Employees of Wisconsin company are embedded with microchips

And he causeth 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...
...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. Revelation 13:16-17, 14:9-11

As reported by Jefferson Graham and Laura Schulte in USA Today, August 1, 2017:

RIVER FALLS, Wis. — A local firm here made good today on its vow to embed employees with microchips.

Sporting "I Got Chipped" T-shirts, some 40 workers at Three Square Market, a firm that makes cafeteria kiosks aimed at replacing vending machines, got tiny rice-sized microchips embedded in their hands.

Company officials said it was for convenience, a way for them to bypass using company badges and corporate log-ons to computers. Now, they can just have their hands read by a reader, similar to using a smartphone to pay for goods.

The company would like to see payments go cashless, as iPhone users do with Apple Pay. Except in this case, consumers use their hand instead of a smartphone to pay.

The chip is not a tracker nor does it have GPS in it, so the boss can't track your movements, company officials say. Still, to those who worry about Big Brother having more control over our lives, Three Square Market President Patrick McMullan says you should, "take your cell phone and throw it away."

The chips come from Biohax Sweden, a company that says it has nearly 3,000 people using it in Europe. The founder of that company, Jowan Osterlund, has struck alliances with companies to pay to have the chips installed in employees or pass them out at tech fairs.

Three Square Market employees say they were having the chip installed to be part of the larger team, and help develop the technology.

The chip ceremony was held in the company's cafeteria, where a local tattoo artist, was on hand to perform the installation.

The entire process took about a minute. It started with Osterlund cleaning the skin, finding a spot in the hand to pinch, then asking the employee to inhale and exhale as he inserted a syringe, install the chip, and place a band-aid over the spot.

"The pinch hurt more than the injection," says McMullen. "It stung for about an hour and half afterwards, but now it's getting back to normal."

But what seemed normal in Wisconsin played out differently across the Internet.

During our Facebook Live interview with McMullen, Chris Malak from Winneconne, Wis., said, "I have a co-worker who can never keep track of their keys thus always asking for mine and no idea what her pass word are. This would be good for her. But as for me, hell no."

Go here to see an interview with Three Market Square Chief Executive Officer Todd Westby on the company's plan to insert microchips into their employees.

Prophecy is one of the most useful tools Christians have in defending the truth of the Bible. Most Biblical prophecies have already been fulfilled, some have yet to be fulfilled, and some are in the process of being fulfilled. The prophecies in Revelation cited above weren't capable of fulfillment until recently, because the technology didn't exist. The technology does exist now, and the prophecy of the mark of the Beast is in the process of being fulfilled. Skeptics may claim that Biblical prophecies of a "mark" in the right hand or forehead without which no one may buy or sell, and the existence and gradually increasing acceptance of microchip implants, is just a coincidence, but the skeptics can't deny that the prophecies are in the Bible--and they've been there for over 1,900 years.

In the case of Three Square Market, the fulfillment of the prophecy in the passages from Revelation isn't exact--

this photo shows an employee receiving the implant in his left hand, not his right--but the stage is clearly being set.

It's one thing to imagine how Biblical prophecy will be fulfilled, and it's another thing to hang around long enough to see it being fulfilled--and not necessarily as I imagined. When I read these prophecies in my early years as a Christian in the 1970s, and 1980s, I imagined that there would be a lot of force involved in getting people to receive the mark of the Beast. However, over the last 15 or 20 years, I've come to believe that my earlier view was wrong--rather than being forced to take the mark of the Beast, people will want it. Submitted for your approval, the following article by Jefferson Graham in USA Today, July 29, 2017 (updated August 1, 2017) (link in original):

LOS ANGELES — Charlene Li wants to be chipped.

“I am so ready,” says the long-time author and principal analyst for the Altimeter Group.

She’s referring to having a microchip embedded in her body, one that would do many of the things her smartphone could do now.

This week science fiction came to the heartland when a small Wisconsin company announced it would begin implanting microchips into employees hands. The pitch: This will be a convenience for them to ditch the company badge and corporate log-on for computers. Instead, the chip identifies them.

For Li, “as a woman, we don’t generally have outside pockets in our clothes so we have to carry a purse for my keys and phone and other things," she says. "If I had a chip, I wouldn’t have to lose things, and I could pay for things, open my car doors, so many options.”

