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What the Mark of the Beast Actually Is_ According to Revelation 13 · Bible stories

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  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Bible Stories. You may notice there
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  Speaker 1: QR code to donate directly. Thank you for helping us
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  Speaker 1: keep these Bible Stories going. Ask most people what the
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  Speaker 1: mark of the beast is, and the answer comes back fast.
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  Speaker 1: Something scanned, something implanted, something that will one day stop
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  Speaker 1: a person at a checkout counter and decide whether they
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  Speaker 1: eat this week. Underneath that answer sits a fear, and
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  Speaker 1: it is the reason this chapter keeps sincere people awake
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  Speaker 1: at night. If the mark is a device, then it
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  Speaker 1: can be done to you. Someone could press it into
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  Speaker 1: your skin while you slept, or slip it into a
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  Speaker 1: card in your wallet, and you would belong to the
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  Speaker 1: wrong side without ever choosing it. Believers have spent years
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  Speaker 1: wondering whether they already took it and simply do not know.
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  Speaker 1: So open Revelation 13 and count. The chapter runs eighteen verses.
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  Speaker 1: The mark appears in three of them, and all three
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  Speaker 1: sit at the very end. Fifteen verses go by before
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  Speaker 1: John ever mentions a hand or a forehead, and not
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  Speaker 1: one of them is about technology. They are about worship.
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  Speaker 1: Who is being bowed to, who is being copied, and
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  Speaker 1: what a crowd does to the person still standing when
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  Speaker 1: everyone else has knelt. By the time the mark arrives,
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  Speaker 1: the bowing has already happened. The mark is what gets
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  Speaker 1: handed to a person afterward. Revelation never tells us what
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  Speaker 1: the mark is made of, not once in the whole chapter.
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  Speaker 1: It tells us whose it is, and it does that
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  Speaker 1: with a single word that every reader in the first
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  Speaker 1: century recognized on sight. It is not a word about
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  Speaker 1: materials at all. There is one more thing, and it
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  Speaker 1: is why this chapter has been misread for so long.
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  Speaker 1: Revelation had already put a mark on people well before
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  Speaker 1: chapter 13. It happens earlier in the book, in a
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  Speaker 1: passage most readers pass straight over, and once you find it,
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  Speaker 1: the beast's mark stops looking like an invention and starts
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  Speaker 1: looking like a forgery. We will get there. Let us
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  Speaker 1: read the chapter the way John wrote it, from the
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  Speaker 1: first line. Chapter 13 does not begin a new subject.
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  Speaker 1: It finishes one. The chapter before it ends with a
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  Speaker 1: dragon at war. He has already been thrown out of heaven.
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  Speaker 1: He has already failed to destroy the child he was hunting.
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  Speaker 1: Now he turns on everyone else who belongs to God,
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  Speaker 1: and the last thing John shows us is the dragon
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  Speaker 1: walking down to the shore and standing on the sand
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  Speaker 1: of the sea. Then the next verse opens and something
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  Speaker 1: comes up out of the water. That is one scene,
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  Speaker 1: not two. Whatever rises from the sea rises because the
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  Speaker 1: dragon is standing there waiting for it. This is the
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  Speaker 1: frame John gives us before a single detail is described,
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  Speaker 1: and it decides how everything else should be read. The
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  Speaker 1: beast is not a rival power that happens to appear.
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  Speaker 1: He is the dragon's instrument called up in front of him.
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  Speaker 1: Most people know this first beast by another name. They
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  Speaker 1: call him the Antichrist, and that name fits what John
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  Speaker 1: is describing, though it is worth knowing that Revelation never
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  Speaker 1: once uses the word. John only ever writes it in
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  Speaker 1: his letters, and there he uses it for something much
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  Speaker 1: closer to home. John describes what he sees— ten horns, seven heads,
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  Speaker 1: the body of a leopard, the feet of a bear,
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  Speaker 1: the mouth of a lion. Those are not random animals.
