What is the Mark of the Beast? — Paul Lamicela

Well, okay, okay. So, so I feel like we have to, I mean, come, uh, you know, mark the beast, right? Like, we have to talk about that briefly, right? Yeah, yeah. Because I think that could be a—let's use that as a case study. Okay. Uh, of a particular passage in Revelation. And, uh, for a little bit of context, and I think this is slowly, um, going out of favor, I guess. Yeah. But this whole fixation with, "It's a microchip," or, "It's a whatever," "It's a chip in your credit card," it's, you know, all— A vaccine. It's a vaccine. Whatever it is, whatever people don't like, gets poked into you. It's like, that's what it is, you know?

Right. Um, and again, I've heard this in so many different forms for years and years and years of my life, and to the point where I was just like, you know what, I don't even care anymore because it's just like, this is just— I don't know. I don't know. It's just, it's so confusing. And people are telling me all these different things, but all of the interpretations that I was hearing were it will be some kind of literal thing at the end of time where Christians will have to choose, you know, will they get this mark or this microchip, this whatever. Um, I'd love to hear your opinion on this. So this is important because it is—and to our, to our younger crowd, I think it's important to say the mark of the beast is actually a really important thing to think about.

It is very high stakes, right? You, it, you don't, you don't want to get the mark of the beast. Like, it's bad news. Mm-hmm. So, um, to the older or to the, to—maybe I shouldn't divide it that way, but, um, with to the dispensationalist style reading of the text, um, it's hugely important, but it's not important in the way—it's not important in the way that it was thought to be with, "Oh, am I going to get tripped up by a chip or something?" But it is very high stakes. And I think, again, I think that speculation on pieces of technology actually can be a cop-out and can cause us to stop wondering whether or not we have been marked by the beast.

So let's look at it really quick. Yeah. Yeah. So what's fascinating is that the mark of the beast happens, comes side by side with another mark. Um, so it's in Revelation 13 is where we have, um, sort of verses 11 to 18, the mark of the beast. So, um, this second beast causes all, both small and great, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark. What is the mark? Well, he says, "It's the name of the beast."

Okay. Or the number of its name. Now, what do you think of when you think of the name or the number of its name? Let's say you were John's first readers. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, in that case, it'd be like, start finding schematria. Yeah. Uh, yeah. And it says, "It's the name." It says it's the name of the beast or the number, right? It's like, it says, "It's something's name." Okay. And then it's, and then Paul, John says, "This calls for wisdom. Let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast for it's, it's somebody's, it's a number, a person's number, and his number is 666." But then the very next thing that Paul, that John does, chapter 14, verse one, "Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him, 144,000 representing the fullness of God's people, who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads."

And I heard a voice from heaven, like the voice of, of many waters sounding and whatever. And then verse nine, another, an angel shows up saying, "If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or his hand, he will receive wrath." So it's, it's the, the mark of the name of the beast is side by side with the mark of the name of God on your forehead. Right? Nobody ever interprets that as though it were a piece of, I don't know, godly technology or something, right?

Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. I see what you're doing. You cannot separate them, right? You cannot separate, you cannot ever talk about the mark of the beast as though it's a standalone thing. It's not. Yeah. It's okay. Revelation is full of these, these dichotomies, right? There's, um, there's the Lamb, there's the beast, there's the prostitute and the bride. There's, you know, there's the judgment, new creation. There's, there's, uh, the seven hills of Rome and there's Mount Zion, right? It's, wow, it's all of that. And there's a stamp on humans of the name of the beast or the name of the Lamb. Like, would it be appropriate to think of this almost like a, a branding? Exactly.

Like, like, like an old style, like or a new brand or something. Or a slave brand. Yeah. Which would happen in the ancient world. And he's basically putting, he's, he's contrasting these two off of each other. Okay. Well, now, so if you're, if you're stamped with the name of, of Jesus or God, this means for one thing that you will, you will be exempt from the final judgment, right? And this actually comes from Ezekiel. There's this mark of God that God's people are stamped with to avoid judgment. So he's pulling that straight from Ezekiel. Do you know where that is in Ezekiel? Just if anyone wants to know. It's Ezekiel. It's Ezekiel nine. Okay. I'm going to read that afterwards.

