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And you know, in some ways these
texts may seem like a downer, but they are clothed in the kingdom
and the grace of Christ throughout this book. And it is showing
the futility of anything outside of Christ. So let's read it in
that context. Now I saw another beast of prey
coming up out of the land, and he had two horns like a lamb
and spoke like a dragon. And he exercises all the authority
of the first beast in his presence. And he started to cause the earth
and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast whose
mortal wound was healed. And he performs great signs,
including that fire should come down from heaven upon the earth
before the people. And he deceives my own people,
those dwelling on the earth, by the signs that it was given
to him to perform before the beast, telling those who dwell
on the earth to make an image to the beast who had the sword
wound and lit. And it was granted to him to
give breath to the image of the beast so that the image of the
beast should actually speak and should cause as many as would
not worship the image of the beast to be killed. And he causes
everyone, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free
and slave, to receive marks on their right hand or on their
foreheads, so that no one would be able to buy or sell who does
not have the mark, the name of the beast, or the number of his
name. Here is wisdom. Let the one who
has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is
the number of man. His number is 666. Amen. Father, we thank you for this
portion of your Word. It is your good gift to your
church. We want to understand it and
we want to live our life in light of the wisdom that you have given
here. So we pray that you would bless the preaching of your word,
and you would bless the hearing of your word. In Jesus' name,
amen. Well, believe it or not, we're
actually gonna finish chapter 13 today. And I think it's an
important chapter. A lot of people just focus in
on the mark of the beast when you look at sermon series and
different things like that. They'll hone in on that and that
is a very interesting part of this chapter. But the chapter
as a whole is encouraging God's people not to have false saviors
in church or in state. And Rushduni summarized this
chapter as God's perspective of man's utopian messianic ideals. And really it stands in such,
both Rome and Israel stand in such stark contrast to the Kingdom
of Christ. that was invading this world
in chapter 1. For example, Rome, it's not just
Jesus who speaks of peace, Rome trumpeted their bringing peace
to the world. They put peace in all of their
coins, you know. But God points out that apart
from the grace of God transforming and the law of God informing
a society, That society is going to end up with war, bloodshed,
disregard for life in some fashion. Rome trumpeted the ideal of liberty. that the only way to have liberty
was to submit to a one-world government, sort of like what
our United Nations promises today. But God shows that the end result
of any definition of liberty that throws off God's perfect
law of liberty ends up with the opposite, ends up with enslavement. It's really unavoidable. Enslavement
is inescapable. If a society does not subject
itself to God's perfect law of liberty, it will always have
the opposite. Another ideal is that Rome trumpeted
the ideal of safety. You know, why does the government
need to have more power? It's for the safety of the citizens. And it's true. They were using
their armies to clean up the seas from pirates and to clean
up the highways from bandits and robbers. And that is a legitimate
function of civil government. It's a good thing. But the way
that they did it was through centralization of government
and eroding the liberties of all citizens. And that's not
a good thing. And God's view of a centralized
government in this chapter is that it is anything but safe.
He likens it to a wild beast that devours its own young. So
this chapter is trying to convince us that if we ignore the kingdom
of Christ that begins this book and that ends this book, we will
not have paradise. Instead we'll have our own version
of Rome with its boot grinding on our face. Any society that
casts God's law out of the public sphere has automatically taken
on the characteristics of one of these two beasts. And people
say, well surely democracy is an exception. Surely democracy
is the very epitome of liberty. But Rushduni says this, said,
this is true not only of kings and dictators but of democracies
also with their blasphemous doctrine, vox populi, vox dei. The voice of the people is the
voice of God. Majorities are thereby equated
with righteousness and appeal beyond the government and its
courts is rendered null and void. God has spoken only through His
approved voice, the government." That's the view of democracy. And I think this is so powerfully
illustrated by the recent case in California where Sarah Lochner
tried to flush her newborn child down the toilet in a McDonald's
restaurant, and she was arrested, and she's standing trial for
attempted murder. I was on $11 million bail. And the public is really outraged
by what went on there. But just think about it. If she
had gone and gotten an abortion three minutes before in that
same hospital that they took the baby to and the baby is now
alive. The police got her resuscitated
there. But if she had had an abortion
three minutes earlier, people would have praised her and defended
her. What is the difference between
those two? It's because even a so-called
democracy, the voice of government has replaced the voice of God.
