The Mark of the Beast

Automated transcript, lightly edited for readability. Scripture appears as spoken; the video is the authoritative teaching.

Why the Mark of the Beast Belongs in This Series

Shabbat shalom everybody. Welcome to Founder and Truth Fellowship. The mark of the beast. Wow, Matt, we went from talking about being a statue that represents God in the world straight over to the mark of the beast. I guess looks like Matt got excited and he finally read Left Behind or something, right? And he's it's just it we've spent weeks supporting the claim of who we were created to be. And that is as God's image, the Salem in Hebrew, the living statue in the ancient world, the living statue of the king made to carry his name and represent him into the world. And so, why stop in the middle of a perfectly good series about being the image of God to talk about the mark of the beast?

And here's why. As we'll see, and as we already know, the serpent or in Revelation, the dragon never creates anything. He only counterfeits. And that's from page one. And Revelation 13 is where he rolls out his counterfeit of the exact thing that the whole series is about. There is an image in that chapter which I hope you'll go home and dig into the Bible. Like I say, I love getting people excited to go home and dig in the word. And I want people to find that passion in the word because the word is very much so alive. And sometimes people disagree with me and that's okay. I still want you in the word.

A Wolf You Cannot Watch For

I want you to I want you in the word. That's what I want. That's what I want. But there's an image in this chapter, right? It has breath and there's also a mark that goes along with it. And every piece of that entire infrastructure is a forgery of the job description of being the image bearer of God. And so u I want to start with kind of a common phrase u that we've all heard and probably used. Sometimes we use it to describe people we don't like politicians or at times pastors we feel are just in it for control and power. It's a wolf in sheep's clothing. Wolf in sheep's clothing. And what's neat is that phrase the earliest we can find that phrase used is actually in Matthew 7.

That's Yeshua coined that. It's pretty neat. It's the earliest usage of it. And yeah, Matthew 7 15-16. Be on your guard. Here's what Yeshua says. Be on your guard against false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravaging wolves. You'll recognize them by their fruit. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles. All right. So there are people out there according to Yeshua that wear a costume so that they can get into your ear. They can wear a costume so they can get into here. They can wear a costume so they can get in front of you and influence you and your families under the guise of using God.

You hear me sometimes say spray paint Jesus on stuff. They'll spray paint Jesus on something and try to sell it to you as being Jesus. It's a false prophet. They use the Bible and God as a Trojan horse to manipulate you. And who are they? Yeshua calls them false prophets, religious voices, somebody standing and talking about God. And the reason why the warning has such gravity to it. Is that it's not the villain that anyone expects. Like that's the whole point. Like, yeah, I'm going to keep my eye out for this wolf in sheep's clothing. You can't keep your eye out for the wolf because it looks like a sheep.

That's right. It's it's no one gets recruited when by a wolf, you know. Hey, you No, I don't No, it's a sheep, right? It's I know it's common sense. They are willing to leverage your faith against you so that you serve them and their purposes. And that's what the sheep costume's for. And so, yeah. And so Yeshua actually has a test. He says, "You can ignore how they look, but you can't ignore their fruit." What are they doing with all of this? And so, a few weeks ago, we went through a really fun topic, the skull crusher, right? We took the promise of who the skull crusher was going to be in Genesis 3, and we went through scripture, kind of like a detective finding, trying to find who the skull.

Is it Cain? Nope. Is it David? Nope. Is it Is it Yael? Man, she certainly hit a prophetic echo that was referenced by Mary, but no, right? And so, we're going to kind of do the same thing today except for with this idea of what it looks like throughout scripture and even today in our generations of past when someone puts on the costume. And so, we're going to check the fruit. So during the time of Yeshua, he says this, but if we jump forward, 60 years, give or take, if you'll allow me that, 60 years. One of Yeshua's students is an old man named John, and he's been exiled on an island that is a prison, right?

And he's given a vision. And boy, is it a fun roller coaster of a vision. The vision is what takes up the majority of the book of Revelation. And it's filled with huge apocalyptic big explosive symbolic meaning to get its very real point across. U Revelation, the book of Revelation is a manifesto of resistance against the mixture of God and imperial and political power. A manifesto against civil religion is what Michael Gorman, a Christian author, that's how he phrases it. I kind of like it. It's edgy, makes me uncomfortable. That's that's the book of Revelation. It's not a crystal ball, although it's always fun to kind of treat it like that and spread some fear and get all excited.

Three Monsters in Revelation 13

It's not that. It's it's meant to be a letter of hope and it's meant to encourage Christians to stand firm and don't fall for the sheeping the sheep clothing of the wolf. And so in Revelation chapter 13, the vision that he's hasing that he has turns into a legitimate Godzilla monster movie. You have all of these monsters that there's a monster coming out of the sea and there's, oh, look, there's a monster coming out of the earth. There's monsters everywhere. And Godzilla is just what I think about when maybe it's not the right metaphor, but it works, right? And so in the chapter, three different characters come out, right?

