Matthew 24: 32-51

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

“Who then is the faithful and wise slave, whom his master has put in charge of his household, to give the other slaves their allowance of food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. Truly I tell you, he will put that one in charge of all his possessions. But if that wicked slave says to himself, ‘My master is delayed,’ and he begins to beat his fellow slaves, and eats and drinks with drunkards, the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour that he does not know. He will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Sermon Text

Our first four weeks of sermons based on questions from you all certainly has not disappointed. We have looked at faith and works, the Mark of the Beast, and if you are on my pastor page on Facebook (or getting this in the mail,) you also saw the fate of all the twelve disciples. Today we end our month of questions with a follow-up to our discussion about the Mark of the Beast. We are wrapping up with what it means to live a life that is prepared for its end – whether that be through death or through the return of Christ into the world. We must accept that we are asked to always be ready to meet God and to answer the call to our heavenly home.

Our scripture today follows Jesus foretelling the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. That holy place, the center of the faith for God’s people, was considered the center of the world. While the original temple had been destroyed following the Babylonian conquest of Judah, this second temple was expected to remain forever. The destruction of the first temple nearly destroyed the faith of the Jewish people, the prophets Jeremiah, Zechariah, and Ezekiel all had to assure the people that God did not perish once this building was gone. The people would eventually return to their ancestral home and rebuild the temple, but it was immediately clear to those present that the new building was nothing like the old. Herod the Great would eventually tear this building down and rebuild it over a forty year period, restoring some of its former glory.

This temple was a testament to the ability of God’s people to survive. When Jesus told his followers that it was soon going to be destroyed once again, the news would have been devastating, most likely even apocalyptic. Yet, Jesus gave a strange caveat to his doomsaying. The temple was going to fall, and the people of God would be scattered, but this was not the way things were going to end.

Jesus warns his disciples that there will be plenty of people coming and claiming that the end is upon us. There will be wars and rumors of wars, nations coming and going as conflict and famine and plague devastate a struggling world. Yet, somehow the end will not be something that comes in a way we would expect. Like Jesus’s entry into the world in a stable, Jesus’s entry into the world on a throne of mercy and judgment will be equally startling. Like a thief that plans for the family to be away, Christ will come at a time no one would expect to save his people from the brokenness of the world.

Scripture describes this in a variety of ways, Paul talks about people being taken up from the grave and lifted up into the clouds. Jesus here talks about people suddenly being taken, mysteriously spirited away in a moment. What Jesus means by this is unknowable. While many today, at least in the United States, talk about this in terms of a “rapture,” a sudden bodily disappearance of all believers, but this idea was first described in the 17^th century, and would not become prominent until John Nelson Darby preached it in the mid-1800s.

Different eras of the Church have thought of this in different terms. The earliest Church Fathers gave no specific expectation of how God would gather the faithful. Saint Augustine raised several possible answers, including the idea that God would raise the dead to glory and then kill all living people, raising them immediately to judgment. John Wesley expressed a more modern vision of God removing the faithful to safety and then appointing them to be with God in Heaven. The point being, in all these visions, that however God was doing it – God would bring God’s people to safety at the end of time.

With the nature of the final days set before the people – a sudden deliverance for the people of God that would come without provocation or warning. The Christian was to live as if every moment could be the last one, as if God was going to renew creation all at once. They were meant to sit and live in hope because of this urgency, but they were also expected to live in careful consideration of the magnitude of such a belief. To be ready at all times is no simple task.

We began our month by highlighting that faith and works are tied closely together in the life of a Christian. Thankfully, faith is the actual means by which we are saved even as much as it naturally produces good works from us. The reality of our faith’s sufficiency cannot just be a therapeutic presence in our life. God is certainly a source of comfort and assurance, but the point of us being brought into God’s kingdom is not just that we feel good. We must commit ourselves to furthering God’s kingdom and bettering the lives of those around us. We must become a family in every sense we possibly can – we must love and share God’s bounty but also grow together in holiness.

I’m not a proponent for fire and brimstone preaching, although it is important to remember what is at stake. I think that the church has been far too obsessed with crime and punishment and not nearly enough concerned with righteousness. To be punished for doing wrong teaches us only to not do things that result in punishment. To contrast this, I believe that to encourage people in the goodness they do is to encourage them to grow. Ministers are known for wagging their fingers at every little infraction but never for lifting up the good that people do. Yet, the opposite tendency is also a problem. If we only speak of doing good without exorcising evil from our hearts, we will find ourselves slipping into sin again and again. We need a more holistic approach to Christianity than dancing between extremes.