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  Speaker 1: Centuries earlier, Daniel had seen four beasts come up out
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  Speaker 1: of a churning sea, and they were a lion, a bear,
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  Speaker 1: a leopard, and a fourth creature too terrible to name,
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  Speaker 1: with ten horns. John sees all of them fused into
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  Speaker 1: one body. Every empire that ever crushed God's people gathered
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  Speaker 1: into a single animal standing on the beach. Then comes
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  Speaker 1: a phrase that repeats through the whole chapter, and it
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  Speaker 1: is easy to read past. A mouth speaking great things
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  Speaker 1: and blasphemy was given to him. Authority for the forty-two
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  Speaker 1: months of the great tribulation was given to him. Authority
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  Speaker 1: over every tribe and people and language and nation was
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  Speaker 1: given to him. GIVEN Four times John writes the beast's
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  Speaker 1: power as something handed over rather than something seized, so
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  Speaker 1: this creature that looks unstoppable is operating on permission. He
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  Speaker 1: has time because it was measured out to him, forty-two
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  Speaker 1: months and no more. Nothing in the chapter suggests he
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  Speaker 1: took any of it by force from a God who
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  Speaker 1: could not stop him. That is the flaw under everything
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  Speaker 1: that follows. The beast is terrifying, and he is also
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  Speaker 1: on a leash, and John tells us so before he
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  Speaker 1: tells us anything else. Then John notices something about one
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  Speaker 1: of the heads. One of his heads looked like it
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  Speaker 1: had been wounded fatally. His fatal wound was healed, and
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  Speaker 1: the whole earth marveled at the beast. Revelation chapter 13
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  Speaker 1: verse 3. A death blow. A body that should be finished.
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  Speaker 1: And then it is not finished, and the whole world
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  Speaker 1: stops and stares. We have heard this before. It is
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  Speaker 1: the shape of the gospel told by the wrong mouth.
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  Speaker 1: The beast's entire claim on the world rests on a
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  Speaker 1: story he borrowed, and it works. john says the whole
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  Speaker 1: earth marvelled and then that they worshipped the dragon because
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  Speaker 1: he had given his authority to the beast and they
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  Speaker 1: worshipped the beast too notice where the worship goes first
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  Speaker 1: to the dragon The beast is the public face, but
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  Speaker 1: the bowing runs past him to the one standing on
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  Speaker 1: the sand. People who worship the beast are worshipping something
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  Speaker 1: behind the beast, whether they know it or not. That
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  Speaker 1: is what makes it a deception rather than an announcement.
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  Speaker 1: And notice what is missing from this scene. Nobody is
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  Speaker 1: being forced yet. Nobody has been marked. There is no
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  Speaker 1: threat in these verses at all. The world worships because
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  Speaker 1: it is impressed, and a healed wound was enough. That
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  Speaker 1: is how the whole thing begins. The pressure comes later,
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  Speaker 1: and it comes to the ones who did not join
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  Speaker 1: in while everyone else was still amazed. Halfway through the chapter,
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  Speaker 1: John looks away from the sea and sees a second creature.
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  Speaker 1: I saw another beast coming up out of the earth.
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  Speaker 1: He had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke
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  Speaker 1: like a dragon. Revelation chapter 13, verse 11. Two horns
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  Speaker 1: like a lamb. That is the most frightening sentence in
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  Speaker 1: the chapter, and it does not sound frightening at all.
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  Speaker 1: That is the point of it.' The first beast is
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  Speaker 1: obviously monstrous.' Seven heads, a lion's mouth, a bear's feet.'
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  Speaker 1: You would run from it in the street.' The second
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  Speaker 1: beast looks like a young sheep.' Small horns, no threat,
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  Speaker 1: nothing to be afraid of.' And then it opens its
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  Speaker 1: mouth and the dragon's voice comes out.' Earlier in Revelation,
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  Speaker 1: John had already seen a lamb, and that lamb had
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  Speaker 1: seven horns, because seven is the number of fullness in
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  Speaker 1: this book. This second creature has two. It is a
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  Speaker 1: poor imitation, and it does not need to be a
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  Speaker 1: good one. It only needs to look harmless long enough
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  Speaker 1: for people to listen. A copy that fools you does
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  Speaker 1: not have to be impressive. It has to be familiar.
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  Speaker 1: Revelation comes back to this creature three more times before
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  Speaker 1: the book ends, and every time it uses a different
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  Speaker 1: name for him. It calls him the false prophet. What
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  Speaker 1: does this creature do? He does not build his own kingdom.
