No.
The Mark of the beast will be a microchip in your hand or head.
There's no reason to believe this is the case.
Examine the Scriptures in how they speak of things like marks. In Deuteronomy God instructs the Israelites to be marked by the Torah between their eyes and on their right hand. In the Apocalypse itself we see that there is another mark other than the one belonging to the Beast, the one placed upon the people of God.
What is the seal of God? Let's look at St. Paul's epistle to the Ephesians,
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In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be the praise of His glory. In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory." - Ephesians 1:11-14
We have been sealed, marked, by God in Christ, with the gift and promise of the Holy Spirit. This is the seal of God. It's what we received when we were brought into the waters of Baptism and the word was spoken to us, the very name of the Holy Trinity invoked, that in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit we have been united to Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:27) and received the gift of the Spirit (Acts 2:38).
Jesus Christ is our Lord and King, we belong to Him; the indelible mark and seal of God is upon us, through faith.
To receive the mark of the Beast is no different. It is the sign and seal of allegiance, to be marked by the Beast.
To swear an oath to Caesar, and bind oneself to allegiance to the Cult of Caesar was a vital aspect of ancient Pagan Roman life; and the Christian refusal to do this was, among other things, one of the reoccurring reasons why Christians were persecuted by Rome.
Rome didn't care that Christians had their own God, or that Christians had their own religious practices. Rome was a highly cosmopolitan society with people from diverse places, cultures, and societies who worshiped all manner of gods, with all manner of cultic practices. What mattered to Rome was loyalty. Loyalty and fealty to Caesar, and thus an active participation in Roman cultic life. Rome was big on appropriating the gods of the nations it conquered and identifying them with their own. They identifies the Greek Zeus with the Roman Jupiter, they identified the Germanic Thor, likewise, with Jupiter. While they sometimes found certain religious cults suspicious, as long as you did your patriotic duty it was fine. Which is why the cult of Mithras was able to become popular, a foreign Persian god around which a cult developed in the late first and 2nd centuries, which was very popular among the Roman military.
Christians, on the other hand, were very similar to those troublesome Jews. And while Rome, at least made the pretense, of tolerating the Jews because they recognized the Jewish religion as being very old (and old religion was respectable in Roman eyes). But unlike Judaism, Christianity was a new religion, that made it suspicious in Roman eyes. And it was bad enough that the Jews refused to worship the gods and instead only worshiped their one God; but Christians went a step further, and actively preached their religion to ordinary Romans, actively condemning the worship of the gods as meaningless vanity and that worship belongs to the only one God. Even worse than that? The Christians refused to confess the supreme lordship of Caesar, insisting on another Lord and another King, Jesus Christ, a man who was put to death under a Roman governor named Pontius Pilate in the backwater province of Judea.
Christianity was in many ways a direct attack against Roman civil sensibilities. It confessed another kingdom, another King, another Lord, and not only refused to make an oath to Caesar, offer incense, and worship the gods--but actively encouraged other people to come and join in their impious slander against the human race. That's exactly how the Romans saw Christians, as impious atheists and enemies of the human race who refused to bow before the image of the Emperor and swear by his name. They refused to say "Caesar is lord", and instead confessed "Jesus Christ is Lord".
So they were a prime target when things didn't go the way those in positions of power wanted. When Nero, who was very unpopular, was rumored to have actually started the great fire which burned much of the city of Rome he found a very convenient scapegoat in the Christians. Even contemporary and near-contemporary Roman historians recognized just how pathetic Nero's attempts to scapegoat Christians was; and yet it didn't stop the fact that it was under Nero that St. Paul was beheaded, St. Peter was crucified in Rome, Christians were fed to beasts, crucified, and lit on fire to have their burning corpses light the imperial gardens at night.
Which began a series policies which led to intermittent persecution over the next two centuries. Trajan praising Pliny when Pliny wrote that he wasn't entirely sure on how to handle the Christians, but chose to prosecute them when discovered, but not actively hunt them out. A policy which led to the arrest, and taking of the blessed St. Ignatius of Antioch all the way from Antioch to Rome, to be eaten by the beasts there--a fate he welcomed as a gift of martyrdom for a life of devotion to Jesus, "
I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ." (St. Ignatius to the Romans, ch. 4, c. 107 AD)
One could confess the Lordship of Jesus, or one could confess the lordship of Caesar. But one couldn't confess both.
You could either be marked by Christ or marked by the Beast. And if you chose Jesus over the emperor, expect a life of hardship, just as Jesus promised. To be ostracized in the market place, to be despised by parents, brothers, wives and husbands, children, thrown into prison, to be beaten, to be cast before hungry wild animals, nailed to crosses. To be made "the scum of the earth" (1 Corinthians 4:13), but for the glory and the riches of knowing Christ our Lord.
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Count it as all joy, brothers, when you face tribulation of all kinds," - James 1:2
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Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us," - Hebrews 12:1
Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Amen.
-CryptoLutheran
