Apocalypse Rising: 21d The Mark of the Beast

After Antichrist has established himself in Jerusalem and gelled together his one-world system with the help of the ten kings, he will introduce a worldwide multi-purpose identification system which will be imposed on everyone in the world without exception. As well as helping to cement the cohesiveness of his one-world system, this will also unify the global human population around their allegiance to Antichrist. The False prophet is the one who will implement this project on behalf of Antichrist and roll out this infamous ‘mark of the Beast’:

‘He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no-one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666.’ (Rev. 13:16-18)

Although people in the UK generally find the idea of introducing a ‘national identity card’ distasteful and very much ‘un-British,’ simply because we have never had such a thing in this country, yet many other countries do operate such a national ID system with their citizens. Whereas we tend to use our passport or driving licence as proof of identity, many other people in the world simply use their ID card which has been issued for that very purpose.

Identification cards or documents are therefore quite common in the world. Most of the time, they are used for positive, practical purposes regarding proof of ID. However, there have also been times in history when identification marks have been used for nefarious purposes. Ptolemy Philopator ordered all the Jews in Alexandria to be registered among the common people, and then to be branded on their body with the ivy-leaf symbol of Dionysius-Bacchus (3 Macc. 2:28-29). The Nazis forced all Jewish people, in both Germany and the countries they occupied, to stitch a yellow cloth in the shape of the star of David onto their coat in such a way that it was visible. They would then be easily recognisable in public as Jews. Many of them experienced harassment, slander, humiliation, being spat on, bullying, beating beaten and kicked, or were even sometimes killed while simply walking down the street, by people who were deluded enough to believe the poisonous Nazi propaganda. Similarly, people who ended up in Nazi concentration camps, regardless of their ethnicity, each had a number several digits long tattooed onto their inner forearm. This was their unique personal identification number. They were addressed by this number, rather than by their name, being seen and treated as worthless impersonal objects by their captors, rather than as human beings.

However, we can see from the passage above in Revelation 13:16-18 that, in the time of the reign of Antichrist, there will be an identification system created for all citizens of the global community and which they will be forced or coerced into submitting to. There will be no exceptions: it will be for small and great, rich and poor, and free and slave alike. Furthermore, this mark will not be something that they can carry around with them in their pocket or wallet. Rather it will be something that is marked onto their physical body in some way, on their right hand or on their forehead. As we shall see below, this identification system will have multiple purposes and uses, and the kind of technology that will probably be used in it, is already being developed. According to v.17, the mark will be identifiable by its association with the name of the Beast or the number 666, which is the number of his name.

1. Precursors of the mark of the beast in the present day

The use of RFID chips the size of a grain of rice which have been embedded below the skin into the body (often in the soft tissue between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand) is an increasing trend, certainly in westernised countries. For the sake of personal convenience in ‘making life easier,’ they can be used to open doors, or to check in or out at work, for example.[1]

The development of a new contactless biometric identification system has now facilitated a ‘pay by palm’ method of paying for goods in some supermarkets. You simply wave your hand over the scanner at the checkout, and this then reads your debit card details which are linked up to your unique encrypted palm image – your palm signature – using this contactless biometric identification system.[2] This is eerily similar to the mark of the Beast. Although it is not the mark, it is certainly a precursor of it. It gives us a clear idea of where things are heading, and of what is to come, sooner now rather than later.

Parallel to this, a present general trend in the world of commerce, banking and finance, is towards creating a cashless society, i.e. replacing physical money and cash which we can hold in our hand and wallet, with ‘digital money’ which will simply be a number in our new central bank account which will have been set up for this purpose. The Bank of England in UK has already set up a task force to plan out how to introduce a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in the UK for the use of customers and businesses. It is expected that physical cash will be phased out by the late-2020s.[3],[4]

The convenience of this is that large amounts of cash would no longer need to be counted or handled by either bank tellers or businesses, saving a lot of time. It would also deal a blow to counterfeiters and money-launderers, so reducing fraud. It is also convenient in that dealing electronically with money and payments is much, much faster than dealing with physical money. This development is already being experimented with in certain countries.[5]

