The evangelical Christian, Pam McLaurin, is fighting a looming suspension, claiming that fingerprinting amounts to the “Mark of the Beast,” and hence is a violation of her First Amendment right to practice her religion.

It’s OK - this is happening in America, in the more religiously lunatic part.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/1 ... the-beast/



There is a state law In Texas requiring teachers to be fingerprinted.

I see no problem with this.

If she won't allow herself to be fingerprinted then she can't be a teacher.

Simples.

I'm sure there are ways round this and the woman will have her fingerprints taken.

Surely there's a definition of "the mark of the beast"?

Yep, I'm sure you'll find plenty of references to it in the library under "Fiction".

Stupid Americans...

But she already has finger prints........ they're on her fingers. The police just want a copy of them. What's she's saying is that she already has the mark of the beast.

Thing is, Revelations was written about the Roman occupation in a colourful tone. It’s hardly relevant or prophetic.

That's not something I have heard about before, where did you pick that one up from?

Preterism holds that the contents of Revelation constitute a prophecy of events that were fulfilled in the first century.[34] Preterist interpretations generally identify either Jerusalem or the Roman Empire as the persecutor of the Church, "Babylon", the "Mother of Harlots", etc. They see Armageddon as God's judgement on the Jews, carried out by the Roman army, which is identified as "the beast". It sees Revelation being fulfilled in 70, thereby bringing the full presence of God to dwell with all humanity. Some preterists see the second half of Revelation as changing focus to Rome, its persecution of Christians, and the fall of the Roman Empire. It also holds that the Emperor Nero was possibly the number of the beast mentioned in the book as his name equals 666 in Hebrew,[35] if using the Greek spelling of Nero's name (Neron Caesar), but using the Hebrew symbols with their assigned numeric values (an ancient method known as gematria). However, a few ancient manuscripts of the Revelation say the number is 616, fifty less than the more well known numeral. A possible method to this problem lies in early translation. In the assumption that the Revelation was meant to be distributed among the Early Christians, it could very well be assumed that occasionally someone may have used the Latin spelling of Nero's name (Nero Caesar), so the total value of the gematria would be 616.[36][37]

The Preterist view sees this passage as nothing significant happening until chapter eight; this is just a “predatory show,” a seal-breaking ceremony and introduction to what will take place soon, and thus, already has. Some see this as the Judgment of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. as horsemen represent war and conquering by Rome. Others say these are the tribulations the seven churches faced (Luke 21:22). Some see the white horse as Christ and His victory. They see the second seal as a loss of peace from the land because of the fighting between the Jews and Romans and the slaughter of the Jews prior to the destruction of the Temple. In actuality, what Zechariah predicted is not necessarily about end times (Zech. 11:10-14). The black horse is the famine during the Roman siege (Deut. 28:53; Lam. 5:10; Luke 21:20-23; 23:28-29). They see the pale horse and third seal as pestilence, carnage, and death during the Roman occupation.

The Book of Revelation, like Isaiah and the other Jewish apocalypses, was written as resistance literature to explain a crisis. On its face, Revelation appears to be Christian literature written in response to the persecution of Christians by the Roman emperor Domitian in 95 AD. A detailed analysis of Revelation however, reveals it was actually Jewish persecution literature written in response to three events: the widespread ethnic cleansing of Jews that occurred throughout the Mid-East during the Jewish-Greek Civil War of 66 AD, the destruction of Jerusalem and the loss of hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives during the Roman-Jewish War of 66-70 AD, and finally by the rise of Christianity due to the religious vacuum brought about by the fall of the Jewish Temple-State.