Formspring Question: The Mark of the Beast

Question from an anonymous user: Is the mark of the beast a literal mark?

The short answer to this question is no. The long answer begins sort-of, and will require a little bit of introduction for those less familiar with eschatology. With that aside, the Bible says this requires wisdom, so the explanation will be rather involved. Please bear with me. If you have never heard of the Mark of the Beast it is likely you are not familiar with enough of the surrounding events to understand the answer, please consider first reading my essay A Brief History of Evil.

The Mark of the Beast which the question refers to is a phrase used a handful of times in the Bible, exclusively in the book of Revelation. The flagship verses are Revelation 13:16-17:

And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.

Put simply, there is a mark which the AntiChrist will require people to bear on their right hand or forehead if they are going to participate in his world economy. It will be a choice of remaining faithful to God or feeding your family. The mark will be the name of the beast, or the number which represents that name.

The word translated 'mark' is χάραγμα, charagma (the first letter is chi, so the ch is as in chemistry), a word which connotates an etching, something which has led many in the past to associate it with a tattoo. On a quick side note, χάραγμα is entirely incompatible with a microchip, as the word (to the best of my research) always reflects something on the surface, something visible. But, we have something external, etched in. Something which externally identifies those who would participate in the Beast's economy.

To me, when studying the mark of the beast, it of paramount importance to take a look at a word which is similar in English, but much more shaded in Greek: σφραγίζω (sphragizō). The word σφραγίζω means sealed, and is used by the Apostle Paul in 4:30 to describe how the Holy Ghost protects us from being contaminated by sin, so we might remain worthy of heaven. σφραγίζω refers to a secret seal or a private mark, something used to authenticate and secure without being widely known. In Revelation 7, John uses σφραγίζω to describe the 144,000. It is not a quirk of Paul's language, but an important theological matter. Consider the contrast: Christians are sealed on the inside (a circumcision made without hands) by the Almighty. The servants of the Beast are marked on the outside with the name of their master or his number. Keep this in mind as we go forward.

Having considered the mark itself briefly, I would like to analyze the significance of the right hand and the forehead. The right hand is, symbolically, the tool of work. Jesus is at the right hand of the Father and goes about actually interceding for man. To sit at the host's right side, in Hebrew culture, is to be imbued with all authority of the host. The idea is the same, the person on the right side will be able to carry out actions on the host's behalf, and the host will wholeheartedly endorse it. In the context of a mark on the right hand, carrying out actions on behalf of the Beast would be something visible (a χάραγμα), something giving him authority in your life and something absolutely reprehensible to God. Serve the Beast by name or serve his interests (the number of his name) and you will be accepted in his society. Serve him and you will be allowed to buy and sell. It is external and very real, but not a 'literal' mark.

Now consider the forehead. In Revelation 17, the whore¹ of Babylon has "BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." written on her forehead. The similarity of two different components in the same vision easily implies a parallel. So to see what the Beast's name and number mean on the forehead of those in the tribulation, we need only understand what is written on Babylon's head. No one explains this as well as Matthew Henry's public domain commentary (1706) of the Bible:

"(1.) She is named from her place of residence - Babylon the great. But, that we might not take it for the old Babylon literally so called, we are told there is a mystery in the name; it is some other great city resembling the old Babylon. (2.) She is named from her infamous way and practice; not only a harlot, but a mother of harlots, breeding up harlots, and nursing and training them up to idolatry, and all sorts of lewdness and wickedness - the parent and nurse of all false religion and filthy conversation."

At the time it was very common for harlots to hang signs up proclaiming their 'services'. So we see this great whore with her head marked by her home and her 'services'. It is then reasonable to assume that the mark of the beast on our forehead would be intellectually proclaiming that we served the beast and that we dwelt in the land that was his (Biblically the far country). If we claim to serve the beast to advance ourselves, we are marked by him just as surely as if we actually did the things we claim. The words we spoke would be real and our own falsehood would be sin.

