MY THOUGHTS ON THE MARK OF THE BEAST

The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. ¹⁶ 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, ¹⁷ 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. ¹⁸ 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 13:15-18

There are so many interpretations of this strange “mark” that believers are told to avoid at all costs that believers have no idea what we are to refuse in the “end times”.

Before we try to understand what this mark is, let’s look at something the Scriptures tell us about the mark or “seal” that God has put on His own children.

There is nothing to confuse us about God’s mark because Paul tells us quite clearly…

“And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit…”

Ephesians 1:13 NIV

When we believed in Jesus as Lord, God came to live inside us through His Spirit, taking ownership of us, body, soul, and spirit. However, the Holy Spirit isn’t just a “family crest” to identify who we are. His presence in us has a very practical outcome. He is at work in us, transforming us into the likeness of Jesus. So, Paul could say, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy peace…” Fruit is the evidence of the nature of the tree.

The evidence of God’s presence within us is an ever-increasing likeness to Jesus. We have become “participants in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

So, God’s mark on every believer is His nature being formed in us as we respond to the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

Would it not be possible, then, that the “mark of the beast” is the counterpart of the mark of the Holy Spirit? Since the Spirit is reproducing the nature of Jesus in us, what is the beast and what does the “beast” do in those who refuse to believe that Jesus is Lord?

The beast is a kingdom ruled over by the God of this world. He reproduces his image in those who unwittingly follow him as Lord by living according to their fallen nature which is otherwise called “the flesh”.

The mark of the beast, according to John in Rev. 13:18, is the number of man (also translated “humanity” or “one of the human race”), which is 666, the number of incompleteness. God made man in His image. God is three in one; man is also three in one, body, soul and spirit, but without God, he is incomplete.

God’s number is 7, which is the number of completeness. Since God is three in one, His number would be 777. The Holy Spirit in Revelation is called “the sevenfold Spirit of God.”

Therefore, man without God has the nature of the one who influences his life through his fallen nature. He bears the fruit of that nature in his rebellion, disobedience, and refusal to obey the gospel and come under the authority of Jesus as Lord.

All mankind without God is eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, living in the kingdom which this tree represents by making their own rules and producing the chaos and destruction which are the hallmarks of Satan’s dominion of darkness.

In the Book of Revelation, John was writing to encourage believers in the first century after Jesus, who were suffering severe persecution for their faith in Jesus as Lord. Therefore, to interpret “the beast” and the “mark” of the beast as anything outside of the understanding and experience of those first-century believers is to defeat the purpose for which John wrote.

Perhaps, in John’s day, persecution reached its zenith by ungodly authority, whoever they were,  preventing those who confessed faith in Jesus from buying and selling in the local market, subjecting them to intense suffering by cutting off their food supply.

Very simply, all who believe in Jesus as Lord are marked by the nature of God being formed in them by the indwelling Holy Spirit. All who reject Jesus have Satan’s mark in them, the nature of man without God (666) produced by following the unrestrained appetites of the flesh.