What makes it murder now, and previously it would have been
something praiseworthy. It's not a difference in the
outcome. It's not a difference in the
motive. The only difference is the voice of government. And
so Rushton, he says of this chapter, apostate man moves towards establishing
a radically humanistic social order in which God is abolished
and man is his own law and lawgiver. So as far as God is concerned,
both the secessionists and Rome, who was trying to maintain the
union, both of them were humanistic to the core, okay? Now last week
we saw the zealots of Israel had tried to secede from Rome,
and Rome, of course, in the best interests of the citizens, was
trying to prevent that and maintain the union. So last week we saw
the verses 11 through 16 were describing a wartime government
of Israel from A.D. 70 through 74. It was a time
of martial law. Everything, including the economy,
were tightly controlled, of course, in the best interests of the
citizens again. And in today's passage, we're going to see that
wartime rations were only given to people who had been officially
approved by Rome, by the pro-Roman official government. And you
can kind of think of it like World War II. There were these
ration cards. You got a picture in your outline
of one of those. And it wasn't just one side. The Nazis who had this, the Allies
and the Axis, they all had this kind of stuff. Statists tend
to do this. When push comes to shove, they
really don't believe in a free market. So for example, if you
wanted to get groceries in Holland or one of the other occupied
countries, you had to use one of their ration stamps that were
distributed once a month to you. They were kind of hard to counterfeit.
You could get around the system, but it was really hard to do
so. So the body of the land beast was not the underground government
of the zealots, which by this time, by the way, had been almost
completely wiped out. There was no more government.
There were just scattered people, guerrilla warfare that was happening
around the country. This was the newly emerged official
government of Israel that was recognized by Rome. We saw that
the head of the political body was Herod Agrippa II, the Jewish
king. Two horns were his two prophets,
Flavius Josephus and Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, both of whom had
political power. In fact, I didn't mention it
last time, or maybe I did, but Yohanan was actually given permission
by Titus to set up the new Sanhedrin, which was Israel's supreme court,
and he was the head of it. And so anyway, with that as a
background, let's dig into each of these points. Though Agrippa,
Josephus, and Yohanan protested that they were cooperating with
Rome for Israel's good, for its eventual liberty, for its economic
restoration, verse 16 exposes that as a lie. They were just
as involved in enslaving Israel as Rome had been. They were the
enforcers for Titus. And I think this is symbolized
by the brand on the right hand, the brand on the forehead. So let's try to make sense out
of verse 16. It says, and he causes everyone, both small and
great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to receive marks
on their right hand or on their foreheads. Now the reason for
the mark was Rome's purported need to weed out all terrorism
and insurgency of the zealots. So crisis has this tendency to
always lead Statists to take liberties, not just from the
bad guys, but from all citizens. Now, he thinks he's being generous. Titus could have wiped Israel
off the map. He could have destroyed them. He's done that to other
countries. Countries that were completely,
completely creamed out, annihilated. He could have done that, but
he wants to get taxes from this province for his future kingdom.
And so he allows them to stay, but he uses time-tested methods
for subjugating a people and controlling the food supply and
controlling the economy as one of those time-tested methods.
The Allies and the Axis powers used a food ration stance. For
Titus, it was much more convenient to just use a brand. He would
brand the people. Secondly, this mark that they
received was a testimony to his ownership of them. He could have
enslaved them all and sent them off to Rome, but he graciously
allowed them to stay in the land. But even those who stayed in
the land, he wanted to make it very clear to them, They were
slaves. They were His property, thus
the brand. So I've told you where I'm going.