As for the actual number 666, I subscribe to a simple interpretation. 7 is repeatedly the Biblical number of completion/perfection (Revelation 10:7, Genesis 1:27, Joshua 6, etc.). God is a perfect trinity, 777. Satan is a mock trinity, with two beasts and a prophet, who comes short of God's complete perfection. He is therefore 666. So things which come short of God's glory (sin) and therefore follow after Satan are in accordance with the number of the name. Whether we say "I worship Satan" (To quote Paul: May it never be!), or simply live according to his precepts (again, May it never be!), we are still marked by the beast.
So there you have it. We can take who the Beast is and write it on our hands (with our actions) or proclaim it with our heads (by word). Either way, we are tatooing ourselves with a mark of ownership, instead of having the seal of ownership on our souls. Whether we do it explicitly in the name of the beast, or in the number of his name (the same nature), we stand in sin. So is the mark of the beast a literal mark which could be photographed on the hand or head? I do not believe so. Is it something dangerous, sometimes tangible and frighteningly real? Yes. Yes it is.


Thank you for this question.

¹Henry clarifies the meaning of whore in context: A whore [in this passage] is one that is married, and has been false to her husband's bed, has forsaken the guide of her youth, and broken the covenant of God.

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Which God?, Pt 1

In the following series, I intend to show that the Creator evidenced in the Creationism series is the God of Christianity. The way we will do this is to investigate what the universe reveals about the character of God and then to see how this is consistent with the God of the Bible. It will not be possible for me to analyze every religion in the history of the world and show how they are inconsistent with what is revealed, sadly. But, such a study can be done fairly easily. The fact that evidence strongly exists for a Creator should refute atheism, the fact that the attributes of the Creator can be known should refute agnosticism.

We have already discovered a few things of our Creator's character in our study of Creationism. If you missed that study, I will review them briefly here. I will also include a reference that says this characteristic matches the God of the Bible.

(1) The Creator has reason. Only a reasonable creature can create something with reason. (Psalms 147:5)
(2) The Creator wishes us to understand. This seems apparent because He imbued us with his own reason. (Isaiah 1:18)
(3) The Creator is powerful. He was capable of creating the universe according to very fine standards. (Psalms 79:11)
(4) The Creator wished for life to exist. He created the universe in a very specific way to that end. (Isaiah 45:18)
(5) The Creator is atemporal. Because He created spactime, he is necessarily outside of it.  (2 Peter 3:8)

With that known, we will proceed according to an outline given in Romans 1:18-20:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

Here we see some attributes of God: opposed to unrighteousness, invisible, eternal, and divine. The following posts in this series will examine the universe as we experience it to see if a perfectly holy, unseen and intangible, timeless and divine God matches what we should expect. Comparing Christianity with faiths outside Judaism and Islam, you will find these characteristics unique. Once we have come so far as to eliminate the faiths outside Judaism and her seed, we will identify why Christianity succeeds over Islam and is the rightful heir to Judaism and her promises.

Stay tuned.

Creationism, Pt 4

In the last three posts, we have examined several different things.
Post One - (Foundation) The Biblical Account of Creation does not contradict known science.
Post Two - (Physics) The universe appears fine tuned to support life.
Post Three - (Reason) The ability to question seems to indicate some master reason.
Post Four - Elegant Summary

This leaves us with a high probability of an atemporal God (who existed before spacetime), who created the universe with the intention of supporting life and gave certain creations (us) the ability to reason. This will be the final post in the creationism series. In Creationism, Part 4 I will present one final proof that the universe was created by a supernatural intelligence before beginning a new series on who exactly that intelligence might be. So, stay tuned for The Search for Truth, Part 1.

In this post, I require you to accept only one axiom going in: Truth is always internally consistent. If you accept the fact that I true worldview cannot contradict itself, we can happily move on.

There are two competing views of morality in the world. The moral relativist and the moral absolutist. The moral relativist (logical positivist) rests his entire philosophy on one claim: "A statement is literally meaningful if and only if it is either analytic or empirically verifiable." That is: the meaning of something is not some transcendental concept, but something based only in experience. If you accepted my axiom, you are not a moral relativist. Why? Their basic claim is not empirically verifiable. Your experiences cannot tell you that your experiences are relative. If we accept the moral relativist's conclusion, we must exclude his premise. His worldview collapses under its own weight.

So, if absolute truths exist outside of experience, they are (by definition) transcendental. These truths exist independent of spacetime. Because they are not bound by spacetime, they cannot be the product of spacetime. If they are independent of spacetime, but still exist as a set framework, we have yet another (tiny, elegant) proof of some atemporal intellect which designed the absolute rules which govern our universe. Let's call this intellect God. Logically, creationism is the only viable belief system.

