Notes On Bible Prophecy

Just a few observations concerning recent events and how thay may relate to the fulfillment of biblical prophecy of the last days as described in the posting "The End Of The World As We Know It" on the religion blog, www.markmeekreligion.blogspot.com .

We know that the final series of wars in the world will begin with an attack on Israel. The Israeli commando attack on a Turkish ship last year has seriously damaged relations between the two former allies. Egypt, under it's former government, was at peace with Israel. But since the overthrow of Mubarak, the future of relations between the two countries has come into doubt. The most recent development is an attack on the Israeli Embassy by a mob of people in Cairo.

But before the final wars, the world must come under the influence of the great leader of the last days, known as the Antichrist. His base is to be the old Roman Empire, which is today the European Union. Due to financial turmoil, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has called for actual economic unity among the countries of the European Union. The countries of western Europe all use the euro curency, with the exception of Britain, Denmark and, Sweden. This would mean that there would be no separate national economies in Europe. Mr. Schroeder described Britain as the major obstacle to closer European unity, stating that Britain wants a say in what goes on in Europe but isn't willing to give up sovereignty to more closely integrate into Europe.

In the posting about the fulfillment of Bible prophecy, I speculated that the fabled "Mark of the Beast" could actually be a cell phone (mobile). St. John, author of the Book of Revelation, was an ancient man who was given a vision of the tribulation period. He would have had not the slightest grasp of modern technology and described what are clearly battle tanks and helicopters using imagery that he was familiar with. Why couldn't he have done the same thing with ultra-slim phones, describing them as a "mark" used to buy and sell?

With this in mind, I consider recent developments concerning the BlackBerry to be very interesting. This is not saying that the wonderful communications device that the province of Ontario has given the world is the Mark of the Beast, or anything like that. But the BlackBerry has caused concern because it's encryption makes it impossible for local authorities to monitor it's communications.

Countries like India and Saudi Arabia have expressed unease with the BlackBerry, and have asked that servers be located within the country so that communications can be monitored, if necessary. Most recently, the BlackBerry played a major role in the coordination of rioting in British cities in August. Other methods of coordinating events among groups of people, such as Facebook and Twitter, can be easily monitored. But rioters knew that local authorities could not monitor BlackBerry communications.

This could well be a step toward making possible the monitoring of all phone and text communications. This would, in turn, be a step toward using phones as centrally controlled, and easily trackable, devices that could be used for all manner of communication and financial transactions.