Deploy credit cards with biometric identification, outlaw or severely limit the use of cash, then start blacklisting people from the system. Voila, you have exactly what St. John was describing.
Revelation is the story of collapse of the Western (Christian) civilization in the 21st century seen from the Middle East. It was misunderstood for centuries, because the claims made in the text appeared so outrageous, that people thought that they must be symbolic… Until modern times. Today, the stuff described by St. John is all too plausible.
Take for example 8:10-11:
That makes no sense, until you realize two things. The first one is that wormwood (or mugwort) is the name for the plant
Artemísia vulgáris. The plant has a black stem, from which is derived its name in the Russian language -
чернобыльник, or, transliterated – chernobylnik. As it happens, the plant is quite common in the areas surrounding a certain ill-fated power plant, so that’s probably why the city was named after it in the first place. And, as another rather interesting coincidence, observe that John does not write names of things he is seeing. Wormwood is an exception.
What, then, is the “falling star” described in verse 10? This:
Now it makes sense, doesn’t it?
9:1-2 has a similar description of a “falling star” raising a “column of smoke”. Remember that columns in Greek architecture were wider at the top. So a column of smoke wider at the top describes an all too familiar image:
The same passage also includes a cryptic reference to a key needed to open the abyss. I wouldn’t be surprised if the author meant an actual key, like the one in the image below:
There are several other passages in Revelation which make perfect sense once you take modern technology into account.