Economist.com | The end of the world

The end of the world

A brief history
Dec 16th 2004

Why do end-of-time beliefs endure?

Bridgeman

The shape of things to come

A VERICHIP is a tiny, implantable microchip with a unique identification number that connects a patient to his medical records. When America's Food and Drug Administration recently approved it for medical use in humans, the news provoked familiar worries in the press about privacy-threatening technologies. But on the notice boards of raptureready.com, the talk was about a drawback that the FDA and the media seemed to have overlooked. Was the VeriChip the “mark of the beast”?

Raptureready.com runs an online service for the millions of born-again Christians in America who believe that an event called the Rapture is coming soon. During the Rapture, Christ will return and whisk believers away to join the righteous dead in heaven. From there, they will have the best seats in the house as the unsaved perish in a series of spectacular fires, wars, plagues and earthquakes. (Raptureready.com advises the soon-to-depart to stick a note on the fridge to brief those left behind—husbands, wives and in-laws—about the horrors in store for them.)

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Economist.com | The end of the world