However, regardless of the convenience and benefits inherent in a cashless society, what many people do not realise is that, once physical money has been removed and dependence on ‘digital money’ becomes the new norm, people will never be able to access their money ever again. From that time on, their money will literally always belong to the central bank, never to them. And if a central bank decides to charge negative interest rates, then people would no longer be able to avoid this simply by withdrawing their money. They would have to spend it instead, and this would discourage saving.[6]

In a different but related area, the goal of the growing ID2020 Alliance is to develop a secure and private digital ID which is trusted, verifiable and portable, ostensibly for the one in seven people in the world who have no means of proving their identity. It will be a computerised record of who a person is, and such records will be stored in a registry. As of the time of writing, it aims to contain details of a person’s financial records; proof of their vaccination history; their health record, which can then be accessed anywhere and as needed by health professionals; and it will allow the person to conduct business, to travel and to vote. For purposes of security, it will involve the use of biometrics and blockchain.[7],[8]

Supporters of this concept would no doubt justify it by saying that it would greatly aid doctors and other medical professionals to help people who fall sick, by being able to access their personal medical records. In this way, such records would be accessible wherever in the world a person falls sick or has had an accident. However, laudable and well-meaning though such a project appears to be, it immediately raises several issues:

· Will this digital ID be coerced upon people?

· If successful, will it (or something similar) also be rolled out for the other six out of seven people worldwide?

· Where would a person keep their digital copy of such a record: on a personal gadget, or in/on their own body?

· Exactly who will be allowed to have access to the centralised registry and its information? Would this registry be stored on a massive, centralised database in Geneva under the auspices of the World Health Organisation?

· Would you yourself really want all these details of your personal life to be stored on a central database and to be available to other people?

The underlying issue in all this that should rightly concern thinking people, is the new and increasing emphasis on accessing and using a person’s physical body for such purposes and ends, rather than using paper or electronic records outside our body, as people have always done in the past. The justification is, of course, that it will be the best, most secure, and convenient way of keeping our personal records safe. However, this means that our body is now no longer seen as a personal and autonomous thing. As things move in this direction, and they certainly already are, then people will eventually lose their control over the last area of personal autonomy that they have: their physical body. They will lose the kind of control and freedom over the use of their own body that people everywhere have always generally enjoyed and taken for granted. They will no longer be fully in control of decisions that are made regarding their body.

Taking this even further, as I said in chapter 14 there are people in the transhumanist movement who desire to make people into cyborgs by linking their physical bodies and brains up to scientific paraphernalia and artificial intelligence. It seems that the world of science is now rushing headlong into a brave new world in which people will become ‘augmented humans,’ and in which in some scenarios they may no longer be truly and fully human. Indeed, Elon Musk of Tesla went so far as to say in 2017 that humans must merge with machines (so becoming cyborgs), or risk becoming irrelevant in this age of artificial intelligence![9] Personally, my mind boggles at such concepts, and yet the technology for such things is being developed even now. So I for one get apprehensive at the thought of what science might be able to do by the time Antichrist does rise to power!

2. So what will the mark of the Beast be, and what will it involve?

The Greek word charagma used of the mark in Revelation 13:16 referred in daily use to a stamp, an impress, an imprinted mark, a badge, or an engraving. It was used in the world of business and commerce to refer to an owner’s unique brand-mark. It was a mark made on something which provided undeniable identification of that thing, or a symbol which showed the irrefutable connection between different parties. For example, Roman slave-owners would often brand or tattoo their slaves with such a mark of ownership, on their forehead, arm or leg.[10] The Greek preposition epi which is used twice in v.16 means ‘on’ or ‘upon,’ rather than ‘in.’

