Don't Accept The Beast's Mark - Revelation 13-14:5

A man was talking in the mall on his cellphone. "I know it's something you want," he said earnestly, "but I don't think tattoos are a good idea. And the same goes for body piercing. As long as you're living in my house, I think you should respect my wishes."

After a few moments, where the person on the other end of the phone had to have been arguing their side of the argument, the man said, "Besides, Mom, you're 75 years old! You don't need a tattoo!"

Tattoos seem to be a growing trend these days…almost everywhere you turn there is a new tattoo parlor and more and more folks, some you would never expect, bearing tattoos.  In that sense, more and more folks are becoming marked…and being marked is where we are going in Revelation today…

Last week, we began the cosmic battle which was the historical survey that was an attempt to explain why the people found themselves in the intense situation of persecution that they found themselves in.  We saw as the dragon, which was Satan, first pursued the woman, representing the people of God, and after not being able to get hold of her, took after her children, those who seek to live by God’s commandments and follow Jesus.  We left off as the dragon was waiting on the shore of sea…waiting for his reinforcements to go after people that would hold on to Christ.  Chapter 13 of Revelation gives us the account of the dragon’s reinforcements arriving…and then it boils down a mark.

As we enter chapter 13, we encounter “a beast rising out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads were blasphemous names…and the dragon gave it his power and his throne and great authority.  One of its heads seemed to have received a death-blow, but its mortal wound had been healed.  In amazement the whole earth followed the beast.  They worshipped the beast, saying, ‘who is like the beast, and who can stand against it?’”

They were asking “who is like the beast, and who can stand against it?” and we want to ask, not “who is like the beast” but “who is this beast?”  If we remember, or refer to our apocalyptic symbolism cheat sheet, we recall that beasts and animals represent nations, and that horns and heads represent rulers.  With ten horns and seven heads, we can begin to think that it is inclusive of all the rulers of that nation as it has come to be.  What nation have we repeatedly come across as appearing connected throughout Revelation?  That’s right, Rome.  And the wounded head that had been healed will be a further indication of this connection.  The first thing to note, though, is the way that evil parodies something good…we remember that the Lamb before the throne of God was slain but alive, so evil parodies that with this beast that has a mortal wound that has been healed…that parody is continued with the second beast that is described as having “two horns like a lamb” but “spoke like a dragon.”

My friends, that is why evil tends to catch so many people.  Evil is not always easily recognized, because often it looks good.  Groups like Hitler’s Nazi’s and the Klan appeal to folks who feel threatened and think protecting themselves at the expense of another is a great idea, self-preservation is a good thing, right?  Adulterous affairs, may look like love.  I think of how in the movie Ghost Rider, Johnny Blaze sells his soul, not for riches, or power, or pleasure, but in an attempt to save the life of his father.  Evil packages itself in pretty packages, sometimes packages that look like something good.

For the wounded head that had been healed to connect us to Rome, we have to know a little more of the history.  The first emperor to persecute Christians from Rome was Nero.  He used Christians as scapegoats to cover up his own misdeeds.  His persecution was so harsh, that his name became associated with the persecution of Christians, much in the same way that on the good side of things, that Moses was considered the Lawgiver, though God’s laws came before and after Moses, and prophesy is associated with Elijah, though prophets preceded and followed him in Israel.  When Nero was died, there were rumors that he did not really die, but had gone into hiding and was raising and army and would return to take back the throne.  So whenever extremely intense persecution was leveled on the Christians by an emperor, it was said that that emperor was “Nero come back to life”—hence the head/ruler with a mortal wound, that was healed.

So this beast was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months…3 ½ years…3 ½ symbolizing the amount of time God allows evil to appear to have the upper hand before moving in and taking away the persecution.  We find that the beast, or its power, is so attractive that almost everyone throughout the world (the known world at that time), worships this beast…only those “whose name has been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb” do not worship…only those who are faithful don’t worship the beast are the ones who names are written in the book of life…verses nine and ten call on the people of God to remain faithful, and keep their names in the book of life: “Let anyone who has an ear listen: If you are to be taken captive, into captivity you go; if you kill with the sword, with the sword you must be killed.  Here is a call for the endurance of the saints.”

The second beast comes, not from the sea, but from the earth.  “It exercises all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast…It performs great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in the sight of all; and by the signs that it is allowed to perform on behalf of the beast, it deceives the inhabitants of the earth….”  If the first beast is Rome and its emperors, then what of this second beast?  What caused the people to worship Rome and its emperors, the temple emperor cults that we discussed before that were set up throughout the region, such as the one we looked at in Pergamum, which Revelation referred to as the synagogue of Satan, fitting, since to worship the beast is to worship the one giving power to the beast, the dragon, who is Satan.  The emperor temples were also known to have ancient stone, wood, and pulley contraptions set up as idols that resembled the work of the wizard of Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz…so that through those setups they could make fire or lightening come from the eyes, or smoke billow from the nose….giving the suggestion that these emperor idols were powerful and scaring the people into bowing down before them.

