Revelation prophecy; the futility of date-setting

It never says in the bible that the last beast will force you to abandon your faith, it only says that you will not be “able to buy or sell” without its mark. All the stuff about tormenting the saints, and putting demands on your faith comes from the beast before that. The one that is Rome.

Rome did in fact do this. It was a death penalty offense to be anything other then Roman Catholic for a large part of almost the last 2000 years. If you so much as questioned the RCC, you were tortured to death via the Inquisition. Supposedly the RCC put more Christians to death then any other entity on the planet before or since. If you so much as owned a Bible, and could see for yourself that the RCC was twisting Gods word, you were a threat and therefore killed by them. Luthers final kick in their butts was to translate the Bible, and mass print it.

Remember when dealing with Historicism, your dealing with multiple entities spanning over the last 2000 years, not a single one.

Added just for ease:

11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.
12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.
13 And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,
14 and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.
15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17 and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

Again though that may be talking about the system, not literally becoming a Catholic.
As an example, Rome was a democratic republic, the US is a democratic republic, what do we do with countries that we do not consider “democratic”?
Generally we make enemies with them and go to war.
I'm not saying that is what the verse means, I am just using it as an example of showing that they do kill over not following their system. Chances are good that this will only get worse as time goes on.

Here, check this out:

Unfortunately prophetic language doesn’t work that way, and beast's ALWAYS represent kingdoms, not kings.

Let me just ask you one logical question.
If you were the “prince of this world” where would you have your seat of power?
In the richest, most powerful places?
How about in the largest supposedly Christian religion on Earth?
Why not, if you can get away with it?
You could certainly do the most damage there, and you could slowly influence things in a manner that it just seemed like the natural order of things. Frog in a pot syndrome. You could slowly twist your dogma further and further from the bible, until, for example, your members revere the human mother of God as much as they do God. Heck, over time you can even say that she is a “partial” savior, a co-Redeemer. After all, the best lies are the ones that are rooted mostly in truth, but just twisted enough to still be lies.

Then while you're at it, why not trick Christians into looking for some future sci-fy antichrist, so they keep looking everywhere but at you?

If you're really slick, then you can get some who claim to be "Christians" to take the mark, because they figure “well that can't be the mark, I don't see an antichrist yet”, "a rebuilt Temple", "a peace treaty with Israel".

2 Thessalonians 2-
9Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 10And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 11And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: 12That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Matthew 24:24
For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; so that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

Yeah...Futurism...
The antichrist and the false prophet.
But Revelation is based on the prophetic language of Daniel, and what does that say:

Daniel 7-
23 “He gave me this explanation: ‘The fourth beast is a fourth kingdom that will appear on earth. It will be different from all the other kingdoms and will devour the whole earth, trampling it down and crushing it. 24 The ten horns are ten kings who will come from this kingdom.

Beasts are superpower countries of their day and match the parts of the earlier statue interpretation.
Horns are people or positions held by people.

That is a translation issue:

bible.cc...
New International Version (©1984)
'The four great beasts are four kingdoms that will rise from the earth.
New Living Translation (©2007)
"These four huge beasts represent four kingdoms that will arise from the earth.

To get the actual meaning go back to the interpretation of the Statue:

in your hands he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.

39 “After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. 40 Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others.