So That No One Could Buy Or Sell Unless He Had The Mark .….

◄ Revelation 13:16 – 18 ►

V(16 )And the sec­ond beast required all peo­ple small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their fore­head, 17so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark — the name of the beast or the num­ber of its name. 18Here is a call for wis­dom: Let the one who has insight cal­cu­late the num­ber of the beast, for it is the num­ber of a man, and that num­ber is six hun­dred sixty-six.…(Berean Study Bible)>

In the din of every­day life it is easy to miss God’s voice. Those who trust in him and believe his words are sacro­sanct must do their very best to go to their pri­vate places, or quite spaces, even when total­ly strapped to the ham­ster-wheel of life’s dai­ly grind.

God speaks to us as long long as we are will­ing to lis­ten. He is able to do that in tiny moments of his choos­ing because he is God Almighty.
I can lay no claim to being an obe­di­ent lis­ten­er who waits for him to speak through his Holy Spirit to my heart , yet in his grace and mer­cy, in his infi­nite wis­dom and awe­some kind­ness he some­times choos­es the least qual­i­fied , the least like­ly , the least wor­thy through whom to com­mu­ni­cate his word.

Telling of his grace and good­ness can­not always come from an esteemed pul­pit, but from wher­ev­er we are , reach­ing the peo­ple we can reach, in what­ev­er way we can. So that his Kingdom may be glo­ri­fied. I am one of those unqual­i­fied, unwor­thy, unlike­ly servants.
That must have been the way Jonah felt when he decid­ed to ignore the Lords call to trav­el to Nineveh to warn the peo­ple of God’s immi­nent wrath which was to come.
Jonah in his lim­it­ed wis­dom and human flesh had no use for the Ninevites, he believed they were utter­ly deserv­ing of what­ev­er God was about to vis­it on them. In his eyes they were wicked peo­ple who deserved every bit of what was to come.

It’s such a beau­ti­ful , won­der­ful thing to be com­fort­ed in the knowl­edge that God does not har­bor the thoughts we har­bor, does not hate the way we hate. In fact the only thing he hates is the sin in us . Even though we sin he for­gives us while still hold­ing us in his lov­ing arms.
Though unde­serv­ing we still ben­e­fit from his uncon­di­tion­al love, his unend­ing forgiveness.

REVELATION.….

So this morn­ing before going to work I was tak­ing a show­er as I always do each day, and out of nowhere his voice spoke to my heart “you like to write, how about writ­ing some­thing for me”?
“How about telling those with whom you inter­act that my words are true today as they were yes­ter­day, as they will be for ever­more”?

“Wow” !
The Book of Revelation Chapter 13 Verses 16 – 18 was revealed to me.
I found it stun­ning that God would want me to write about that to the maybe four peo­ple who would poten­tial­ly be inter­est­ed in any­thing I have to say. Usually my wife and maybe two of my friends.

According to for​tune​.com, for the first time ever, shop­pers are going to the web for most of their purchases.

An annu­al sur­vey by ana­lyt­ics firm comScore (SCOR, ‑0.97%) and UPS(UPS, +0.20%) found that con­sumers are now buy­ing more things online than in stores. The sur­vey, now in its fifth year, polled more than 5,000 con­sumers who make at least two online pur­chas­es in a three-month peri­od. According to results, shop­pers now make 51% of their pur­chas­es online, com­pared to 48% in 2015 and 47% in 2014.

According to the web­site Forbes​.com, Amazon ruined the Holidays for retailers.
As the own­er of a small elec­tron­ic busi­ness I know all too well what that feels like. Before this mad rush to shop online, I under­stood the mad rush toward the large box-stores dur­ing the hol­i­day season.
As Black Friday images emerged show­ing throngs of peo­ple lin­ing up for deals in sub-zero tem­per­a­tures, com­pa­nies like Amazon has made it much eas­i­er to pur­chase online insu­lat­ing shop­pers from the madness.

Amazon is now ask­ing the Government to approve drone licenc­ing which would essen­tial­ly allow the mega retail­er to deliv­er same day to it’s customers.
If approved this will cer­tain­ly deal a death knell to many mega stores, not to men­tion small mom and pop estab­lish­ments which are just bare­ly hang­ing on for survival.

According to CNNmoney​.com ‚In a sign of how dra­mat­i­cal­ly the retail shop­ping land­scape is chang­ing, Macy’s is clos­ing 100 of its stores nation­wide. Macy’s (M) announced the clo­sures Thursday. They rep­re­sent about 15% of all Macy’s depart­ment stores. The icon­ic retail­er did not dis­close the loca­tions of stores, but said most of them will be shut down in ear­ly 2017.

