I made another thread about this many months ago when i first came here but that thread died so im making it again this time with some different things added on. I have prayed many times now that God may give me His wisdom in this regard, my mind feels hazy but hopefully i will present the truth. All verses will be from the Bereans Readers Bible. __And the second beast required all people small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark— the name of the beast or the number of its name.__ __Here is a call for wisdom: Let the one who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and that number is 666. __ There are four references to the number 666 in the Bible, one is the verse you just read, two are about Solomon, and two are about a man and the number of his children. I will start with the one i personally deem the most important which is about king solomon. Im sure many of you are familiar with the story of Solomon, a man blessed by God with great wisdom who later in his life succumbed to degeneracy and betrayed God in favor of the idols of his many wives. Whenever i recount this story i immediately think of the West who was once favored by God and accomplished great things but then succumbed to the flesh and is now getting closer to death every day. But i digress, how does this relate to the Mark of the Beast? Well for one the verse that mentions 666 in regards to solomon is in the chapter just before the one about solomons downfall, and for two it is my theory that the so called "mark of the beast" isnt an actual mark like a drawing or tattoo but rather ones actions, these actions being the same as the actions of solomon, degeneracy and idolatry. This would help explain the symbolism of the right hand and forehead. In the Middle East the right hand was seen as the dominant hand that a person did most of the work with therefore the mark on your hand symbolizes your degenerate/idolatrous actions and the mark on your forehead symbolizes your degenerate/idolatrous thoughts. if you take part in this idolatry/degeneracy then you are rewarded and allowed to take part in the financial system, if you refuse this idolatry/degeneracy then you are punished and left out, this will likely be done via social credit system. Harkening back to solomon this system will likely start in America/Europe which are symbolically the same as solomon but it also could have already started in China which some could argue has already been blessed with great riches by God for many millennia before communism. Or you could argue that China was the lab rat for the Western version of the system. In my belief China does not meet all the criteria as degeneracy is not as rampant enough there as it is in the West but they are for sure a model for what is to come. Furthermore and the most frightening aspect of this theory is that we are already seeing the preamble to this system coming about today with such things as cancel culture and forced acceptance of LGBTQ and transgenderism, and we see that as time goes by these beliefs become more and more mainstream at a faster and faster rate even amongst so called Christians and conservatives.