This therefore will be the mark of the Beast: some kind of identifying mark of ownership which will be marked onto a person’s body, either on their right hand or on their forehead.[11] Some have suggested that quantum dot technology could perhaps be used to embed the mark just underneath a person’s skin.[12],[13]

It is significant that the right to buy or sell will be connected to the mark (Rev. 13:17). I believe that this is because it will only be then, at that time, that the right to buy or sell can be seriously restricted through the use of technology. The globalists know full well that they cannot impose this on people at the present time. The time has not yet come for it. People are still too free and too independent to tolerate accepting such a restriction upon their life. It would immediately provoke a huge backlash with massive street demonstrations in every town and city worldwide. So, personally, although I do think that the hold of the globalist NWO over people’s lives is slowly getting incrementally stronger and tighter, yet the basic right to buy and sell cannot and will not be addressed by them until the time of Antichrist. In other words, it will be one of the very last human rights and freedoms to be restricted, and this will happen in the time of Antichrist through his use of the mark of the Beast.

Because people will not be able to buy or sell if they don’t have the mark, it is therefore inevitable that the majority of people in the world will take it. So, among its other uses, it will certainly be used for payment purposes and economic transactions. This ‘latest new tech’ will perhaps be promoted initially under the guise of personal convenience, but it will very quickly become the new and only way to pay for things. So it will be deliberately used to hit people at perhaps the most basic of all human instincts: the need to eat in order to survive, and to look after your children so that they too can eat. Therefore, many people will take the mark of the Beast simply out of fear for their day-to-day survival. It will mean survival or starvation, quite literally. They will choose survival, and therefore they will take the mark. In this way, they will be coerced into taking it.[14]

Therefore, when people take the mark, they will bring themselves into total subjection and enslavement to the system and rule of Antichrist. They may secure the freedom to buy food or conduct business transactions, but they will no longer have the right to decide what to do even with that most personal and private of all things, their own physical body. They will exchange their physical survival for Antichrist’s control over them. Antichrist, together with the authorities of his worldwide system, are the ones who from then on will control what people do with their body. If Antichrist can control your body and your right to buy food, then he will have full control over you.

Antichrist will therefore have total control over the life of everyone on the entire planet who submits to taking the mark, and over everything they do. People everywhere will become enslaved, literally so, to this end-times one-world order. If they decline to submit to any new regulation which is introduced, then the next time they are in the supermarket, they will suddenly find that their own personal, physical payment system does not work. Their mark will be declined by the check-out machines. Someone out there had turned off the payment facility in their mark, because of their lack of compliance to the new regulation. That is until they ‘freely’ choose to comply, of course…

At the present time, none of us knows with certainty what form the mark will take and what taking it will involve practically, but the trends and developments which I have discussed above do indicate the general direction in which things are moving very fast now. Unless we are to assume that the mark will simply be nothing more than a symbolic identification mark on a person’s right hand or forehead, the recognition of which will grant them the right to buy food or to conduct business transactions, then, taking into consideration everything I have said above and what I also say further below, it is reasonable to conclude that receiving the multiple-purpose mark of the Beast will certainly or probably mean at least the following:

· It will provide a unique personal digital identification.

· It could perhaps be used for convenience’s sake for simple everyday tasks, such as those mentioned above.

· It will probably contain your complete medical history, and your vaccination record.

· It will house the ongoing record and details of your bank account(s).

· It will certainly be the only way in which to conduct commercial and personal financial transactions, to buy and to sell.

· It will be a sign of personal allegiance to Antichrist’s system (see below).

· It will be the seal of Antichrist’s ownership of the person who has taken it (see below).

· It could well be linked to some form of artificial intelligence through which you are controlled by Antichrist’s system.

· It will be a tool that can be used to coerce people into ongoing submission and compliance to Antichrist’s system.

· And, severe judgement awaits those who do receive it.

