The mark of the beast is a prophetic event that has brought much fear and confusion to the body of Christ and it is probably far more subtle than we’ve been led to believe. Many of us are right now inundated with very confusing explanations about the meaning of the mark of the beast.
It is true the Bible speaks very clearly of a time coming when no one will be able to buy or sell if they don’t bear the mark but no one can get that mark without worshipping the beast.
What a horrible time that’s going to be. Without this mark, there will be no way to obtain food or transportation or even make a living. It will be humanly impossible to survive. Regardless of the form in which the mark comes (or has come), those who have partaken of the nature of the beast-the spirit and the love of this world (see 1 John 2:15-17), will not be able to resist the mark or anything else the beast has to offer.
The technology is already in place to implement such a ‘marking’ system. But at this point, I will refrain from all speculation about the beast’s marking system and leave it to those the Lord has revealed its technology.
My belief is that the overcoming Church of Jesus Christ will be with the Lord when this marking takes place. God’s people have already been marked on their foreheads. Ezekiel spoke of a people that sigh and cry for all the abominations that are done:
And the Lord said to him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in the midst of it (Ezekiel 9:4).
Remember no one will be able to get the mark without worshiping the beast. So whether or not this is the mark of the beast doesn’t matter to those who know and have placed their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. What matters is; do you know Jesus intimately? Are you blood-bought, stamped with the seal of the Holy Spirit and preserved for glory? The overcoming church of Jesus Christ will not be on this planet when this marking takes place.
God’s people have already been marked on their foreheads. We are already sealed, marked, branded and stamped with the seal of the long-promised Holy Spirit as God’s own secured for the day of redemption through Christ from evil and the consequences of sin (see Ephesians 1:13).
In the Book of Revelation, we hear the Lord telling the destroying angels, Harm neither the earth nor the sea nor the trees until we have sealed the bondservants of our God upon their foreheads (Revelation 7:3).
In Revelation 9:4 the demon powers unleashed in the last days are told not to injure the herbage of the earth nor any green thing nor any tree, but only to attack such human beings as do not have the seal (mark) of God on their foreheads.
Again in Revelation 22:4, the Lord promises us that, “No longer will there be a curse upon anything. For the throne of God and of the Lamb will be there, and his servants will worship him. And they will see his face, and his name will be written on their foreheads.”
We, His children, are already marked in our foreheads! We are blood-purchased, sealed, marked and preserved for glory. Who dares to try to convince us that he who sealed us in our foreheads would allow Satan to replace the Lord’s mark with his own?
If you are a child of God, your forehead has already been claimed, and your forearm has been plunged beneath the blood of God’s lamb.
The Greatest Danger-Deception
Many people have striven to understand the manner in which this beast would attempt to place his mark on them, so they would know what to refuse and would be free from the wrath foretold. Tragically, those who are frantically trying to avoid the mark of the beast are actually partaking of the spirit of the beast every day.
Our only deliverance from the wrath of God is to be found in Christ. Taking the mark is not the real sin, although this might sound a bit contradictory, the sin is found in worshipping the beast. The mark is merely evidence of such worship. John further explains:
Here is room for discernment a call for the wisdom of interpretation. Let anyone who has intelligence (penetration and insight enough) calculate the number of the beast, for it is a human number the number of a certain man; his number is 666 (Revelation 13:18).
If we are trusting in our knowledge of good and evil to discern the beast, we will easily be deceived. The nature of the beast is rooted just as much in the ‘good’ that is in man as it is in the evil.
Satan comes an ‘angel of light’ or messenger of truth, because good has always been more deceptive than evil. It was not the evil nature of the Tree of Knowledge that deceived Eve; it was the good. The ‘good’ of the Tree of Knowledge kills just as certainly as the evil.
The evil nature of man is manifested in these last days with increasing intensity, but so is the ‘good’ of man which is rooted in the same tree. Just as evil is becoming more blatant, the good is becoming more subtle and deceptive.
It’s the reason Jesus begins His analysis of the closing phase of this age with a warning against deception, which is repeated twice in the course of the discourse as recorded by Matthew 24:4-5.
Deception will be and is one greatest single danger that threatens us as Christians greater than persecution or war. For example, what would be the popularity of a leader today if he promised safe streets, a healthy economy and the restoration of national dignity and military strength-and delivered on all these promises?
As we’ve covered here and here, Adolf Hitler promised all these things to a Germany crippled by depression and war. Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer says of this time:
We should not be quick to condemn those who gave Hitler a chance, given the economic chaos that spread throughout Germany after World War I. He could never have come to power if the German economy would have remained strong after World War I.
He rode to victory simply because he promised to rebuild the collapsing German mark and put the nation back to work. He cleverly exploited the economic crisis that post-war Germany was experiencing. Yes, it was the economy that gave rise to National Socialism.
The nation was starving and on the verge of anarchy, with a currency that was utterly worthless. In just four years, he not only balanced the budget but also paid off a national debt that was higher percentage of their gross national product (GDP) than America’s was before the Covid-19.
He took one of the most economically and militarily weak nations on the earth at that time and made it among the most powerful nations both economically and militarily. In only four years, he took a nation struggling with more than 50% unemployment to 100% employment.
