Mark of the beast

Well excuse me if I choose to make an informed decision to believe educated historians about the subject matter rather than someone trying to convert people to a religion.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/explanation/brevelation.html

Here's just an exerpt:
"In the prophetic books and the historical books of the Old Testament, Babylon is described primarily as the one who destroyed Jerusalem. And for John, writing after 70, Babylon then becomes a code name for Rome, because it was the second city to destroy the Temple. ... "Babylon" is the most common phrase that John uses to refer to Rome, and at first he introduces that term very briefly and indirectly. And the place where it's elaborated is Chapter 17, the vision of the Great Harlot. Babylon is a city with overtones of imperial might and destructiveness, conqueror of other cities. Then you have the harlot with her golden cup, her purple, or scarlet clothing, her jewels sitting on seven hills. He hints that it's Rome in several ways. One, that she sits on seven hills, and Rome was famous as the city of seven hills, and several times in chapters 13 and 17 it's talked about as ruling all the peoples of the earth. And there was only one possibility in John's time, that has to be Rome. ... "


I suggest reading the entire article and doing more research on the subject matter. It's good to actually research what you believe in.

 

I believe I have spoken to Jozak about this before, using those same facts. It's called the revival of the Roman Empire during the end times. The end times haven't happened yet, but Rome is a part of it. I know all about the seven hills, the scarlet and purple, the chalice.

Educated historians don't give you salvation.

 

Well Buddah does, so does Mohammad, so do MANY MANY in history. This religion will come and go just as every other has.

I suggest you do a study on religious memes, or social memes in general. It may give you a bit of understand how religion has come about and evolved in our society.

Point is, there is much, much more out there to studying a religion that just the book that the paticular religion stemmed from.

 

All bibles most definitely do not say the same thing. The NIV alone has deleted 17 verses that deal with salvation, hell, prayers, and marginal notes were included that discredit even more passages therein. The King James Version left out even more passages.

The New King James Version even has a pagan symbol embossed within, which was a 666 trinity sign used in ancient Egyptian mysteries.

There's countless sights you can visit with arguments over which translation is "correct".

 

i think it means that they will reject or just not recognize truth, which means they'd also unconsciously reak havoc, in a way.

 

You need to stop looking at Revelation through the eyes of a dispensationalist. Get rid of your model and look at what the scripture says. The key to understanding revelation is the OLD TESTAMENT.

Again, you are reading with a preconcieved notion of what you think the scriptures mean as opposed to what Scripture says it means. Check out this link, I think you will find it VERY informative:

http://mikeblume.com/underst.htm

 

I don't read scripture and assume things

Yes, the very elect will be decieved. Just another one of the reasons for the infilling of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, among other things, is our guidance in truth. Christ said, "the world cannot accept him because they do not know him." Without the Holy Spirit, then deception is easy.

 

Look, flat out, if your holy spirit helped you interpet the bible then why is it so many christians come up with a different interpretation? Are only the people who interpet the bible exactly like you do filled with the holy spirit? Are the rest not really saved?

 

I am not saying that you make assumptions after or even during your reading. What I am saying is that you (like most of us) have probably been raised with a dispensationalist worldview. You have heard that there will come THE Antichrist and the Great Tribulation will follow and there the rapture happens before the second coming of Christ. But if you look at Revelation and keep audience relevance in mind, you don't need the newspapers today to tell you how Revelation is unfolding. People look for THE antichrist. There is no 'THE Antichrist'. The Antichrist is an archetype (or antitype) for a line of thinking and acting. Nero was an antichrist. So was Hitler.

Remeber that Revelation means literally "an unveiling." If the Mark of the Beast is somehow related to a subdermal microchip, well... how is that a Revelation to the people of the 1st century church? It isn't. You do not need newspaper mysticism to understand revelation. You need a firm grasp of 1st century Jewish culture. Revelation is wrought with symbolism drawn from Daniel and Ezekiel. If you understand the Old Testament and its symbols, Revelation becomes clear.

Now I am new to Preterism (in my case Partial Preterism), but I am learning a lot quickly. And the more I learn, the more problems I see with Dispensationalism (the Left Behind series is textbook Dispensationalism).

Test all things in light of Scripture and hold fast to that which is good. The Holy Spirit is a guide for truth, but if there is a difference between what you believe the Holy Spirit is telling you and what is written in Scripture, then Scripture is right and the "Holy Spirit" that you are feeling is wrong. The actual Holy Spirit will never give you guidance that is in any way contrary to Scripture.

Did you read through that website that I posted? If not, I recommend it. It is very informative and points out difficulties with the Dispensationalist view (difficulties that I have always had, but never had an answer for).

 

No Sera, but they are mistaken. And it isn't MY interpretation that matters. The Bible is congruous. Nothing is contradictory (though it may appear so at first). The only way to interpret the Bible (or ANY document for that matter) is, bluntly, by appealing to the author's interpretation. In the case od Scripture, we look to see how scripture interprets itself. That is one of the wonderful things about Jewish Parallelism that is so common in scripture. It gives us a firm foundation for interpretation. If we know what one passage means, then we can draw the meaning for the more obscure text.

Hermeneutics gets complicated, but it is a scientific process and follows a prescribed method. Once you have a means to interpret Scripture in light if itself, you can then begin to separate different interpretations. If an interpretation of a passage exists that is not congruous with the whole of Scripture, then that interpretation can be judged to be incorrect.

 

Salvation and the Holy Spirit, Christianity and the Holy Spirit
http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35826&page=2

 

I think that you have a very good point. Hopefully it wont be ignored (as I notices some of your previous posts were).

 

I don't need a lesson on the holy spirit, I understand very well what it is.

