The False Prophet is the one who is going to enforce a new law of the final 3.5 years of the Great Tribulation. This law will say that every human being on the face of the earth must accept a "mark" in order to buy or sell. We touched on the subject of the mark of the beast earlier in Revelation, but today we are going to discuss the mark and the theories about it in more detail.
The False Prophet, otherwise known as the second beast, does this: "It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name." (Revelation 13:16-17)
The False Prophet is the third person of the devil's unholy trinity. He's imitating the Holy Spirit. What is one of the duties of the Holy Spirit? To mark those who belong to the Lord with a seal. (Ephesians 1:13, Ephesians 4:30, Revelation 7:1-5) If you have trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit. This mark isn't visible to you, but it's visible to the Holy Trinity and I believe it's visible to every being in the spiritual realm. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit can see the mark of ownership upon us. I think the Lord's faithful angels can see it. I think most likely the devil and his fallen angels can see it.
So the question arises: since the False Prophet imitates the Holy Spirit by insisting the people of the world give their worship to the Antichrist and accept a mark that declares they are his, is this mark visible or invisible? A portion of today's scholars think it is invisible and that it simply means that the people who have refused to worship the Lord and who have given their worship to the Antichrist will be counted as lost. These scholars think the mark symbolizes the spiritual condemnation they have brought upon themselves, and they compare the mark to a mark a sheep farmer might paint onto the wool of the sheep of the herd that he intends to slaughter. Although I see their point and think there is some validity to it, I have trouble believing that the mark won't be visible since no one will be allowed to buy or sell without it. If the mark can't be seen with the human eye, how will cashiers in the grocery store know whether the customers carry the mark of the beast or not? Satan and his buddies the Antichrist and the False Prophet may be able to recognize those who are their own in the same way the Holy Trinity and all the angels of heaven can recognize those who are the Lord's, but the unholy trinity can't be present for every transaction that takes place around the world. They can't have one of their top henchmen posted at every one of the millions of financial transactions that occur in person every day all over the earth. They can't have someone monitoring every one of the millions of sales that take place on the internet either.
My tendency is to side with the scholars, who seem to be in the majority, who believe that the mark is a technological device. We are already using various forms of technology to provide us with security. For example, my smart phone screen will only turn on after I place my right index finger on the back of it and allow it to read my fingerprint. Another example is the use of microchips in our pets, so that if they become lost and end up at a shelter or vet's office, someone can scan their microchip to find out who their owner is. Microchips are very small devices that can easily be implanted and it's even been suggested that it might be a good idea to start implanting them in infants. If a person's toddler wanders away, his microchip could be scanned by authorities so he can be reunited with his parents. If a child is kidnapped and a concerned citizen thinks he recognizes the child from pictures on the news and calls the police, the police can rush to that location and scan the child.
There is an actual computer in existence now that's smaller than a grain of rice and it's called the Micro Mote. Interestingly enough, a news article about the Micro Mote came out the last time I was doing an in-depth study on Revelation, about the same time I was getting ready to move into the passage of Scripture we're studying today. You can see why it felt like my hair stood on end when I read the news article. The Micro Mote was being praised for being the smallest fully autonomous computer in the world. A microchip or a computer that's smaller than a grain of rice could easily be implanted under the skin with a syringe. We've been doing something similar for years for women who want implantable birth control. The birth control device is actually larger than a microchip or a grain of rice but it has successfully been implanted in the upper inner arms of tens of thousands of women in the civilized world. We already have the technology to enforce a law that says, "Receive the mark of the beast or you won't be able to buy or sell goods and services. If you don't take the mark, food won't be available to you. If you don't take the mark, medical care and medications won't be available to you. If you don't take the mark, you won't be able to pay your utility bills, and your water and electricity will be cut off. If you don't take the mark, you can't purchase clothing. If you don't take the mark, you can't buy anything at all in our new, worldwide cashless society."
We are already moving toward a cashless society. Identity theft and computer hacking have become serious problems. Thieves have even figured out how to electronically receive credit card information while a customer is having his credit card run at the checkout. This is why chips have been added to our credit and debit cards, because the chips are supposed to provide us with an extra measure of security. Our current generation is trending toward never handling actual cash or writing checks or even using cards. Other methods of payment have emerged to transfer money between accounts, to transfer money from person to person, or to pay for goods and services without ever touching cash or having to swipe a card or having to write a check. There are all sorts of mobile apps you can download onto your smart phone in order to pay for things in a more "secure" manner. But eventually the hacking thieves are going to figure out a way to bypass pretty much every security measure that's put in place, and it may make a lot of sense to the citizens of the world in the end times to protect their money and their personal data by having it stored not in a database somewhere but in their own bodies.
