I’ve been seeing a lot on social media recently about the ‘mark of the beast’ so I thought I’d share some thoughts about what the mark of the beast is or isn’t! For those of you that don’t want to read the full answer the mark is not a ‘thing,’ it’s a picture the writer of Revelation uses as short hand for choosing to worship the Roman Emperor.
Before we look at the text where the Mark of the Beast is mentioned in Revelation we need to remember:
1. Revelation is prophecy on steroids. Like all prophecy, it speaks to the situation then, as well as looking forward. In fact most prophecy speaks to a specific community either about what has gone wrong or about what God will do to make things right. It is not primarily about what is going to happen in the future.
2. Revelation is a letter to a specific group of churches in a particular time and place. The key issue in those churches was the huge pressure to turn their backs on Jesus and worship the Roman Emperor (either Nero or Domitian depending on how you date the letter). Failure to do so resulted in discrimination and persecution and could lead to execution, beatings, being excluded from commerce or losing their property or legal rights.
3. Revelation is a peculiar type of writing that uses numbers and images to illustrate spiritual truths and often contrasts something good with something evil.
(If you’d like to know more about how to read Revelation well you can watch my talk on that very subject here).
So when we read in Revelation 13:
‘Then the statue of the beast commanded that anyone refusing to worship it must die. 16 He required everyone—small and great, rich and poor, free and slave—to be given a mark on the right hand or on the forehead. 17 And no one could buy or sell anything without that mark, which was either the name of the beast or the number representing his name. 18 Wisdom is needed here. Let the one with understanding solve the meaning of the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666.’
What does it mean?
1. The Statue of the beast
Firstly Roman Emperor’s often had huge statues built in their own honour and even required people to bow to them. We know Domitian had a massive statue built in Ephesus (one of the towns John was writing to in Revelation). It echoes the story in the Book of Daniel where the Emperor of the day had a huge statue built and demands everyone worship it. In fact, the Book of Daniel is an important key when reading Revelation - again see my talk on Revelation on how Daniel is key to reading Revelation well.
So the statue represents the Roman Emperor and the demand that everyone worship him. It is humanity choosing to worship one of their own (the beast) rather than the God who created them….still something we do today!
2. The Mark of the Beast
So the Statue demands everyone have a mark on their forehead or hand to demonstrate their allegiance and worship of the Beast. This is the negative mirror image to the saints having the seal of God on their foreheads elsewhere in Revelation (Rev 7 & 9). No-one seriously considers that the seal of God is an actual physical stamp on your forehead. Rather it is a picture representing how we belong to and worship God.
Remember that Revelation contains lots of opposites that deliberately contrast each other? The opposite of the seal is the mark of the beast. Therefore if the seal represents, or is a picture of, the saints belonging to God, so the mark represents the choice people made to worship the beast.
Therefore the first readers of Revelation would have understood that taking the mark is another way of saying you had given in to pressure and discrimination and had chosen to worship the Roman Emperor.
When the passage says ‘no one could buy or sell anything without that mark’ this represents the experience of the first century Christians of the cost of resisting the pressure to worship the Emperor. They would be actively discriminated against and persecuted and that could lead to people boycotting their businesses, them losing property and their rights as citizens. They could be denied a place in the local community and economy.
3. The Number
With regard to the number of the beast, I’d encourage you to watch my talk on Genesis 1 (available here). In that, you’ll see how the number 7 came to represent the relationship between God and man, the relationship we were created for, and that was experienced on the 7th day. To those early believers, 7 is perfection because of its association with day 7 of creation when all was completed. 666 would therefore call to mind day 6 when man had been created but had yet to experience the wonder of their relationship with God. 6, therefore, is imperfect, mankind without God, humanity choosing to worship other things.
So what does this mean for us today?
As followers of Jesus the temptation to worship/give our love and trust to other things is still very relevant. The beast can be any number of other things like career, money, sex, drugs, alcohol, food, or academic performance. All of which can take over our lives and displace following Jesus as our priority. Each of those things leave their ‘mark’ on us, signs of how we have become enslaved to them.
Revelation is a reminder to us to take these temptations seriously, that they lie and make false promises to us and lead us in the wrong direction - away from God. It also reminds us most importantly, that Jesus triumphed over them and can set us free from them. Also that no matter how messed up the world looks, the end of the story is not in doubt - Jesus wins!
So don’t be misled, my dear brothers and sisters. Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. James 1:16-17
