WIP / Stucky QOTD: The Mark Of The Beast

WIP asked me to do a QOTD regarding the identification of the Mark of the Beast. Consider it asked.

I could give my answer immediately.  But, I won’t. Because, as in math, HOW I got there is just as important as the answer.

Please give your answer first, before reading my stuff below. I don’t want to influence your answer.  Then read the post. I’d be curious as to whether or not your answer changed. You could say, “I thought it was “A”, but now I think it’s “B”.  Or, “I thought it was “A”, and I’m sticking with it because you are full of shit.” (The most likely response from my arch nemesis Ditchner, AWB, and ilk. Ignore these people.)  I’ll wait ….

 ^“The second beast was empowered to give life to the image of the first beast so that it could speak, and could cause all those who did not worship the image of the beast to be killed. He also caused everyone (small and great, rich and poor, free and slave) to obtain a mark on their right hand or on their forehead. Thus no one was allowed to buy or sell things unless he bore the mark of the beast—that is, his name or his number. This calls for wisdom: Let the one who has insight calculate the beast’s number, for it is man’s number, and his number is 666.”

——- Revelation 13:15-18 (New English Translation)

OK then, I’ll look at three key questions and the three corresponding principles, which lead to my conclusion identifying the Beast and his mark.

Key Question #1:  To whom directly was Rev 13 written?

The answer is in Rev 1:4; — “To the seven churches in the province of Asia.”. It wasn’t written to Americans living in the year 2017. It was written to a specific group of seven Christian churches around 90AD in what is now modern day Turkey.

This means that the messages given directly to them do not necessarily apply directly to us today. It just can’t!   For example, the church in Thyatira is condemned because they —  “ … tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and by her teaching deceives my servants to commit sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols”. — That’s a very specific named person of that very specific time period, which has zero counterpart to the American church today.

Don’t misunderstand me. Just because a book wasn’t written directly to us, does not mean there is no benefit to reading it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have to bother reading any of the books in the Bible, for NONE of them were written directly to us.  We read Scripture because the principles that appear therein most certainly do apply to us. Principles matter.

So then, although there is in America no prophetess named Jezebel teaching sexual immorality (well, maybe Hillary), the principle of remaining sexually pure certainly applies.  Of course, to the church in Thyatira much more than just principle was at sake … they were under God’s direct command.

Now, the concept of principles works out great in many situations. Unfortunately, prophecy isn’t one of them, especially apocalyptic prophecy.  What principle can possibly be applied to the pale green horse, ridden by Death, who annihilates 25% of the world’s population? This is none.  Yet … it must MEAN something!

Yes, it did mean something …. to the people to whom Revelation was written directly. THEY understood the full meaning of Revelation because it applied to them directly. John was specifically writing to a real people (not us), living in a real time and place (not ours), with a really urgent message (not just principles) that the whole church MUST have understood in its entirety.

Otherwise, why write the letter at all, if it was all encoded with nearly unsolvable riddles and mysteries, correctly understood by only a few … and even then, only thousands of years later? To what benefit would that have been to the seven churches? None.

Now, some people believe that many prophecies, especially apocalyptic, have a dual nature; 1) an immediate fulfillment (to the people living at the time the prophecy is made) and, 2) a future fulfillment, whose time is only known by God.

—For example, when Isaiah prophesizes to King Ahab that as a sign of God’s judgement a virgin will give birth,  it was fulfilled in the short term when in actuality  “the prophetess conceived”, and also in the future, 800 years later, when Mary conceived.

— Another example from prophecy; Daniel’s fourth beast “with large iron teeth and ten horns”, … about a thousand years later becomes Babylon in Revelation which is thought to be the Roman Empire, … which two thousand years later becomes the NWO, NATO, or whatever else seems fanciful.

Then, when the future fulfillment arrives (such as Mary’s conception) Christians will shout Halleluiahs and proclaim that fulfilled prophecy is proof of the inerrancy of Scripture.

