Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[Washington Post]

The House of Delegates is scheduled to vote Wednesday on a bill that would protect Virginians from attempts by employers or insurance companies to implant microchips in their bodies against their will. It might also save humanity from the antichrist, some supporters think.

Del. Mark L. Cole (R-Fredericksburg), the bill’s sponsor, said that privacy issues are the chief concern behind his attempt to criminalize the involuntary implantation of microchips. But he also said he shared concerns that the devices could someday be used as the “mark of the beast” described in the Book of Revelation.

“My understanding — I’m not a theologian — but there’s a prophecy in the Bible that says you’ll have to receive a mark, or you can neither buy nor sell things in end times,” Cole said. “Some people think these computer chips might be that mark.”

Cole said that the growing use of microchips could allow employers, insurers or the government to track people against their will and that implanting a foreign object into a human being could also have adverse health effects.

“I just think you should have the right to control your own body,” Cole said.

The religious overtones have cast the debate into a realm that has made even some supporters uneasy and caused opponents to mock the bill for legislating the apocalypse.

Del. Robert H. Brink (D-Arlington) said on the House floor that he did not find many voters demanding microchip legislation when he was campaigning last fall: “I didn’t hear anything about the danger of asteroids striking the Earth, about the threat posed by giant alligators in our cities’ sewer systems or about the menace of forced implantation of microchips in human beings.”

Microchips, which use radio frequency identification, have been used in pets to identify and track them. Proponents suggest that such chips could be invaluable in making people’s medical records portable and secure and in helping to identify and find missing children. Others have urged they be used with Alzheimer’s disease patients.

But the growing use of microchips has collided with the Book of Revelation. The biblical passage in question is in Chapter 13 and describes the rise of a satanic figure known as “the Beast”: “He causeth 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.”

David Neff, editor of the magazine Christianity Today, said that some fundamentalist Christians believe that bar codes and implanted microchips could be used by a totalitarian government to control commerce — a sign of the coming end of the world.

Read more here.

[From me]

I don’t know if this will be a device of the anti-christ but I don’t want one in my body just for privacy reasons. It is no one’s business where I am and this is just another way for government to stick their nose in our lives where it doesn’t belong. Personally, I think the anti-christ will be more subtle than to use microchips. I just don’t want the government tracking my every move.

What do you think?

[Alternet]

The revelation this month in GQ Magazine that Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary embellished top-secret wartime memos with quotations from the Bible prompts a question. Why did he believe he could influence President Bush by that means?

The answer may lie in an alarming story about George Bush’s Christian millenarian beliefs that has yet to come to light.

In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France’s President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated.

In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:

“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”

Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:

“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”.

The story of the conversation emerged only because the Elyse Palace, baffled by Bush’s words, sought advice from Thomas Romer, a professor of theology at the University of Lausanne. Four years later, Romer gave an account in the September 2007 issue of the university’s review, Allez savoir.The article apparently went unnoticed, although it was referred to in a French newspaper.

The story has now been confirmed by Chirac himself in a new book, published in France in March, by journalist Jean Claude Maurice.Chirac is said to have been stupefied and disturbed by Bush’s invocation of Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs”.

Read more here.

[From me]

I’m not sure if President Bush really said those things to President Chirac.  But if he did, I think there are some scary things with this.

I do believe that Jesus is coming again. I know it will happen, I just don’t know when. I’m a Pan-Millennialist–it is all going to “PAN-out” in the end. Jesus is coming….But He doesn’t need our help.

My problem with the Zionist theology is that people believe they change History. My understanding of Biblical Prophecy is it is going to happen without our help. Doesn’t Jesus say we won’t know the day? It isn’t our job to make sure Jesus comes again? No, it is His job. What happens in Revelation is going to happen when God decides not by our forcing it to happen. 

Shouldn’t we as believers try to change the world for good? Shouldn’t we be trying to share our faith and lead people to personal relationships with God rather than killing people? We need a strong military to protect us from evil. But I don’t think it should be used to support our theological view.  What if our theology is wrong?  I think we should let God decide when He comes because He is going to do it when He wants to anyway.

What do you think?

[Yahoo news]

Eyebrows were raised in the House of Commons on Thursday when a motion calling for the Church of England to be disestablished was listed with the number 666, symbol of the AntiChrist.

Read about it here.

[From me]

Jenkins and LaHaye were unavailable for comment.  They are writing their new book-Left Behind in London.