And the first one is a dragon. And John tells us plainly who that is. It's the ancient serpent, right? The one who is called the devil and Satan in chapter 12. Second, a beast of the sea. And this is not a small beast. This is a really big beast out of the sea. He has seven heads and 10 crowns. It's like a big cloverfield monster, right? Huge. U and we're going to come back to him. And then the third character, which is the one we're going to probably spend the most time on, is the beast that crawls up out of the earth. And this one looks a little bit different. It doesn't look all gnarly with all the different heads and all of that.

Here's here's how John describes it. It's small and it's harmless looking and it and it just has two little horns on it. Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth and it had two horns on it like a lamb. But it spoke like a dragon. Look at look at John's description. The intentional description here. Two itty bitty lamb horns, right? Fuzzy, cute, even. It's familiar, right? Lamb. It's familiar because in the book of Revelation, the lamb is the hero of the book. The lamb is Yeshua, right? A few chapters before this, in chapter 5, John describes Jesus in the most beautiful, authentic, accurate, symbolic picture in the throne room of God.

The Lamb Slaughtered and Standing

And it's my soap box, so bear with me. John is having this vision in the throne room of God and there's an elder that tells him, he says, "Hey, the lion of Judah has overcome." And we love that because we all want Jesus to be the big lion, right? Because the big tough and you got the big claws and the fangs, right? And John's excited, too. He's like, "Okay, we got a big Yeah. The lion of Judah. Like where?" and he turns around to see the lion of Judah because he wants to see the big lion of Judah with the claws. And he does not see a lion of Judah because Jesus is not depicted as a lion. He sees he sees a little lamb with its throat cut open still standing.

It's unsettling when you're like me and you want my big bad god to have big claws and teeth and just a little lamb that's been slaughtered. Let that settle like let that marinate. The entire cosmos of creation, the throne room is orbiting around that lamb. The angels are praising the elders. Everyone's there. It's the whole look at this. He's overcome. This is what God's victory looks like. This is where we learn what victory looks like. A little lamb just stood there while evil and sin and the worldly powers threw everything they had on it. Its throat is cut. It bled everywhere. It died. And now it's just standing there staring back as if to say is that is that it?

That's good. That's better than a lion with claws and bloody teeth. That's what defeats a lion with claws and bloody teeth. Welcome to Christianity. It's very radical. It's very radical. It's uncomfortably radical at times. Resilient, unmovable, and undefeated, slaughtered and standing. And it's here how we are taught how to dee how to defeat evil. According to Yeshua, you do not outclaw the lion, you outlive it. Love it. So, back to the beast. Revelation 13. Still with me? Revelation 13. It comes dressed as a good guy, right? Is the little lamb. It looks like what we know is safe to approach and to engage with.

We let it in. Welcome. We follow it around and then it opens its mouth and out comes the voice of the dragon. Sheep's clothing with a wolfensteide dragon. John is drawing off of Yeshua's warning here, right? And why does it speak like a dragon? Well, two weeks ago we spoke about we spoke about the topic of becoming what we worship and how that's a theme throughout the entire scriptures. Israel becomes what they worship, right? And so if the thing opens its mouth and the dragon comes out, you know what? It's been worshiping the dragon. No. Later, John refers to it, the lamb dragon here as the false prophet.

So, that's that's that's how I'm hooking it all into Matthew 5, by the way, or Matthew. The false prophet, someone who speaks into the microphone and claims to speak for or about God, but is doing a trick. And so the little lambhorned monster thing is the one also holding this branding iron, if you will, because he's giving out seals. He's sealing his followers. He's marking his followers. The mark of the beast in the Bible, it comes from this chapter and it belongs to this beast. Not the big scary one out there. It's the one that looks like a lamb. Which is obvious of course, but yeah. And so we're going to talk a little bit about what the mark is, but we're also going to try to find the same concept and find this thread throughout the Old Testament as we move forward.

The dragon breathing lambs throughout history and even the ones that are still working today. So, let's go back and let's take a look at the more interesting monster that came out of the sea with all the with all the heads because these two beasts support each other and they work off of each other. Yeah, the little one serves the big one. And here's what it says in Revelation 13. In the first two verses here, I was proud of the graphic, but I forgot to show it. So, it's a lamb with a dragon shadow, right? Thank you. And I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, and it had 10 horns and seven heads, and its horns were on its horns were 10 crowds, and its heads were blasphemous names.