Christ uses the example of a slave being left in control of a household while their master is away. The slave specifically is charged with taking care of his fellow slaves. The expectation is that, even if the master returns before they were supposed to or even later than they were meant to, that the work will get done as it was requested. The slave in Jesus’s metaphor does not succeed in his task. Instead, the slave beats his fellows, taking the power he has been given and exploiting it. The food meant for them is given to friends who eat and drink excessively.

Those two contrasting images are not meant to be literal in describing the limits of Christian behavior, but they are good images to keep in mind. We lose track of our life as Christians when we forget what Jesus has asked us to do. We are called, immediately after this teaching, to care for the hungry, the sick, the naked, and the imprisoned in Jesus’s parable of the sheep and the goats. We are told to make disciples of all nations and to baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These two broad categories – the proclamation of the Gospel and the care of our siblings in Christ and neighbors more generally – make up most of our positive responsibilities as Christians.

There are negative responsibilities as well, things that we are asked to avoid as well as things we are meant to take on. The two examples Christ lifteed up are emblematic of the two main categories of evil a Christian should avoid – evils of cruelty and evils of excess. The first is demonstrated anytime that we seek to do harm to others in order to benefit ourselves. Sometimes this cruelty is purely egotistical – we hurt others to feel like we are better than them. Other times it is opportunistic, hurting others to get ahead in life. Both examples are unacceptable to a Christian. We cannot knowingly hurt others and ever feel that we have done what is right.

The evils of excess are more internal in the way they destroy us. There are tangible practical troubles that come from sins of excess, denying other people what they need and actively harming those around us, but the greater damage they cause is often to our own spirit. You can live a life of lust and gluttony and greed and still lead a life that appears to be all together, but the soul festers even when outwardly we present a picture-perfect life. The fact is that the consequences of our actions are not always seen in the obvious and immediate presence of punishment but in the slow degradation of joy.

The real burden of being a Christian who is prepared is in being willing to admit that we are far from the mark that was exhibited in Christ and that we need to get there. We have to acknowledge when the occasional drinks we used to enjoy are becoming habits. We have to confront the lingering gazes we are casting at those we find attractive while we are out and about. We have to see that the money we are spending is not going to fix the problems we have, only limit the good we are capable of doing. There is pain behind a lot of these sins of excess, but that pain has to be addressed honestly if we are going to grow beyond it.

Sins of cruelty, they too are often born out of pain. We know the world is broken and so we try to set things right through force. If we can strike out at those we see as the source of the problem, maybe it will eventually fix something. There is a clear disparity between those who have and those who have not, so we exert our will to make sure that we do not become a have not. We look down on others who suffer because to acknowledge the pain they feel would force us to look inward and see our own brokenness.

To be prepared for Christ’s return we must not be people who are tolerant of our own sin and critical of other people’s. We cannot be well wishers only, but actively work to take care of other people. We cannot be passive in any aspect of life, but see that God is calling us to actively take up the banner of our salvation. We have been freed by grace to pursue the law of life which is love. We refuse the currency of this world, which is trading in cruelty, and instead accept the seal of Christ which makes all things new. We remember the ministries of those who have led us in life and trained us in the ways of God. We stand prepared for Christ whenever he might appear to bring us home. We must not fear anything, but in all things rejoice at the opportunities which God has given to us. Christ will come again, let us be found ready when that time comes. – Amen.

Luke 6: 12-16

Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, and James, and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot, and Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

Sermon Text

I am prone to history heavy sermons, but today is going to be mainly a matter of history. When the question was posed to me, “What happened to the disciples?” I wanted to take the time to look at what their life looked like once the book of Acts ended. There will, of course, be plenty to learn for our own life as we dig through the legends and records of their life. However, in terms of reading scripture, reflecting, and drawing meaning from it, this sermon will not follow my usual patterns. Today we look at the lives of the Saints, as we have been handed their story, and try to understand what that tells us about our own life as disciples of Christ.