Tuesday, the Wisconsin firm, Three Square Market, will stage a “chips and salsa,” party at its company headquarters near the Minnesota border, where it expects to chip up 50 of its 85 employees.

The announcement set up off alarm bells with some readers, who asked about the health risks (experts say they’re minimal, for now) and worried about them being evasive).

First, a reality check. The tiny, rice-shaped microchips do not have GPS. They are similar to the chip inside smartphones that let us pay for goods at the store by holding it under a reader. They can identify us, but they can’t track us — yet.

Still, it got us wondering. Beyond company ID and logging onto the computer, how else could an implanted chip improve (or worsen) our lives?
We went to a farmer’s market this week to ask folks. Their take:

— Replace passwords forever. Haley Cameron, 20, a hostess for a Hermosa Beach, Calif., restaurant says she has so many passwords and always forgets them. If they were already in you, “you wouldn’t have to memorize things or write them down,” she says.

— Goodbye passports. “It would be more efficient," says Mari Calisto, 17, a Hermosa Beach student. "At the airport it would be really quick to scan your ID” ... “and you wouldn’t have to worry about carrying a lot of paperwork.”

— Ditch the phone. Implant a chip that would allow you to receive phone calls through an accessory earpiece — as they communicated in the 2012 remake of Total Recall, when actual phones were implanted in bodies, and the characters held their hands to their ears to make calls. “I wouldn’t want to use the phone anymore. It’s all about the chips,” says Stephen Blackshear, 17, a Hermosa Beach student.

— Medical Safety. You could put vital information into the chip, says Bob Hoffman, 71, a retiree in Hermosa Beach. “If someone passed out, they might be able to read from the chip what allergies or medical problems they had.”

— Keeping track of criminals. Instead of ankle bracelets that monitor the movement of those under custody, “maybe they could trade it for chipping,” says Joe Terry, a farmer from Lawndale, Calif.

— Buy goods at stores quicker. Amazon is testing a new supermarket concept in Seattle that eliminates cash registers and lets customers pay with an app. For Li, an embedded chip would do even better.(Three Square Market sells kiosks that replace vending machines for employees, and is encouraging paying for food with the chip.)

— Business cards are so yesteryear. “When I meet people and they would say, can I connect with you, I say, read my chip,” says Li. “There’s no exchange of business cards, I'd just show up in their contacts.”

Click here to listen to our complete interview with Li about being chipped on the #TalkingTech podcast.

While the Scripture dwells on the negative aspects of receiving the mark of the Beast, the article above mentions a number of positive aspects, which I suggest are helping to soften people up for accepting the microchip. Another motivation, as stated in the earlier article, is to be "part of the larger team"--which sounds somewhat coercive and suspiciously cultic to me, especially with so many workers wearing t-shirts reading "I Got Chipped." It's also worth noting that while the microchipping technology comes from and is accepted in Sweden--which long ago abandoned its Christian heritage--it's now gaining increasing acceptance in the United States, which still retains a vestige of its Christian heritage.

I suggest that a pre-Tribulation, pre-millennial Rapture would hasten acceptance of the mark of the Beast. Imagine, if you will, the sudden disappearance of untold numbers of Christians. Those who are left behind won't likely recognize that those who have disappeared are Christians who've gone up in the Rapture--when the Antichrist is revealed, God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie (II Thessalonians 2:11).

More likely, the reaction of those left behind will be panic because of the disappearance of large numbers of people, with no way of tracing where they went. (New Agers--and "Christian" dominionists--will likely say that the "good guys" have been left behind, while the "bad guys" who have been holding back the introduction or progress of the New Age have been removed either for re-education or destruction.) The reaction will likely be "Where did they go? Who's next? If this happens again and I disappear, I want those left behind to be able to find out where I went. Give me that microchip before this happens again."

God doesn't condemn people merely for having a piece of technology put in their bodies--there are no biblical condemnations, for instance, of pacemakers, or pieces of steel in the case of fractured bones--but there is a condemnation for receiving the mark of the Beast. Since the passages in Revelation talk about the mark as "of the beast," and say that those who receive it "drink of the wine of the wrath of God," there has to be a major religious component to accepting the mark, involving allegiance to the Antichrist and rejection of Jesus Christ.

All of these developments indicate that the return of the Lord Jesus Christ is imminent and draws ever nearer. Maranatha!