An aside of sorts:

I work for an engineering consultancy which specializes in the design of hospitals.

The scare-mongering page Lindy's original post linked to contained a link to a press release from a RFID manufacturer, announcing the sale of one of their systems to one hospital in a chain owned and operated by a major university in this area. Said university, with their chain of health care facilities, is a client of my employers (I haven't taken the time to see if said hospital is 'one of ours', but it very well could be).

The press release in question touted the system as a security measure for their OB department. I inferred that babies would be 'chipped' (with parental permission) to prevent sending the kids home with the wrong parents, and to deter infant kidnapping. A noble purpose, I'd think...

The university who owns and oversees this health care chain also advertises itself on local radio, with equal emphasis on faith and education. One assumes (this is Texas, after all) that they're referring to Christian faith.

I spent a day last week working on the construction documents for an RFID system for an entirely different hospital, owned by an entirely different umbrella organization (this one named for an American Catholic saint; presumably run by the order of religious women -- a.k.a. "nuns" -- she founded). While I was tweaking the drawings, I wondered about the purpose of the RFID system, and guessed by the placement of the readers that it was to track inventory of critical items (drugs, mostly), not 'chipped' patients.

"Mark of the Beast"??? Please... These are mainstream Christian organizations -- presumably aware of the content of the Book of Revelations -- engaged in the practice of health care and utilizing available technology for the purpose of safety and security.

Notwithstanding that Revelations is the least believable book of what y'all call the New Testament (and what we Jews call 'apocrypha' when we're being polite), it is the same sort of exhortatory (and semi-hallucinatory) political commentary written to its contemporary audience, about issues and characters prevalent at the time of writing, as are the older ("OT") Prophets.

That is: Allegory, not prophecy.

There never was, is not now, nor ever will be a "Beast" -- except, as Marcia said, in the hearts and minds of individual humans.