There’s just one huge problem with that. The entire belief structure built around short/long term fulfillment (and its unusual bedfellows; secondary fulfillment, partial fulfillment, spanned fulfillment) is ALL a theological product of the last 150 years!  You would think that just once, somewhere, that when a prophecy was given that had two fulfillment dates, that God would have told us that. Fact of the matter is that nowhere in the seventh chapter of Isaiah does the text indicate a second fulfillment, or even the slightest hint of one.  All of these bizarre and esoteric ways or “rules” of interpreting prophecy were developed by men-with-an-agenda to solve theological problems, to shore up a particular related doctrine, or even to titillate the sheep … or scare the shit out of them.

You can get a massive migraine trying to understand it all, if even possible, and that’s a shame, because I can’t imagine that such complexity and confusion is what the original Bible authors had in mind. There has to be a better way.  There IS a better way!  It is Bedrock Principle #1 below.

Bedrock Principle #1:  Determine the meaning of a Scripture as AS THE PEOPLE LIVING AT THAT TIME WOULD HAVE UNDERSTOOD IT.

———————————— –

Key Question #2: In what style is Revelation written, and why?

Revelation is Apocalyptic. The genre was popular in Jewish literature from the Diaspora (8^th century BC) to when Revelation was written (90AD). “Apocalypse” in Greek means “revelation” — certain things are unveiled. It is not necessarily about the end of the world, — more often than not it is the unveiling about an end of an era, and a new one is about to begin.

The most important aspect of Apocalypse (for purposes of this article) is its heavy use of coded symbolic language. Why use code? Because the author was writing to Christians, who were under persecution by Rome.  Revelation was written after the Romans utterly destroyed Jerusalem in 70AD. John was a Jewish-Christian who still loved his fellow Jews, and his hatred for the Romans (Babylon) should be openly visible to most readers. He wanted their total and utter destruction. John was trying to encourage the followers of Jesus at a time when their entire world seemed doomed. But, how could he do it?

To speak and write openly about such things would have ensured his death, and many others. So, John wrote in code. Not a secret goofy nearly impossible to decipher Bible Code. He wrote in a code that Christians of the day would have immediately understood. They would not have had to ponder and wonder and try to figure out the meaning of ‘666’. They knew!

Again, as mentioned above, if they wouldn’t have known, why would John have written it to them in the first place? Just for fun? Or for people two thousand years later? The beauty of the code is that THEY knew …. but, the Romans did not! They operated from a totally different framework. and a different level of spiritual understanding.

In other words, the code enabled John to hide in plain sight.

Bedrock Principle #2:  The mark is only a symbol of something. It is not an actual thing.

———————————— –

Key Question #3:  How does one determine True Worship?

Jesus answers the question in response to the Samaritan woman at the well; —-  ^“Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

It’s not about singing songs, or going to church on Sundays and prayer meetings on Wednesdays, or any myriad of other outward signs. In fact Jesus had a lot of contempt for those who specialized in outward external signs of worship. He tells us to ”beware of the experts  in the law” who like to “walk around in long robes”  and how they love “elaborate greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues” and he closes his long diatribe of such worshippers in Matthew 23 by calling them “snakes and the children of snakes” who won’t escape going to hell.

Jesus seeks worshippers in Spirit and in truth. It’s an internal thing. Whatever “in Spirit and truth” means, how can it possibly refer to tattoo or mark of some sort?  That is purely an external thing—a matter of skin, not of heart.  It is the very thing God loathes, and it makes no sense that such a thing now suddenly becomes an indicator of true worship.

Does the arm tattoo of your wife’s name framed in a heart mean you love her?  No, it’s just a mark. Does saying “I love you, honey!” mean you love her?  No, it’s just words. On the other hand, I truly cannot recall either of my parents ever telling each other “I love you.”.  But, when I arrived at the hospital bed after mom fell down the stairs, and I saw my dad’s head in his hands, and crying … I knew he did.  When dad plowed through a fence, a yard, and some trees and he was unconscious in the hospital bed, and mom was holding his hand, and doing her best to suppress a gusher of tears … I knew. Their love is deep deep in their heart, just as true worship is.