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  Speaker 1: He points at the first beast and makes the earth
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  Speaker 1: worship him. That is his entire job. He works signs,
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  Speaker 1: John says, real enough to hold a crowd, even calling
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  Speaker 1: fire down out of the sky in front of everyone.
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  Speaker 1: Fire from heaven has a history. It fell on Elijah's
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  Speaker 1: altar in front of a nation that had forgotten who
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  Speaker 1: God was, and it settled the question that day. So
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  Speaker 1: when the second beast calls fire down, he is reenacting
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  Speaker 1: a moment God's people already trust, and using it to
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  Speaker 1: point the crowd somewhere else. Each of these is something holy,
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  Speaker 1: wearing a mask. Nothing in this chapter tries to make
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  Speaker 1: evil attractive on its own terms. It all works by
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  Speaker 1: looking like something good. Then the second beast tells the
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  Speaker 1: world to make something. An image of the first beast,
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  Speaker 1: a statue, an object, a likeness that people can gather around.
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  Speaker 1: And John says something is given to that image using
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  Speaker 1: the same word he has been using all along. Breath.
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  Speaker 1: The image is given breath, and it speaks. and the
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  Speaker 1: order goes out that anyone who will not worship it
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  Speaker 1: should be killed. An image that breathes is the boldest
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  Speaker 1: copy in the sequence. In Genesis, God formed a body
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  Speaker 1: from the dust and breathed into it, and the man
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  Speaker 1: became living. What God did in a garden, the dragon
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  Speaker 1: servant now does with a statue, and the world falls
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  Speaker 1: down in front of it. This is also the moment
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  Speaker 1: the mood of the chapter changes. Up to here, people
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  Speaker 1: worshipped because they were amazed. Now there is a penalty
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  Speaker 1: for standing still. The crowd that was impressed becomes a
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  Speaker 1: crowd that is watching who does not bow. And once
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  Speaker 1: a room is watching, a person does not need a
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  Speaker 1: law to feel the pressure. They just need to notice
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  Speaker 1: that they are the only one still standing. Hold on
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  Speaker 1: to this, because everything after it depends on it. The
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  Speaker 1: order to worship comes before the mark, and so does
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  Speaker 1: the killing. The whole system of allegiance is already running,
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  Speaker 1: fully public, before a single hand or forehead is touched.
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  Speaker 1: So by the time we finally reach the verses everyone quotes,
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  Speaker 1: the question has already been settled for every person in
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  Speaker 1: the chapter. The mark does not decide anything. It records
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  Speaker 1: what was decided. Now we come to the three verses
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  Speaker 1: at the end. He causes all, the small and the great,
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  Speaker 1: the rich and the poor, and the free and the slave,
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  Speaker 1: to be given marks on their right hands or on
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  Speaker 1: their foreheads. Revelation chapter 13 verse 16. Look at how
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  Speaker 1: carefully John spreads that out. Small and great, rich and poor,
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  Speaker 1: free and slave. He is closing every door a person
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  Speaker 1: might hope to slip through. Whatever this is, it reaches
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  Speaker 1: the palace and the field, then the pressure. No one
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  Speaker 1: would be able to buy or to sell unless he
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  Speaker 1: has that mark, the name of the beast, or the
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  Speaker 1: number of his name. Revelation chapter 13 verse 17 That
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  Speaker 1: sentence has frightened people for two thousand years, and it should.
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  Speaker 1: Buying and selling is not a luxury. It is bread.
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  Speaker 1: It is medicine. It is rent. Cut a person out
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  Speaker 1: of the market, and you have not argued with them.
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  Speaker 1: You have made living hard enough that most people stop refusing.
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  Speaker 1: But read the second half of that verse again, because
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  Speaker 1: it carries the definition, and almost nobody stops on it.
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  Speaker 1: The mark is the name of the beast or the
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  Speaker 1: number of his name. A name, that is what the
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  Speaker 1: mark is. Revelation defines it by whose name is on
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  Speaker 1: it and says nothing at all about what it is
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  Speaker 1: made of. And the word John chose for mark makes
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  Speaker 1: that unmistakable to his first readers. In everyday Greek, that
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  Speaker 1: word meant the official stamp pressed into a document to
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  Speaker 1: show it was authorized. It meant the image struck onto
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  Speaker 1: a coin to show whose face and whose empire stood
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  Speaker 1: behind it. And it meant the brand put on a slave,
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  Speaker 1: so that anyone who saw him would know who owned him.
