Wow, so we were just talking about this in this thread - the mark of the beast.
And then I just saw this pop up on yahoo news today:
Installing microchips in employees is 'the right thing to do,' CEO says
Wow.
Seems like it's going to come sooner than I thought. Satan is preparing people to get used to this idea it seems. He already has been, but now it's become bolder.
Okay, so this is actually a bit of a pet peeve of mine.
For anyone who has been a Christian for more than a few years, somehow we have all acquired this knowledge that microchips are talked about in Revelation and that they automatically equate to the mark of the beast, implying that anyone who has them will go to hell.
First of all, there are a lot of conclusions being jumped to with this. Microchips in and of themselves are amoral just like any inanimate object is. How is there anything sinful about getting one implanted into your hand? There are definitely ethical issues involved with this without a doubt, but how is this sinful?
Secondly, we are told that anyone who puts their faith in Christ alone for their salvation will be saved. We can't just throw that out the window by saying that if you get a microchip, you are automatically going to hell. If this ever even became reality, there have to be other caveats in play.
Thirdly, if you actually examine what it says in Revelation, the "mark" it talks about has to be symbolic of "the beast" and somehow be associated with the number "666," and there is no indication this is the case with microchips in any way.
We can talk about microchipping human beings from an ethical standpoint, but to say microchip implants are definitely the mark of the beast talked about in Revelation is an extreme conclusion to leap to, and when you actually take time to think it out there is very little basis for it.
And just to add to that, even people in the secular world have issues with this. I just ran across an NPR article today that said that microchip implants basically make the human body a bar code--that it dehumanizes a person. And I bet if you took a survey, an overwhelming majority of people would be opposed to ever having a microchip implant. There are a lot of people who aren't Christians who are way too paranoid to ever let that happen to them.
So all that to say...the whole thing has been espoused by modern day doomsday preachers and there just isn't any basis to make the connection that everyone is making.