Remember how earlier, as we discussed the four horsemen of the apocalypse that we discussed that while some may have experienced death and physical torture as part of the persecution, that many of God’s faithful, those who refused to worship the emperor, experienced an economic persecution.  We see it come into play here: “…it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.”  Remember how we discussed the outrageous cost of a quart of wheat, that a day’s wages would buy one quart of wheat and that one quart of wheat was what was needed to keep one person alive for a day…and this if there was only one person working in a household, of two, or three, or four, or five…how the lack of food and nutrition would lead to the death of those who refused to fall in line…here we see how it is acted out…those who refused to worship in the emperor cult were not marked and thus not all owed to buy or sell…not allowed to purchase food in the marketplace, nor sell their wares in the marketplace to earn money to buy food elsewhere.

So what is this mark?  It is the mark of the beast…the name of the beast or the number of its name, and we are told that it is the number of a person…the number six hundred and sixty-six.  666, a number that has cause so much disturbance over the years…a number treated more superstitiously than the number 13.  I had a grocery store cashier tell me one time that she knew she was going to have an awful day, because she had had to give someone $6.66 back in change.  People refuse to stay in motel rooms that have the number 666.  Folks have refused to accept license plates with 666 as part of their number.  The list goes on and on.  Yet the passage tells us that 666 is the number of the name of a person.  How could that be, well, Rome itself gives us an aid.  Often, if you do not use the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on to count, how would you number something?  With Roman numerals…and what are Roman numerals?  Letters of the alphabet.  Prior to the numeric system we are familiar with, letters were used to represent numbers.  Thus a person’s name could have a numeric equivalent.  Can we guess whose name comes out to 666?  Neron Caesar.  666 is not some mysterious magical number, it is the name of the emperor

If you worshipped the emperor, you were given a mark…that mark would be placed on either your forehead or your right hand.  It is important to note that in this time period, slaves were branded with their owners symbol.  They were branded on either the forehead or the right hand.  If you were marked in this way as a slave, someone could look at you and know who you belonged to.  Knowing that, what does it say to be marked on the forehead or right hand from worshipping in the emperor’s temple…it says that you belong to the emperor…and in turn, in the Revelation world view, you belonged to the dragon, and your name was no longer written in the book of life of the Lamb.

“This all seems dark and sinister, where is the hope, Revelation is supposed to be a book of hope?  I don’t see any here.”  That’s because it comes in chapter 14, which begins: “Then I looked, and there was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion!  And with him were one hundred forty-four thousand who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.  And I heard a voice from heaven like the sound of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder; the voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they sing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders.  No one could learn that song except the one hundred forty-four thousand who have been redeemed from the earth.  It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins; these follow the Lamb wherever he goes.  They have been redeemed from humankind as first fruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found; they are blameless.”

The hope comes in that there is a choice.  The choice is to accept the mark of the beast, and be able to eat and drink and be merry, and live eternally separated from God, for to accept the mark of the beast is to erase your own name from the book of life.  To accept the mark of the beast is to say that you belong to the beast, that you belong to Satan, it is, in essence, selling your soul to the devil.

The other alternative is to accept the mark of the Father and of the Lamb…to allow His name to be written on the forehead…indicating that those with His name on their foreheads belong to him…not to the world, and certainly, not to the dragon.

So what about today?  What bearing does this have on anything today?  If this is all about Rome and Early Christians, then what good is it to us today, have we not just wasted all of this time?  The answer is “no, we have not wasted this time.  It applies as much to us today as any day.  Just as the message of Noah and the flood, of Abraham and Isaac, of David and Goliath, of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ have relevance to us today, so too does this.

We may not have emperor cults to bow down and worship in, but too often we visit other temples and accept marks of ownership that are not God’s.  Who do we allow to mark us?

Our jobs, our bills, our recreational activities, our families, our desire for pleasure, addictions to alcohol, illegal or prescription drugs, gambling, or over-eating, even fear…anything we let control our lives is something we let mark us, and in that sense, own us.

So what happens if we are marked…what happens if we have accepted the mark of the beast upon our lives?  What happens if we have allowed Satan to come in and mark his ownership of our lives?  Well, the cost of getting rid of that mark is expensive.  We talked about tattoos at the beginning of this sermon, well, in looking at a variety of informational websites, we are looking at thousands of dollars to remove a tattoo, some as much as ten thousand or more, depending on the size of the tattoo.

What about those of us marked by the beast?  The cost is far greater, for the cost of sin is death…but for us, the price has been paid, we have been redeemed.  There is only One who can remove our tattoos, and it is not a best that looks like a lamb, it is the true Lamb himself….as the old hymn goes, “what can wash away our sin, nothing but the blood of Jesus.”  Jesus, Himself, paid the price for the removal of our markings…if we surrender to Him, His touch will erase the mark of evil’s ownership of us, and replace it with the mark of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…the mark of life itself…and thus insure us that we have a future filled with hope…a future that finds us, one day, standing in the very throne room of God.

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.