The Mark of the Beast?

A prototype of an implantable biometric chip capable of marking an individual's precise location and of monitoring him or her for life is gaining support. It was named Best in Show of 170 International Science Exhibitors last year, and released in its “First Phase” wristwatch format called Guardian Angel soon after. Beta testing with an eye on human implantation was initiated privately, and recent acts of terrorism have many calling for quick implementation of the technology.

Applied Digital Solutions (ADS) received patent rights to Digital Angel (TM) technology on December 10, 1999. What set Digital Angel apart from the competition was the innovative design--a miniature digital transceiver specifically created for human implantation. According to information released last year the implantable transceiver “sends and receives data and can be continuously tracked by GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) technology. The transceiver's power supply and actuation system are unlike anything ever created. When implanted within a body, the device is powered electromechanically through the movement of muscles, and it can be activated either by the ‘wearer’ or by the monitoring facility.”

An Information Technology (1) report this week verified plans to study implantable chips as a method of tracking terrorists. After first pulling back from the implantable version of its Digital Angel, ADS foresees a unique use of its product in the wake of terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.

“We've changed out thinking since September 11,” a company spokesman said, “Now there's more of a need to monitor evil activities.”

ADS also claims the Digital Angel has a variety of other uses, such as “providing a tamper-proof means of identification for enhanced e-business security, animal tracking, locating lost or missing individuals, tracking the location of valuable property and monitoring the medical conditions of at-risk patients.”

Following the Internet World Wireless 2001 award for “Best of Show: Client Services,” Mercedes Walton, President and COO of Applied Digital Solutions, said: “We have always had high expectations for the Digital Angel products. This award is truly a validation of our faith in Digital Angel's ability to capture the imagination of the public. Consumer anticipation has translated into accelerated interest from potential partners and allies. We are eager to bring Digital Angel to the marketplace in a very timely manner....”

To further advocate Digital Angel technology, Applied Digital Solutions launched a website www.digitalangel.net where viewers can peruse diagrams and read summary information. Other manufacturers of sub-skin implants have quietly field-tested similar devices over the past few years. The London Times reported in October 1998, “Film stars and the children of millionaires are among 45 people, including several Britons, who have been fitted with the chips (called the Sky Eye) in secret tests.”

Due to civil liberty and privacy issues, the ACLU announced opposition to mandatory microchip implantation when applied to humans. The ACLU is certain to be a strange bedfellow of Christians and conservatives concerning this issue.


Many Christians believe that, before long, an antichrist system will appear. It will be a New World Order, under which national boundaries dissolve, and ethnic groups, ideologies, religions, and economics from around the world, orchestrate a single and dominant sovereignty. The system will supposedly be free of religious and political extremes, and membership will tolerate the philosophical and cultural differences of its constituents. Except for minor nonconformities, war, terrorism, and hunger will be a thing of the past.

According to popular Biblical interpretation, a single personality will surface at the head of the utopian administration. He will appear as a man of distinguished character, but will ultimately become “a king of fierce countenance” (Dan. 8:23).

With imperious decree the Antichrist will facilitate the one-world government, universal religion, and globally monitored socialism. Those who refuse his New World Order will inevitably be imprisoned or destroyed, until at last he exalts himself “above all that is called God, or that is worshiped, so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” (2 Thess. 2:4).

The Antichrist's widespread power will be derived at the expense of individual human liberties. He will force “all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. 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 [666]” (Rev. 13:16-18).

For many years the idea that humans could somehow succumb to little more than branded cattle, and that rugged individualism would thereafter be sacrificed for an anesthetized universal harmony, was repudiated by America’s greatest minds.

Then, in the 1970’s, things began to change. Following a call by Nelson Rockefeller for the creation of a “New World Order,” presidential candidate Jimmy Carter campaigned, saying, “We must replace balance of power politics with world order politics.”

During the 1980's President George Bush continued the one-world dirge, announcing over national television that “a New World Order” had arrived. Following the initial broadcast, President Bush addressed the Congress, saying,

“What is at stake is more than one small country [Kuwait], it is a big idea--a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law. Such is a world worthy of our struggle, and worthy of our children’s future!”

Ever since the President's astonishing newscast, a parade of political and religious leaders have discharged a profusion of rhetoric aimed at implementing the goals of a New World Order. Developers of biometric implant chips employ similar language in announcing compatible global technologies, and many Americans consider electronically marking humans or implanting a series of digital equations under the skin to be the natural progress of advancing and necessary technologies.


Some people believe implantable microchips will be the Biblical Mark of the Beast. These claim that acts of terrorism such as the ones in New York and Washington, encourage microchipping humans for identification purposes. But even before the New York and Pentagon tragedies, a push was being made to brand and monitor humanity. Consider the following:

As far back as 1973, Senior Scholastics introduced school age children to the concept of buying and selling using numbers inserted in the forehead. In the September 20, 1973 feature "Who Is Watching You?" the secular high school journal speculated:

“All buying and selling in the program will be done by computer. No currency, no change, no checks. In the program, people would receive a number that had been assigned them tattooed in their wrist or forehead. The number is put on by laser beam and cannot be felt. The number in the body is not seen with the naked eye and is as permanent as your fingerprints. All items of consumer goods will be marked with a computer mark. The computer outlet in the store which picks up the number on the items at the checkstand will also pick up the number in the person's body and automatically total the price and deduct the amount from the person's 'Special Drawing Rights' account.”