The point I was trying to make is, that if the holy spirit is the one who interpets the word of god for you, than how come so many christians have different interpretations of the word? There is only one holy spirit...

I am basically trying to tell you that your interpretation of the bible is not the absolute. And it is just wrong for you to imply that you have the right one because you have the holy spirit.

I guess you should refer to Alsharad's post for more clarification, he seemed to put it better than I. He also brought up a few more good points to ponder.

 

MSNBC News
FDA approves computer chip for humans


WASHINGTON - Medical milestone or privacy invasion? A tiny computer chip approved Wednesday for implantation in a patient’s arm can speed vital information about a patient’s medical history to doctors and hospitals. But critics warn that it could open new ways to imperil the confidentiality of medical records.

The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that Applied Digital Solutions of Delray Beach, Fla., could market the VeriChip, an implantable computer chip about the size of a grain of rice, for medical purposes.

With the pinch of a syringe, the microchip is inserted under the skin in a procedure that takes less than 20 minutes and leaves no stitches. Silently and invisibly, the dormant chip stores a code that releases patient-specific information when a scanner passes over it.

Think UPC code. The identifier, emblazoned on a food item, brings up its name and price on the cashier’s screen.

Chip's dual uses raise alarm
The VeriChip itself contains no medical records, just codes that can be scanned, and revealed, in a doctor’s office or hospital. With that code, the health providers can unlock that portion of a secure database that holds that person’s medical information, including allergies and prior treatment. The electronic database, not the chip, would be updated with each medical visit.

The microchips have already been implanted in 1 million pets. But the chip’s possible dual use for tracking people’s movements — as well as speeding delivery of their medical information to emergency rooms — has raised alarm.

“If privacy protections aren’t built in at the outset, there could be harmful consequences for patients,” said Emily Stewart, a policy analyst at the Health Privacy Project.

To protect patient privacy, the devices should reveal only vital medical information, like blood type and allergic reactions, needed for health care workers to do their jobs, Stewart said.

An information technology guru at Detroit Medical Center, however, sees the benefits of the devices and will lobby for his center’s inclusion in a VeriChip pilot program.

“One of the big problems in health care has been the medical records situation. So much of it is still on paper,” said David Ellis, the center’s chief futurist and co-founder of the Michigan Electronic Medical Records Initiative.

'Part of the future of medicine'
As “medically mobile” patients visit specialists for care, their records fragment on computer systems that don’t talk to each other.

“It’s part of the future of medicine to have these kinds of technologies that make life simpler for the patient,” Ellis said. Pushing for the strongest encryption algorithms to ensure hackers can’t nab medical data as information transfers from chip to reader to secure database, will help address privacy concerns, he said.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday announced $139 million in grants to help make real President Bush’s push for electronic health records for most Americans within a decade.

William A. Pierce, an HHS spokesman, could not say whether VeriChip and its accompanying secure database of medical records fit within that initiative.

“Exactly what those technologies are is still to be sorted out,” Pierce said. “It all has to respect and comport with the privacy rules.”

Applied Digital gave away scanners to a few hundred animal shelters and veterinary clinics when it first entered the pet market 15 years ago. Now, 50,000 such scanners have been sold.

To kickstart the chip’s use among humans, Applied Digital will provide $650 scanners for free at 200 of the nation’s trauma centers.

Implantation costs $150 to $200
In pets, installing the chip runs about $50. For humans, the chip implantation cost would be $150 to $200, said Angela Fulcher, an Applied Digital spokeswoman.

Fulcher could not say whether the cost of data storage and encrypted transmission of medical information would be passed to providers.

Because the VeriChip is invisible, it’s also unclear how health care workers would know which unconscious patients to scan. Company officials say if the chip use becomes routine, scanning triceps for hidden chips would become second nature at hospitals.

Ultimately, the company hopes patients who suffer from such ailments as diabetes and Alzheimer’s or who undergo complex treatments, like chemotherapy, would have chips implanted. If the procedure proves as popular for use in humans as in pets, that could mean up to 1 million chips implanted in people. So far, just 1,000 people across the globe have had the devices implanted, very few of them in the United States.

The company’s chief executive officer, Scott R. Silverman, is one of a half dozen executives who had chips implanted. Silverman said chips implanted for medical uses could also be used for security purposes, like tracking employee movement through nuclear power plants.

Such security uses are rare in the United States.

Meanwhile, the chip has been used for pure whimsy: Club hoppers in Barcelona, Spain, now use the microchip to enter a VIP area and, through links to a different database, speed payment much like a smartcard.

 

only the true believers can see this mark

 

i had them put that gps chip thingy in my cat so i can find him anywhere on earth, but i dont want one in me

 

There are study guides available to help people figure out Revelation. I have studied Revelation with my father(a Pastor with a Masters Degree in Theology). If any of ya'll are interested pm me and I'll see if I may be of help.

 

Epiphany, you are missing the point. Revelation was written to be an unveiling of things to come. It uses a TON of symbols which find root in Daniel and Ezekiel. In fact, almost HALF of the book is direct allusion to the Old Testament. Anyway, if the "Mark of the Beast" refers to a subdermal microchip, how does that unveil ANYTHING to a first century Christian? In short, it doesn't. You are neglecting audience relevance. When you do that, you begin to develop a theology that is not in line with the rest of scripture. All the other books in the New Testament are steeped in Jewish and Roman culture of the time. They mention things like the Festival of Lights and other cultural references. We have a deeper understanding of the passages when we understand the cultural contexts of the time period. So, why in the world, when we get to Revelation, do we drop ALL cultural (and I think literal) context and begin looking for the signs in the newspapers? Why are you not interpreting Revelation in light of the audience to whom it was written?

There is a book coming out soon called Exegetical Eschatology. You might give it a look as it can explain my viewpoint MUCH better than I can.