I'm going to try to do this. I've told you where I'm going.
Now I'm going to try to demonstrate the reasonableness of this. Some
have taken this mark as being just as invisible as the seal
that God put on people's, on His elect's foreheads. And you
know that I I was somewhat favorable to that viewpoint in the past,
but the more I have studied this, the more I'm convinced this was
a very literal mark placed on very literal foreheads and hands,
and I now believe that for three reasons. That's the literal meaning
of the Greek word charagma, which refers to either a stamp seal
that officials would use on documents, so they would put an imprint
on a document, or it was used of Roman coins that had an image
engraved on them, stamped onto them, or it was used of a branding
iron that would brand a mark on a person's head. So it could
be used for any of those Three, and the word that's used for
the sealing of believers on their foreheads is a completely different
word, and that Greek word can refer to something visible or
something invisible. But this charagma is used of
visible cuts, engravings, or brandings. Second, it specifically
mentions two parts of the body that receive this charagma, the
forehead and the right hand. Now, people will object. They
say, yeah, but in Ezekiel, God puts an invisible mark on the
foreheads of his elect. That's true. But the fact that
it emphasizes the forehead and the right hand seems to indicate
this may be more than just an invisible mark that only demons
and angels are going to be able to see. Third, verse 17 makes
it clear that it was illegal to buy or sell without this mark. So to me, that implies that storekeepers
would be able to recognize, okay, here's a guy who doesn't have
a mark. I don't dare sell to you. And here's a guy that does
have a mark. So they could distinguish. So
to me it seems like this mark is something that everybody could
tell was either on a person or was not on them. Sort of like
the badge that they forced the Jews to wear in Nazi Germany,
only this one would be a little bit more painful if it was a
brand, right? Now it's of course at this point that futurists
jump all over our case and they say, aha, this is a weakness
in preterism. We have no historical evidence
that all of the Jews were branded on their foreheads. They will
admit we have plenty of evidence that he enforced what this mark
symbolized, but the question is, did all Jews receive a literal
mark on their foreheads or on their right hands. And I believe
the evidence is absolutely overwhelming that they did. based on how Vespasian
and Titus treated rebellions in other parts of the empire,
and given the severity and the duration of this one, and that
Titus had the mandate to enforce loyalty from every citizen, to
me it is inconceivable that these Jews would not have had some
kind of a visible token to distinguish, are you loyal or are you not
loyal? I mean, the Romans had to be able to immediately tell,
is this guy a foe or is he a friend? But before I document why Rome's
policies would have absolutely required this to have happened,
given Israel's rebellion, Let me list two theories of how this
might have been accomplished. And it's possible both of these
happened with a brand being put on common people and a coin being
tied to the foreheads of those that Caesar favored. Now the
coin theory is actually a much more recent theory. It's a minority
view and therefore I think it needs to have a lot more evaluation. But there's a lot of merit to
it. One of the dictionary definitions of the Greek word for mark, karagma,
is a coin with an image. So you can find that meaning
in just about any Greek dictionary. So Tyrian money, which is what
the Jews used to use, didn't have any images on it, that would
not be karagma. But Roman money that had these
images imprinted on it, that would be a charagma. And therefore
Joseph Poon argues that this charagma or mark was simply a
reference to a Roman coin, and he points to literature that
uses this term in exactly that way. Likewise, Taylor's fascinating
essay on the monetary crisis that went on in the late 60s
up through this period, shows that Roman coins were called
chirogma and that Nero in the mid to late 60s up through this
period of time, Nero, Vespasian and Titus enforced the use of
Roman money. They said you can't use Tyrian
money anymore. Now if this theory is true, you
could paraphrase verse 16 this way, and he causes everyone,
both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave,
to place Roman image coins on their right hand or on their
foreheads. So one of the interpretations is that because the zealots who
had started this war absolutely refused to even touch, let alone
