Economic Sanctions (3) Number of the Beast

People get obsessed with the number of the Beast in Revelation. The number was just a technique by which political power accomplish the outcome that John visualised. We should be focusing on the outcome, and the identity of the political power that imposes it, not on the technique, which would depend on the legal and financial institutions at the time.

The United States is currently the most powerful nation and the strongest economy that the world has ever seen. It controls the financial and banking systems that are used by all the nations of the world. In addition to exercising military power in many nations, it uses its place at the centre of the world financial system to control other nations. Presidents have begun preventing people and nations from using the SWIFT system for interbank transactions, which prevents them from trading.

Nations that do not submit to the American Beast are not allowed to trade. Sanctions are imposed on nations that will not submit to the dictates of the United States to prevent them from trading. Nothing like this has been done before. The irony is that the nation that claims to be the champion of free-market economics is blocking people from buying and selling. This suggests that the Mark of the Beast is already being put in place.

These sanctions are directed at nations, but they are imposed on people and businesses. The list of people and businesses that are banned is thousands of pages long. Some of the bans have been in place for nearly fifty years. Businesses in other nations are also prevented from trading with them too. The United States uses control of the financial system to prevent people and companies from other nations trading with the nations on the list of baddies. This change is spreading the net of sanctions much wider.

The Church provided moral support for this behaviour by declaring that the sanctioned nations are evil. Many churches advocate the full use of economic power to implement American power in the world, but their selection of targets is highly selective. The Beast decides which nations can buy and sell.

Recently, the United States has begun a trade war with some of its allies. It is imposing heavy tariffs on China, Canada and the European Union with the aim of preventing certain types of buying and selling. It is also imposing controls on the transfer of intellectual property.

John said that the people of the world would be deceived. The United States claims to be a leader of the free world and claims to be a staunch advocate of free trade, yet it is acting to limit the free flow of trade. This is probably what John saw in his vision?

I hope the American Christians will wake up and stop their nation from going to a place that they do not want to go.