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  Speaker 1: It is ownership language, top to bottom. So the chapter
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  Speaker 1: is not asking us to identify a product. It is
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  Speaker 1: telling us that people end up carrying the name of
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  Speaker 1: the one they belong to, in a place where everyone
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  Speaker 1: can see it. Which raises the question almost nobody asks.
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  Speaker 1: Why the hand and the forehead? Of all the places
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  Speaker 1: on a human body, why those two? It is one
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  Speaker 1: of the most familiar commands in the Old Testament, and
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  Speaker 1: every Jewish reader of Revelation would have heard it the
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  Speaker 1: instant John named those two places. You shall bind them
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  Speaker 1: for a sign on your hand, and they shall be
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  Speaker 1: for frontlets between your eyes. Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 8.
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  Speaker 1: That comes from the passage Israel recited every morning and
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  Speaker 1: every evening. Love the Lord your God with all your heart.
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  Speaker 1: Teach these words to your children. Talk about them when
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  Speaker 1: you sit at home and when you walk down the road.
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  Speaker 1: And then bind them on your hand and set them
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  Speaker 1: between your eyes. Jewish families took that seriously enough to
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  Speaker 1: make it physical evidence. They wrote the words of God
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  Speaker 1: on small pieces of parchment, put them in little boxes,
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  Speaker 1: and strapped them to the hand and to the forehead
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  Speaker 1: when they prayed. Not because leather boxes are holy, but
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  Speaker 1: because the two places mean something. The hand is what
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  Speaker 1: you do, your work, your money, your choices, the things
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  Speaker 1: you reach for. The forehead is what you think, your beliefs,
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  Speaker 1: your loyalty, the things sitting behind your eyes shaping how
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  Speaker 1: you see everything else. Together they mean all of you.
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  Speaker 1: The command was about a life where God's words govern
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  Speaker 1: both the hands and the head, so that what you
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  Speaker 1: believe and what you do are the same thing. Now
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  Speaker 1: go back to Revelation 13. The beast marks the hand
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  Speaker 1: and the forehead. He is quoting Scripture at us. Everything
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  Speaker 1: God asked of Israel, the beast now demands for himself
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  Speaker 1: in the same two places, using the same picture. Your
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  Speaker 1: work and your loyalty, your hands and your mind, all
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  Speaker 1: of you. That is why the mark has always been
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  Speaker 1: about worship. It is stamped on the exact spots where
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  Speaker 1: devotion was supposed to live. So what about the card
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  Speaker 1: in your wallet? What about a world closing its cash
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  Speaker 1: registers and an identity number attached to everything you buy?
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  Speaker 1: Here is the honest answer from the chapter. Revelation describes
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  Speaker 1: a system where refusing to worship costs you the ability
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  Speaker 1: to eat, and any age that can shut a person
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  Speaker 1: out of the market has the machinery for that. The
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  Speaker 1: concern is not foolish. But the chapter puts the mark
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  Speaker 1: at the end of a road that begins with worship,
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  Speaker 1: and it never once describes a device. A payment system
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  Speaker 1: can make refusing expensive. It cannot make you bow. What
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  Speaker 1: John warns about is what a person gives their loyalty
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  Speaker 1: to when refusing finally costs them something, and no card
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  Speaker 1: in a wallet has ever decided that for anyone. And
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  Speaker 1: this is where the fear people carry begins to loosen.
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  Speaker 1: If the mark were a technology, it could be applied
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  Speaker 1: to a sleeping man. But a stamp on the hand
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  Speaker 1: and the forehead, in the language the Bible has already
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  Speaker 1: given us, is a picture of a person's whole life
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  Speaker 1: pointed in one direction. That is not something anyone can
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  Speaker 1: do to you while you are not looking. It is
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  Speaker 1: built out of the hundred small decisions a person makes
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  Speaker 1: when the room has gone silent and everyone is waiting
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  Speaker 1: to see whether they will kneel. Then the chapter ends
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  Speaker 1: on a riddle that has swallowed more Christian energy than
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  Speaker 1: almost any verse in the Bible. Here is wisdom. He
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  Speaker 1: who has understanding, let him calculate the number of the beast,
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  Speaker 1: for it is the number of a man. Revelation, chapter 13,
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  Speaker 1: verse 18. And then the number, 666. Two things in
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  Speaker 1: that verse are worth slowing down for, and neither of
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  Speaker 1: them is the number itself. The first is the word calculate.