3. The contrast between the mark of the Beast and the seal of God

As I noted in chapter 16, the biblical motif of marking people out, for whatever purpose or end, comes from a vision of the prophet Ezekiel in which God marked out those people in Jerusalem who were faithful to him, and who grieved and lamented over all the detestable things that were being done in the city:

‘Then the Lord called to the man clothed in linen who had the writing kit at his side and said to him, “Go through the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.” As I listened, he said to the others, “Follow him through the city and kill, without showing pity or compassion. Slaughter old men, young men and maidens, women and children, but do not touch anyone who has the mark. Begin at my sanctuary.” So they began with the elders who were in front of the temple…’ (Ezek. 9:3-6)

In this case, the people who were marked out were those who belonged to God and whose heart allegiance was truly towards him. These people would be saved from the outpouring of God’s wrath on Jerusalem in the time of the Babylonian conquest. It was a mark that would bring them salvation and deliverance in the time of God’s wrath and judgement. However, the rest of the people came under the judgement of God, and they died in the destruction that came through the Babylonians.

As we shall see below, this motif of being marked or sealed is used also in the book of Revelation, in reference to the mark of the Beast and the seal of God.

The mark of the Beast is presented to us in Scripture in contrast with the seal of God upon his people. The passage in Revelation 13:16-18 which describes the mark of the Beast, is followed immediately by the description in Revelation 14:1-5 of the 144,000 who were sealed by God. Remember that, in the original writings of the Scriptures, there were no verses, chapters or passage headings to help us to read and study the word of God. So the passage in Revelation 13:16-18 was followed immediately without a break at all by that in Revelation 14:1-5. It is therefore obvious that we are expected to compare and contrast the mark of the Beast with the seal of God.[15]

The seal of God, of course, is the Holy Spirit who is given to believers as the seal of their salvation and as a down payment which guarantees their future redemption and inheritance (cf. Eph. 1:13-14; 2 Cor. 1:21-22, 5:5). The Greek word sphragis, which was used of the impression made by a seal or signet, meant ‘an emblem of ownership’ and it implied security from destruction. So receiving this seal of God means that a believer is owned by him, much as a farmer marks his sheep out with a particular colour of dye on their woollen coat, in order to distinguish them from sheep which belong to the neighbouring farmer. So those who have received the seal of God belong to him: they are owned by him and are his property; they are members of his kingdom and his willing servants; they have given him the love and allegiance of their heart; and, they are saved from eternal destruction.

The 144,000 are, as I made clear in chapter 16, a large group of Jewish believers who are saved and anointed for ministry during the time of Daniel’s seventieth week. They were sealed in Revelation 7:2-8 during the time of the sixth seal, but they appear again in Revelation 14:1-5, as below:

‘Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads…’ (Rev. 14:1)

In this latter passage, the 144,000 are evidently standing on the heavenly Mount Zion in the presence of God and the Lamb, rather than on earth. They are described as having been redeemed from the earth (14:3). The implication seems to be that they have been martyred for their faithfulness to Yahweh sometime during the Great Tribulation, probably in the earlier part of it. They did not take the mark of the Beast, and neither did they worship the Beast or his image. And so they paid for their allegiance and faithfulness to God with their life.

This group of martyred servants of God, who have the Lord’s name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads, are placed before us in direct contrast with those who receive the mark of the Beast in Revelation 13:16-18. The mark of the Beast will therefore be the seal of a person’s allegiance to Antichrist’s worldwide system, and this mark will be his seal of ownership upon all the people worldwide who submit themselves to receiving it. From both a spiritual and practical perspective, they will belong to Antichrist. Their soul, their body and their life will be owned by him. They will worship him and his image, and their life will be controlled in detail by the authoritarian structure of his worldwide system.

During this worldwide reign of Antichrist, there will be no fence-sitting. People will have to make a clear choice between faith in God through Jesus and their allegiance to him, or aligning themselves completely with the world’s Antichrist system. They will belong either to God or to Satan. There will be no wiggle-room in the middle! To take the mark will mean giving allegiance not only to Antichrist, but also to Satan who is possessing him and working through him. It will mean an idolatrous satanic allegiance and bowing the knee to him, rather than to God. The people who take the mark will therefore be marked out for judgement, wrath and destruction. However, by contrast, those who are courageous enough to give their whole-hearted allegiance to Jesus, and who stay faithful to him and therefore refuse the mark, will not undergo the judgement of God and his wrath. For them it will simply mean martyrdom (which is an entirely different thing than experiencing the wrath of God, of course). They will pay for their faith with their life.