That's a great, I hadn't thought of that. Right. That's fascinating. Um, so, okay. Okay. Okay. So what it, so what it means though, is that yes, you're, you're stamped, that means you belong to, it believes you belong to Jesus, right? That's what it means. It's a branding. It's, it's saying, I, I belong to Jesus. I'm a Jesus person. I'm, I bear his name. So just like Israel was supposed to bear God's name in the Old Testament, or like the high priest had on his forehead, holy to Yahweh.

Um, all of God's people are those who are stamped with allegiance to the Lamb. Okay. So, so I'm really curious here. Why did John put a number with this beast mark and say 666? Not 666, but 600, not 666. It's 666. So that has tripped up people a lot. Yeah. Especially, again, I'm thinking more here in America in the last, in the last few decades. But, um, but so again, walk me through that. The most important thing is to say is whatever this is, it's the antithesis of being sealed with God's name, being somebody who says, "I belong, my allegiance is not to the beast, my allegiance is to Jesus." And that might mean I, I suffer a lot in this life, but it means I'm going to be saved from final judgment.

It means I, I live as somebody who, like a priest who bears God's name. So this is the opposite. So this one would think implies, um, being stamped by allegiance to the, the world, right? As represented in the beast. And specifically, um, John doesn't mention any specific name, but he mentions this number. And the, the common, the, the most common interpretation of this is that it represents, it stands for the words Nero Caesar.

Hmm. Okay. Um, not all scholars think that, but that's the majority, the majority take. Um, so again, if you write out the name Nero Caesar using Hebrew characters, um, it comes out to 666, right? Now, why, why does he say this? Why doesn't he just say, it's Nero? Yeah. Um, well, I think a couple of reasons. One, again, this is how this type of literature tends to work. Think of the sibling oracles, where for some reason, even though it's describing a whole list of king, of emperors, Roman emperors that were known to the people, it does it in a more, in a cryptic fashion rather than just come out and say it. It seems to imbue more symbolic meaning, um, more theological significance, more a sense of, this is kind of scary, but God knows what's going on type of thing.

Um, right? So I think that's one of the, that's one of the reasons. This is an enemy figure, and so it's described more cryptically. But I think also it's that Nero, Nero himself is, is simply a stand-in for the, the head of the beast, right? That this isn't supposed to be just the historical Nero and that's it. Well, that was my next, very next question was like, oh, well then that means this is locked to this specific piece of history. But no, you're, and is this because there's so much going on about Rome, but Rome as an archetype against God's people, say, and Nero is a great example of that, actually, like a really, really horrible person who persecuted Christians, persecuted Christians like at an incredible level.

Right. Um, and he also, so he also, some of the imagery that, that is spoken of here, Nero had some of these weird legends associated with him. Like he, he died, but some people thought, claimed that no, he actually wasn't dead, or maybe he was dead, but he was going to come back someday. Oh, wow. So he's like a great stand-in for like the anti-Messiah because a lot of similar stuff that's spoken of Jesus, right? He died, but will return or whatever. There's, there are various legends about Nero or expectations around this time that kind of like Elvis or something. Maybe he's not dead or maybe he'll come back. Yeah, maybe he'll come back. Yeah.

And so he's perfect for this kind of thing, right? Again, as an archetype. Yeah. So, okay. Because he was already gone by the time Revelation was written. I was going to say he would have been dead by. So it's not like the people were like, "Oh, good. Nero's, this stands for Nero. Nero's gone. That means I don't have to worry about getting marked by the beast." No, no, no. It's saying that the beast, Rome, as a stand-in for God's, the power of God's enemy, right?

Um, and its head, it's, it's, it's human leader as, as symbolized by Nero, right? Mm-hmm. That's, that is, that is the beast, right? And then being marked by the beast means to be branded with allegiance to that figure or that pattern of figures. Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm.

And this, the reason this is so powerful and important, I think, is that, um, it's, it's again, it speaks to, just like the rest of the New Testament, Revelation is not saying something different from the rest of the New Testament. It's the same thing.

This speaks to our heart. That's the thing I hate most about wondering about the mark of the beast being some piece of technology and getting, "Oops, I just got the wrong credit card and now I'm, now I'm going to hell or something." Um, that has nothing to do with one's heart. But what John is talking about is, where is your allegiance? Are you living your life now marked by this, by God's name on your head or the world system name on your head? And that, that, that's, that's a really convicting thing because it's, it's the, those, the pressures from society. Um, I can make more money. I can be successful if I give myself to, um, the power and pleasure of the markets, or I can get my sort of my tribes, um, policies in place if I give myself to a certain political party, as some of our people are doing.