I personally heard Peter and Paul Lalonde make exactly the same claim about debit cards in 1994 on their This Week in Bible Prophecy program. (TWIBP was a low-budget, Canadian answer to Jack van Impe's similar show. The Lalondes have since gone on to other things, most notably producing the Left Behind movie.) This was at about the time when point-of-sale devices were just starting to become common in stores, and new "smart card" technologies were just over the horizon.
Ironically, I was working at the time for a company that provided software to drive ATM and POS networks. Knowing how these machines actually worked, I found the Lalondes' doom-and-gloom description rather comical.
And then, a few years later, I was at a men's retreat where I got into a conversation with an older gentleman whose son apparently worked for another such company. He was trying to talk him into changing jobs because, in his words, debit cards are "the mark of the beast."
So in 1994 and 1997, at least, this was a common enough belief.
[ June 11, 2002, 01:23 PM: Message edited by: Ransom ]
Ironically, I was working at the time for a company that provided software to drive ATM and POS networks. Knowing how these machines actually worked, I found the Lalondes' doom-and-gloom description rather comical.
And then, a few years later, I was at a men's retreat where I got into a conversation with an older gentleman whose son apparently worked for another such company. He was trying to talk him into changing jobs because, in his words, debit cards are "the mark of the beast."
So in 1994 and 1997, at least, this was a common enough belief.
[ June 11, 2002, 01:23 PM: Message edited by: Ransom ]