4. The warning about the consequences of receiving the mark

The third angel gives us a severe warning in Revelation 14:9-11 that could not be any clearer, regarding those who receive the mark of the Beast and/or who worship the Beast and his image: it will lead to the eternal damnation of their soul. This is not literary hyperbole. Nor is it just an idle threat from God designed to make people fearful of taking the mark and of worshipping the Beast, but which should not be taken literally. It underlines the seriousness with which God takes the wilful sin of this idolatrous allegiance:

‘If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured out full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulphur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.’ (Rev. 14:9-11)

This warning passage indicates in no uncertain terms with what depth of seriousness God views the mark of the Beast. The allegiance to Antichrist and the idolatry of him that are implicit and involved in taking the mark and worshipping his image, will have severe consequences in terms of a person’s eternal destiny. There will be no redemption for anyone who takes the mark. The taking or not of the mark will be the ultimate choice between eternal life and eternal death. Furthermore, it is also the first thing upon which God will pour out his wrath and judgment in the seven bowls:

‘The first angel poured out his bowl on the land, and ugly and painful sores broke out on the people who had the mark of the beast and worshipped his image.’ (Rev. 16:2)

So, because the majority of people in the world will take the mark, this judgement that will be poured out in the first bowl of wrath will therefore affect most people on the planet. Imagine it: ugly and painful sores all over your body. The word of God does not say for how long these ugly and painful sores will last, but they will certainly not be an affliction that simply clears up in a day or two. Slaves to a worldwide system that controls your entire life, and now with your body also covered in ugly and painful sores that neither the False Prophet nor medical science will have any cure for. What horrible misery, and with the certainty of a lost eternity in the lake of fire to follow!

The fact that ugly and painful sores will break out on people’s body may simply be the act of God’s judgement that Revelation 16:2 seems to indicate it to be. However, it may also suggest that there could be a general and widespread physiological reaction in people’s body in response to the functioning of the technology associated with the placing of the mark on their body. Something that was perhaps neither understood nor planned beforehand. Who knows… There have certainly been plenty of examples in modern medical history of unintended and serious consequences in people’s bodies caused by the latest touted ‘miracle’ drug or cure.

5. Believers who refuse to take the mark

However, there will be many people certainly among those who come to faith during the period of the seventieth week (and particularly in Israel among the Jews), who will refuse to take the mark. And the Holy Spirit encourages believers on this point: don’t take the mark, regardless of the consequences for you. The consequence of refusing to take the mark, just as with refusal to worship the Beast and his image, will be death. The taking or not of the mark will be the ultimate dividing of the ways not only between eternal life and eternal death, but also between survival and martyrdom in this present life:

‘This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus. Then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.”’ (Rev. 14:12-13)

‘And I saw what looked like a sea of glass mixed with fire and, standing beside the sea, those who had been victorious over the beast and his image and over the number of his name.’ (Rev. 15:2)

Gaining victory over the Beast and his image, and over the number of his name, will lie in the willingness to so live in loving submission and surrender to God, that you are prepared to pay the ultimate price and lay down your life for your faith in Christ:

‘They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.’ (Rev. 12:11)

This is a choice that many believers have faced down through the ages, both in Scripture and in various periods of persecution against believers. It was the stark choice that Daniel’s three friends faced and from which they did not shrink. They refused to bow down before Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, and they were thrown into the fiery furnace as a result (Dan. ch.3). They kept the integrity of their faith strong and pure. Likewise, the Lord exhorted the believers in Smyrna to be strong in the face of imprisonment and torture for their faith, to be faithful unto death, and they would receive the crown of life (Rev. 2:10).