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  Speaker 1: That was not a strange invitation in the first century.
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  Speaker 1: In both Hebrew and Greek, letters doubled as numerals, so
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  Speaker 1: every name a person could write also added up to
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  Speaker 1: a figure. People played with this constantly. Someone scratched a
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  Speaker 1: line into a wall in Pompeii that reads, in effect,
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  Speaker 1: I love the girl whose number is 545. So when
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  Speaker 1: John says, calculate, his readers knew exactly what kind of
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  Speaker 1: puzzle they were being handed. The second is the phrase
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  Speaker 1: that follows. It is the number of a man, a man.
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  Speaker 1: Whatever John is pointing at here comes down in the
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  Speaker 1: end to a single person, not to a nation or
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  Speaker 1: a system of trade. And there is something in the
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  Speaker 1: number itself that the ancient reader would have felt straight away.
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  Speaker 1: Seven is the number of completion in Revelation. Seven churches,
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  Speaker 1: seven seals, seven trumpets, seven horns on the Lamb. Six
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  Speaker 1: is one short. Six is the number of the creature
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  Speaker 1: who was made on the sixth day and who was
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  Speaker 1: never meant to stand alone. 666 is that failure, three
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  Speaker 1: times over, a man trying to be seven and coming
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  Speaker 1: up six no matter how many times he tries. Christians
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  Speaker 1: have spent centuries trying to solve the name, and I
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  Speaker 1: understand the pull. But watch what the chapter does right
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  Speaker 1: at this point. It says, here is wisdom, and then
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  Speaker 1: it closes without telling us the answer. And in the
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  Speaker 1: very next chapter, when John describes the people who came
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  Speaker 1: through all of this without bowing, he says nothing about
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  Speaker 1: their skill at arithmetic. which is the strongest hint in
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  Speaker 1: the chapter that the hunt is not the assignment. Now
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  Speaker 1: for the thing we left waiting at the beginning. Six
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  Speaker 1: chapters before any of this, John saw four angels holding
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  Speaker 1: back the winds so that nothing could happen. be harmed.
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  Speaker 1: And then another angel came up from the east, carrying
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  Speaker 1: a seal, and shouted at them to wait. Don't harm
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  Speaker 1: the earth, neither the sea nor the trees, until we
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  Speaker 1: have sealed the bondservants of our God on their foreheads,
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  Speaker 1: Revelation chapter 7 verse 3. Put that beside chapter 13,
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  Speaker 1: and the whole shape of the thing turns over. God
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  Speaker 1: marks his people on the forehead, and he does it first,
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  Speaker 1: before the storm arrives, before the beast rises, before anyone
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  Speaker 1: is asked to bow to anything. The marking is so
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  Speaker 1: important that the judgment of the whole earth is held
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  Speaker 1: up until it is finished. So when the beast stamps
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  Speaker 1: foreheads in chapter 13, he is doing what he has
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  Speaker 1: done all along. The healed wound, the lamb's horns, the
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  Speaker 1: image with breath in it, and now the mark, each
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  Speaker 1: one made in the image of something that was already God's.
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  Speaker 1: And the order is what matters. God sealed his people first,
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  Speaker 1: and the beast produced the forgery afterward. And the picture
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  Speaker 1: does not stop there. As soon as chapter 13 ends
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  Speaker 1: on that number, chapter 14 opens on a hillside. John
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  Speaker 1: looks and sees the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and
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  Speaker 1: standing with him is a great crowd of people, and
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  Speaker 1: they have a name written on their foreheads. It is
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  Speaker 1: the name of the Lamb and the name of his Father.
