Question
Some today are teaching that Christ cant return soon because he is supposed to come for a church that is without spot or wrinkle. Ephesians 5:27. Because the church is not yet in this perfect place Christ wont return until the church is fully prepared. Is this true?

Answer
Jesus warned that all Gods schedules are in the keeping of his Father. Mark 13:32. Isnt it just like us to try to put the schedule in our own little slot? Hardly any Bible read believer would disagree with the fact that we cant know the day or the hour, Now some have reasoned that at least take we might have the option to hinder the hour. This speaks of arrogance and a failure to recognize Gods sovereignty. It also speaks of a lack of understanding about the processes and elements of what the Bible calls sanctification. 1 Peter 1:2

Christians the world over labor under the false notion that this process is based on some kind of positional perfection. This is the idea that we sin less and produce more for God every day, so if we stay the course we must be better today than we were yesterday. In fact from the moment God imputes the righteousness of his Son to us, God already sees us as perfect. James 2:23 Knowing this, can take us out of the futility of jumping on the good and bad scale at the end of each day to see how we measure up. Sanctification rather than being a positional achievement is after all a conditional state of grace produced by a daily willingness to be rightly related to God. The willing heart is what is pleasing to God not the working heart. The shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ has already accomplished the work.

Because true sanctification is a conditional thing and not a positional one, the church is already without spot and wrinkle every day of its existence. I am not suggesting here that we couldnt always stand some growth and improvement, but that should not be confused with some positional perfection that we might attain to at some unspecified future date. If this had any truth in it whatsoever the return of the Lord would never come.

Question
Will people actually submit and allow themselves to receive some sort of indelible mark or implant that places them in the economic system of the antichrist?

Answer
The answer is an unequivocal, yes. In the United States the Food and Drug Administration has just approved an implantable computer chip that can store and transmit a patients medical information and make it available instantly to medical professionals and hospitals. The chip, produced by Applied Digital Solutions of Delray Beach, Florida, is about the size of a grain of rice. They have been in use for sometime already in livestock, pets and animal tracking applications. Besides being presently used in animals the chips have been implanted in over Two hundred people in Mexican law enforcement and are used in Spain to monitor peoples bar tabs, in high end night clubs.

Why hasnt anyone noticed that even without requesting it, banks automatically issue ATM debit cards to every account holder, almost universally? Who doesnt know that as a result of advances in electronic micro-miniaturization that it has become mere childs play to put the personal information of every person in the world on a computer that wouldnt be as big as a single kitchen appliance? Who hasnt noticed in America that even if you submit every pertinent piece of information about yourself from your birth onward, you still will make no loans or any other significant monetary transactions without a social security number? We have debit and credit cards that have advanced security features like photos and fingerprint identification. These things are only a step away from an immovable, indelible, mark that would seem very convenient and couldnt be lost or stolen.

Starting with government checks and now over to payroll checks, what person has not been encouraged to or may already be using a direct deposit system. Individuals, governments and large corporate conglomerates pass trillions of dollars hack and forth electronically without a single greenback appearing in the hands of anyone. Will the world submit to a cashless, ID perfect, means of personal and business money management? These things are already fully underway why wouldnt or why couldnt people be assuaged to cross just one more line, which is after all is only the most logical next step? Any Bible believing person who is only nominally aware of world trends and events could make this prediction with greater accuracy than Carl Sagan predicted the canals on the planet Mars. Christians must see that the world is not standing in front of the sign at some crossroads trying to make a decision about which way to go. They have long since started down the path to the place called the mark of the beast.