I have another one here. The beast I saw was like a leopard. Its feet were like a bears, and its mouth was like a lion's. And the dragon gave the beast his power, his throne, and great authority. That last part, the dragon, because that's exactly what Yeshua's experience was with the dragon or the serpent in the desert. That's what he tried to give him. We spoke about that last week. I will give you my kingdom, the empires of the world. You all you have to do is do a little just do a little nod and you don't you don't need to evangelize. It's all done. Boom. You're king over it all. Just give up your authority to me.

And of course Yeshua refused. So here we have the little lamb the dragon giving his authority to the beast here. And the beast the description here of this multi- modular Frankenstein beast is meant to represent empire in general the empires of the world. John builds its body from monster parts from a much older prophet the prophet Daniel in Daniel 7. And Daniel described each of these beasts individually as the empires of his time. And so what John's doing is saying, "Yeah, the beasts don't just live in one time period. The beast is always it's always here." and it's here now for these churches that I'm writing to who are going through struggling with their allegiance to God or allegiance to empire and how they're starting to overlap.

Empires, that's your definition. Empire is power that eats. It feasts. Power that answers to no throne above itself. It feeds on the people around it. And it demands that everyone everybody call the eating that it does good or righteousness or justice. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Rome, it's all the same animal in the biblical story as the enemy of God's kingdom. New costume every century though. We'll just paint it a little bit differently. And now notice the thing that John tells you about this monster. It's wearing blasphemous names. And blasphemy, blasphemy means like it's not necessarily growing up, I always thought it was synonymous with like cussing at God.

And no, that's not it at all. It's it's it's taking it's taking what's God and claiming it is yours. It's taking what's God's and claiming it is yours. Yeah, they're not insults to heaven as much as they are saying that no, that all that all belongs to me. I'm in control of this. And Rome was literally doing this at the time. During the time of Yeshua and John, the Roman Empire implemented what we now call today as the imperial cult. And apologies for the nerdy level that is cranking up slowly. You're going to do great on Jeopardy one day. It's the imperial cult and Rome was smart. What they decided to do is they fused religion and political power together.

So that nationalism and support of the government and its leaders were part of worshiping the gods and the faith of the people. Right? Like what a great trick, right? Honestly, I mean that's a great strategy. Can you imagine Caesar became deified as God? So participation in things like war or even paying taxes were a form of worship in one way or another, right? And they did this in very practical ways. Here's a here's a Tiberius Daenerius. Oh, there's the monster. There we go. So here we have Daenerius. It's about a day's wage if I'm not mistaken. And this was the coin that they handed Yeshua when they asked him about paying taxes, right?

That is the emperor's face on it. And the lettering calls him Caesar, the son of the god Augustus. He's the son of God. The son of God. Brilliant propaganda. Brilliant. A tiny liturgy with every purchase, right? The liturgy of empire just runs in the background in the money in the slogans in the anthems in the songs and they all draw on using faith and religion to drum up support for the things that the empire does because if God is behind the empire then obviously it's God doing the things right now John tells you what the lambhorned monster actually does and in verse 12 of Revelation 13, he explains his job description.

So, we're going not from the big monster. We're going back to the little monster that looks like a lamb. Still with me? Here's its job description. It exercises all the authority of the first beast on its behalf and compels the earth and those who live in it to worship the first beast, the big one, whose fatal wound was healed. Right? So the verse ends with speaking about fatal wound and earlier talks about the head wound that it recovers from. If you're curious and diving into that, most likely that's speaking about Nero when he killed himself with a dagger to his neck or head and the whole empire fell into civil war and it broke it up.

They had they went through four emperors in one year, right? Can you imagine just destabilized the huge beast of the Roman Empire and somehow they got their act together and came back and with as much fury as they had before. So this may have jived with the churches that John was writing to when they were watching CNN and watching everything that they had been through go on, right? Like I said, Revelation was written to the first century audience as well as future generations. But look at what the job is. It exercises the empire's authority and it compels the earth to worship the empire.

Where the true prophet leads people to worship God, this one leads them to worship the state, the empire. That's that's that's what happens when religion goes bad, I guess. When religion goes bad, it doesn't tell you to stop worshiping. It just it just aims your worship a little bit off of where it used to be and a little bit closer bit by bit to where it kind of wants you to be, right? It takes the longing in you to serve God that was built to point to God and it just quietly redirects it. And be careful again because the land beast does not sound evil. It sounds like loyalty. It sounds like tradition.

It sounds like being on the right team, God's team. It even quotes scripture just like Satan did. Quoted the Psalms to Yeshua in the wilderness. It is the most effective weapon the dragon has ever built. Because it does not it doesn't feel like someone's latching a chain to you and tying you up. It almost feels like coming home. And so what is the job of God's image bearers that we learned about in Genesis? Well, two things. We are to represent the king, his authority being exercised through us, right? And we lead creation in worship of him. And now we read what the land beast does and it exercises authority for a throne and it leads the earth in worshiping that throne.

