In the first place you are leaving out a BIG part of the mark of the beast. The idea is that one most worship the beast in order to be GIVEN or OBTAIN the mark.
Hi deborah. Thanks for raising this issue of worship. I think we may be coming at it from opposite ends. You suggest that the worship comes first and then the Mark is given as some kind of reward for that worship. The prophecy doesn't say anything like that.
Whereas I'm suggesting that taking the Mark IS a sign of worshiping the Beast's system, even if it's nothing more worshipful than just conceding (through our behavior) that the Beast is the true provider for our lives rather than God.
I think people get this idea that the Mark will be somehow overtly religious in nature, because the prophecy associates it with the Beast. But if the Beast is just a metaphor for worldly systems, then the Mark's association with the Beast is likely to be worldly, as well. You don't need wrong religious theology to be bad. The devil doesn't care about money or religion. He cares about turning people away from God. This is what the Mark represents. Do we trust God as our provider, or do we trust the systems of man?
I suggested earlier that part of the reason why so many Christians will end up taking the Mark is because they are looking for something overtly religious, whereas the microchip implants are just a part of normal, everyday progress in the area of economics and banking. It doesn't look bad because it doesn't look religious.
I think what you are trying to get to in your many, many posts is that man worships money and therefore he will accept the mark.
Different people have different ideas of what worship is. If you mean worship in the sense of people bowing down to money, swimming in pools of cash, praying to money well, no not many people do that kind of thing. But worship is more than just a religious display.
I think people will accept the Mark because they want to keep their job, pay the bills and put food on the table. They will almost certainly find some way to convince themselves that it's not the Mark, probably by using some kind of argument about how they don't worship the implant so it can't be the Mark.
If that is the case we have all accepted the mark already in one form or another. Gold, silver, diamonds, other gems, paper money, checks, ccards, valuable art, stocks and bonds, etc. In that case, what difference is there in any other form of tender?
You raise another good point. There are many marks out there (lower case "m") but there will be one "The" Mark. The difference depends on motivations for why we work. We're in a situation where we're not forbidden from using money. However, we are told not to work for money. In other words, the motivation for why we work should not be money, but rather, to seek God's kingdom first.
As it is now, those motivations become easily confused. People work for one master while claiming to work for another master and they dabble back and forth between the two depending on how convenient it is at the time. The Mark represents a final diving line, a line in the concrete as one last attempt to reach people with this message that God is the giver of life, not money. No more games. No more masks. You either side with God or you side with the Beast. The Mark is the sign of who we've chosen to side with.
It's not like the Beast is a loose cannon out there doing is own thing irregardless of what God wants. He's only able to use this issue of buying and selling because God allows him too. Think about that. God knows we use money to buy things we need. Why would he allow the Beast to put us in such an obvious situation where we are forced to choose between God or money? Why would the beast decide to use buying and selling as the dividing line?
Well, from the Beast's perspective, most people in the world believe they will die without money. The obvious choice for turning the maximum number of people away from God will be to use this one common theme on which we feel our lives depend. It's a fear that he will exploit. It's a no brainer. If the world believed they could not live without fish in the same way we believe we cannot live without money, you can be sure the prophecy would be something like, "A mark without which no person could have fish".
From God's perspective the Mark represents a choice; who do people really trust as their source of life, him, or money?
