How about an official who marks all those he finds to be traitors?
Or marks those who he considers patriots?
That way
The Mark of the Beast.....
by A-Team 17 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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The Dragon
How about an official who marks all those he finds to be traitors?
Or marks those who he considers patriots?
That way, he could
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journey-on
Its not necessarily a bad thing to have a digital ID implanted into one's body. There is nothing to fear if we are good citizens and aren't doing anything to break the laws of the land.
Sorry Icyestrm......BUT THINKING LIKE THIS IS JUST PLAIN SCARY!
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The Dragon
Mark them accordingly and have the patriots refuse to feed the traitors....and starve them out.
That way he does not have to lift a finger against those who betray him or disobey him...He just does not have to have to help them by feeding them. He maintains order and control by his peoples loyalty, instead of force.
That is how I would do it anyway.
I would rather be led by reason than ruled by force any day.
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icyestrm
I've thinking of the positives of such as one of these digital ID implants. It can be used to track missing children when they get abducted by a family member. What about someone who is lost in the backcountry and cannot find their way back home. What about if a family is unconscious in a burning home, the firefighters can use this technology to locate and save those people. If you got a Bible-based background, then I understand why there is a lot of apprehension toward this technology. Yet we need to realize that any technology can be used for right and wrong depending on those who are in charge.
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Warlock
We will see what you say when everyone is required to have a chip.
I doubt you will be able to voice a negative opinion, though.
The REAL 1984 is close.
Warlock
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icyestrm
Its good we have differing opinions on this subject. The microchips are similiar to a grain of rice. There will be no second guessing once the edict is passed to implant or be beheaded. The time of it happening is still up to debate, whether it will be during our lifetime or our children's.
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Terry
Read somewhere that the newly discovered "oldest" manuscript from Revelation 13 gives the number of the Beast as 616 and not 666.
I hope everybody who owns Commentaries also own white-out!
Bible:
National Post, Canada
Beast’s real mark devalued to ‘616'
May 4, 2005
Christ Wattie
www.canada.comBible news tracker & news archive
• Article Tools • Share This Story
ReligionNewsBlog.com • Item 11134 • Posted: Wednesday May 4, 2005Satanists, apocalypse watchers and heavy metal guitarists may have to adjust their demonic numerology after a recently deciphered ancient biblical text revealed that 666 is not the fabled Number of the Beast after all.
A fragment from the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament, dating to the Third century, gives the more mundane 616 as the mark of the Antichrist.
Ellen Aitken, a professor of early Christian history at McGill University, said the discovery appears to spell the end of 666 as the devil’s prime number.
“This is a very nice piece to find,” Dr. Aitken said. “Scholars have argued for a long time over this, and it now seems that 616 was the original number of the beast.”
The tiny fragment of 1,500-year-old papyrus is written in Greek, the original language of the New Testament, and contains a key passage from the Book of Revelation.
See AlsoWedding couples pick the ‘Devil’s date’
Interpreting the Bible’s Symbols and Types
Where more conventional versions of the Bible give 666 as the “number of the beast,” or the sign of the anti-Christ whose coming is predicted in the book’s apocalyptic verses, the older version uses the Greek letters signifying 616.
“This is very early confirmation of that number, earlier than any other text we’ve found of that passage,” Dr. Aitken said. “It’s probably about 100 years before any other version.”
The fragment was part of a hoard of previously illegible manuscripts discovered in an ancient garbage dump outside the Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus. Although the papyrus was first excavated in 1895, it was badly discoloured and damaged. Classics scholars at Oxford University were only recently able to read it using new advanced imaging techniques.
Elijah Dann, a professor of philosophy and religion at the University of Toronto, said the new number is unlikely to make a dent in the popularity of 666.
See AlsoWedding couples pick the ‘Devil’s date’
Bible Contradictions and Other Difficulties
Books:
The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? by F.F. Bruce
Is the Antichrist Alive Today?
101 Answers to the Most Asked Questions about the End Times
Interpreting the Symbols and Types
“Otherwise, a lot of sermons would have to be changed and a lot of movies rewritten,” he said with a laugh. “There’s always someone with an active imagination who can put another interpretation on it.
“It just shows you that when you study something as cryptic and mystic as the Book of Revelation there’s an almost unlimited number of interpretations.”
The book is thought to have been written by the disciple John and according to the King James Bible, the traditional translation of the passage reads: “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.”
But Dr. Aitken said that translation was drawn from much later versions of the New Testament than the fragment found in Oxyrhynchus. “When we’re talking about the early biblical texts, we’re always talking about copies and they are copies made, at best, 150 to 200 years after [the original] was written,” she said.
“They can have mistakes in the copying, changes for political or theological reasons … it’s like a detective story piecing it all together.”
Dr. Aitken said, however, that scholars now believe the number in question has very little to do the devil. It was actually a complicated numerical riddle in Greek, meant to represent someone’s name, she said.
“It’s a number puzzle — the majority opinion seems to be that it refers to [the Roman emperor] Nero.”
Revelation was actually a thinly disguised political tract, with the names of those being criticized changed to numbers to protect the authors and early Christians from reprisals. “It’s a very political document,” Dr. Aitken said. “It’s a critique of the politics and society of the Roman empire, but it’s written in coded language and riddles.”