Those who refuse to give their allegiance to the Beast and his system, who refuse to submit to the idolatry of worshipping him or his image, and who refuse to take the mark, will pay the ultimate price and be martyred for their faith. However, believers who overcome in this way during the Great Tribulation will also be raised from the dead at the time of the Second Advent, and they will then reign together with the Lord in his millennial kingdom:

‘And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshipped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.’ (Rev. 20:4)

Happily, though, the word of God does give us grounds to believe that there will be a significant number of people in different nations who survive the Great Tribulation, and who will then come to worship Yahweh annually in Jerusalem during the millennial reign of Christ. From this it seems that these people must have refused to take the mark and somehow survived until the end of the Great Tribulation:

‘Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.’ (Zech. 14:16)

Copyright Notice

[1] In 2021, it was reported that some people in Sweden were happy to have their Covid-19 vaccine passport merged with an implantable microchip which was then embedded into their hand. See https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=5100, accessed 03.12.2021.

[2] See the article at https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=4688, dated 26.04.2021, and accessed on 21.10.2021.

[3] See https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/2021/april/bank-of-england-statement-on-central-bank-digital-currency, article dated 19.04.2021, and accessed on 21.10.2021.

[4] Some think that, even if coins are phased out completely, yet cash notes may well remain to an extent, certainly until the mark of the Beast is introduced, so that older people and others who are not tech savvy would still be able to buy food and pay for necessary goods. It may well be that banknotes themselves will have a nano-level tracking marker inserted into them, in order to track their use and therefore the spending habits of those who use them.

[5] See for example https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=3345#ibfLtk72mDa5dSMS.99, article dated 17.07.2019, and accessed on 21.20.2021, and, https://www.activistpost.com/2017/09/uk-supermarket-worlds-first-cashless-finger-vein-scan.html, article dated 20.09.2017, and accessed on 21.10.2021.

[6] Furthermore, not only could such digital spending be monitored in real-time, there have also been suggestions that future digital currencies could be ‘programmable,’ i.e. those who issue the money would have the power to control how it is spent. It could be programmed to make sure that it is spent only on essentials, or on things which an employer or the government deem to be sensible or necessary, or within a defined time span after which it cannot be used. See https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=5175, accessed 21.01.2022.

[7] See https://id2020.org, www.biometricupdate.com, and www.accenture.com, each accessed on 16.10.2021.

[8] In some low-income, remote communities in West Africa, a new biometric identity platform was launched recently which will combine Covid-19 vaccinations and cashless payments, and which will also have potential law enforcement applications. It is being developed by a partnership involving the GAVI vaccine alliance, Mastercard and Trust Stamp. See https://news.knowledia.com/US/en/articles/africa-to-become-testing-ground-for-trust-stamp-vaccine-record-and-051afc451582b5f59e76e3f5b9d5197cb87bbd08, accessed on 21.10.2021.

[9] See the relevant footnote references in chapter 14.

[10] See https://ancientromanslavery.wordpress.com/primary-sources/branding-face-weebly-2/, accessed 22.12.2022.

[11] Regarding biometric technology, the fact that the mark will be placed on a person’s right hand or on their forehead, may suggest that the mark could be linked to a person’s encrypted palm image, or their retinal or iris pattern. Both the palm of the hand and the retina and iris of the eye are unique personal identifiers.

[12] See an example of the present use of quantum dot technology in such a way at https://www.genengnews.com/topics/drug-discovery/quantum-dots-deliver-vaccines-and-invisibly-encode-vaccination-history-in-skin/, accessed 03.12.2021.

[13] Apart from an isolated use in Acts 17:29 (where it refers to sculpted figures), the Greek word χάραγμα is used exclusively by John in the book of Revelation. Together with its related forms χαρακτήρ and χάραξ, it refers to a scratched or engraved mark or image. These words derive from the verb χάρασσειν meaning ‘to sharpen,’ ‘to cut into’ or ‘to engrave.’

Similarly, Paul uses the word στίγματα uniquely in Galatians 6:17 where its best rendering would probably be ‘scars.’ This word was generally used to refer to a stamp, imprint or engraved sign made by pricking or branding. It is also used in the LXX in Leviticus 19:28 to render the Hebrew words kethobeth qa’aqa referring to cutting, disfiguring or branding the body. The NIV translates it as ‘tattoo marks.’ It is rooted in the verb στίζειν, meaning ‘to stick into,’ ‘to incise,’ ‘to punch’ or ‘to prick,’ so as to make a mark which is a recognition of ownership. Such marks were branded on slaves to indicate their owner, sometimes on criminals, sometimes on soldiers to indicate their monarch, and on the necks or thighs of horses and camels. So the underlying concepts in being marked were those of ownership, enslavement and allegiance.