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  Speaker 1: Two chapters, side by side, and the same body part
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  Speaker 1: in both. One crowd carrying the name of a beast,
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  Speaker 1: another crowd carrying the name of God. John has arranged
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  Speaker 1: the whole thing so that we cannot miss it. Which
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  Speaker 1: brings us to the fear I mentioned at the start,
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  Speaker 1: the one that keeps sincere believers awake. Could I take
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  Speaker 1: it without knowing? Could it already be on me? Revelation
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: 13 answers that, though the answer sits in a verse,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: people rarely connect to it. Right in the middle of
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: the chapter, describing the crowd that worships the beast, John
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: writes this, All who dwell on the earth will worship him,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: of the world in the book of life. Revelation 13
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: 8 There is a book, and there are names in it,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: and those names were written before the world had a
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: foundation under it. Look at what that does to the timeline.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: The Beast is late. Terribly, hopelessly late. He arrives to
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: a world where the naming has already been done, in
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: a book that was open before the first day of creation,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: and nothing he stamps on a hand can reach back
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: and cross out what is written there. He can pressure
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: a market and empty a bank account. He cannot get
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: into that book. And put that beside everything the chapter
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: has already shown us. The mark comes after the worship
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: every single time. Nobody in Revelation 13 is marked by
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: accident or in their sleep or by touching the wrong
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: thing at a market stall. They are amazed first, then
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: they bow, and the mark is what the crowd gives
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: them afterward. A person who is frightened of taking the
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: mark is a person who does not want to belong
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: to the beast. That fear itself is evidence of where
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: their loyalty already sits. The people in this chapter who
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: receive the mark are not afraid of it. They want it.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: It is their ticket into a world they have already
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: decided to be part of. Revelation does say what follows
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: for those who take it. One chapter later, an angel
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: flies through the sky with a warning, and he does
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: not soften it. Anyone who worships the beast and receives
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: his mark will drink the wine of God's anger and
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: That is severe, and it is meant to be. But
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: notice who the warning is for. It is announced out loud,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: in advance, to a world that still has time to
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: hear it. God does not spring this on anyone, so
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: if you have lain awake over this, hear the chapter clearly.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: It was never describing an accident. It was describing a
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: choice made in public by people who had already made
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: it in their hearts. If identifying the beast is not
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the assignment, what is? Revelation tells us twice, and both
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: times it says the same thing. At the end of
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: chapter 13, right after John describes the beast making war
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: on God's people and winning, he stops the narration and
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: speaks directly to the reader. Here, he says, is the
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: endurance and the faith of the saints. That is all.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: In the middle of the worst thing in the book,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: the instruction to the reader is to hold on. Then,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: one chapter later, after the warning about the mark has
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: been spoken by an angel, John does it again. Here
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: is the perseverance of the saints, those who keep the
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Revelation chapter
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: 14 verse 12. That is the whole assignment. Keep going,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: keep trusting Jesus, and keep doing what God has asked
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: on an ordinary Tuesday when nothing dramatic is happening. It
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: is a strangely small instruction for such a large chapter.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: Revelation was written to churches where the cost of not
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: bowing was your business, your reputation, sometimes your life. Those
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: believers did not need a chart of world powers. They
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: needed to know that staying faithful was enough. That is
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: still the instruction. Endurance rather than watchfulness over every new
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: payment method or a search for the man behind the number.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: The kind of faith that gets up again on a
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: bad morning and stays with Jesus one more day. You
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: only endure something that is hard and that lasts. God
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: does not promise this chapter will be painless. He promises
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: that holding on is the victory, and he says it
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: right where the beast appears to be winning. Because the
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: beast does appear to win. The chapter says so plainly,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: he makes war on the saints and he overcomes them.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: I do not want to soften that. God's people lose
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: this fight, visibly, in front of everyone. The chapter offers
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: no rescue in the middle, no last-minute reversal, no fire
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: from heaven on the right side. It simply says, the
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: beast overcame them. Then, two chapters later, John looks up
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: and sees something like a sea of glass mixed with fire.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: And standing on it are the people who overcame the beast,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: and his image, and the number of his name. They
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: are holding harps, and they are singing. Read those two
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: accounts together. The people described as overcome in chapter 13
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: are the same people described as overcomers in chapter 15.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Nothing changed in the events. What changed is the vantage point.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: From the ground, they lost. From the sea of glass,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: they won, and they are the ones singing about it.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Revelation never denies the loss. It shows you the same
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: event from far enough away to see how it ends.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Think of a believer who cannot drive anymore, whose world