That's our job. That's that's supposed to be our job. Pointed at the correct throne, the kingdom, the king. The false prophet is not an alien monster from outside the story. It is what a slimm becomes when it represents the wrong god. And so the thing about revelation is it's easy to read and think, okay, well that sounds like a really, really, really big problem for Rome and the Christians in Rome and the Roman Empire way over there, right? With John, Jesus, and all the disciples. But this thing, the beast system, if you will, runs, it's been around for a long time. It's much older. And we can see it in scripture pretty clearly.

Solomon and the Golden Age in Costume

And a really neat section of scripture that we'll find in First Kings. So, we'll start we'll go back to Israel's golden age with King Solomon. Centuries before Israel had a king, God wrote a job description for the king, found in Deuteronomy 17. And it is a list of things the king should not do. It's like three things, right? Deuteronomy 17, starting at verse 16, here's what the Lord said. However, he must not acquire many horses, synonymous tanks, fighter jets, war machines. He must not acquire many horses for himself or send the people back to Egypt to acquire many more tanks and fighter jets and whatever horses for the Lord has told you are never to go back that way.

He must not acquire many wise for himself so that his heart won't go astray. And he must not acquire very large amounts of silver and gold for himself. So, gold, guns, and girls, right? It's Yeah. Don't go back to Egypt, right? Specifically, don't go back to Egypt to buy horses. Spoiler alert. What do you think King Solomon decides to do? Right. Don't do so first kings starting in first kings 10 for probably I'd say mainly four chapters first kings the author did something really cool because he made it sound like Solomon was getting these praises. He made Solomon look really good in all the things that he was doing.

He's like look at all these things Solomon's doing. He's doing this and he's doing that and he's doing that and wow this is amazing. And really what's happening is when you start reading in between the lines as we'll see it's like oh no all these things are really bad. Like this is not this is this is Egypt. He's he's being praised for creating Egypt. And it's it's almost like a wolf in sheep's clothing kind of chapter which is why I bring it up. But we'll start in we'll start in first kings 10:23. King Solomon surpassed all the kings of the world in riches and wisdom. Okay. Lost that one real quick.

Like all of them. Richest guy in the world, right? Elon, there he is. Solomon. That's the headline. And then we work through the same chapter. And verse 21 says that there's so much gold that silver was not even considered valuable anymore. Rule three, toast, right? Verse 26, 1,400 chariots and 12,000 horsemen. Rule one done. Verse 28. And you can read where they came from. Where do you think he got all the horsemen and horses from? They imported them from Egypt and then he sold them up north to Anatellia. King Solomon became an arms dealer. He was profiting off of other people's wars.

Now, this is not good. So, as the reader, you're supposed to read this and be like, "Wait a second. This isn't good at all." verse 4 chapter 11. When Solomon was old, his wife turned his heart away from following to following other gods. He was not wholeheartedly devoted to the Lord his God as his father David was. Every rule like he couldn't even everyone broken in order. And the entire chapter is written like it's praising Solomon for all these great things he did, but really it's pointing out how he's going in the opposite direction. But he built the temple. That's a big deal. King Solomon built the temple.

Oh, I didn't put the verse. So, in first Kings 9:15, it speaks about who King Solomon got to build the temple. And it says, "This is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon had imposed to build the Lord's temple. He used slave labor to build the temple to the God that freed slaves. And you'll miss it all if you just skip through it, right? Oh, yeah. He did all these great things. No, slave labor and empire was the wolf. The golden age of Israel was a costume. And when Solomon died, the bill came, the bill came, the kingdom split over what? The labor. Everything Solomon had built.

The infrastructure crumbled. So the whole kingdom split. And now you have a new king that's up north, Jeroboam. And what do you think he's going to do? He's going to do everything right, isn't he? No, he's getting upset because he can't control his people because they're going down to Jerusalem and worshiping in the other kingdom. I'll fix this. Listen, let's get two places and let's set up some golden calfs and just get people to worship them here. So that's what he did. He used religion to solve a political problem by literally redirecting the worship of 10 out of the 12 tribes of Israel toward golden calfs. Look guys, this is the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

Bethel and the Prophetic Critique

Fast forward two centuries, the northern kingdom is a booming because they have all the resources and the neighbors to trade with, right? And into their sanctuary, right? God sends a prophet, Amos, a shepherd and a fig farmer, I guess you could say. He has no credentials. He's just a nobody, I guess you could say. And he stands up at Bethl during all of this and he's like, "Guys, no, you got to stop it. You're doing everything wrong. God does not like this. It's it's it's not even close. You're you're selling the righteous for silver and you're selling the poor for a pair of sandals and you're crushing those who have nothing at the gates.

