Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. Today, what is the mark of the beast in Revelation? Oh, the mark of the beast in the book of Revelation written by the Apostle John. Are we to breathlessly look for barcode strips and microchips on our foreheads and hands as Revelation Red Heifer Rapture teachers tell us will happen in the takeover by the Antichrist?

Or does Revelation actually indicate to us that John's first audience, that is the Christians of Asia Minor in the first century, knew exactly what the mark of the beast was without having to wait some 2,000 years for barcode strips and microchips? The answer has a great deal of meaning for you, dear listener. If you think all of this is future, if you buy the fantasies of your Revelation Red Heifer Rapture teachers, your guard is down today, regarding the beast and his impact on you and our world around us.

If you maintain with us, however, that the beast had a first century context, then you can see how the mark of the beast is evident not only then, but today in the beast and his followers today. There is a beast today, and there are followers of the beast today. You are far more able to identify the beast and his deeds today, honestly and realistically. The beast, as we have seen over the last few weeks, the beast was simultaneously in Revelation a territory and a tyrant. John says the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated, and that, of course, is the seven mountains of the city of Rome.

But they are also seven kings. That is Caesar Nero. And we establish this with three different vectors that John gives us. That is succession. There were seven, eight successors, one of which was Nero.

There was resuscitation, succession, resuscitation, and 666. Resuscitation, that is the Nero redidivus myth. That is the resurrection of Nero. And then there was the number 666, which we saw perfectly fit Caesar Nero. But what is crucial for you and me is that it doesn't end there.

A satanically inspired beast is alive and well on planet Earth now as we speak. And unless you face it squarely, you will end up serving it. There is no compromise here. Satan is a deceiver. His partner in crime, the beast from the Earth, deceives those who dwell on the Earth, as John says.

And this includes clever Christians who are deceived into thinking all of this is future when it's happening now. And the beast demands your loyalty and allegiance now. And the beast, with foolish Christians, buy into a futurist scheme, they go ahead and blindly serve the very beast they swear they would never submit to if they were left behind and bidden to take barcode strips and microchips.

There is no more perfect scheme of deception than to convince men that Satan manifest is in the future, only after a sequence of particular events that will never happen, when in fact he is out and about now, marking his own now, requiring worship now, animating the beasts now. The pre-tribulational rapture scheme as outlined by your revelation, Red Heifer rapture teachers, will never happen. You are waiting in a fantasy and as long as he can string you along into thinking it will, deceiving you with blood moons and raptures soon, you will continue to serve the beast. Stop serving the beast, oh listener.

The beast has already gained victory over you, if this is your view. You go on pledging your allegiance to him, making your fortune, serving in his armies, and you worship the beast in countless ways about which you are totally unaware. After all, you reason, the really bad stuff like the Great Tribulation and the Antichrist may be close, but it won't happen until after I bail out through the escape hatch of the rapture. So, my service to the system as it is now is all good. I can't possibly be one of those with the mark of the beast, because the rapture hasn't happened yet, and I don't have a microchip in me.

At least, I don't think I do. So many millions of men are already walking around with chips under their skins, dear listener. Bear with me, though. Please do bear with me. Have patience with me.

I began to show you over the last few weeks that the beast of revelation is not what your revelation, Red Heifer rapture teachers told you he was. This means as well that the mark of the beast is not what they're telling you it is. One thing your revelation, Red Heifer rapture teachers don't tell you is what John expected his first century readers to see from their world around them and the source from which he expected them to draw their conclusions. That is the Bible. How novel.

How revolutionary. You are looking around your world, drawing on literal symbols like barcode strips and microchips when John expected his readers to look around their world, that is the world of the first century, and draw upon the Bible and not wait two millennia and then consult Fox News and the latest tech journals. John himself says this calls for wisdom. If we are to see what God intends for us to see in Revelation, then we must first see what he intended our first century brothers to see. They were John's first readers of the apocalypse.

Then we can look for those same things as they appear now. But until we do this, we are practicing isogesis. Isogesis is reading into a text things that are not there, like barcode chips and microchips. Instead of reading out of text things that are there, this is exegesis, things native to the text. Well then, what kind of marks are native to the text?

In the biblical context, what does it mean to mark a man, whether of a beast or a man or of God, because God marks men too? The Bible. Rather than your imaginative newspaper headlines, the Bible is the abundant source for the first century church. Let us look first of all to the mark of Cain, the mark of Cain, because God marks men too. It doesn't take long into the history of mankind before a man is marked.

And this is Cain, the first murderer who slew his brother Abel. Now, when God pronounces judgment, and he does this in upon Cain, he says, when you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on earth. Well then, Cain is dismayed. Note Cain's fear in chapter four of Genesis.

