Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

[–] Zacryon 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

How do the authors know what a dragon speaks like? Were speaking dragons a common thing back then or...?

[–] skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

A pretty significant number of relatively disconnected cultures all have ancient legends of dragons or creatures very like them.

Always thought that was sort of neat.

[–] random_character_a@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

...and almost non-existent in cultures whose lands were once covered by ice age glacier that disturbed sediment layers where you can find dinosaur fossils.

[–] abbadon420@lemm.ee 3 points 3 months ago

The answer is shrooms

[–] bizarroland@fedia.io 2 points 3 months ago

You know that's a really good question.

I don't know if a dragon is ever mentioned anywhere else in the Bible other than Revelations. But at the time Revelations was written, Rome would have been in full pre-fall swing, so maybe it's some sort of like crossover information.

[–] Veneroso@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago

A vice president taking over for a president fits this pretty well as thier power comes from the former guy by definition. It's also supposed to be 42 months, or 3.5 years.

You need the mark for commerce. People without it can't participate in commerce.

Peter Thiel, JD Vance's big Techno Fascist backer has a large stake in crypto. There's an open secret that they want to devalue the dollar to spur crypto adoption. Vance has already said this 'to spur investment in the US'.

Trump, RFK, and others have been openly calling for the US Treasury Department to start buying cryptocurrency.

The problem with cryptocurrency is that it is worthless. It only has value if you think that it has value. That's basically how US Money works, but I digress. Tech Evangilists, Crypto Bros, Techno Fascists, they can't turn their "investment" into fungible currency unless they have a buyer. Here comes the US to "bail out crypto".

They then convert their profits into other stable goods and signal for devaluation of the dollar. People are "encouraged" to adopt cryptocurrency because suddenly it seems to be more "stable"

As it's fully digital, you don't need to cary cash around anymore, not that anyone would accept it because it's worthless. What's a good way to process funds from a digital wallet in the real world? Why not a tattoo or RFID tag under the skin of your hand or behind your ear?

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

So basically president Vance and a Trump-GPT are gonna make everyone get crypto wallets?

[–] saltesc@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Great, now I have Aphrodite's Child in my head... Fuck yeah.