There are number of news articles lately regarding chip technology and/or cashless societies.

The first knee-jerk reaction after reading them is thinking that this is how Revelation 13 will be brought in.

However, the primary issue in Revelation 13 is worship, not economics.

The economics follows the theology, not the other way around.

That's why articles that start out talking about new chip technology, or even banks & cashless moves, shouldn't get us too alarmed.

Yes, those technologies or systems could be used to implement something like that described in Revelation 13.

But if countless people begin to worship the beast, and are willing to worship his image, they'll just take the mark willingly as act of worship.

There would be no need to blackmail the beast worshippers into taking the mark.

It's those who won't worship the beast that are threatened with not being able to buy or sell.

So that's a much, much smaller subset of the population, making the implementation of the "no buying or selling" a far simpler task.

That number gets even further reduced when many of them are killed for not worshipping the image of the beast.

So, they probably don't need chips or an elaborate economic system for Revelation 13 to come about.

The beast worshippers will also probably have some "false" form of what the Jerusalem church had, in having all things common.

The beast worshippers may have something like the old Soviet Union used to have.

Those people had to wait in very long lines, simply to get the portions of whatever those in charge allowed them to have.

It a sense, it was simpler for the old Soviet Union, since everyone went along with it, and if not, they were imprisoned or died.

So the economic threat in chapter 13 is probably only that, a threat.

It is a threat against the few that will not worship the beast or his image, and thus will not have taken the mark.

They will be known immediately, no need to worry about them trying to sneak through a line without the mark.

They will no doubt have early on been identified as those who won't worship the beast.

They will not have secretly blended in amongst the beast worshippers, needing to be discovered.