And you're and you're doing all these festivals, all the feasts and festivals. Yay, I'm doing a mash shalom every week. Yeah, God hates your festivals. He hates them. Judgment is coming. And the priest of Bethl, watch what he does with the word of God. It's in Amos 7:10. He says, "Amazia, the priest of Bethl sent word to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, Amos has conspired against you right here in the house of Israel. The land cannot endure all of his words. For Amos has said this, Jeroboam will die by the sword and Israel will certainly go into exile from its homeland. Do you catch that? A word from God shows up in the sanctuary, and the priest's first move is to call the palace, not to pray.

He follows a police report, right? There's a conspiracy going on. Then Amazia the priest turns to Amos and here's what he says. He says, "And Amazia said to Amos, go away." I don't know if that's funny. Go away. Go away, you seer. Flee to the land of Judah, back where you're from. Earn your living and give your prophecies there, but don't ever prophesy at Bethl again. For it is the king's sanctuary and a royal temple. The king sanctuary is the king's. It's a royal temple. He didn't say your prophecy is false. He said you can't say that here because this house of God answers to the crown. Think about how backwards that is.

The one place in the kingdom where even though it's wrong, the one place where at least some version of the word of God should be able to penetrate. It's illegal to say it. Bethl's costume had an altar. It had a priesthood. It had festivals. It had the name of God over the door. The whole shebang. But their fruit was that they pro they silenced the prophets to keep to keep a lid on national security and the poor were crushed while they played worship music. Dragon. Dragon. You never have to peek under the costume if you can see the fruit. But this priest he wasn't the only bad apple. And certainly this wasn't the only prophet that was sent out to address this thing.

This is exactly what the prophets were sent out to do. You'll hear a term in Christian scholarship. It's called the prophetic critique. And it's it's the shifting of how the Torah and the beginning of the story is so focused on the priesthood and lifting up the holiness of God and the law and how everything's supposed to work. And when we get to the prophets, it's like the prophets are like, "No, you've messed it all up and you're using it to serve yourself." And so now they're going after the very thing that was held up at the beginning because it's become corrupted by the governments, by the kings, by the people, by the rich, right?

The cows of Bashan, right? And so it's called the prophetic that shifting and turning of the tone no longer, right? Trying to call people out for finding for finding the cracks in the law to do evil and justify it with the name of God. That's what the prophets were sent out to do. And so we have Micah down south. He watches the same machine working, but it's in Jerusalem. And he describes it like this in Micah 3:11. And the her leaders issue rulings for a bribe. Her priests teach for payment. And her prophets practice divination for silver. Yet they lean on the Lord, saying, "Isn't this the Lord that's among us?

No disaster will ever overtake us. God is with us. God is with us." Yet they lean on the whole system is for sale, right? Imagine if we had a system where you could buy your way out of the court system and buy your way out of out of enduring justice. Could never imagine. And they do it all with like a sales pitch having to do with God. A century later, Jeremiah stands in the temple gate and he hears that same pitch turned into worship and liturgy. The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. And he tells the crowd, don't trust those words. And it was not just the priest.

When King Ahab wanted a war, about 400 prophets told him what he paid them to say. March up. The Lord will hand it over to you, king. Pay me. 400 prophets to bless a war. And the one prophet who told the truth was put in jail. Now, these 400 prophets, I wouldn't even think that they were anti- worship or anti-God. No, Jeremiah loved the temple. He didn't have a problem with the temple. Amos wasn't anti-Israel. He was heartbroken over his people, other people. The prophets never attacked worship of God. They attacked worship aimed at the wrong throne. The loudest voices in your Bible against mixing God with the state are God's own prophets.

The Mark, the Number, and Two Foreheads

And Revelation is written by prophet doing the exact same job as these against the biggest bethl the world had ever built. And so we move on because everyone wants to know about the mark. Revelation 13:16-1 17 says and it makes everyone small and great rich and poor free and slave to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark the beast's name and the number of the name. So this is the cute guy, the cute fuzzyhorned lamb beast who is given authority to trick people into worshiping the empire. But he's a false prophet. He's using God to do so.

He's painting the beast. He's painting Jesus on the beast of the of the sea. And he makes everyone get this mark. The right hand, the forehead. Why those two spots out of the whole human body? And boy are there lots of opinions. And I don't know all of the answers. But I do believe John's first readers didn't have to ask what it had to do with because they were familiar with at least these two things being used in prayer every morning. In Deuteronomy 6:8, Israel was commanded to bind God's words in exactly those spots. I have the Yeah. You shall bind them as a sign in your hand and put them as a as a symbol on your forehead.

It's been a tradition in Judaism for a long time to do this very literally with little boxes called felon and you wrap up little Bible verses and you stick them in the little boxes and you have these leather straps and you wrap them around your arm and your forehead. And this was something that was done in the first century and a little bit before and it still happens today in many Orthodox communities. It's pretty neat. And so picture a Jewish believer in Smyrna hearing receiving John's letter and it's being read out loud and he gets to the mark on the hand and the forehead and he doesn't really have to interpret a lot. He looks down at his own arm that probably still has the strap, right?

