OK, let us assume that God will rapture His Believers after the sixth seal is opened. However, for the sake of argument, let us further say that for whatever reason, you did not make it. Oops! God is about to open the seventh seal, things are going to go from bad to worse, and the First and Second Beasts are set to rise. Yes, you would be fu@ked. But wait — let us look at the half full glass. Perhaps God wanted you to show your faith and endure though the reign of the Beast, thereby winning a spot in his special priesthood for the next millennium. So now all you need to do is find a place to hide, figure out how to buy food without getting the Beast’s mark, and avoid being tracked down and picked up by the Beast’s high tech police force. No sweat — not.
We have argued that history has shown us that two conditions must exist for the persecution of Christians — one is that Believers are a small minority and two, the presence of hostile authorities. If God raptures up His Believers, then both conditions would be suddenly met and those who convert afterwards are faced with a difficult future. However, I would argue that even without the rapture, current demographic and cultural trends point to a not so distant future where Believers will shrink to a small minority of the population, even in America. Surveys show that Believers are still a large percentage of the baby boom generation, but a small and shrinking percentage of the younger generations. Further aggravating this situation is the ongoing normalization of homosexuality and the growing numbers of gays. There are surprisingly (or not surprising) few surveys out on the growth of the gay population as a percentage of the overall population. Preliminary polls indicate that at a minimum, the percentage of homosexuals have doubled in the younger age brackets (around 6%) compared to older age brackets (around 3%). Given the issues of self disclosure, these numbers are sure to be on the low side. We can expect a significant further rise in the percentages of homosexuals given the ‘conversion’ pattern — older minors using younger minors sexually, which somehow hard wires their brain’s sexual response to gay orientation. A bad analogy would be ‘The Walking Dead’ (I do admit that I like that TV series) — one gay converts two others and the pyramid keeps growing. The point of this is not gay bashing, but rather that the growing gay population represents the creation and growth of a distinctly hostile group (the current mayor of Houston being an excellent example) that could become a significant percentage of the entire population . The rising gay population combined with the decline in Christian population (with the death of the baby boomers) represents an emerging society where Believers will be very much at risk of increasing political harassment and outright persecution. There does not need to be a rapture to create a society where Christians are persecuted.
Given this scenario, I would argue that it would be beneficial to Believers to ‘network’ aggressively with other like minded Believers, and start to build ‘cells’ that can support an underground community. Just like the days of the first Believers in Ancient Rome, the Believers in the End of Days may be required to once again go underground — especially for those still alive during the reign of the Beast. In order to buy food and other necessities, without getting the mark of the Beast, Believers will need to have set up an underground economy — free of anything digital.