The disciples came from several walks of life in ancient Judea. The first to be called to follow Jesus were fishermen from his hometown of Nazareth or nearby Bethsaida. In fact, only a handful of disciples can be traced to a location outside these two towns, and all of them still are from the Galilean shoreside. This area was at the Northern extreme of the Judean province, far removed from the historic center of Jewish life in Judah proper. Jesus and his disciples were in an area that was once part of the kingdom of Israel. Between Galilee and Judah was Samaria, a province and a culture that was as similar to the Judean people as it was different. Jesus and his disciples, despite what our initial reading of the gospels may suggest, were outsiders among their own people. They were rural hicks launching a ministry in the urban centers to the south.

 The life of the apostles as recorded in Acts and the Gospels shows us only a glimpse of what they were like. We know the personality of Simon Peter, the bold, if not misguided, head of the disciples. We know John was devoted to Jesus like no other, that Thomas – though questioning of Jesus at times – was the first to say he would die for his savior. Judas is perhaps the most developed of all the disciples outside of these, a thief and a betrayer and, perhaps, even a violent revolutionary.

The first disciple to die was Judas. After his betrayal of Jesus, Judas was overwhelmed with grief and guilt and returned the payment for his betrayal to those religious leaders who had paid him. There are two accounts for his death in scripture, the first and most commonly referenced description comes from Matthew 27:1–10, in which Judas hangs himself and the location of his hanging becomes a potter’s field for burial of the poor. This is contrasted by Acts 1:18 which says that Judas became bloated and fell in a field, exploding on the land that eventually became a potter’s field. The difference in these stories is sometimes reconciled as Judas completing suicide and then the body bursting after being cut down. Acts is probably just reporting a separate tradition that builds off of its wider themes of divine control.[1]

Judas is worthy of his own entire study at some time, a tragedy on every conceivable front. However, the disciples closest to Jesus continued on in their ministry. The Church was born on Pentecost and the Kingdom of God spread across Judea and the Mediterranean world. Initially the disciples stayed in Judea, though some movement is recorded, as when Philip baptizes the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8. This seems to have been a rarity of the early Church as the disciples worked as a central leadership body in those early days. However, a variety of conditions eventually led to the disciples moving out from Judea and into the wider world.

Firstly, Paul had begun his gentile ministry and was making major headway in expanding the Church. This put a fire under the disciples to go out and do their part in spreading the Gospel. Secondly, persecution in Jerusalem was rising as tensions between Judea and Rome were reaching a high point. James the son of Zebedee is killed, traditionally by beheading. Finally, those tensions mentioned a moment ago eventually culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem which ended the Judean church and began the full diaspora of Jews and Jewish Christians.

The records of the disciples’ lives now leaves solid documentation in scripture at this point. Hagiographies and Martyrologies – the stories of saints and of martyrs – are the primary way we know what became of the other disciples. Philip, Bartholomew, and Thomas went to India and preached. Thomas has a legacy in India that extends into today, where Thomistic Orthodox communities still exist that trace their spiritual ancestry to Thomas’s congregations. Philip and Bartholomew traveled west after their work in India to preach elsewhere. While in what is now Turkey, Philip was crucified upside down for his ministry. His preaching led to Bartholomew being spared, and he was allowed to continue his ministry into Europe where he was killed by being skinned alive.

Thomas would be murdered by spearmen, Jude killed by an axe, and Simon the Zealot sawed in half. The only disciples that do not have well documented deaths are James son of Alphaeus and Matthew. The final names to be lifted up are Peter, crucified in Rome on an inverted cross. Paul, apostle to the Gentiles who was beheaded in Rome. John, son of Zebedee, the only disciple to die of old age while in prison on Patmos. All these deaths are recorded in various sources and the details are not always identical across them, so take each description above with a grain of salt.

The lives of the disciples were not easy. They all met horrible ends in the pursuit of spreading the Kingdom of God. These deaths in themselves are tragic, but they are not pointless. Every person who gave their lives in those early years of the Church achieved something greater than themselves – they spread the good news far and wide and they allowed the world to know God in a way they never had before.

In our modern world, in our specific context, we do not experience persecution. While there are certainly people who are against the Church and people who may treat Christians poorly, there are no systemic ways that the Church is oppressed in the United States, at least not for existing. Some people point to certain social media bans toward specific figures or certain social trends and provide these as evidence of Christian persecution, but these are seldom anything more than disputes that happen to occur to Christians or around Christian groups. I can confidently say that I am not aware of any widespread, systemic persecution of Christians in the United States.