handle, Roman money because of the blasphemous images that were
on them, this was such a convenient way for Titus to be able to distinguish
who's friend, who's foe, who's willing to submit. If a person
is not willing to tie a coin onto their phylactery or have
it as a bracelet on their right hand, then the suspicion is they're
probably zealots. And so it was a very quick way
of rooting out potential zealots through this policy. They would
have instantly been able to be detected. In light of Vespasian's
and Titus's policies, this theory actually makes sense. So the
word charakma can indeed be translated as a coin with an image. Now,
if it was voluntary, that would doubly expose the zealots. A
brand would not necessarily. If you just forcibly branded
every person, there might be zealots who got involuntarily
branded and they're still going to be zealots. Whereas if it's
voluntary, you say, okay, this shows your loyalty. A zealot
absolutely would not touch that money. It went against their
conscience. So that's one theory. Theory two is that this word
means either a tattoo or a branding on the forehead or hand, and
that meaning is just as common, if not more common, than the
coin meaning. And if it was a tattooing or
a branding that was meant, and that's the way I take it, then
this is not the first time that every Jew had this happen to
them in the land of Israel. For example, when Ptolemy Philopator
conquered the Jews, he forced the survivors to be branded with
the sign of his religion, and here's the wording of his decree.
He said, those who are registered are also to be branded on their
bodies by fire with the ivy leaf symbol of Dionysus. Now if we
didn't have that single sentence preserved for us somehow, we
would have no clue that Philopator had no historical record that
he'd actually enforced that policy upon every Jew. He still would
have enforced it, but we just wouldn't have a historical record.
But even without that sentence, based on Philopator's handling
of other nations, we would have immediately assumed this is what
he is doing to people that he considers rebels. He's probably
done it to the Israelites as well. Okay, that's his policy.
So that's my argument with regard to branding. Given Israel's rebelling,
one would assume that all the survivors were branded. To me,
this seems the more likely of the two theories. Though as I
mentioned, The coin theory, I think, is a legitimate one. And who
knows, maybe Titus favored certain Jews that he liked with the coin
policy and others with a branding or a tattooing. But the word
really could cover both theories. Now, the reason I think it was
likely branding is that branding foreheads and her hands in exactly
this manner was a very common practice in those days. For example,
runaway slaves were branded with the letters F-U-G, which stands
for fugitivus or fugitivus. A runaway is what that means.
But all slaves were called stigmatias because they were all branded.
Many of them branded with the name of their master. If they
had more than one master, sometimes they had more than one brand
that was on them. And if this was the reason why
Titus branded the Jews, it was a declaration that they were
his property. And certainly the coins that
Titus minted from this time forward for quite a few years, all the
way up to the end of his reign, Many of the coins, I think it
was around 48 of them, had a picture of a woman by a palm tree with
the words Judea Capta. Okay, Judea the captive. And
they treated them as captives. And if you want to see some of
the coins, a coin page on the web that has pictures of Roman
coins with Egypto capta, Armenia capta, Germania capta, Parthia
capta, Dacia capta, and Iudaea capta. Now these were distinguished
from countries that were completely wiped out, which had the word
divicta, destroyed, like Sarmatia divicta. And they were also distinguished
from countries that were freely admitted into the Union, like
Asia Recepta is one coin. They were received as free people.
They were not enslaved. But the coins related to these
countries proclaimed the slavery, some actually having chains around
the edge of the coin. Interestingly, Agrippa II himself
made a coin. He's the Jewish king, right?
But he made a coin declaring Israel to be captive to Rome
and on the other side having the title of his favorite emperor,
Titus. But there could have been other
reasons to have the Jews branded. The historians Plutarch and Herodotus
both record the practice of branding defeated soldiers. Well, that's
who a lot of these people were that were captured. They were
defeated Israelite soldiers. It would have been an expected
policy. But it didn't even have to have negative connotations.
