What's wrong with being chipped?

Originally posted by Bedlam
What I'm not so sure about is that even this is "the mark of the beast". My take on it is that you're going to have to overtly embrace the antichrist in a heads up sort of fashion, not buy a can of beans with a barcode or have an SSN.

IMHO, that is the greatest deception in religion today. Remember that the Bible speaks of there being a “great deception” in religion during the 'end times'. The deception being that there will be a one time, all powerful, 'antichrist' person. The bible does not in fact say any such thing, that is just an interpretation of what is said. That interpretation actually comes from the Roman Catholic Church (another entity that is directly spoken of in prophecy), as a result of the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent.

In the 1500's you had Martin Luther running around Germany stating that the Pope was the 'Man of Sin'. As the description of the 'Little Horn' does in fact match very well with the Pontifex Maximus, this was a hard point for the RCC to argue with. So how they handled it was to come up with competing versions of the interpretation of prophecy. They put the Jesuit Order in charge of this.

A Jesuit theologian named Francisco Ribera wrote a commentary called “In Sacrum Beati Ioannis Apostoli, & Evangelistiae Apocalypsin Commentarij “, which was the start of the eschatological school of Futurism...

Apocalypse commentary
In order to remove the papacy of the Catholic Church from consideration as the Antichrist (as an act of countering the Protestant Reformation), Ribera began writing a lengthy (500 page) commentary in 1585 on the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse) titled In Sacrum Beati Ioannis Apostoli, & Evangelistiae Apocalypsin Commentarij, proposing that the first few chapters of the Apocalypse apply to ancient pagan Rome, and the rest he limited to a yet future period of 3½ literal years, immediately prior to the second coming. During that time, the Roman Catholic Church would have fallen away from the pope into apostasy because of the Reformation cry stating that "the papacy is the seat of the true and real Antichrist." (Martin Luther, Aug. 18, 1520). Then, he proposed, the Antichrist, a single individual, would:
Persecute and blaspheme the saints of God.
Rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.
Abolish the Christian religion.
Deny Jesus Christ.
Be received by the Jews.
Pretend to be God.
Kill the two witnesses of God.
Conquer the world.
To accomplish this, Ribera proposed that the 1260 days and 42 months and 3½ times of prophecy were not 1260 years as based on the year-day principle (Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:6), but a literal 3½ years, hence preventing the arrival of the deduction of (i) the 1260 years to be related to the Dark Ages (according to the Historicism (Christianity) interpretation of eschatology from 538 A.D. when the papal power was fully established in Rome until its political blow in 1798 A.D., when Louis-Alexandre Berthier the general of Napoleon captured pope Pius VI as prisoner to Valence, France) and (ii) the Antichrist to be related to papacy.

So this is where the idea of a “future” antichrist character comes from.

According to Historicism, which I consider the most accurate school of interpretation, the beasts of both Daniel and Revelation are all the world controlling governments of their day. This coincides with the symbolism throughout Daniel, including the Statue of Nebuchadnezzar.

With that in mind, the entity that brings in the 'Mark' is actually the next world superpower that came into existence at the time that Rome was removed from political power in Europe (mentioned above in the wiki quote). The Country that came into existence around 1798, is based on the Roman systems of law and government, became the last world superpower, and has called down fire from the heavens, is the United States...

And yes, we are the first to call down fire from the heavens: Trinity