Several weeks ago a disturbing secular news story grabbed my attention. Applied Digital Solutions (ADS) received patent rights to new technology named Digital Angel (TM). What's bothersome is that Digital Angel is a miniature digital transceiver specifically designed for human implantation.

According to ADS, "The implantable transceiver sends and receives data and can be continuously tracked by GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) technology. The transceiver's power supply and actuation system are unlike anything ever created. When implanted within a body, the device is powered electromechanically through the movement of muscles, and it can be activated either by the 'wearer' or by the monitoring facility."

In a company press release dated February 15th, ADS stated that "Digital Angel has generated a large and positive response from both the investing public and those who are interested in participating in the wide array of applications for this technology."

ADS also claims that Digital Angel has "a variety of potential uses, such as providing a tamper-proof means of identification for enhanced e-business security, animal tracking, locating lost or missing individuals, tracking the location of valuable property and monitoring the medical conditions of at-risk patients."

To further advocate Digital Angel technology, Applied Digital Solutions launched a website http://www.digitalangel.net where viewers can peruse diagrams and read summary information. Although still in the developmental stage, a prototype of the device is scheduled for release by the end of 2000.

Other manufacturers of sub-skin implants have quietly field-tested similar devices over the past few years. The London Times reported in October 1998, "Film stars and the children of millionaires are among 45 people, including several Britons, who have been fitted with the chips (called the Sky Eye) in secret tests."

Due to civil liberty and privacy issues, the ACLU announced opposition to mandatory microchip implantation when applied to humans. The ACLU is certain to be a strange bedfellow of Christians and conservatives concerning this issue.

THE FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY?

Many Christians believe that, before long, an antichrist system will appear. It will be a New World Order, under which national boundaries dissolve, and ethnic groups, ideologies, religions, and economics from around the world, orchestrate a single and dominant sovereignty. Such a system will supposedly be free of religious and political extremes, and membership will tolerate the philosophical and cultural differences of its constituents. Except for minor nonconformities, war, intolerance, and hunger will be a thing of the past.

According to popular Biblical interpretation, a single personality will surface at the head of the utopian administration. He will appear as a man of distinguished character, but will ultimately become "a king of fierce countenance" (Dan. 8:23). With imperious decree the Antichrist will facilitate a one-world government, universal religion, and globally monitored socialism. Those who refuse his New World Order will inevitably be imprisoned or destroyed, until at last he exalts himself "above all that is called God, or that is worshiped, so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God" (2 Thess. 2:4).

The Antichrist's widespread power will be derived at the expense of individual human liberties. He will force "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. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six [666]" (Rev. 13:16-18).

For many years the idea that humans could somehow succumb to little more than branded cattle, and that rugged individualism would thereafter be sacrificed for an anesthetized universal harmony, was repudiated by America’s greatest minds. Then, in the 1970’s, things began to change. Following a call by Nelson Rockefeller for the creation of a "New World Order," presidential candidate Jimmy Carter campaigned, saying, "We must replace balance of power politics with world order politics."

During the 1980's President George Bush continued the one-world dirge, announcing over national television that "a New World Order" had arrived. Following the initial broadcast, President Bush addressed the Congress, saying,

What is at stake is more than one small country [Kuwait], it is a big idea--a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law. Such is a world worthy of our struggle, and worthy of our children’s future!

Ever since the President's astonishing newscast, a parade of political and religious leaders have discharged a profusion of rhetoric aimed at implementing the goals of a New World Order. In his Friday Fax, Austin Ruse of Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (www.c-fam.org) wrote:

The 55th annual meeting of the UN General Assembly next fall will go by the name of the Millennium Assembly. The resolution calling for this special meeting of the Member States said, 'The year 2000 constitutes a unique and symbolically compelling moment to articulate and affirm an animating vision for the United Nations in the new era.' The Member States also look upon the new meeting as an opportunity to 'strengthen the role of the United Nations.

Austin continues:

At the same time as the GA’s Millennium Assembly, Secretary General Kofi Annan will host a shorter 'Millennium Summit' that will deal with a broad range of themes including 'the role and function of the UN,' 'towards a global society,' 'new challenges to multi-lateralism in the era of globalization,' 'international cooperation,' and 'promoting peace and sustainable development of mankind.' The Millennium Summit will also deal with human rights. Radical notions of reproductive 'rights' and population control generally enter the UN debate through the concepts of human rights and 'sustainable development.

Developers of biometric implant chips employ similar language to announce compatible global technologies, and many Americans consider electronically marking humans or implanting a series of digital equations under the skin to be the natural progress of advancing and necessary technologies.