He says, I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me. Well, God contradicts Cain. He says, not so. If anyone kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. Now it's here that the so-called mark enters, because the text says, the Lord put a mark on Cain.

The word mark here in Genesis can also be translated sign or omen, and it is translated precisely that in other contexts. For example, in the creation narrative, the lights of heaven are said to be, let them be for signs, that is, or marks. The rainbow of Noah was also a sign or an omen, the circumcision that God made with Abraham was also a token of God's covenant, that is a sign or an omen. And that's the best understanding here, in fact. Not mark, but sign or omen.

And many translations do exactly this. The New American Standard says, the Lord set a sign for Cain. The American Standard Version says, and Jehovah appointed a sign for Cain. The English Revised Version says, and the Lord appointed a sign for Cain. Well, then what was that sign?

The context tells us, dear reader, so important. The context tells us what the sign or omen was for Cain, because rather than being driven away, being hidden, being a fugitive, and a wanderer, note what the text says. Cain would settle in the land of Nod. This is the sign and omen that God gave to him. And in settling, men would be less likely to slay him.

And then he would bear a son in peace, and that would be Enoch. And much more, Cain would build a city. What wanderer, what fugitive does this? No one does this unless he is indeed given a sign or an omen from God. Surrounding peoples would refrain from killing one who has built a city.

Cain's subsequent career was anything but that of a fugitive and wanderer. Well, what other alternatives do you have to offer, dear listener, for the mark of Cain? There have been many. For example, the LDS Church used to maintain that the mark of Cain was the curse of black skin upon him, and then later his descendants Cain. And this interpretation was also popular in the antebellum slave South and amongst groups like the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups.

Well, some have thought that the mark of Cain was also a physical deformity. And then a popular current understanding is that it was a physical mark on the forehead and or hand, like that of the Beast of Revelation. Some even say it was the number 666. Well, dear listener, the sheer number of speculations as to what a literal physical mark might be should send up warning flags to you about literal interpretation. Literalism in a highly symbolic book like Revelation, and then parts of Genesis too, leads the interpreter into blind alleys and absurd understandings like those that we have just mentioned to you.

The problem with these interpretations is that our Hebrew word is never a literal physical mark in the Bible. As the exegetical commentators, as Kylan Dalich put it, they say, and I quote, the mark which God put upon Cain is not to be regarded as a mark upon his body, but as a certain sign or omen, unquote. So, the mark of Cain was not a literal physical mark on the body, a truth that cannot be wished away. The sheer number of speculations on such a physical mark shows its implausibility. Rather, the mark of Cain was a sign, an omen given to him, and all who would slay him, that he would be an opposite of a fugitive and wanderer.

That is a settler and a city builder. The second set of marks that we see in the Bible are the mark of God upon the elect, because indeed God marks his own as well. The next text that our first century reader, we must think in terms of our first century reader when we come to Revelation, not two millennia later to red heifer rapture teachers, no. The next text our first century reader would think of when he thought about the mark of the beast on the forehead was Ezekiel 9, where men were marked on the forehead there as well, only by God for preservation rather than by the beast for condemnation.

Here in Ezekiel 9, God was judging Israel for her idolatry by removing his presence from the temple, slaying the idolaters, sparing only those who bore his mark on the forehead. The text says in Ezekiel chapter 9, pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark upon the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it. And to the other angels, he said in my hearing, pass through the city after him and strike. Your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity, kill old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, but touch no one upon whom is the mark, unquote.

And here we have a mark on the forehead that all commentators universally confess to be an invisible one, a mark known to God and his angels as he judges. Nowhere in the historical documents does the text require a literal mark on the forehead. Nowhere in the historical documents is there a record of men running around the streets of Jerusalem, wide-eyed and zombie-like with 666 on their foreheads or some other number, as we see portrayed to us by the revelation red heifer rapture teachers who represent these things as literal marks.

What is required by the context in Ezekiel chapter 9 is that the avenging angels of God distinguish between the godly and the ungodly, the just and the unjust. In this highly symbolic prophecy, the angels see what is required to distinguish the good from the bad, the righteous from the evil, while we do not. Ezekiel, of all the Old Testament prophets, along with Zechariah perhaps, uses spiritualized picture parables to communicate to his generation. Spiritualized picture parables. And despite the horror and revulsion you may feel at this, if you are a literalist, revelation red heifer rapture teacher, dispensational premillennialist.

Well, the Bible does precisely spiritualize many texts at various junctures, Ezekiel chapter 9 being one. Third set of marks that we see in the Bible, we have the mark of God upon the elect in Revelation 2, Revelation chapters 7 and 9, echoing Ezekiel. Here is why I say to you, you cannot understand the New Testament and Revelation without first understanding the Old Testament. John in Revelation is drawing upon the parallel tradition in Ezekiel for his purposes.

