Are you sure you didn’t mean Matt Daemon?
It didn’t. It said “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.”
You also need a Costco membership to buy something at Costco, but it doesn’t mean they won’t take cash.
Are you sure? The only way to prevent anyone from buying and selling without the mark would be to have a cashless society. If you still had cash then you have a way to skirt around the mark requirement. Consider this; you want to purchase Sally’s special services and you have no mark, but have cash. Sally say ok and renders her service. You pay her in cash and then she goes to Myron to buy food. Both Sally and Myron have the mark so he sells her the food. You just bought something without having the mark. The statement says " And no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark" The only way to prevent this scenario is to have a cashless society.
I’m looking at this from a logistic standpoint. From my point of view the only way to make that statement true is to have a cashless society. It’s the only way that I see a government being able to control your spending.
What about barter?
Let’s you buy Sally’s “special services” and pay her with the food she would have bought from Myron. In a cashless future how does having or not having a mark prevent this?
Underlying your idea is an assumption that cash is the only possible way transactions can happen. Cash makes transactions much easier, and it might be impossible to buy a Coke without using a cashless transaction in this future. But most humans have lived on a barter economy for most of history. If a government outlaws your ability to buy and sell, we’d figure a way around that.
The mark (imo) more symbolizes a fear of an all controlling state, and certainly Roman society was heavily regulated, and was becoming more so. But I think the idea of the Mark is more about enforcement (ie, you’d be arrested for buying or selling without a Mark).
If a future government suddenly declares that every person has to have the name NERO seared onto their hands or foreheads, well, then, I’ll tip my hat.
How is the ‘mark’ enforced?
Edit: Is it enforced by Satan and his Antichrist? Or is it enforced by worldly means? And if so, how?
Ok, you have a point, but how would you be able to enforce that edict without using a cashless society. With cash you could skirt it fairly easily and with bartering goods you would run out of goods to barter pretty quickly and have no way to restock. Being able to buy and sell only if you have the mark is about control nothing else and the only way to completely control the people would be with a cashless society. The beast won’t care if you trade a few tomatoes for Sally’s special services. The beast wants to control the worlds financial services and the only way to do that is through the use of a cashless society.
Please elucidate and expand? Is the Beast an actual entity? Or a worldly government?
But the cashless society isn’t really cashless. It’s just that the cash is electronic, or notional. If I write you a check, is that cashless, or is it cash?
You’re adding additional meaning and implications based upon your own rationalization of your readings, which is perfectly fine. Logically one should then understand there will be more and different interpretations to the between-the-lines stuff. If I believed the words in Revelations, I would think transactions with anyone not possessing the mark would be illegal. From my reading, that has nothing to do with whether cash exists or not. Begging the question of the acceptability of multiple views, asserting it predicted a cashless society requires a level of certainty and an unsupported stretch of interpretation. Why didn’t it just say “There will be no cash,” after all?
I’m not sure, the beast could be a man or a government. All I really understand is the beast wants to rule the world and take God’s place, but understands the there is a limited amount of time in which to do so.
Cash in my opinion is the legal tender that you carry around, hence the term paying cash. I’ll admit that it sometimes means to buy something without the need for credit.
It doesn’t say “There will be no cash” because cash wasn’t a term used in those day’s. If it was then I would appreciate it if someone could direct me historical paper that explains it to me. I’m open to listening to any interpretation you may have. Remember we are talking about a 1st century dude who was starving and exiled to a remote island and if he truly had a vision of someone waving their iphone over a terminal how would you describe it? Especially after he seen all the things the beast does prior to the iphone waving. Who knows though you may say something that fits together better than my interpretation or may even be able to fill in a missing piece to my interpretation. However if you read chapter 12 and 13 I believe the beast is all about world domination and control. Two ways to do this is control religion and money. I’ve explained earlier how to get around the mark requirement using cash and you can’t acquire enough goods or services to circumvent trade. The only way to have complete control of the financial sector and enforce the mark requirement is to go cashless. By financial sector I mean Wall Street as well as Main Street. Got to go for the night, thanks for the discussion.
Well, we’re using English to discuss this, which nobody spoke a word of it back then. However, money certainly existed. So if it helps, why didn’t it just say “There will be no money,” then? Or coins?
I still haven’t heard an alternate way of enforcing the cannot buy and sell unless you have the mark. The only way I see to totally enforce it is to go to a cashless. Just making it illegal won’t work. Look at all the stuff that’s illegal now and can’t be controlled.
Don’t police enforce laws without chips? If you’re interpreting the words to mean it’s literally impossible vs. not allowed (which again is a choice of interpretation either way), we’re talking about supernatural entities; why would you think something so minor beyond their grasp?
PS - this isn’t a debate, btw. This is you expressing an interpretation, which is fine, and me trying to explain yours isn’t the only valid one. I have zero interest in trying to convince you of anything aside from trying to find a way to carry on a related conversation which is more enjoyable for everyone.