Caesar's own soldiers voluntarily branded themselves with his name
as a symbol of their loyalty, their submission, and their belonging. Barclay speaks of, quote, evidence
that soldiers were branded on the hand with the name of their
general. These marks are generally called stigmata. Elion says that
soldiers bear that stigmata on their hands. And Ambrose goes
on to say that soldiers are signed with the name of their general.
Now I won't bore you with more details, and there are a lot
more. Roman policy, but there's absolutely nothing unusual about
Titus and the Jewish triumvirate requiring all of these conquered
Jews to be literally branded on their foreheads or on their
hands. It fits the spirit of the times.
It certainly fits the rigor with which Titus sought to enforce
loyalty to his dad, loyalty to himself from every Jewish citizen.
And I think we would expect nothing less than this, knowing the situation.
So to me, literal branding makes sense, so I'm open to the coin
theory. or maybe even a combination of both. Now, I've already spoken
to the next sub-point of what this symbolized. Numerous commentaries
point out that every kind of branding that Rome did was a
declaration of ownership of the people by the state. Now the
state already acted as if it owned the people, just by the
way it taxed the people, right? But this made it crystal clear.
Beale in his commentary says, if branding of slaves is in mind
here, then the beast's worshippers are seen as his property. The
mark is clearly figurative of the ways in which the state keeps
check on whether people submit. Now, if the mark on the right
hand shows the state's ownership of what you produce, okay, that's
your hand that you do all your work with, if it shows ownership
of what you produce, the mark on the forehead shows ownership
of even your thoughts and of your devotion, but why the right
hand? Well, it's because in those days,
today as well, most people, that was the dominant hand, and it
showed the dominance of statism over religion. See, they had
a phylactery on their left hand, and they had the mark of Caesar
on their right. This is the exact reversal of
the way Scripture says that we are to treat ourselves. God claimed,
and I've got some scriptures here, and marked the right ear,
the right hand, and the right foot in the Old Testament. But
from this point on, the phylacteries were worn on the left hand. You
don't find that in the scripture. This was by Johanan's traditions
that he began to set up. And so what's going on here is
there's a dual loyalty. You know, Rome was very free-minded. Very open-minded. You can worship
any religion you want so long as Rome has the dominance, so
long as Rome is acknowledged as the Lord and has the ability
to control, if need be, everything that goes on in that religion.
They gave the ability to have these dual loyalties. So the
point is, like the IRS, Caesar was very tolerant of all religions,
so long as they registered and they acknowledged Caesar was
Lord. Now, we may get to that point
in America. America already treats its citizens
as if it owns them, not just through taxation, but when it
licenses its marriages. Why? Why does the state have
authority to license marriages? when it assigns numbers to our
children. Why? Why do our children have
to have social security numbers? Taxes our properties, insists
on permits for fix-up and things we do in the privacy of our homes. Why? Insists on thousands of
different laws being fulfilled that are utterly unrelated to
legitimately running a civil government. It's already licensed
most churches in America. And that's been really in the
last 50 years or so. And there may come a time that
when churches are unwilling to get licensed, they may have to
go underground. But this is the trajectory of
the demon of statism. It's constantly driving all countries
toward total ownership of everything by the state. Communism is probably
the most consistent form of this statism, but you had it in the
ancient world as well. You had it in Egypt. You had
it in a number of places. Communism was seeking to control
every aspect. I think North Korea is an example
of that. I just recently, you know, we
talked about, you know, that mark on the head. I recently
read an eyewitness account of people being executed in North
Korea for not weeping sincerely enough in public or not rejoicing
sincerely enough over the president. So Satan wants total loyalty,
total control, total ownership of everything, and so it makes
sense that his agents would move in that direction as well. Now
let's move on to the next major point. It says, whatever its
pretensions, statism aims to control the economy. Now, when
I say pretensions, I mean they pretended to be much more liberty-minded. The promises that were made by
Agrippa, Josephus, and Yohannan were that these are temporary
compromises for the well-being of the country, and we will once
again make the country great and prosperous. But verse 17
shows that to be a lie. Even first century politicians
were noted for lying through their teeth. Here's the bottom
line. Any government willing to control
the economy is not interested in your well-being, period. Verse
17 says, so that no one would be able to buy or sell who does
not have the mark, the name of the beast, or the number of his
name. Now you may think we are so far removed from that that
that passage is not even relevant to us, but don't be too sure.
