“16 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, 17 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.” – Revelations 13
In the history of Christianity, every Christian society has viewed its current affairs through a Biblical lens and looked heavenward for a return of the Messiah. Each society’s trial and tribulation served as a foreboding warning of things to come. Christian or not, every generation collides with a monumental and defining moment that headlines a chapter in the history books. For many in recent history, it was assumed that moment was September 11, 2001. Perhaps they were selling history short?
For the first time since the cultural revolution of the 1960s or even since the Great Depression, Americans find themselves in unchartered ideological territory: a cultural and civic revolution on a divergent path from the free and Liberal order established at our Founding. Global pandemic paired with a wave of post-modern philosophy have sharply uprooted our cultural norms and placed an unhealthy amount of authority in the hands of scientists, politicians, grievance peddlers, and oligarchs. For their part, the scientists and politicians melded into an indistinguishable cohort of fear hawkers who played off of each other to test the limits of their newfound authority. Using politics dressed as science they shuttered schools, businesses, churches, free speech, and free association. Contrary to the scientific method, they buried debate and replaced it with a political consensus. And when Americans were at their lowest point, having been locked in their homes for months on end, the grievance peddlers stepped in to resurrect Jim Crow and destroy any semblance of joy left in pop culture. The wokerazzi took every American pastime and turned them into an opportunity to lecture the public on neo-Marxist doctrine. This brings us to the oligarchs.
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, some have referred to Bill Gates as the Biblical Beast of Revelations because of his outsized influence on the public response to the pandemic. I’m a Christian, but I also married into the medical community. I spent a lot of time defending the man and his global health initiatives. And while I can’t go as far as to call the man the antagonist of the prophetic apocalypse, I have been left questioning what his motivations are? The first thing that tipped my hat that something was not right was when a friend sent me a link last Spring to an event held in New York City in 2019 called Event201. Event201 was a pandemic simulation exercise that followed a fictional bat coronavirus that travels through Brazilian pork to China and then the United States before going global and eventually killing millions. It attempted to model a public/private partnership solution that wasn’t all that different from our response to Covid-19. Sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation(B&MGF) and Johns Hopkins University, this simulation took place 4-6 weeks before the first cases of Covid-19 arose in Wuhan, China. And that was just the first of a laundry list of skepticism-inducing pieces that begged the motivation question. Here is a list of other associations in which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation touched the Covid-19 pandemic:
- Corona Virus Gain of Function Research via the EcoHealth Alliance – Funded directly through the National Institute of Health. EcoHealth Alliance also receives grants for other projects through the B&MGF, as well as Microsoft. Members of the B&MGF sit on the advisory board of the EcoHealth Alliance.
- Event201 Simulation of public/private cooperative response. B&MGF in coordination with Johns Hopkins.
- Modeling IHME at University of Washington used to shape public policy and economic lockdowns, built by a grant from B&MGF.
- Reporting Johns Hopkins – established financial partnerships with the B&MGF
- Therapeutics Development – Therapeutics accelerator to develop and deploy therapeutic treatments. Sponsored by the B&MGF.
- Vaccine Development – COVAX Advanced Market Commitment of GAVI vaccine alliance among others. Sponsored by the B&MGF.
At this point, a rational response might be to ask oneself, “So what?” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a philanthropic organization devoted to global health. They should be lauded for their selfless financial contribution to the health of the globe. That was certainly the initial response of this author. However, one additional piece somewhat closed the loop of forbidden territory for me. Last Spring I was sent a link to an organization called ID2020. ID2020 is a consortium of tech, health, government, and non-governmental organizations that are seeking to create a universal digital identification for every human on the planet. Gates is a founding partner through both Microsoft as well as the GAVI vaccine alliance. They purport to be focused on maintaining vaccine records in the third world, but this is most definitely a case of a solution looking for a problem. By their own admission, vaccines are the pathway into Digital ID.
The idea behind Digital ID is that via some form of biometric marker, you can be known and your personal and health records can be kept in the absence of electricity or connectivity. A deeper dive shows that Gates is serious about this Digital ID. One major research project attached to Digital ID is the Quantum Dot Tattoo. The Quantum Dot Tattoo is an invisible tattoo delivered via a micro-array of needles that imparts your skin with a phosphorescent barcode that only shows up under special light; like a human QR code. This was sponsored by the B&MGF through a collaboration with Rice University and MIT. In an AMA (Ask Me Anything) last year on Reddit, Gates cites the need for these Digital ID certificates before we can begin to participate in society again post-pandemic. If you have heard a lot of recent talk about Immunity Passports, this may sound familiar to you. Many countries, states, and corporations are in the infancy of exploring these Immunity Passports, and still others like New York state have already implemented an electronic digital version of them. Digital ID via biometrics is a natural progression of the electronic form already being implemented. The idea of a Digital ID stored in a tattoo that determines your ability to participate in society is synonymous with the Mark of The Beast described by John the Revealer in the biblical Book of Revelations, and any Christian will recognize his warnings against this.
For a Christian the idea of an identifying tattoo for participation in society is sacrilegious, but you don’t have to be a Christian to find that branding people like cattle is a bridge too far. Religious or not, there has never been a major movement in history where branding entire populations carried positive connotations. The obvious example of Nazis tattooing Jewish prisoners may be the most egregious case in recent history. Is this really the society that we want to build for our children? Digital ID under the pretense of vaccine status is incompatible with a free society, but what’s more, incompatible with a free human soul.
“Emergencies have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.” – Friedrich Von Hayek
Photo source: https://unsplash.com/photos/9yvADFNcXOc
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