I have often wondered the same thing myself.
What??
It says 0 posts and someone has posted!
oooohhhhh:eek:
That beast ate your post vanilla. I will pray you overcome the enemy and your post will return unharmed.
If your missing OP is what the Mark of the Beast really is,
as in ( more or less):
“The mark of the beast shall be written upon the forehead or the hand: no-one who has no mark of the beast can do business, buy or sell.” (that not from scripture, but off the top of my head).
Perhaps the Mark of the Beast is the Social Security Number?
How many things documents must we fill out with a social security number as our officialy designated identity?
Its a number we either memorize (written on the forehead)
or present with the card (written on the hand).
In my case it is written on my golf balls as an identifier. Three 6’s at approximately 120[sup]o[/sup] around a great circle, again approximately.
You didn’t get yours? Were you at the meeting? 'Cause everybody else got theirs.
Well, good luck trying to buy anything, I guess.
The Beasts name is “Mark”? 
I thought it was “Bob”.
That’s easy, just check for possession of one or more of the “Left Behind” series.
Enola, might I suggest that you quote directly from the Scripture if you’re going to postulate as to its meaning?
Based solely on that, couldn’t the mark of the beast be an international ID card?
However, rather than make a decision as to what you think it may be based solely on what I have quoted, I recommend that you read the entire book and see then. One of the most dangerous things you can do is take a Bible verse out of context. You want to end up as a snakehandler? Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
What I posted was
In the other thread, WVWoman said something about the inquisition.
My thoughts were if someone had been tortured and forced to accept Jesus as Lord, God wouldn’t count it as true, since they didn’t mean it.
So, why in Revelation does it say thta all who take the mark of the beast will be damned?
Why couldn’t they take it and not really mean it?
See what I’m saying?
I would suspect that when you take the Mark of the Beast there’s some kind of “no backsies” clause.
quoth Vanilla
Hence the Inquisition.
I may be wrong (probably am), but I believe the Inquisition’s main thrust was to unmask those Jews (Marranos?) who, even though they had been forcibly converted to Christianity, still continued to secretly practise Judaism.
In the scripture that was quoted above, if the Mark is the number of the beast which is the numeric writing of his name, then random serial numbers would not count, as each number is different and clearly not every 10 digit number can be the numerological name of the beast. I think St. John had a few too many of those hallucinogens where he was, or he was just plain crazy, or else it was a social commentary on the near future based upon the world in which he lived.
We deal with apocalypses regularly, World War I, World War II, AIDS, Famine in Africa, Economic collapse. One day there may be a big apocalypse from which we barely recover, or do not recover at all, and saying that it was “predicted” is rather silly, because on a long enough timeline you can predict anything.
Erek
Social security number indeed. It’s your Costco[sub]®[/sub] card. The excecutive membership entitles you to a special circle of hell.
By your logic, the makeup ring my beastly project manager leaves on the telephone could be the mark. First it ends up all over the side of my forehead. Then its all over my hand when I try to wipe it off. Either way its pretty gross.
you guys are not taking this seriously…
Lord Astar, if you use the your quote from Revelation, it couldn’t be any sort of card you carry, unless said card was imprinted upon your right hand or your forehead.
Does that mean you ALREADY have the mark on you? :eek:
It could start out as a card that would include everything on one computer chip - social security number, drivers license info, medical info, bank account, credit card etc, and then after so many of them are stolen and people get fed up with that, the right hand/forehead idea will come up.
Can anyone provide a non-translated/transliterated version that explains, word for word, a direct translation (from Arameic) of the earliest surviving version of Revelations?