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: has shrunk to a few rooms, whose faith costs her
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: something every week that nobody sees. From the outside, that
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: looks like a small defeat. Chapter 13 would call it
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: being overcome. Chapter 15 shows her standing on glass and
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: fire with a harp in her hands, and the thing
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: that kept the beast's mark off her was simply that
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: she stayed. Everything in Revelation 13 is a copy, and
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: copies only make sense when you know the original. There
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: is a wound in this book that healed for real.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Early in Revelation, John weeps because no one is worthy
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: to open the scroll, and then he is told to
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: look at the Lion of Judah, and when he turns,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: he sees a lamb standing there, as though it had
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: been slain, standing and still carrying the wound. That is
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: the original. The beast's healed head is the forgery of it.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: The difference between them lies in what each one does
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: with the worship afterward. The beast takes his healed wound
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: and demands that the world bow, then kills the people
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: who will not, then stamps his name on the ones
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: who do. The lamb takes his wound and opens a
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: scroll no one else could open, and the song that
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: goes up around him says he purchased people for God
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: from every tribe and language and nation. He buys them
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: at his own cost, and the price was the wound
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: he is still carrying. Both of them end up with
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: people who belong to them. Only one of them paid
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: for it himself. The beast's mark is taken by people
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: trying to survive. God's seal is placed on people before
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: the trouble even starts, by an angel sent out ahead
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: of time. the storm for that exact purpose. One is
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: a receipt for compliance. The other is a gift with
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: a name on it. So let me say plainly what
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Revelation 13 says the mark is. It is the name
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: of the beast, worn where a name is worn by
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: someone who is owned, on the hand that works and
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: the forehead that thinks. It is given after worship, never
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: before it. It is enforced through the ordinary machinery of
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: buying and selling, where most people can be reached, and
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: it is a forgery, from beginning to end, of a
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: seal God had already placed on his own people before
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: any of this began. The chapter never tells us what
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: it is made of, and I have come to think
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: that silence is a mercy. It keeps us from spending
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: our lives watching the wrong thing.' I want to speak
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: to you directly now.' Some of you are older than
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: you ever expected to be,' and your world has gotten smaller.'
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Some of you are tired in a way that sleep
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: does not touch.' Some of you have been carrying a
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: fear about this exact chapter for years,' wondering whether you
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: missed something,' whether the church you left, or the card
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: in your purse,' or the thing you agreed to,' has
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: put you on the wrong side of God without your knowing.'
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Hear the chapter. Nobody gets marked by the beast by accident.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: The mark comes at the end of a road that
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: people walk on purpose, with their eyes open, in front
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: of a crowd. If the thought of belonging to anyone
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: but Christ makes your stomach turn, then your loyalty has
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: already answered the question that this chapter is asking. And
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: hear the rest of it, too. Your name was written
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: in a book before the world had a foundation under it.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: An angel was sent ahead of the storm to seal
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: God's servants on their foreheads, and the judgment of the
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: whole earth waited until it was done. It was done
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: for you in advance by a God who did not
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: want you to face any of this unmarked. That is
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: where Revelation ends. The last chapter of the Bible describes
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: a city with no more curse in it, and a throne,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: and people who serve God there. They will see his face,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: and his name will be on their foreheads. Revelation, chapter 22,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: verse 4. The final picture of the redeemed in all
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: of Scripture is a face turned toward God, with a
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: name written on the forehead.' Everyone ends up marked.' The
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: whole book has been telling us so.' The only thing
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: that was ever in question is whose name it would be.'
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: And if you belong to Jesus, that was settled a
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: long time ago' by someone who paid for it with
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: a wound he still carries.' So keep going, not because
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: you are strong and not because you have the beast
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: figured out. Keep going because you have been named and
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: sealed and written down, and because the one who did
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: all three is standing at the end of it with
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: your name already on his lips. If this video helped
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: you grow deeper in God's Word, I want to personally
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: invite you to be part of what we are building here.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Every video on this channel takes many hours of study
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: and careful research to make sure we bring you content
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: that is faithful to Scripture and worthy of your time.
• 33:12
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• 33:15
  Speaker 1: us keep making these videos, you can find a link
• 33:18
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• 33:22
  Speaker 1: become a monthly supporter. Every gift, no matter the size,
• 33:27
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• 33:33
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• 33:35
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• 33:39
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• 33:42
  Speaker 1: hear it, and keep studying God's Word with us. Thank
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: you for being here, and may God bless you richly.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Thanks for watching!