IT SHOULD COME AS NO SURPRISE

Dr. Carl W. Sanders worked on the development of microchips for human implantation. He now believes such chips will be the Biblical Mark of the Beast. Writing for the June-July edition of Nexus, he says, "There are bills before congress right now that will allow them to inject a microchip in your child at the time of birth for identification purposes. The president of the United States of America, under the Emigration of Control Act of 1996, Section 100, has the authority to deem whatever type of identification is necessary - whether it be an invisible tattoo or electronic media under the skin. So I think you have to look at the facts, folks: this is not coming as some big shock. The paving has been done ahead of time."

Has the paving indeed been done ahead of time? The following are a few examples:

• As far back as 1973, Senior Scholastics introduced school age children to the concept of buying and selling using numbers inserted in the forehead. In the September 20, 1973 feature "Who Is Watching You?" the secular high school journal speculated:

"All buying and selling in the program will be done by computer. No currency, no change, no checks. In the program, people would receive a number that had been assigned them tattooed in their wrist or forehead. The number is put on by laser beam and cannot be felt. The number in the body is not seen with the naked eye and is as permanent as your fingerprints. All items of consumer goods will be marked with a computer mark. The computer outlet in the store which picks up the number on the items at the checkstand will also pick up the number in the person's body and automatically total the price and deduct the amount from the person's 'Special Drawing Rights' account."

• Bar codes began appearing in grocery stores a few years after the article above. Some claim that all such codes contain the number 666.
• In the 1974 article "The Specter of Eugenics," Charles Frankel pointed out Linus Pauling's (Nobel Prize winner) suggestions that a mark be tattooed on the foot or forehead of every young person. Pauling envisioned a mark denoting genotype.
• In 1980, U.S. News and World Report continued the warning, pointing out that the Federal Government was contemplating "National Identity Cards," without which nobody could work or conduct business.
• The Denver Post Sun followed up in 1981, claiming that chip implants could someday replace I.D. cards. The June 21, 1981 story read in part, "The chip is placed in a needle which is affixed to a simple syringe containing an anti-bacterial solution. The needle is capped and ready to forever identify something--or somebody."
• The May 7, 1996 Chicago Tribune questioned whether we could trust Big Brother under our skin?
• In 1997 applications for patents of subcutaneous implant devices for "a person or an animal" are applied for.
• The April 27, 1998, edition of Time Magazine runs the story, The Big Bank Theory And What It Says About The Future OF Money, in which they opine "Your daughter can store the money any way she wants--on her laptop, on a debit card, even (in the not too distant future) on a chip implanted under her skin."
• In August 1998 the BBC covered the first known human microchip implantation.
• That same month the Sunday Oregonian warned that proposed medical identifiers might erode privacy rights by tracking individuals through alphanumeric health identifier technologies. The startling Oregonian feature depicted humans with barcodes in their foreheads.
• Senator Robb's (Virginia) MARC (multi-technology automated reader card) Card Amendment was added to FY97 DOD Authorization Bill.
• Bionics technology is attempting to create organisms that contain linked organic (human cells) material with biometric chips for human implantation.
• Scientists are also working on half-human, half-silicon chips.

Meanwhile, it's the year 2000, and Digital Angel has arrived.

WILL DIGITAL "MARKS" SOON BE MANDATORY?

Microchip implantation is currently introduced as a voluntary procedure. But a report written by Elaine M. Ramish for the Franklin Pierce Law Center says, "A [mandatory] national identification system via microchip implants could be achieved in two stages: Upon introduction as a voluntary system, the microchip implantation will appear to be palatable. After there is a familiarity with the procedure and a knowledge of its benefits, implantation would be mandatory."

Writing for WorldNetDaily.com (Concern over microchip implants, 1999), Jon E. Dougherty quoted George Getz, the communications director for the Libertarian Party:

After all, the government has never forced anyone to have a driver license, [but] try getting along without one, when everyone from your local banker to the car rental man to the hotel operator to the grocery store requires one in order for you to take advantage of their services, that amounts to a de facto mandate. If the government can force you to surrender your fingerprints to get a drivers license, why can't it force you to get a computer chip implant? These are differences in degree, not in kind--which is why it's essential to fight government privacy invasions from the outset.

As Social Security numbers were first voluntary, then mandatory, biometric chip implants are universally inevitable unless citizens rise up in immediate and national opposition. People like Mr. Getz may be on to something. Conservatives and liberals alike better contact state and federal representatives while they still can and demand immediate protection. Laws preserving individual rights need to be enacted by Congress before Digital Angel and similar forces lead humanity down a high-tech path of no return.

And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name" (Rev. 14:9-11).