Just as God knew his own all throughout the apostate days of Ezekiel, which was the function of the mark upon the forehead there, so God knows his own all throughout the days of John, not some far-off irrelevant days for American evangelicals who hold a newspaper in one hand and a copy of Left Behind in the other. John says, then I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun with the seal of the living God. And he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea, saying, do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads, unquote.

From Revelation chapter 7, with great hope the angel seals the servants of God on their foreheads. How beautiful and how reassuring that is. Why don't Revelation Red Heifer rapture teachers pay any attention to this wonderful passage full of so much promise for the church? Almost all agree, too, in interpreting this, that it is a symbolic spiritual seal that identifies possession by the sealer that is God Almighty. The seal on the forehead of believers is meant to be seen by the supernatural forces of judgment, not by all and sundry upon the earth.

Let me repeat that. The seal upon the foreheads of believers is to be seen by the supernatural forces of judgment, not by all and sundry upon the earth. The kind of fierce wrath that God pours out in judgment upon the world will not hurt the people of God. That's the promise of the seal. Revelation chapter 9 also reveals the same principle to us, because it says there, they, that is the demons arising from the pit.

We're told not to harm the grass and the green plants and the trees, only those who don't have the seal of God on their foreheads. There are many other places in Scripture, too, where men are marked in precisely this fashion. Mark the blameless, David says in the Psalms, Psalm 37, mark the blameless and behold the upright, for there is a future for the man of peace. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, from Psalm 130, O Lord, who could stand? Though you wash yourself with lie, in fact, Jeremiah says to the Israelites, though you wash yourself with lie and use much soap, the mark of your guilt is still before me, declares the Lord God.

One of the many, many places where the word mark is also used. We have observed consistently throughout the Bible that to mark a man is a spiritual, symbolic act by which he is identified in association with a character, quality, or possessor. There's no escaping this conclusion if we are honest in examining the Bible's consistent use of to mark. Well, what then are we to conclude when we come to the mark of the beast? Are we to conclude anything different?

Are we to make an exception here in order to avoid profound disappointment in our special inside knowledge of literal barcode strips and microchips as marks of the beast? Let me remind you again of a very important interpretive principle here. A text cannot mean what it could not mean for its first audience. Neither John nor his people knew anything about barcode strips and microchips. The writer, John, wrote with a particular people in mind, the churches of Asia who lived in thought within their own day and time, that is the particular culture and set of ideas in the first century of which barcode strips and microchips were not a part.

Therefore, if we are to understand what John means, and not just make it up to suit our own fancies, well, then we must endeavor to interpret John's text in the context of his day and time. They knew nothing of barcode strips and microchips, but they did know how a man's thoughts, words, and deeds marked him as a sinner or a saint, as belonging to the Caesar or Christ, as a worshiper of the emperor or the one true God. From Revelation chapter 13, verse 16, this is the meaning of it. That is also, it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead.

That's the sense of this text. If you examine the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, you find that the forehead is symbolic of a man's thoughts and words, and the hand is symbolic of his deeds or his works. In exhorting, for example, Israel to obedience to God's word, Moses commanded Israel to have that word ever before them. And he puts it this way in Deuteronomy chapter 6, and these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise.

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes, that is, your forehead. The hand and the forehead, dear listener, the word of God was to be there with the Israelite. This is the tradition of the phylacteries, that is, those little boxes that you see bound on the forehead and the right hand of pious Jews even today when they pray. Those little phylacteries or black boxes are filled with scriptures, symbolic of the ever-present word to guide that pious Jew in their thoughts and words on the forehead, and then in their actions and deeds, that is, on the right hand.

This is that which identified a man with God, that is, his thoughts, his words, and his deeds. And not even the phylacteries per se. The phylacteries are redundant and unnecessary. They were never acquired by God. God never meant for this text to be taken literally.

To have them bound as a sign or a mark on the hand and forehead is a spiritual symbol, that a man's thoughts, words, and deeds are so tempered by the word of God that he is consistently obedient to it, and thus he belongs to God. This is the mark of a man belonging to God, the mark of God, if you will. What is then the mark of the beast? I suggest to you it is the very same thing. Same thing here in Revelation 2.

That is, his thoughts and words symbolized by the forehead and his actions symbolized by the right hand. Satan, possessing the beast, requires even now, not after the rapture, he requires even now Satan does a like kind of devotion from his followers, a commitment of every thought, word, and deed exclusively. The mark or sign of the beast is the corresponding loyalty and devotion of all by their thoughts, words, and deeds. This rich tradition of spiritual symbolism is what our first century audience would have immediately referenced.

