Do We Still Not Get It?

I’ve read reports about microchip implants before, but this one is different. It makes the idea of an RFID chip under your skin seem to be the best idea since chocolate. Why would anyone refuse the chip?

But what concerns me most about the article is the number of Catholic and other Christians who still don’t get it. I think I know why. They’ve been taught for decades the events recorded in Revelation were all fulfilled in the first century. As a consequence, they remain unaware of the real and present danger facing us, danger of which Jesus warned us about in that prophetic book of Revelation .

It doesn’t take a lot of intuition to associate the linked article about the RFID chip with this prediction in Revelation 13:16-17: "And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name."

Nor does it take a lot of imagination – especially in these days – to correlate the rapidly increasing persecution of Christians and Jews around the world with the prophecies in Revelation concerning world-wide persecutions awaiting God’s people. (Indeed, Jesus also warned of persecutions, along with international, geographic, and cosmic upheavals in the gospels. Neither were some of the OT prophets like Ezekiel and Daniel silent on the subject. But I digress).

For those who teach, and for those who have been taught, that the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John refers exclusively to the first century, I suggest they take a more reasoned look at the world around us.

There is an important text in Acts 17:10-11 which is apropos to the point.  St. Paul visited Thessalonica and Berea during one of his missionary journeys.  Here is what the text tells us about those two cities:

"The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so."
Notice how the Holy Spirit refers to the Christians in those cities. The Bereans were “more noble-minded” than those in Thessalonica because the Bereans “examined the scriptures daily,” to see whether the things taught by St. Paul were true.

Should we in the 21st century do less than the Bereans? And if we decide Revelation does, in fact, speak to the impending dangers Christians today face, how then should we proceed?

That’s an easy question to answer. As Jesus said: "Be on the alert—for you do not know when the master of the house is coming, whether in the evening, at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning— in case he should come suddenly and find you asleep. What I say to you I say to all, ‘Be on the alert!’" (Mark 13:35-37)

An important part of being alert includes frequent confession, and frequent confirmation and reconfirmation, along with frequent dedication and rededication of our life to Jesus – for no one knows the day or the hour.