Taylor Street Market was a quaint little grocery store on the west side of Ottawa, Illinois. I worked there under the watchful eye of the owners, who seemed to have a difficult time trusting this high-school sophomore. My duties included stocking shelves, putting eggs in cartons, making sure dairy products were lined up according to their expiration dates, and pricing items. Back in the 70s, we put the price on everything in the store. If the price changed before an item sold, we removed the old price with a little sponge drenched in solvent, and then stamped on the new price.
A few years later, I worked at Jim’s Supermarket on Norris Drive. Those were the days when cashiering was fun. We visited with customers as we entered the price of every can of soup, carton of eggs, and pack of gum into the old-fashioned registers. Everybody paid with cash. And then it happened…
You would think we’d all jump for joy when someone invented barcodes. But we didn’t. We liked seeing a price tag on every item. We trusted people more than computers. And some of us were certain this new fangled way at the grocery store put us one step closer to the mark of the beast.
Questions about the mark of the beast, which is described in the last book of the Bible, seem to come up more now than ever. These are important questions, for if you believe the Bible, you don’t ever want to take the mark.
According to the Bible, a few things will happen before the mark is mandated.
Two men will have to rise onto the world scene: the false prophet and the Antichrist, who is referred to as the beast in Scripture. The Antichrist will be primarily a political and military leader. The false prophet will be a religious leader. The false prophet will convince the world to worship the Antichrist, as though he is God. Death will be the penalty for those who choose not to submit to the Antichrist’s rule.
Revelation 13:16-17 says the false prophet will force “all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.”
To prove allegiance to this one who usurps the authority that belongs to Jesus Christ alone, all men will be required to receive the mark. John F. Walvoord says, “There is no need for a complicated explanation. The mark is simply a token that [those who have it] are beast worshipers, and it serves as an identification necessary to conduct business and to purchase the necessities of life. It is another device to force all people to worship the beast” (https://walvoord.com/article/271).
John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in California, says, “Without the identifying mark, individuals will be cut off from the necessities of life.”
With the rise of interest in vaccine passports, cryptocurrency, a cashless society, microchipping technology, and a one world government, it seems silly that we were alarmed by a barcode.
[First published in The Daily Times and News Tribune, 2022]