Can you buy or sell with an alternative currency in America to the Federal
Reserve notes? Well, yeah, there's one they
can't control. It's called cryptocurrency, but it's really illegal. You're
not allowed to do that. Do we have a free market of healthcare?
No. Do we have a free market of business?
Well, it depends on what you mean by free market. What I mean
by free market is a market that's completely free of civic control. So, when the government enlists
and forces the owners of businesses to be the tax collector for the
government, is it really free? I would say no, it's not. I had
one international student that was telling me that one of the
reasons America's got economic problems, I'm thinking, compared
to your country, really? But anyway, he said, is that
you guys are way too free, way too much free market. You can
imagine the argument we got into on that. We've not been a free
market since the Federal Reserve was set up. Statism aims to control
the economy, and the first point that we just went through is
irrelevant. It's only theoretical if they
cannot do the second point. if they cannot control the economy.
So while our money still has the words imprinted on it, in
God we trust, the state has become the God that most people trust,
and the state controls the money. And if you doubt that, just try
to withdraw $20,000 of your own money from the bank sometimes.
See what happens. It's weird. It really is weird. I used to
be able to do stuff like that. You can't do that anymore. Not
that I have $20,000 to withdraw right now, but... If you want even more adventure,
try taking $20,000 across the border in an airplane. You will
be detained, and your money will likely be confiscated under our
asset forfeiture laws. It is really a strange thing.
Another example is that it is technically illegal for stores
to demand any other currency than American Federal Reserve
notes. Is that any different than what Nero and Titus did?
It says on every piece of paper money, this note is legal tender
for all debts, public and private. So if you owe something to a
store and you want to pay with Federal Reserve notes, however
inflated they may be, that store is legally bound to accept those
as payment for debts. Now the store can Voluntarily
receive from you if you want to pay with something else. Yes,
they can do that But if you want to pay with Federal Reserve notes,
it has to be received They cannot insist on barter or the use of
silver or gold and it's hard to fathom the degree of control
that the federal government exerts on the economy till you start
reading the way things used to be before World War one and Or
you start reading good economic books like Ludwig von Mises,
his books, or Murray Rothbard, or if you want an easy introduction,
Gary North's Introduction to Biblical Economics. You realize
we are not a free economy. People are fooled on this subject.
We are not a free market economy. We have been a controlled fascist
economy for quite a long time now verse 17 says so that no
one would be able to buy or sell Who does not have the mark the
name of the beast or the number of his name? Under the military
regime of titus agrippa josephus and johannan There were three
things that legally allowed a person to engage in exchange of goods
The first was the mark of the beast Now if poon and taylor
are correct if this kerygma is simply a reference to a roman
coin, then he's just saying You have to use Roman coinage. You
cannot use Tyrian coinage. And of course, they've been enforcing
that for two years already. So that's a possibility. If I'm
correct, then they had to be branded. The name of the beast
would be the name of whatever current emperor was on the throne.