For instance, Walmart (WMT)announced plans in January to shut down 269 stores this year and just this week, inked a $3.3 bil­lion deal to acquire Amazon rival Jet​.com. Sports Authority, once the nation’s largest sport­ing goods retail­er, is shut­ting all 450 of its stores after fil­ing for bank­rupt­cy. Other tra­di­tion­al retail­ers such as Target(TGT), JC Penney (JCP), Kmart, Sears (SHLD) and Kohl’s(KSS) have also pulled the plug on hun­dreds of stores in recent months. It’s a grim pic­ture for retail store work­ers — there have been around 44,000 retail lay­offs announced so far this year alone, accord­ing to Challenger, Gray & Christmas data. Walmart’s clo­sures alone impact­ed 16,000 work­ers. Macy’s clo­sures come amid a sixth-straight quar­ter­ly decline in sales. However, sales fell less than feared and the com­pa­ny said it’s “encour­aged” by recent sales trends. Wall Street applaud­ed the dra­mat­ic store clo­sures, send­ing the stock surg­ing 17%, its best day since 2008.

Last night I need­ed to pur­chase a lap­top bag for my wife, so after work I drove to K‑Mart, they usu­al­ly have stuff like that right?
Wrong, the store seemed like they were on the verge of clos­ing down.
I drove across the street to Radio Shack, they are small­er , with stores gen­er­al­ly the size of my small busi­ness . They did not look much bet­ter than K‑Mart , just small­er more orga­nized but of course they did not have any either.
So I went a few miles up the road in anoth­er direc­tion to Staples , only to see total dark­ness where Staples once stood, it had closed.

I Inquired from staff at a large store next door which is kin­da like a dol­lar store filled with chachkies, “what hap­pened to Staples” ? They told me they moved to where Office Depot once was before they closed down.
So I got back into my car and drove the few miles down Route 9 south. The store was there like she said, but stocked sur­pris­ing­ly sparsely.
I was the only cus­tomer except a lady get­ting some copies made.
I found a few lap­top cas­es and grabbed one for Cheryl, I was through driving.

A friend who owns a petrol sta­tion laments to me that he is pay­ing humon­gous sums of mon­ey to the Banks through their mer­chant ser­vices divi­sions which han­dles cred­it card processing.
This I under­stood well, more and more peo­ple are opt­ing for the fast con­ve­nience of credit/​debit card use over cash, my cus­tomers being no exception.
He tells me the bulk of his cus­tomers who stop for gas uses a deb­it or cred­it card. His estab­lish­ment also hous­es a con­ve­nient store as well, thats where his prof­its come from as there are real­ly not much mar­gins on gaso­line sales.
However he went on to say that even if the cus­tomers are not fill­ing up their tanks but are get­ting a cup of cof­fee, they still plunk down a debit/​credit card.
Turning them away is not an option .

To the young Generation X’ers this is cool, clut­ter-free way of doing busi­ness, a cash­less society.
But a cash­less soci­ety has it’s downsides.
For instance the Banks are get­ting expo­nen­tial­ly rich­er as they cut into the mea­ger prof­its of retail­ers who have no choice but to accept cred­it card and deb­it cards.
This forces more and more small busi­ness to close as they are unable to turn a profit.(And the rich shall be rich­er and the poor poorer)
Credit/​debit cards get lost they are prone to being com­pro­mised. Hackers are able to hack into large hold­ing servers steal­ing mil­lions of credit/​debit card infor­ma­tion which ren­ders own­ers pen­ni­less and at fur­ther risk.

So with peo­ple lit­er­al­ly look­ing to shop online which dras­ti­cal­ly reduces com­pe­ti­tion for large cor­po­ra­tions, and the legal ten­der already proven vul­ner­a­ble and eas­i­ly com­pro­mised whats next?
V(16 )And the sec­ond beast required all peo­ple small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their fore­head, 17so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark — the name of the beast or the num­ber of its name.

The human specie will do pre­cious lit­tle to halt it’s own march toward it’s ulti­mate con­clu­sion. In fact human­i­ty is glee­ful­ly rush­ing to it’s des­tiny, unwit­ting­ly ‚ful­fill­ing Biblical Prophecy in the process.
Even so, Isaiah 55:11New King James Version (NKJV)¹¹ So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accom­plish what I please, And it shall pros­per in the thing for which I sent it.

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