Knowing their Bibles, they would not have stood around tapping their feet and looking at the watches, muttering, whatever does John mean. I guess we'll have to wait two millennia for this text to mean anything until they invent barcode strips and microchips. No. They would have been able to apply the mark of the beast immediately in their own day. The emperors were already beginning to require this kind of worship by thought, word, and deed of every citizen.

By the time we reached the reign of Emperor Decius, for example, every citizen was required to confess his loyalty to Rome's Pontifex Maximus, as he was called. Pontifex Maximus, which was translated the supreme priest. Who else is the supreme priest with whom he's competing, dear listener? We know from Hebrews that is the Lord Jesus Christ, of course. But, of course, in the first century, all citizens of Rome were required to confess their loyalty to the Pontifex Maximus, the supreme priest, the Caesar, by appearing before one of Caesar's lesser priests of the emperor cult.

And then the citizen was to confess with his mouth, Caesar is Lord. What does that sound like from Romans? Paul says we are to confess Jesus as Lord. But they were to confess Caesar is Lord. And then they were to purchase a pinch of incense to toss upon the fire that burned upon the emperor's altar.

If he did do these things, well, then the citizen would receive a certificate of compliance that would entitle him to walk freely through the local marketplace and buy food from local vendors who were members of local pagan cults who were required by Rome to these guilds, required by Rome to demand that buyers produce this certificate of compliance. And even oftentimes, these foods, especially meats, were offered previously to whatever god the vendor was a devotee in his particular guild.

So now, do you see how hard it would be for Christians to buy or sell, as the text says, to participate in the local economy if they refused the mark of the beast? Can you see why the mark of the beast cannot be barcode strips and microchips for John's audience? They would have understood it in terms of the Bible, not 21st century technology and headlines. Additionally, their understanding must be ours as well. As it was in the first century, so it is in our own.

If the mark of the beast was obedience by thought, word, and deed to the satanically inspired empire of Rome, then so the mark of the beast must be for us. Obedience by thought, word, and deed to the satanically inspired beast in our day. And there is one in our day, dear listener. What is the nature of that beast in our day? Who is the beast in our own day?

This we will interpret and unpack for you in days to come. What's important to leave you with today is the clear understanding that these things, the beast from the sea and his correspondent, the beast from the land, and the mark and the number of the beast, have direct application in the first century as well as our own. But that application to us must be consistent with that of our brothers in the first century. Or else it is wishful thinking nonsense. Revelation red heifer raptured fantasies like barcode strips and microchips that our brothers to whom John was writing would know nothing about.

It is entirely possible that well-intended Christians today are serving the beast they so studiously think they avoid simply by not taking barcode strips and microchips under their skin from the government. If only it were so simple. Truth, however, is always more complex. This calls for wisdom, as John says. As we will unpack in greater detail in weeks to come, the beast in Revelation has a long history throughout the Bible, not confined to a narrow, exclusive seven-year Great Tribulation in the future.

Do you seriously suppose that Satan has been waiting till that moment in some distant future to establish his worldwide dominion in a blasphemous copy of God's kingdom? Quite the opposite. Satan has been laboring since the Garden of Eden to do this. Even the serpent in the Christ there is more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord has made. Satan inhabited the serpent beast there, and we can trace this beast theme through biblical history, as we will do.

Men have served the beast since our first father, Adam, doing so exactly as Adam did by thinking the thoughts of the beast, speaking the words of the beast, and doing the deeds and actions of the beast. That is Satan's incarnation in the world. Most men did it unwittingly, even, thinking they were serving God sometimes. Even the Israelites worshipped idols, thinking they were merely representations of Yahweh, the God of Israel. And also, the Pharisees, even of Jesus' own day, thought that they were worshipping God, but they were actually hypocrites, that Jesus said whose father was the devil, true father was the devil.

But make no mistake, dear listener, they were serving the beast by their thoughts, words, and deeds. Many serve the beast in the very same fashion in our own day, unwittingly, thinking at times they're serving God. Twice John calls for wisdom in interpreting the spiritual symbols that he reveals, and both times they are in reference to the beast. Yet so many well-meaning Christians run headlong into barcode strips and microchips, Barack Obama and 666, and they think they're employing wisdom. Oh, come out of your revelation, red heifer, rapture, foolishness.

Stop serving the beast, dear listener. Revelation is a book that exalts and glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ like no other. Revelation gives us insight into heavenly worship and earthly service. Revelation confirms and records history, as well as revealing what the future will be like. Tie these things together in your interpretation.

In it, all Jesus looms over all. Yes, he does. He says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. Jesus will defeat the beast fully and finally, even as he has done so in the past. So, dear listener, may you see, hear, and interpret with wisdom.

This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We meet for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Call us at 523-0196.