It is interesting to note that the obsolete Greek letter ς (‘stigma’) is used in the number ‘666’ in v.18. The letters used in this number are χξς (chi-ksi-stigma). It might perhaps seem that we are left to draw out the implicit connection between the use of χάραγμα (‘mark’) in vv.16-17 and this letter ‘stigma’ in v.18. This would then imply that the mark of the Beast might well consist of something inserted just below the skin, rather than strictly upon it. The insertion of chips just underneath the skin is now being seen as not only acceptable, but almost by some people as the latest social fashion to engage in. Some employers already use them on their top-level employees. Quantum dot patches work by making many tiny pinpricks in the skin over the area covered by the patch. The use of the right hand is evidently for usefulness, since the majority of people are right-handed. Verses 13:17-18 and 14:11 indicate that the mark will be associated in some way with the name of the Beast or with ‘666’ as the number of his name.

[14] The kind of technology which as it continues to develop will eventually lead to the mark of the Beast, is already being used in daily life. Its continuing enhancement, and the almost constant updating and upgrading with which we are only too familiar, is a natural progression towards the emergence of the mark.

Younger people in particular always seem very eager to adopt the latest app. or its upgrade. Since they have been born and brought up in a world in which the use of tech is increasingly necessary to live daily life and to access services, and because its use is often so convenient and can make the tasks of daily living so much easier and simpler, they are easily deceived into believing that it is harmless.

Our willingness to take on board the latest upgrade almost as soon as it becomes available is conditioning us into a mindset of believing that this is the way life must be lived in order to stay abreast of developments. So when the mark finally emerges as ‘the next upgrade,’ it will require only a few simple steps to take it, and this will appear to people to be a very natural thing to do. It will seem to them to be ‘just another upgrade’ like many others they have downloaded over the years (for whatever use).

The crucial point at which people need to be wise and discerning in using tech (if they are willing) is when it becomes invasive of their physical body. For example, in terms of it being wearable, or measuring data regarding their body’s physiological wellbeing and transmitting this data elsewhere, or it being actually linked to or integrated in some way with their body (such as in making purchases using Amazon One’s ‘pay by palm’ method described above). Regardless of the apparent good, convenience and practical usefulness of such forms of tech, becoming used to accepting them uncritically is conditioning people to eventually taking the mark as a matter of course.

So when it does appear on the world scene, the mark of the Beast will simply be ‘the latest upgrade’ which people will be requested and encouraged to adopt, and then soon coerced and forced into taking onto their body in order to continue to have the right to buy and sell. It will be ‘the new and latest way of doing things.’ Many people will already be using, or will be used to, its precursor tech and upgrades. In this sense, the mark will probably appear to many people to be no big deal, and they will be easily deceived into receiving it onto their body. And furthermore, because it will be tied to their right to buy and sell, and therefore to their physical survival, they will no doubt flock in droves to take it out of the instinct of self-preservation.

[15] The placing of the mark of the Beast on the right hand or the forehead is echoed in the description given of God’s commandments to the ancient Jews, which were to be bound as a sign on their hand or on their forehead between their eyes (Deut. 6:8, 11:18). The Jews would affix tefillin (small boxes containing biblical texts) to their hands and foreheads. In the New Testament, these were called ‘phylacteries’ (Matt. 23:5). Seen from this Jewish perspective, the mark of the Beast is therefore intended to replace the commandments of God, i.e. its purpose is to signify rejection of the will of God and allegiance to him. Similarly, the reference in Exodus 13:8-9,15-16, where the sign on the hand or symbol on the forehead represented salvation from death and destruction.

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21d The Mark of the Beast

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Apocalypse Rising

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