Is the beast a computer, the Internet, bar codes, microchips or credit cards?
Another rather silly way to read Revelation is to try and find something in the book that matches up with current technology, such as computers or microchips. Any kind of technology can be used for good or evil. I would ask you to avoid any interpretation of something in Revelation that makes no sense in the first century world. Computers and bar codes might make sense to us, but they would be meaningless to first century Christians, and the book of Revelation is as much theirs as it is ours. Hal Lindsey once interpreted the “locust monsters” in Revelation 9 as helicopters. I interpret these “monsters” as demons. Which interpretation would make sense to all Christians, and which one only makes sense to modern people? I think this is important, and will do a lot to keep us from chasing after “strange rabbits” in the book of Revelation.