In this case, it would be Titus Flavius Vespasianus, which, by
the way, was exactly the same name for father and son, all
three names. Third thing that qualified was
the numerical total of the name of the beast. So in lieu of the
full name, you could have 666 stamped on you. That'd be very
convenient because there's only three letters. I think I'd go
that route if I had to, you know? But it seems to be that there
was some voluntariness about this. You could die, or you could
get branded, or you could run, but not everybody had it. Anyway, we're gonna talk about
the numerical total, or the gematria in the next point, but for now
it appears that Titus was being flexible. Any one of those things
would qualify as a pass for purchasing things through the military occupation
period. And I think the word or indicates
that. Now whether it involved a Roman
coin, a branding, or both, those things show the same thing, that
Caesar claims the right to intervene or to control the economy. if
needed be, if needed. It didn't necessarily always
do it, but if needed, it claimed the right to intervene or control
the economy. Why? Because Caesar owns the
economy. Any nation that purports to do
so is likened by God to this demonic beast of prey. And I think Edward Griffin's
book, The Creature from Jekyll Island, is aptly named. The Federal
Reserve is bestial in nature. But technically both the first
and the second beast are countries. They're nations. Is America there? I believe it is. Now it may not
be as intrusive as Titus' armies because we're not under, you
know, what's it called when militia are everywhere? Martial law.
We're not under martial law right now. But all it would take is
a terrorist attack or some kind of a catastrophe, and you could
feel those jackboots coming. All it would take is some kind
of a crisis, and you would find the police, national and local,
enforcing Caesar's wishes in every area of life. So the path
to total statism, in my opinion, has been gradually paid by constant
concessions of power over the last 200 years. And at bottom,
it's a form of the idolatry of man, what we're going to deal
with in the next point. Next point says, whatever its
pretensions, statism replaces God with man. And again, the
reason I say pretensions is they pretended to do the opposite.
Rome said, we're the most free nation, the most free empire
in the world. Other empires, like Greece, imposed
their religion on everybody. We don't do that. We allow free
religion so long as you submit to Caesar in your religion. And so if they had free religion,
you have to ask yourself, why were Christians persecuted? It
wasn't because Caesar cared about, you know, you having some strange
Christian doctrine. The reason they were persecuted
is because Christians did not bow to the God of statism. They
recognized statism as a form of idolatry. They refused to
be pluralists. They had been warned by the Book
of Revelation. But Josephus and Yohanan were
compromised deceivers, and they insisted that they were interested
in Jewish survival, not in the removal of religious liberties. But they were both involved in
accommodating the state's intrusions into religion. They both believed,
for example, in the licensing of synagogues. It was only about half of the
synagogues prior to Nero that had been licensed. That was a
gradual development. Now there are only a few holdout
synagogues that refused to get licensed. So here's the bottom
line. While they pretended to make God the Lord over all, it was quite apparent they were
willing for Caesar to be the Lord of most of their life. Verse
18 shows that whatever its pretensions, statism replaces God with man.
Here is wisdom. Let the one who has understanding
calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of man. His number is 666. Now this is
one of the most abused verses in the Bible. Dr. Andrew Corbett correctly
notes, the speculation regarding this verse is breathtaking. At
times it borders between sheer absurdity and utter ridiculousness
to suggest that this is a computer chip, barcodes, or even a global
satellite tracking device numbering system or a cashless financial
system is just plainly nonsensical. This was an urgent message to
the first generation of believers. None of these fanciful guesses
could have possibly applied to them, and they are therefore
to be dismissed immediately. Now, while I will agree that
the fulfillment was in the first century, we shouldn't forget
that there are applications that can be made in every generation.
