This Has to be a Sign of the “Beast” By James Reed

     About 3,000 Swedes, people living in a space that was once “Sweden,” have had microchips implanted in their hands, to make life easier. Yes, it is just too damned hard to get cards out of one’s pocket. This practice is starting to catch on in some US firms, where employees can have the convenience of getting a can of coke without even going for their credit card:
  https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611884/this-company-embeds-microchips-in-its-employees-and-they-love-it/

“When Patrick McMullan wants a Diet Dr Pepper while he’s at work, he pays for it with a wave of his hand. McMullan has a microchip implanted between his thumb and forefinger, and the vending machine immediately deducts money from his account. At his office, he’s one of dozens of employees who have been doing likewise for a year now. McMullan is the president of Three Square Market, a technology company that provides self-service mini-markets to hospitals, hotels, and company break rooms. Last August, he became one of roughly 50 employees at its headquarters in River Falls, Wisconsin, who volunteered to have a chip injected into their hand. The idea came about in early 2017, he says, when he was on a business trip to Sweden—a country where some people are getting subcutaneous microchips to do things like enter secure buildings or book train tickets.

It’s one of very few places where chip implants, which have been around for quite a while, have taken off in some fashion. The chips he and his employees got are about the size of a very large grain of rice. They’re intended to make it a little easier to do things like get into the office, log on to computers, and buy food and drinks in the company cafeteria. Like many RFID chips, they are passive—they don’t have batteries, and instead get their power from an RFID reader when it requests data from the chip (McMullan’s chip includes identifying information to grant him access to the building, as well as some basic medical information, for instance.”

     I am not a Biblical scholar, but I dare to conjecture that having a microchip implanted on one’s person enters a whole new realm of freedom surrender. Who know that could be done with this? Mind control next? There has been a healthy literature arguing that sufch technology, and its mindless acceptance, represents the sign of the beast, and the coming of end times:
  https://rcg.org/realtruth/articles/101105-001-prophecy.html 
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l39XsMcyvgA

     Whether this is theologically correct is something which I am too ignorant to judge, but the possibility of such technology leading to the elimination of cash, and only the marked ones being able to buy and sell, is a frightening prospect, and one which all lovers of freedom must resist.