Paying With Your Right Hand or Forehead?
by Mike James
I recently read an article in Midnight Call magazine (December 2019) titled, “Takeover of the Human Body for Payment.” The article related the story of a man who went to a Whole Foods shopping for groceries. When he wanted to pay he realized he had left his wallet at home. All he had to do was unlock his iPhone thru the facial recognition software and pay for his groceries with a mobile payment app.
Mobile payment is being employed all over the world. By mobile payment I’m talking about using phone apps and other methods to pay for things in lieu of cash, checks, or credit cards.
The article went on to state the world is moving closer and closer to payment with our fingerprints and facial recognition. Payment technologies using fingers, retinas, and faces are already here. According to Aram Sinnreich, author of The Essential Guide to Intellectual Property, Amazon and Apple are gearing up for the day when shoppers are ready to pay for products without a card or phone. Now that might take some time for people to get used to because it will mean knowledge of who you are will be more ubiquitous.
“Using biometrics as a method of payment is going to be pretty popular in the future,” said Hannah Zimmerman, associate attorney with Fey LLC in Leawood, Kansas. Biometric readers are being more and more commonly used in airports today.
Sinnreich was quoted in the article as saying, “The deeper the tie between the human body and the financial networks, the fewer intimate spaces will be left unconnected to those networks.” Think about Sinnreich’s quote for a moment—the human body being tied to the financial networks as never before. Computers today can store information on your eyes, face, and fingerprints in such a way that they can determine the differences between everyone on earth. I thought about that quote for a minute and immediately thought of some scriptures in Revelation (7:1-8; 13:16-18).
Now Revelation is a very symbolic book and we need to be careful in how we interpret it. Let’s not forget John was seeing a vision. But in Revelation 7:1-8 we read about God’s elect being sealed in their foreheads. There is debate on exactly how to interpret this, but notice what we read in Revelation 13:16-18. Here it talks about most of humanity being given some type of a mark on their right hand and forehead which has something to do with their ability to be involved in the world economy at that time. I’m not setting any doctrine here, but it’s very interesting that the future economy of the world, according to the experts on that sort of thing, say we will be buying and selling things based on our fingertips (right hand) and eyes and face (forehead). Now don’t get me wrong, there are other ways to look at these scriptures, but we are living in interesting times.
One last point to think about with these scriptures is in verse 8 of Revelation 13. Everyone will worship the beast except those who were sealed by God. Revelation 13:7 says the Beast will make war against God’s people and conquer them. How will the Beast power know who God’s people are? Facial recognition, fingertips, retinas, and other biometric data? One of the biggest problems faced by our intelligence community today is the proliferation of biometric data. In the not-too-distant future retina and fingertip scanning will render our cover mechanisms (methods used to conceal who an undercover individual is) irrelevant. I believe the world is moving closer and closer to a place where not only is your name known, but what you believe will be easy to determine also.
One of the great debates about technology today is the tension between the ease and speed with which technology enhances our lives versus the amount of personal data and information we give up. Agrarian societies were eventually replaced by the industrial revolution. Most people moved from the country to the city. Telephones connected you to people long distances away, but someone knew your number. Motor vehicles took you to people long distances away, but license plates had to be recorded by law. Computers opened up new worlds in your own home, but those same computers can now lead people into your home. Don’t let it get you down; we will lose this life, but when you lose this life you find real life (Matthew 16:25).
Sources: Midnight Call, December 2019
www.marketwatch.com, 7 October 2019