This lack of systemic oppression is not a given for Christians in many places. There are many places where Christians are persecuted today. These persecutions are often regional, lacking the approval of the state but nonetheless having widespread repercussions. The Voice of the Martyrs is an organization that lifts up the stories of these oppressed Christian groups around the world. For these people, faith is a matter of life or death, they choose to accept the cross of Christ everyday they get up, and they do not know if or when they will be asked to die for their faith.

We honor these modern day martyrs, those who live into the legacy of the apostles in several ways. First, we advocate for them. I go further to say that our solidarity with the martyrs of our faith should lead to us advocating for all victims of religious oppression. The Uighurs of China are a Muslim minority currently suffering extreme persecution, they must be on our hearts alongside the persecuted Church. Though we do not share the same faith, we share the image of God, and we must advocate for one another. We must stand against the oppression of religious minorities, and we must pray daily for the martyrs of our own faith, finding ways to help them however we can. Again, Voice of the Martyrs is a helpful resource for this.

Secondly, we honor the martyrs of the past and present by being honest about our own privileged position. I personally am exhausted of persecution narratives often used by American Christians. The idea that there is some grand conspiracy against us in the United States does not stand up to scrutiny. While our world has become more secular, we are not being punished for remaining spiritual. The reality is that our present friction with a changing world is a natural consequence of the change in itself. Our response must not be to reflexively cry out that this change is an attack, but thoughtfully consider how our ministry must change to reach the culture that currently surrounds us. As long as we are free, to call ourselves persecuted is an insult to those who are truly suffering persecution.

Finally, I would say that looking at the martyrs of yesterday and today, we are given insight into the truth of our life in Christ. Jesus said that those who hate their life will save it, and those who protect their life will lose it. This seems contradictory, but Jesus is being quite literal in what he means. To believe in the Kingdom of God is to believe that Christ is going to make all things new, even our own bodies and souls. This means that death, a necessary end, is nothing for us to fear. Yet, we who suffer no fear of death, bend the knee to social pressure and convenience without ever being forced to do anything. How many have we failed to love because someone told us it was wrong to help them? How many have gone without hearing the word because we caved to the expectations of those around us?

The disciples all died for their faith, but that does not mean we necessarily will need to. We will likely live out our lives free of persecution, even if we do face conflicts between our faith and our circumstances. We must honor the martyrs then through our support of those that yet live, our admiration of those gone into glory, our honesty about our own privilege, and in a willingness to do all we can to serve God. Give your life to Christ, and even death loses its power. Let us serve God, even when the going gets tough. The twelve disciples all attest to the reality that there is more to life than living, and when we face no threat of life, then God calls us to even greater adherence to all goodness. Let us meet that calling. – Amen

[1] Contrast with Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 or Herod Agrippa’s death in Acts 12

Revelation 13: 11-18

Then I saw another beast that rose out of the earth; it had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. It exercises all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and it makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound had been healed. 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 earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that had been wounded by the sword and yet lived; and it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast so that the image of the beast could even speak and cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. Also 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. This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred sixty-six.

Sermon Text

We talked a few months ago about how we love to talk about the end of time, not just as Christians but as human beings. Perhaps this prompt gives us a great deal of room to work with, and so we just have more ability to build up end times discussion than we do other matters of the faith. Revelation, Daniel, and the other apocalyptic literature in the ancient world all use vivid imagery to describe their messages. There are monsters and signs and miracles and terrors of every shape, size, and color. If you want to make a compelling narrative using any of them, it does not take much. Beasts, literal and figurative, can be found in any person, place, or thing as long as we are creative enough to tie the right aspects of each together.

Very few images from Revelation have gripped the Church more than the idea of a “Mark of the Beast.” Though only being mentioned once in scripture, this concept overwhelmingly captures our imagination about what the end of history might look life. Since Revelation was first put on parchment, we have tried to figure out what its enigmatic description of this Mark could possibly refer to. The nature of the Mark has changed based upon the culture and time of those writing it and the perspective they have on Revelation. These perspectives fall into several broad categories.

There are those who read the book of Revelation as a step-by-step guide to the end of history. To these interpreters, every part of this book will happen as is written. The beasts that emerge from the sea are literal, the marks on the forehead and wrist are exactly as they are described – somehow conferring three sixes upon the flesh of their recipient. This literalist reading tends to be the most concerned with natural phenomena as a sign of Christ’s eminent return to the Earth. Whenever you hear people talking about blood moons and eclipses they likely fall into this category of speculation or sit adjacent to it.