Thank you for coming through this series with me and be sure to check back for my next series, where we examine the character of this creator to see how we know the God of Christianity is the correct one (and be sure to click on the Facebook button above).

Credo ut intelligentum.

Creationism, Pt 3

At this point in our little study of creationism, I would like to study an argument originally created by Chesterton and popularized by CS Lewis: the argument from reason. I will start with my paraphrase of Chesterton's illustration.

A child wearing a giant cowboy hat is walking happily under some large trees. Suddenly, he sees the mighty trees begin to tremble and then feels a breeze knock his hat off of his head. Looking up with tears in his eyes, he says: "Mommy! Turn the trees off!"

To us, it seems absurd. Of course the wind causes the trees to blow, not the other way around. But if we lacked the benefit of moden science, would it come so easy? Chesterton argues, and I concur, that the child's response is perfectly human. Human beings assume that the big and the tangible is the cause of the intangible and the subtle, not the other way around. Consider the belief that the firing of neurons is the cause of all thought - is there any objective reason for that argument to be anything more sophisticated than the trees causing the wind? Put another way, if we remove our natural bias, is there any reason to distrust the notion that the subtle and intangible (thought) causes the tangible (synaptic activity)?

With that little prelude out of the way, let us consider it completely possible for some intangible concept of reason to drive the brain and not the other way around. Much like Creationism, Part 1, this does little but show that what I propose is possible, that a mind could conceivably be some separate entity from the brain - a greater one, in fact. This argument lends itself to unusual rigor, so I will present it in a way to demonstrate the problem with refuting it. First, carefully examine my axioms. I believe you will find them all logically sound.

Axiom I - Everything created must be of the same type as the direct creator.
I treat this as an axiom to be accepted because I am not sure how to go about proving it. But let me elaborate with some examples. Electricity is able to induce a magnetic field only because they are both different forms of the same thing (electromagnetism). Likewise, matter and energy and interchangable only because they are ultimately the same thing. But no amount of matter will ever create time, because they are of different types. More relevant to this discussion, it is that if a computer is capable of decision making, it is only because humans are capable of decision making. A creature incapable of decision making would not be able to design a machine which

Axiom II - Human beings are capable of determining things as either true or false.
This one is neat. If you refuse this axiom, you are making a judgement that it is false (thereby treating it as true). So either you accept Axiom II or believe that all human experience is chaos. It is not possible to prove this, so it is a more proper axiom than Axiom I.

Axiom III - Matter is deterministic.
A ball does not roll to the bottom of a hill because it would like to, it does because it must. I am using the world deterministic loosely here because I do not know of a better one. This is not to discount randomness at the quantum level or chaos theory, but simply to say that a rain drop does not choose to fall. It simply follows the rules.

Proof I:
(1) Axiom III - Matter is deterministic.
(2) Something which is deterministic cannot make judgements of worth, it can only respond to natural laws (a restatement of Axiom III).
(3) Something which is deterministic will never produce anything which is not deterministic (by Axiom I). Really consider this one.
Conclusion I: The products of purely materialistic behavior will always be deterministic.

Proof II:
(1) Axiom II - Human beings are capable of determining something as being either true or false
(2) By the definition in Axiom III, this contradicts how we defined deterministic.
Conclusion II: Human reason is not deterministic.

Proof III:
(1) Conclusion I - the products of purely materialistic behavior will always be deterministic.
(2) Something not deterministic cannot be the product of materialist behavior.
(3) Conclusion II: Human reason is not deterministic.
Conclusion III: Human reason cannot be the product of materialist behavior.

Proof IV:
(1) Conclusion III: Human reason cannot be explained without appealing to some other reason.
(2) By Axiom II, only reason can create reason.
(3) Following back in time, we can only create an arbitrarily long list of reasons before hitting the "Prime Mover." The Prime Mover must be uncreated and therefore atemporal in order to resolve the situation.
Conclusion IV: Human beings have some rational, self-existant creator. This is a passable definition of deity.

In sum: The fact that you can use your reason to say "There is no God" proves that there is a God.