Not only did Hitler dramatically improve the German economy and military, but he also removed corruption, pornography, and perversion from the streets and instilled such a resolve and vision in the nation that even some church leaders began to wonder if it were the beginning of the Millennium.
Such a dramatic transformation of a nation has never been witnessed before or since. It was so remarkable that Winston Churchill said that if Hitler had died in 1939 he would have been considered the greatest leader in world history.
In the face of such ‘miracles,’ one can understand the deception of the masses and their adulation of this man. Yet few church leaders have been willing to acknowledge the tragic deception that came upon most of the church in Germany.
Milton Mayer, in his book They, Thought They Were Free, observed,
Fascism came as an ‘angel of light ’and German Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, welcomed Hitler as a gift from God. Nazism was seen as redemptive of a decadent society and came almost as Puritanism to a majority sick of perversions and licence parading as liberty.’
Hitler used the church in Germany as a springboard to power. The dean of Magdeburg Cathedral exulted in the Nazi flags displayed in his church, declaring, “whoever reviles this symbol of ours is reviling our Germany.”
Hitler became a god for millions of people in Germany. It seems much of the nation had come under a spell of a man who was hailed as the long-awaited savior of a people who had become weary of poverty and humiliation.
It is been noted that at one of the Nuremberg rallies, a giant photo of Hitler was captioned with the words:
“In the beginning was the word.” The Lord’s prayer was changed by some to read, “Our father Adolf who art in Nuremberg, hallowed be thy name, the Third Reich come….”If you did not say, “Heil Hitler!” when you entered a restaurant or a business establishment, you would not be served.
Although dictators are usually hated by most, this one was for the most part adored, obeyed, and worshipped
‘The swastika flags around the altar radiate hope-hope that the day is at last about to dawn.’ Pastor Siegfried Leffler stated,
In the pitch-black night of the church history Hitler became, as it were, the wonderful transparency for our time, and the window of our age, through which light fell on the history of Christianity. Through him, we were able to see the Saviour in the history of the Germans.
Pastor Julius Leutheuser actually taught that ‘Christ has come to us through Adolf Hitler.’
The entire German Church did not reach this level of deception, but much of it did. This profound delusion was challenged by the extraordinary stand for truth made by some German Christians, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Those who will stand against the most powerful political and military machines in history with nothing but spiritual power will ultimately prevail. Bonheoffer’s life continues to challenge Christians to rise up and boldly stand against the darkness of their times.
It now seems clear that the German church’s superficial understanding of redemption opened the door to this terrible deception. The good that is in man will never redeem him from the evil that is in him.
It is still from the same tree, and its poison will always result in death. The system whose coming appeared so good to the German Christians shocked the civilized world with its evil deeds, but its nature had actually not changed. The good of man is just the other face of evil in man.
Satan is capable of using either good or evil as a tool to bring about his purposes. They were only a handful of German Christians that discerned the deception from the beginning. The same satanic mask is being promulgated today. Our discernment must be more than distinguishing good from evil; we must know the Lord’s voice and follow Him.
Milton Mayer added a significant insight into the events in Germany preceding the war:
I felt and still feel that it was not just a German man that I met, but MAN. He happened to be in Germany under certain conditions. He might be here under certain conditions. He might, under certain conditions, be I.
The truth is that the same beast is within us all. It is the Adamic nature that continually beckons us to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
There is no good in accumulating an entire storehouse of prophetic knowledge, preaching and teaching, if you drift away from intimacy with Christ. It would be easy to know everything possible about all these prophetic subjects, and yet still fall into the jaws of lust, lose your faith and die in utter apathy.
The only trustworthy preparations are those for the heart, not the body. If you love the Lord, this is where all preparations must begin. If your heart is not right with the Lord, all your preparations to protect your body will be in vain.
Those who are right now setting their hearts to seek God with all their being-saturating their hearts and minds with His Word, and cleaving to Christ more and more-are better prepared for the coming storm than anyone.
The key to understanding everything God is doing on the earth, and everything He is doing in our individual lives, is to understand that it is all for the purpose of bringing us, and the whole creation into union with His Son. The ultimate purpose of God is that all things will be summed up in His Son Jesus Christ (see Colossians 1:13-19).
So our goal is not to just see the book of Revelation as either history or future events, but to see it in the light of the unfolding purpose of God to reveal His Son. The apostle John testified that:
This is the revelation of Jesus Christ His unveiling of the divine mysteries. God gave it to Him to disclose and make known to His bond-servants certain things which must shortly and speedily come to pass in their entirety. And He sent and communicated it through His angel (messenger) to His bond-servant John (Revelation 1:1).
Events did immediately begin to take place, and continue to occur, which perfectly fulfills this prophecy. In John’s vision, there is a great deal about the anti-Christ or the man of sin.
Revelation 13:16-17 teaches that the beast has a mark which he attempts to place upon us in chapter 14, verses 9-10, we see that terrible wrath comes upon all who take the mark.
Therefore the mark of the beast has nothing to do with the true believer. The Lord will sustain us in the midst of depression and disaster. If He can empower the Hebrew children through the fiery furnace and Daniel to endure the lions’ den, then he can empower us all to resist anything the devil throws at us.
We’re His bride-and His love will deliver us! I believe God is going to remove His bride before He pours out His final vials of wrath upon the earth.