The second category see a future reality in the words of Revelation but interpret it more broadly. Beasts are not literal creatures coming out of the ocean, but are world powers and important political figures. The signs in the heavens and the sudden shifting of natural features of the world are not necessarily 1:1 with what will transpire, but point to definite events. This group also interprets things like the Mark of the Beast more broadly – rather than being a number written on a person the Mark is allowed to take any form, so long as it bars commerce. People who see the Mark of the Beast as a microchip or some other piece of documentation tend to fall into this camp. I would also define this as one of the most common of these three broad perspectives.

The next most, or perhaps equally, common perspective on Revelation sees the book as a historical account of timeless ideas. Rather than seeing the book as a prophecy of exact events to come, the images of Revelation are interpreted as reflecting the present reality of the author and the future reality of their readers. This view is the least tied to specific events or features of the end of history. The beasts of Revelation are not specific world powers, but any power that works counter to the Church. The Mark of the Beast is not a singular thing which people take on to be able to buy or sell – but anything that makes people prioritize wealth and comfort over devotion to God. This perspective is, in my opinion, the closest to a proper reading of Revelation we can achieve.

Prophecy throughout the Bible is a complicated thing. We tend to think of it in terms of a word being uttered by a prophet and then immediately coming to pass. Sometimes this is definitely the case – such as Elijah bringing down fire. Other times it is far less clear. Jeremiah spoke of a day when God’s word would be written on the heart of all people and there would be no potential for evil in our hearts – something that has yet to come to pass. (Jer. 31)

Revelation is not a traditionally prophetic book. It does not cast a moral vision of what we should do as God’s people, although the opening letter to the seven churches effectively fills this role. Much like the latter half of Daniel or those many apocalyptic stories written between the Testaments, Revelation projects a message to the Church that – no matter what is going on in the world, we can depend on the truth of the Gospel to see us through. No matter what forces come against us, Rome or Babylon or any other earthly power, we are citizens of the New Jerusalem. No matter what beasts we face, plagues and wars or famines and vermin, God is in control.

To the original readers of Revelation there were probably very specific real-world analogues to the images within the book. The seven-headed beast mentioned just before the passage we read today, for example, is generally understood to be a reference to Rome and more specifically the Caesars that rule the city. A specific reference to one of the heads of the beast having been hit with a fatal blow, yet somehow surviving, conjures up the image of the Emperor Nero – the first great persecutor of the Church. Nero had arranged his own death through a slave killing him with a sword. There were those who believed that Domitian, the second emperor to actively persecute the Church, was one way or another a reborn Nero, a parody of the resurrected Christ.[1]

This produces the first interpretation of the Mark of the Beast which seems to have some validity. The number as it appears in the Greek scripture is written as three letters χις, although later texts spell out the number as separate words. Some scholars notice that when Nero Caesar is spelled using Hebrew letters and then translated into numerical values based on those letters, the result is none other than 666.[2] This triangulation is compelling in many respects, and a major component of historical readings of the Book of Revelation, but it is also one I find unsatisfying.

While this is a popular reading of the Mark of the Beast, it works better backward than forward. If I was given this number, with no reference to Nero as a Caesar and the specific spelling used by the person who encoded this message, I would never find its hidden truth. Likewise, and though I did not take the time to come up with any specific examples, there are endless numbers of letters in endless orders that would produce the same numerical value. Still more complicated, other manuscripts say the Number of the Beast is 616 not 666, further muddying the waters. If the Mark of the Beast is just a winking reference to Nero and his feared return from the dead, then it is not a very effective one. It should also be noted that Irenaeus, a first-generation Christian warned against trying to tie the Mark of the Beast to any specific person, seeing the practice as pointless at best.[3]

This lesson from Irenaeus removes a great deal of the speculation people apply to the Mark of the Beast. Outside of the Mark being tied to the head and hand, the only working information we are given is this threefold number. Knowing that it is “the number of a person,” does not help us understand what it is in itself, precisely because any name can be converted into six hundred and sixty-six with enough manipulation. My last name, Langenstein, for example, can have a number assigned to each letter of it based on its placement in the Alphabet. Adding these together, you get 120. Multiply that by (95/19) for the year I was born, 1995. Then add the abbreviation of where I was born, Waynesboro, PA, and you get 642. But where’s that missing 24? Well just add the time I was born multiplied hour by minute. 2:12; two times twelve. As you can see, number games don’t get us anywhere. We might as well be claiming Monster Energy is somehow satanic.[4]