It's easy for us to see how the Antichrist achieves such enormous power in the last days. He's going to take over the government, the religious system, and the financial system. When you hold the keys to these things, you have the citizens of the world under your thumb. Not everyone will take the mark because those who become Christians during the Great Tribulation will recognize it for what it is. I think that those who haven't yet come to Christ when the mark comes out are going to acknowledge that everything the Bible says about the end times is actually happening, and they will refuse to take the mark and will end up turning to Christ before the Great Tribulation is over. But a great deal of the population of the world in that day will accept the mark. Some will do it out of loyalty to the Antichrist because they've come to believe he is worthy of worship. I think some will take the mark, not because they believe the Antichrist is a deity, but because they don't believe in any deity. It won't matter much to an atheist whether he has to take a mark in order to buy and sell. It won't mean anything to him except continued access to the things that make life comfortable. It will have the added bonus of supposedly providing a never-before-seen measure of security for his money and his identity.
John concludes our portion of Scripture today by saying, "This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666." (Revelation 13:18) These words have puzzled scholars, Christians, mathematicians, linguists, and even unbelievers for well over 2,000 years. Experts in languages have tried to calculate the actual name of the Antichrist by assigning a numeric value to the letters of various alphabets. John wrote Revelation in Greek, so the experts started with Greek first. They had trouble making anything sensible out of that. They then translated the Greek into Hebrew and tried to make something out of numbers associated with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It was possible to come up with the words "Caesar Nero" by translating an obscure spelling of his name in Greek into Hebrew, but the problem is that Nero was already dead by the time John wrote Revelation. He'd been dead for nearly thirty years and could not possibly be the Antichrist. Then, because John was living under the rule of the Roman Empire, the linguists turned to assigning Roman numerals to letters of the Latin alphabet in an attempt to learn the name of the Antichrist. Nothing much came of that either. The only way to form the names of literal living people is to handle various alphabets and various numeric systems very loosely and creatively. John's readers would not have had access to the tools of modern linguists and modern mathematicians. They weren't going to take his Greek words and turn them into Hebrew or Latin and do all sorts of complicated calculations, so when he says, "Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast," he must have been speaking of something the average person could understand.
I think the answer is not based on the study of language or mathematics but on the study of God's holy word. John expected the book of Revelation to be read in the churches. He expected it to be read by people who know the Scriptures. Which number do we often find associated with God in the Scriptures because it symbolizes perfection and completion? It is the number seven. We've already seen the number seven used a great deal in the book of Revelation and we're going to see more of it. So, using that logic, then perhaps the number that symbolizes the Holy Trinity is 777. Using that same logic, the number that symbolizes the unholy trinity could be 666. When John tells us that the mark of the beast is "the number of a man" (also translated in some versions of the Bible as "humanity's number") we see that the number is one digit shy of perfection and completion. Something is lacking. Something has fallen short. The Bible tells us that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God". (Romans 3:23) Every human being on the face of the earth has sinned and fallen short. Satan and the angels who followed him in his rebellion have sinned and fallen short, for they rejected everything that is holy and they've refused to be what they were created to be. The mark that will be placed on the foreheads or hands of the world's citizens may not literally say "666" since each person may be given his own personal number that's associated with his bank account and his identity, but symbolically it will be "666" because it is a mark that stands for sin and rebellion. It is a mark that symbolizes the desire of Satan to be worshiped as God and the desire of many human beings to either be their own gods or to worship anything but a God who calls them to holy living. I think John is saying to his readers, "Understand that when a man comes onto the scene who passes a law that everyone on the earth must take a mark in order to buy and sell, he is the one you've been warned about. He is not God, so don't be fooled. The Lord Jesus said many would come in His name claiming to be the Messiah, and He said not to fall for it."
John issues this warning even though the church will be called out of the world at least 3.5 years before the earth's citizens are told to take the mark. I think the warning is for those who will be left behind at the rapture of the church. Many people in those days are going to turn to the Scriptures for answers. They are going to need to recognize the signs of the times for what they are, and the warning is issued to them so they won't be deceived by the Antichrist into thinking he is the Messiah instead of the Lord Jesus Christ. An untold number of people are going to read Revelation in those days and understand what's happening. They are going to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior because they take the words of Revelation to heart. They will understand that the world leader of those days is not the Messiah but the Antichrist and they will refuse to take his mark.
When I conducted a search on Biblegateway for references to the word "seven" or "seventh" it rendered 518 results. This number is very much connected with God and with anything that is complete and perfect. Satan, in his efforts to imitate God and to imitate the Holy Trinity, will fall short. He is going to miss the mark of perfection because no one is perfect except God and no one can achieve perfection (righteousness) without God. The reign of the unholy trinity of the end times is going to be something thoroughly imperfect, incomplete, and unwholesome.
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