You know, huh? Oh, wait. Wasn't there a guy in the Bible that had a name engraved across his forehead? Yeah, it was the high priest. That's right. There's there's another high priest. The high priest was commanded Sinai that you are to make a pure gold medallion and engrave it like the engraving of a seal, holy to the Lord. Codes Yahweh, holy belonging. That's what the law is. Belong is possessive. You belong to Yahweh. Codes Yahweh. The priest wore it visibly. And it represented what all of Israel carried invisibly. God's name placed on the people of Israel, sealed, if you will. It's like an invisible tattoo.

I heard one author write it. And don't forget about the mark that was in Ezekiel. Remember, God tells Ezekiel, right, to put a mark on the foreheads of the faithful so they'll be spared. So it goes down all the Yeah, it's the forehead in the Bible is where the name goes so everybody knows who you belong to. In Rome, runaway slaves, we have accounts where they would they would write the their slave owners name on their forehead and if they ran away, it would be on their forehead and it would say, I'm not supposed to be here. Like it was a very it I've I've run away. If you see, if you can read this, just so you know, right?

But normally slaves would have their in Rome, it was common to have their owner's name tattooed on their right hands and the wrists. Prophets make reference to that as well. In Revelation 13, the beast did not invent a single element. It is it's it's Sinai, but it's forged. It's fake. The shama, it's counterfeited. The medallion on the high priest's head, it's a knockoff. The mark is allegiance made visible. It's what the mark is. It's allegiance. It's who you belong to. It's who you serve truly. And it's made visible. It's worship aimed at empire. And it's worn as ownership. Ownership of what you do and what you think.

And here it's wired into every single thing you buy. I don't believe it doesn't look like anyone catches this mark by accident by the way. I don't think you can get this mark from a needle or a scanner. Beep. It's no the whole thing is about worship. Whole thing is about worship. It's about belonging to someone. It's about coerced allegiance and the pressure John describes here is very real. Like your livelihood is on the line depending on where your loyalty is going to fall here in the Roman Empire. If you don't yield to Rome and worship Rome, then they will make your life miserable. You will not be able to participate in the things that Rome offers.

They have leverage and they will use it. And he's encouraging them to stand firm. Do not fall for it. Do not be persuaded to worship the imperial cult, to worship Caesar. But you know how it goes. You bow a little bit at a time, right? You get used to it and what you do and what you trust. And sometimes the name without you even realizing how many times you've yielded and compromised the name just of who you belong to is seen. And so yeah, so this mark this allegiance is God's. John continues and he associates this mark with a number. We use it in a lot of horror movies, right? And which what number is it? 666.

Yeah, we got the 666, right? This calls for wisdom. Let the one who understands calculate the number of the beast because it's associated with the allegiance and the mark because it is the number of a person. It is 666, right? I love superstition because it's kind of fun to laugh at ourselves sometimes. You know, you go to a gas station and you get some snacks and it's $6.66 and you're like, I mean, like I have a strong faith, but I'm going to go ahead and get a piece of bubble gum, too. Just to add on, you know, it's we are funny. People are funny. And but he says it's a number of a person. If you want the nerdy explanation, the most widely accepted scholarly reading, and they have they have evidence to back it.

A lot of a lot of things we found that are on display even on the antiquities website in Israel. They say that it's the reading of the letters Nero Caesar written in Hebrew. And if you calculate that up, it's 666. So Caesar, Nero, the big guy. Yeah, the guy with the head wound, right? Add up 666 and the emperor that killed himself by driving a dagger through his own throat, his head, the man who represented empire 666. But there's still a lot of speculation over it and there's room for that. A better source I would add for trying to help understand what the number is associated with at least would be in scripture.

Remember Solomon? We were speaking about Solomon just a few minutes ago in the golden age. The chapter in sheep's clothing, right? Kind of does a switcheroo on us. Let me ask you a question. How much gold do you think King Solomon pulled in annually during his kingship? Now, the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was 666 talents of gold. It's the only place in the Old Testament where this number appears. It could be coincidence. I don't buy it because the whole chapter is building up the corruption of trying to build a kingdom of God through ways that are imperial and empire.

666. It's an echo. It's an echo. This is the annual revenue line of Israel's golden age, a thousand years before John was born. The number of the beasts, I believe, has been hanging in the story the whole time. Just keep pointing us back, stamped on the exact moment worship and empire fused inside God's own nation. Nero's name and Solomon's checkbook. That's that's where the number marks and the very next verse. So, how many of you guys know that John unfortunately, right? It would have been nice, but we had to add them later. The whole verses thing, you put the verse and the chapter and all of that.

