!!!!!!!  ‘Pray Pray pray!!’

I’m not even near enough qualified to make any sort of comment on those theories, but I’m guessing it’s a fairly certain bet there’s no smoke without some sort of fire.

Individual Choice

How much, how dangerous, and ultimately how real you believe these threats/theories/observations/warnings are – whether this is a raging inferno about to engulf us all or it’s all an inconsequential flame – will be down to individual choice.

For me, I’m looking for evidence that – even to the most sceptical of agnostics – points to reasonable, logical support for what the bible says will happen sometime in the future.

That’s why I find the whole issue around about how the Mark of the Beast is presented to a wider world (a world that may not necessarily have the access to the prophesy that Revelation 13 and 14 describes) quite fascinating.

For those who haven’t seen it, I’m referring to my Dr Who episode and Morrissey blogs (so far – this blog will added to that list as well).

Delivery via technology

Even though I’m no biblical scholar, one thing I will offer by way of opinion is that I think that this mark will be delivered to the world – in whatever form it ultimately takes – via technology.

Pretty much all the tech around us these days fulfils the basic description as found in Revelation; it’s portable, and can be worn on the right hand and on the head.

Think about all the possible applications for portable and mobile tech: mobile phones, credit cards, PDAs, portable music players.  And we’re not even fully in the nanotech age yet.

And apparently London (is it the UK as a whole?) is the CCTV capital of the planet, with more cameras per citizen than anywhere else.  I don’t know if that CCTV thing is a fact, it’s just something I’ve heard bandied around a lot in the news.  However, nobody can argue we do have LOADS of cameras watching us all the time…

RFID (radio frequency identification) tags even mean that chips have been grafted on to animals for years, allowing them to be tracked remotely.

To the point

Anyway I pretty much repeat this intro every time I do a new Endwatch blog, so I’d better make my point:

I was reading Keith Stuart’s Game Theory in last week’s Technology Guardian (rarely miss the paper every Thursday), and he was talking about games developer Ubisoft’s announcement about a new game called ‘Your Shape’.

Apparently it scans the user via a Wii camera and delivers a ‘full-body diagnosis’.  Your Shape’s ‘unique body tracking technology follows your every move in real time’.

Virtual Merge

He goes on to lament the loss of separation between the virtual and physical, something he calls an ‘ontological breach’.

Broadly speaking the point he’s making is that he prefers (as a gamer) to keep his virtual and physical selves separate, voicing a key concern that as gaming moves online and more personal data resides more on a network for corporations or Government (or whoever has access) to use, the easier it is for even our psychological responses (as a result of tech like Your Shape) to come under scrutiny.

Read the whole article yourself and make up your own mind, but the point I’m making is this: there are now even more ways than ever for this mark to be (potentially) introduced to the world.

And now these products and processes are not even hidden behind inscrutable walls any more.

We’re willing…

And the thing I find most interesting is how willing we all could be to offer up this information to anyone with an interesting (or useful) enough proposition.  And it cuts across the board: video games, mobile phones, Internet banking or whatever…

I’ll end with the same line Keith does at the end of his piece, even though the context is different:

‘How comfortable are you with that..?’

P.S. don’t fall into the same ‘doomsday scenario’ trap: read Keith’s piece to get an understanding of the specific point I’m making here, read Revelation 13 and 14 to understand a bit more about what it says about the mark of the beast.

Do some research and make up your own mind.