This ambiguity means that this verse is ripe for abuse. John Wesley claimed that the Mark of the Beast was the acceptance of the Pope as a legitimate leader of the Church, something I think is grossly unfair and which remains a blemish on his legacy.[5] A ministry in Martinsburg, WV linked the Mark of the Beast to UPC codes, the little barcodes on all modern products.[6] Others link it to credit cards, others to crypto currency, and some people – God help us – tie it to vaccination or some microscopic product thereof. Like any obscure teaching of the Bible, we are able to make it expansive to the point of consuming much of our life and attention, even though the point of Revelation has little to do with this three number sequence.

As I have already stated, I see much of Revelation as a commentary on how to live as a Christian at all times – not just at one particular moment at the end of the age. Like our previous discussion of end times speculation focused on, we are always in the end of days, no closer to it than Paul and no further from it either. We live on a knife’s edge that is always moving closer and further from the moment that Christ returns in final victory. This means that, from my reading of the text, I have to be able to explain what is timeless about the Mark of the Beast if I am to sustain a compelling argument for my overall reading of the book. Will I succeed? That’s up to you all once I finish this next page or so of writing.

To me, the Mark of the Beast is not a microchip or a tattoo to be placed on the forehead or the wrist, but is instead a way of being in which we give up our identity as Christian for the sake of worldly goods – money, power, or even just social capital. Previously in Revelation 7, 144,000 of the tribes of Israel, and presumedly the untold multitude of Gentiles, were sealed by God on their forehead to protect them from the trouble to come. With this in mind, it seems to me that the Mark of the Beast, on the wrist or the forehead, is in direct opposition to this first seal. If I was feeling especially bold in my interpretation, I might point out that someone with the seal of the Lamb on their head could easily get the Mark of the Beast on their hand if they decided it wasn’t worth it to deal with all this other trouble.

In my mind we accept the Mark of the Beast whenever we accept an imperfect substitute for God. Returning to a more reasonably applied numerology, 7 traditionally represents perfection, and 8 often represents rebirth or baptism. Christ is sometimes rendered numerically as 888, the source of our new life, God is often associated with 7. What is more common to evil than an attempt to become like God through manipulation or violence, an imperfect attempt at perfection, like someone counting to seven and only ever reaching 6.[7] This reading is more consistent, I believe, with the history of Christian interpretation than most of our attempts today are.

So, do I think the Mark of the Beast is a specific thing Christians will one day be forced to take on or else face starvation? No, personally I don’t. When I read news stories of some people opting for RFID chip implants, I do not see a sign of the end times but a sign of a passing trend that is unlikely to go mainstream. Nor do I worry about vaccines or cashless societies or any other hot topic prediction of what those three digits could mean. To me, anytime we choose power or money or social standing over God and doing God’s work in the world, we trade the Seal of the Lamb for the Mark of the Beast. I don’t expect this answer to be pleasing to everyone, or even fully convincing, but it is the most honest one I can give, and if it gets us talking about scripture a bit more deeply, we all can count that as a win. We’ll pick up our discussion of the end times and readiness on the 27^th, when we conclude this month of questions. – Amen.

[1] Mitchell G. Reddish. “The Two Beasts,” in Revelation (Macon, Georgia: Smyth and Hellwys. 2005) 251

[2] “Revelation.” In The New Interpreter’s Study Bible. (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon. 2003)

[3] Irenaeus. Against Heresies V.30

[4] A popular meme and video was released alleging this based on a faulty understanding of Hebrew Numbering, the alleged “666” on the can would, if this argument had any validity, actually be “18.”

[5] John Wesley. “Revelation.” Explanatory Notes on the New Testament. Available at: http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/john-wesleys-notes-on-the-bible/notes-on-the-revelation-of-jesus-christ/

[6] A complete recording of their VHS pitch of this idea is available at: https://youtu.be/iST5Ip8a9nk

[7] “Revelation.” In The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary. Vol. 12. (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon. 1994)