So, so John just wrote a letter and we added in all the chapters and the verses and we broke stuff up. And so when the mark of the beast is speaking about that in the very end of chapter 13, we forget sometimes to turn the page to see if John is still writing about the same thing. And guess what? He is. So if we turn the page and we go to the very next verse, then John says this. Then I looked and there was a lamb. The lamb. My mistake. There was the lamb standing on Mount Zion and with him were 144,000 who had his name and his father's name written on their foreheads. Hallelujah. So, we have two crowds of people here.

We have two foreheads, groups of foreheads, who had, and two groups of image bearers, right? One wears the name of the beast and one wears the name of the father in the exact same spot that the medallion covered on the high priest that represented Israel. Now, this is all great history. I love history. And some cool Bible theology, right? But what does this have to do with today's world? I mean, we don't have empires trying to stamp phrases about God on our coins along with faces of our leaders on them or anything, you know. I guess the beast system that John saw in his day still exists. As long as empires exist, we're always going to see the fingerprints of the beast system.

Berlin, Smyrna, and Where Loyalty Goes

It shouldn't surprise us. And it's everywhere. It's everywhere. And you kind of roll your eyes a little bit and okay, you're here and you're trying to do what Jeremiah 29 says and pray for the well-being of the place that God has put you and I'm going to be this little light of mine, right? You keep pushing. In 1933 in Germany there was a group that called themselves very creative name the German Christians and Nazism of course was on the rise and Nazism knew that if it worked for Rome it would most certainly work for them. Right. So they started holding services and promoting a promoting a type of Christianity that created a more Aryan looking Jesus, right?

And fused loyalty to the Nazi party into the worship services. So you would you would go to church and you just see the swastikas and oh sorry this is the Berlin Cathedral would at one of the ceremonies that they did. You have all the banners everywhere right next to the pull pit. Do I have the There we go. It's outside the Berlin cathedral. Just walk up. You have all the brown shirts, I guess, and swastikas. And even inside on the altar, swastikas everywhere because this is God's nation. Why wouldn't there be a national flag of our country hanging at the altar of God? Like of course there would be because God's blessing us.

We're his favorite. And if you want to worship God, then you have to worship his nation as well. Can you imagine? It's humbling. Humbling. Those people believed with all their hearts that they were being faithful. They thought revival had come because the costume is just perfect, right? You got the you got the word Christian in the movement's own name and if any organization says they're a Christian, they must be you must be safe. That same year a governing council that adopted what they called the Aryan paragraph or statement believers they got together and they voted and they decided any pastors that have Jewish descent Christian pastors that have Jewish descent can't preach anymore.

You got to take them out. Take them out of the churches. Take them out of the churches. Not the government. They did this to their own ministers. That's right. And then they went after the Bible itself. 20,000 people packed the Berlin Arena and a man by the name of Reinhold Cross stood at that podium and demanded that it's time for us to have liberation from the Old Testament. And so yeah, because obviously we need to cut all the Jewish stuff out. And so they attempted to do that. Power, control, manipulation, evil, all being cheered on because they claimed Jesus was on their side because we're Christians.

Because we're Christians. Don't you believe us? It's easy to fall for, isn't it? If we're honest, it's easy. It's easy. Gosh. And it's everywhere. It's everywhere. Everybody does it if you're an empire. A few weeks ago, Russia's Department of War released a graphic on Telegram. And we go. And they use this for a type of recruitment to get people excited to send them to war. And look at it like it's quoting it's quoting Isaiah 68. Then I heard a voice from the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send and whom will I go for us? And I said, here I am. Send me." Right. This is this is the throne room scene of Isaiah.

He gets the cold touched to his lips like the anointing is there, the power is there, and he's like, "Send me, Lord. I want to be the prophet to go deliver the message of your kingdom and everything that you are. Send me." And it's being used as a recruitment to go to war. Oh, my apologies. That was not Russia. That was the US Department of War tagged with Sean Parnell, the chief spokesman of the Pentagon. Everybody does it. I love my country, but the birthright of being an American is to not approve everything the country does. This is the fingerprints of the beast system. Just if you wanted to see it.

And it's heartbreaking. Words that belong to the throne turn to face the state. It's no different than what Amazia did with the sanctuary or Ahab's 400 priests to go to war. It's no different than what Berlin did in the pulpits. This time it just ran across our phones on Facebook and Christians cheered it on because it's a Bible verse, right? It's a Bible verse and that makes everything kosher. The lamb will always look safe. Always check the voice. Any nation in any century that picks up the name of God to move its own agenda that uses Bible verses to try to sway believers into thinking their agendas are the same as God's.