Besides all that, the idea of tattooing everyone makes no sense. John states that pretty much the whole world will follow the Antichrist/Beast combo-pack, and just a remnant of true believers remain. Why in the world tattoo 7 Billion … when all you really would need to do is tattoo a few thousand? (Doesn’t the picture at the beginning of this article look just ridiculous.)

Bedrock Principle #3:  You can’t determine a True Worshipper from a mark

————————————- –

————————————- –

OK, with the bedrock principles established, let’s see if we can whittle it all down to some actual identification.

1)- The refusal to worship the beast will bring serious economic consequences for — “No one could buy or sell unless he had the mark”.  No one the world over is exempt from this harsh economic repression; small, great, rich, poor, free, or slave. Governments and religious authorities love to shut out undesirables, those whom it cannot control, via economic control.

This brings me to another Bedrock Principle. Whatever John is talking about, that thing must have been achievable at the time it was written. So, when John talks about a ‘mark’, whereby everyone must have it in order to eat and survive … then that prophecy MUST have been achievable in AD90. Once again I must pose the question; why would John write to those seven churches about a certain thing – if that thing wasn’t even possible when he wrote it?  The whole world must must have been able to be controlled economically in AD90, not 2017.

What I’m saying here is that we’re on to something here involving economic repression and control …. but, that control could NOT involve modern technology such as computer chips. Unless, Apple had an outlet back then in Jerusalem.

2) Revelation gives some hints of the beast’s mark.

— First, it’s “the name of the beast or the number of his name”

— The number “is a man’s number,” and it is 666

Many are convinced the number translates into an actual name. This is because of the fact that in those times letters also represented numbers. Folks who do this letter-to-number conversion often come up with Nero as the Beast. Of course, hundreds of names over the centuries have been thusly identified one way or another — if I recall correctly, even Henry Kissinger was a candidate. Whoever it was, I will once again emphasize that John’s readers knew precisely who, or what, it was.

3) A most curious comment!! And THE key question.

John says “This calls for wisdom”. Now, if my premise is correct – that the people via coded messages knew exactly who the beast was — then the obvious question becomes; WISDOM TO UNDERSTAND WHAT??

Eugene Boring, a distinguished professor and recognized author of many theological books has this to say;

“When Revelation was read forth in the worship of the Asian churches, the call for wisdom to calculate the number of the beast was not a challenge to identify who the beast, the persecuting authority was – they knew that well enough already – but to recognize WHAT it was, that it was in fact the beast empowered by Satan, not the cultural savior it claimed to be”

Another distinguished commentary writer, Robert W. Wall, says that the number did not identify a particular individual at all. Rather, the number itself has a meaning;

“The cryptographic 666 falls short of the number 777, which symbolizes divine perfection. The beast or Antichrist does not measure up to the perfection of Christ, though he claims to do so.”

4) Warmer. Warmer. Warmer. HOT!

—– John says 666 “is man’s number” Man, is fallen and sinful.

—– seven is the number of completeness, and always refers to God and his work

If the meaning of “666” is in the number itself, then we have our answer!

The beast is nothing more than human government under demonic control. The “beast” has always been with us, it always will be, and one day the Beast will destroy all humanity … unless God intervenes.

Now, this is not necessarily my personal belief. But, my personal beliefs are totally irrelevant. I do believe that considering the above bedrock principles, and other guidelines and commentary, that the above conclusion that human government could be the ultimate source of our demise … well, it just makes the most sense biblically, and without jumping through a series of complex theological interpretive rules. Not to mention it avoids any number of fantastical scenarios.

In closing, I want you to consider that America could become the Beast — that particular human government under which nearly all humanity is under economic control. If that’s the case, then our demise is probably a longer way off than most people think. We’ll continue to amass more and more power until almost the whole world is under our control. This jives well with Revelation as many already believe that such is the goal of the Deep State. Who truly knows … but isn’t it at least possible that this is what is behind MAGA? Too bad for other counties but, we all ought to be in good shape. That’s the good news. The bad news is that God eventually gets tired of our shit. Then he utterly destroys America.

.

.

https://jewsforjudaism.org/

Author: Stucky

I'm right, you're wrong. Deal with it. View all posts by Stucky