In the 1974 article “The Specter of Eugenics,” Charles Frankel pointed out Linus Pauling's (Nobel Prize winner) suggestions that a mark be tattooed on the foot or forehead of every young person. Pauling envisioned a mark denoting genotype.

April 20, 1976, a patent is granted for an apparatus and method for remotely monitoring and altering brain waves.

In 1980, U.S. News and World Report continued the warning, pointing out that the Federal Government was contemplating “National Identity Cards,” without which nobody could work or conduct business.

The Denver Post Sun followed up in 1981, claiming that chip implants could someday replace I.D. cards. The June 21, 1981 story read in part, “The chip is placed in a needle which is affixed to a simple syringe containing an anti-bacterial solution. The needle is capped and ready to forever identify something--or somebody.”

The May 7, 1996 Chicago Tribune questioned the technology, wondering aloud if we could trust Big Brother under our skin?

Then in 1997 applications for patents of subcutaneous implant devices for “a person or an animal” were applied for.

On April 27, 1998, Time Magazine ran the story, The Big Bank Theory And What It Says About The Future OF Money, in which they opined “Your daughter can store the money any way she wants--on her laptop, on a debit card, even (in the not too distant future) on a chip implanted under her skin.”

In August 1998 the BBC covered the first known human microchip implantation.

That same month the Sunday Oregonian warned that proposed medical identifiers might erode privacy rights by tracking individuals through alphanumeric health identifier technologies. The startling Oregonian feature depicted humans with barcodes in their foreheads.

Senator Robb (Virginia) felt it necessary to add the MARC (multi-technology automated reader card) Card Amendment to the FY97 DOD Authorization Bill.

Bionics technology is also attempting to create organisms that contain linked organic (human cells) material with biometric chips for human implantation (2).

Scientists are also working on half-human, half-silicon chips. Meanwhile, it's the year 2001. Terrorism has many people in the mood to sacrifice human liberties, and Digital Angel has opened its first mass production factory in Palm Beach, Florida.


Microchip implantation will most certainly be introduced as a voluntary procedure. But a report written by Elaine M. Ramish for the Franklin Pierce Law Center says, “A [mandatory] national identification system via microchip implants could be achieved in two stages: Upon introduction as a voluntary system, the microchip implantation will appear to be palatable. After there is a familiarity with the procedure and a knowledge of its benefits, implantation would be mandatory.”

George Getz, the communications director for the Libertarian Party agrees, saying:
“After all, the government has never forced anyone to have a driver license, [but] try getting along without one, when everyone from your local banker to the car rental man to the hotel operator to the grocery store requires one in order for you to take advantage of their services, that amounts to a de facto mandate. If the government can force you to surrender your fingerprints to get a drivers license, why can't it force you to get a computer chip implant?”

Just as Social Security numbers were first voluntary, then mandatory, biometric chip implants are destined to become reality unless citizens rise up in immediate and national opposition. People like Mr. Getz are correct. Conservatives and liberals alike need to contact state and federal representatives and demand laws preserving individual rights before Digital Angel and similar forces lead humanity down a high-tech path of no return.

Note what the prophet said!

“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark [charagma; from Greek charax meaning to stake down into or "stick into"] in their right hand, or in their foreheads....Here is wisdom. 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” (Rev. 13:16-18)

Did the prophet foresee a hypodermic needle injecting something beneath the skin? Probably.

A temporary victory was won against such ideas following the original news story by Raiders News Update concerning ADS's implantable microchip intentions in 1999. News services across the web ran our story resulting in an inundation by concerned readers. ADS's shares droped on the Nasdaq from $5.00 to .50 each. ADS then released this statement: “We are not pursuing any applications for embedded chips and we have moved away from that for a couple of reasons....There are a number of privacy concerns and religious implications -- fundamentalist Christian groups regard it [implanting computer chips] as the Devil's work.”

More recently however an Independent news story claimed that if the Palm Beach testing center's wristwatch version of Digital Angel is successful, ADS “will start implanting them inside humans between the muscle and the skin on the forearm next year.”

Now terrorism has people thinking that everything from face scanning to implantable chips is not only inevitable, but perhaps a good idea. These are differences in degree, not in kind, and forecast a prediction made long ago:
“And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.” (Rev. 14:9-11)

(1)http://it.mycareer.com.au/breaking/2001/09/20/FFX6MJ2GTRC.html
(2)http://mercury.sfsu.edu/~swilson/emerging/artre332.bionics.html

Further perspective may be gained at these web pages:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,s2083914,00.html
www.seattleweekly.com/features/0103/tech-jaccoma.shtml
www.boulderweekly.com/archive/092100/
www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/09/07/chips/index.html
www.salon.com/travel/planet/2000/04/11/grandma/index.html
www.cryingvoice.com/Endtimes/Mark9.html
www.surfingtheapocalypse.com/intelligence2.html#patentscontrol

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Last updated 26/04/2005

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