They are running this strategy. Any of them ancient and modern, the ones you criticize and the ones you would defend. Nobody gets an exception. Because yeah, this move is a government reaching for God's name to bless what it had already decided to do. As I mentioned, scholar Michael Gorman calls the book of Revelation a manifesto against civil religion, against fusing God and government into one loyalty. Empire is now. Some he writes, just like Rome is now. And I'm not telling you to check out of the world because as a believer, you're meant to be a soldier and you're meant to go into the battle. Yeah.

You keep doing good. You keep using the ways of empire to do good however you can. Leverage it back against them. Be a citizen. Vote, protest, do every ounce of good you can in this nation or whatever nation you're in. Especially for the people the powerful would rather leave behind just like we saw Israel did because lifting them up is the politics of the lamb. That's how you subvert empire. And never let a flag stand in the spot that belongs to God alone. Amen. And never let anyone with a pulpit tell you that a country is where your worship goes. Your king shares his throne with no nation on earth. And the day that your faith and your national loyalty quiet become the same thing, you have started answering to the beast's name.

And it's a very real thing. Very real thing. So what do we do? You do what the resilient ones did. In Smyrna, one of the seven cities, an old teacher named Polycarp was dragged into an arena and ordered to swear by Caesar and cursed his king. And the account survives. It's also called the mart martyrdom of Parlearp. He had served his king 86 years and his king had never done him wrong. And so how could he blaspheme him now? And it cost him his life. And the empire still could, you know, the empire still could not make him say, "I bow down to empire." He did what the lamb did. No one may be asking us to burn at the stake.

That's a good thing. It's a preference as well. But there's still a war going on. There's still pressure going on. And, when we walk out into this world, there are a lot of lambs that have a dragon's voice. And we need to take the words of Yeshua seriously. Yes. We need to take the words of John Look at the fruit. Look at the fruit. What does the voice sound like? Your job image bearer has not changed since Eden. The opposite of the false prophet is a true image bearer. A living statue of the king aiming worship at God and nothing lower ever. So that wherever you stand, he's represented.

His presence is there through you. So carry your name like you believe it. Carry that name like you believe it. Here's how the story ends in Revelation 22. And there will no longer be any curse. The throne of God and the lamb will be the city and his servants will worship him. They will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads. The spot the beast wanted, the spot the medallion covered, the name from Sinai is now opened and sealed forever and ever and ever. And you behold his face. You become what you behold. And here you are beholding his face. And the redeemed finally behold him with nothing in the way.

The false prophet is silent. And that the dirt and breath stands in the light wearing the name it has always been meant to carry forward. And the God writing his name on your forehead breathe the breath of life into you to be this thing, this object that redirects worship towards him. So ask the prophet's question on your own life. Whose sanctuary is it? And if you do not love the answer is good news. The real lamb, the real lamb is still sealing foreheads today. Amen. Repentance is coming home to the name that claimed you first. And so I hope you'll go home. I hope you'll read the book of Revelation.

I hope you'll dive into the word. U but the one thing I hope most of all is that you will believe that you have a purpose in this life and that God is calling you and filling you with a spirit that has the type of authority that can stand like the lamb. So please stand as we conclude with worship and I want to encourage you today, aside from what we've read, where are you at? Where are you at with the beast of the land? Do you give your focus to it? It could be a lot of different beasts out there, but where do you give your focus? Where do you give your loyalty? And it can be something as big as nationalistic zeal or it can be something as small as maybe that sin in your life or that thing you want to hold on to or that self-medication or that unforgiveness.

What are you chained to? What are you chained to? Because there's a king there's a king that wants to write his name on your forehead. And if you need prayer today, guys, we have a prayer warrior on the other side of the stage. I would encourage you if that's you to take that step of faith of saying you know what I'm going to pursue something more today. I'm going to go up for prayer and I'm going to ask for prayer in whatever situation is going on in my life. And as always we have this symbolic altar here and it's here for one purpose. It's here for you to make a move for you to say, you know what, there's something I want to leave here today that I've been carrying around for such a long time and it's time for me to take that step of faith out.

And it's made for you to come up and kneel down and symbolically place that thing there so that when you return to your seat, you've taken the first step. You've acknowledged what it is. You've acknowledged where you want to go and you acknowledge who's going to get you there. It is no other name than Yeshua. It is no other name than Jesus Christ. Ava Mako, our father and our king. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to dive into your word and your teachings. And Father, I ask that the Holy Spirit would do the thing that it does best. It would give us strength and clarity to move in places where you would call us that we would not be afraid but we would say no I've been here long enough and I'm ready to move forward in my life and I'm ready to move closer to God and I'm ready to leave things behind that this Holy Spirit would give us strength and boldness to be the image bearers that we were created to be out in a world with so many dragons that we would be those slayers.

We thank you, Father, for your grace. We thank you for your mercy. We thank you for the power to forgive that you give us to give to others. We thank you for your love. In the name of Yeshua, our King, we pray. Amen.