What Is The Mark Of The Beast?

@DunningKruger Was the river Euphrates drying up back then cause it is now

@Lichocolati

[quote]Was the river Euphrates drying up back then cause it is now[/quote]

This one already happened in 539 BCE and the world didn't end:

[i]The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East.[/i]
Revelation 16:12

[b][i]Cyrus was now reduced to great perplexity, as time went on and he made no progress against the place. In this distress either some one made the suggestion to him, or he bethought himself of a plan, which he proceeded to put in execution. He placed a portion of his army at the point where the river enters the city, and another body at the back of the place where it issues forth, with orders to march into the town by the bed of the stream, as soon as the water became shallow enough: he then himself drew off with the unwarlike portion of his host, and made for the place where Nitocrisnote dug the basin for the river, where he did exactly what she had done formerly: [u][c=800000]he turned the Euphrates by a canal into the basin, which was then a marsh, on which the river sank to such an extent that the natural bed of the stream became fordable.[/c][/u]
Hereupon the Persians who had been left for the purpose at Babylon by the, river-side, entered the stream, which had now sunk so as to reach about midway up a man's thigh, and thus got into the town.[/i]
[/b]
https://www.livius.org/sources/content/herodotus/cyrus-takes-babylon/

This is a far more parsimonious interpretation of the passage from Revelation than climate change slowly drying up the river over decades.

The fact is that people have believed they see this or that sign of the end times since the time of Jesus.
Paul was evidently quite convinced that Jesus would be returning within the generation. Even Jesus hisownself thought he'd be back before the people to whom he delivered the prophecy had died.

And yet here we still are.

@Pikachu Was the moon turning blood red and was there also pestilence all at the same time?

Remember what the apostle Paul said the return of the Lord Jesus would be like the days of Noah. People were making fun of Noah building the ark and going about their day till the flood came and swept them away. The advantage we have are the many signs that Jesus spoke of. I don't know if you didn't notice how the world changed in the blink of an eye in 2020.

@Lichocolati

Was the moon turning blood red? Probably not. Was there pestilence? Of course there was. There [i]always[/i] is.
Here's the first hit on google for that time period:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian

[quote]I don't know if you didn't notice how the world changed in the blink of an eye in 2020.[/quote]

Oh you thought COVID was a big deal? Well you're right, it was....but it was [i]nothing[/i] compared to the bubonic plague which killed up to 25 million people.
That's the thing about these "signs" of the end times. People have been seeing them since they were written. War, pestilence, famine, natural disaster. There has [i]never[/i] been a period in history where these things were not happening and indeed, some of these things like war and disease are actually at lower rates than they have been at any other point in history.

The problem with prophecy is that unless it can only match [i]one[/i] event then it is useless as prophecy. And the "prophecy" in revelation has been recognized over and over and over and over and over and over and.....
There is not one single generation in recorded history since Jesus which has not been utterly sure that they saw the sings of the end.
And yet here we are.