As an aside to brother Cyprian's views on the chip and the mark, I have a few comments:
It is fully explained by the Church that the "Mark of the Beast" and such antichrist things, are spiritual first and take on material form second. Hence, the mark of antichrist is something that has been in existence from the days of the Apostles, at least in the spiritual sense. Some of the fathers have said somewhere that the fact that the mark is placed on the head and the hand signifies that it is related to antichrist thinking and actions that enslave the person and that taking any physical mark is almost the mere signature on the paper that recognises legally and bindingly the invisible mark written in their minds by the thoughts they accept into their minds and make their own, and from that thinking flow antichrist actions of the hand.
I say this because I both agree with brother Cyprian's caution against the superficial views of the protestants (especially the eschatology of the fundamentalists) on this matter of the mark of the beast. However, I do feel that he presses his views a little too strongly, because I cannot say that the chip is NOT in some way the mark of the beast (even if only in the dry run, beta test sense). In Orthodoxy we often are dealing with the "both/and" of an issue or theological issue, and not the Western Christian's enslavement to the rationalistic "either/or" categorization. Hence, I agree with the caution against the blind acceptance of the digital chips as "The Mark" prophesied in the Scripture; but I also do not rule out that it may pose some spiritual danger as preparation to Antichrist enslavement (material of spiritually), or may be even The very Mark to come itself. Hence, I would not speak quite so decidedly, forcefully, and with such finality as brother Cyprian does in presenting his worthy alternate views.
Symeon