It’s actually pretty simple - you need to have “enforcers”.
If you think of any classic or late classic Empire, there were all sorts of laws regulating and restricting commerce. How did they enforce those laws?
If every person in the world was marked in some supernatural way and then we all just collectively shrugged and said “whatever” and carried on, there has to be enforcement to force people to do this. Fundamentally this mean there must a be a police state like regime that goes door to door, so to speak.
But a police state doesn’t need marks to regulate commerce either, just look at the communist experiences.
More fundamentally the Book of Revelations is very explicit:
1 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
3 And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.
4 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?
5 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.
People are worshiping the Beast because one of his heads was “wounded to death”, and then they said “who is like the beast?” The Beast also rose from the sea. Frankly the idea of a “hidden” beast isn’t really part of the book. Unless “worship” is a metaphor and “ocean” is a metaphor and “beast” is a metaphor… and so on.
But before the Beast comes, there is a dragon that chases a woman all around the world, and before that happen seven angels use horns and cause stars to fall upon the world and a third of people die, a third of the seas to run with blood, and a army of horsemen with human faces and scorpion tails and who killed a third of humanity by the fire and brimstone coming from their mouths.
In other words a whole, whole lot of crazy stuff is going to happen before people start getting branded with 666.
Even if you take this metaphorically at some point something has to be “real”, whether it’s the scorpion faced guys or the third of people dying or stars falling or whatever. If everything is a metaphor - if you stepped on an anthill and this is fulfilling the Book of Revelations from a certain point of view than anything can be anything.
Anyway not to traipse through biblical “interpretation” (the Book of Revelations is pretty un-interpretable imo). Even if you object to cashless for religious reasons I think you’ll be safe, it’s unlikely society will go completely cashless for a long while now.
And actually, more frankly, your credit score is far closer to the Mark of the Beast than any cashless society would be. Good luck trying to buy a house or car without one! (And, numerically, much closer to 666 or 616!)
If you want fun cyberpunk, Shadowrun has the idea of “SIN” and the “SIN-less”, the System Identification Number that everyone has to have to be on the “grid”. Shadowrunners are “SINless” and live off the grid.
Just to be clear, what I meant above is that assuming there is a despotic government that wants to force every person on earth into a cashless system and does so by banning “cash” so no transaction is anonymous.
So we reject this, and start using bottle caps instead of cash.
The point is that in order to force people to use cashless will still require enforcement, the same kind of enforcement that makes forcing cashless redundant because it’s the power to enforce, not the state of being cashless, that’s the important thing.
I’m not sure what I was expecting in a thread about barter, but this one has far exceeded even my most limited expectations, and fully so!
Funny how a simple question about about how you feel about going to a cashless society and a aside about it being interesting that a 2000 year old quote from the bible has devolved into philosophical debate on whether or not that quote actually predicts a cashless society.
Anyway, Enforcers won’t be able to to police every aspect of the financial sector. There just isn’t enough people for it. The only way is to convince everyone they need a chip implanted in their hand. Think of the convenience, you go to Walmart to buy toilet paper and you just wave your hand over a sensor and you just paid for it. Some here have already admitted that it is much more convenient to use plastic or their phone. A chip implanted in your head or hand is the next step. I never said that the chip implant would be forced.
Enidigm, there doesn’t have to be anything supernatural about the dragon and the 2 beasts. The dragon could be a super rich person who uses a dragon as his symbol. This dragon then finds a group of people and raises them from the sea of humanity. One of the people in his cabal appears to be dead and the dragon raises the dead one and the cabal enlists a second beast (person) and makes him their cleric or propaganda dude. My initial statement wasn’t concerned with how the beast came into existence but that a prophesy made 2000 years ago could be interpreted to predict a cashless society.
I believe we are already on our way to a cashless society. Let look at some facts, when my parents were kids in the 30’s you paid for everything with cash. Checks were only used for larger businesses. When my parents generation started raising kids , 40’s and 50’s checks were just starting to become common place. In the 60’s credit cards were beginning to used by consumers. By the time I got my first job in the mid 70’s money, checks and credit cards were in use by everyone. Then in the early 80’s debit cards came into use and the need to write checks at the store soon became unnecessary. That soon evolved into services like paypal which are now becoming services like apple pay. Whats next, well a unique chip implanted into your hand that links all your financial and personal history in one place. Need a loan wave your hand and the lending institute has all your information. Need toilet paper wave your hand and it’s paid for. As for security, you need to use your implanted chip to access your information.
As for me I do see a correlation between what was predicted 2000 years ago and what is happening now. I don’t know if this means the end of the world is coming, but I do find it interesting that a 2000 year old prophesy could possibly be correct.
Yes. You won’t need your stuff now you should send it to me.