After all, he does command us in the first chapter of this
book Blessed is he who reads, who understands, who obeys. We
need to obey the admonitions in this book. So I make a distinction
between meaning. There is one meaning, and that
meaning was fulfilled in the first century. But you look at
that and you say, okay, this is how Satan works. This is how
God works. We can make applications in every age. And so some of
the things he was discounting perhaps could be applications
that we would make today. Anyway, let's look at the first
century fulfillment, first of all. And to understand that fulfillment,
you need to understand the rules governing the ancient system
known as Gematria by the Jews, known as Aesopcephia by the Greeks. The Greek word for number in
verse 17 is a word that refers to the addition of the numeric
value of the letters in a word. and the New International Dictionary
and New Testament Theology say is basically a reference to what
goes on in Gematria. John is specifically telling
his people, those of you who are wise, figure out this Gematria. Now Gematria was a fun kind of
a puzzle where you see letters standing for numbers and then
you add up the value of those numbers. And that's why verse
18 says, calculate the number of the beast. That word for calculate
means simple addition. So if all you have to do is do
simple addition of the numeric value of the letters in a word,
And that's what these two words indicate. You've automatically
ruled out most of the modern idiotic interpretations of the
mark. For example, ones that say, well,
this guy's got three names and each name has six letters, Ronald
Wilson Reagan. Maybe he's the beast because
it's six, it's not 666, it's 666. It's got to add up and it's
one word that's got to add up in that way. But actually it
could be a series of words, but it's got to add up all of the
letters together. or converting ASCII code. It's like John would have really
been interested in ASCII code. Or some other mathematical genius
kind of extrapolation. No, no, no. It's simple addition. And if you just use the rules
of Gematria and simple addition, there are very few candidates
that actually fit. Now, would the Jewish Christians
have even known how to do this and that is a legitimate question
and the answer to that question is absolutely Yes, it was a common
puzzle in the Hebrew language. And actually you see Gematria
all through all through the the Empire and the Greeks any language
that that did not have its own number system that used letters
for numbers. Oh, Demetria you found everywhere.
I've been reading actually some books, most of it was a waste
of time, but I was just skimming through quickly some books on
ancient graffiti. And there's a whole bunch of
books that take pictures of this graffiti all throughout the Roman
world. And one of the things you discover is even these adolescent,
you know, very anti-social graffiti vandals understood the rules
of Gematria. Now I'll give you a couple of
examples. Scribbled on a wall in Pompeii is graffiti that says,
I love her, whose number is 545. Okay, so he's added up the numeric
value of the letters in his loved one's name, comes to 545. On the same wall, there's another
reference to a girl's name, and the name is added up by the rules
of Gematria. It says, Amerumnus thought upon
his lady Harmonia for good. The number of her honorable name
is 45. Now let me try to illustrate the difference between straight
numbers and gematria. First of all, the straight numbers.
They didn't have numbers in Greek or Hebrew. in Israel. So the
first letter of the alphabet would be, stand for the number
one, the second letter, number two, third letter, number three.
So if we were to convert English letters into numbers with A being
one, B being two, C being three, and you put those three together,
what do you have? You have 123. And you know it's
123 because there's no vowels in it. It's really not a word.
So you're going to suspect, okay, that's a number. So that means
123. But gematria is different. It
doesn't read the word as a number. It converts a word or a name
into another number by adding up the numeric value of each
of the letters. So let's pretend that ABC really
is a word in English. And remember we saw A is one,
B is 2, 3. So you add up 1 plus 2 plus 3
equals 6. So the gematria of ABC is 6. It's not 123. Does that make
sense? And you see this is such a commonly
used device in the ancient world that all a reader would have
to do is add up a couple of candidates that were living in his time
and see which emperor fits. When you follow the strict rules
of Gematria there really are not very many candidates. Now
this text says that there are three separate things in AD 70
that the Gematria would fit and almost nobody talks about those
three separate things. They just kind of mush them all
together. First verse 18 says it's the
number of the beast itself. Second, verse 17 says it's the
number value of the name of the individual beast that's been
fighting against Israel, the individual who had a name. It's the emperor, right, who
has a name. Third, verse 18 says it's the number of men. Let's
take a look at each of those three. First, it's the number
of the beast. And you can see in your outlines
that the very word beast is rendered into 666 in both Greek and Hebrew. Commentators have pointed out
that one of the Hebrew words for dragon... is also a gematria
for 666. And the more you study this number,
the more you would realize why a demon would be fascinated with
it and would identify with the number 666. It has long been
an occult number, a symbol, because of the fascinating properties
in that number. For example, it is a triangular
number, which means it is the sum of every whole number from
1 to 36. And so let me just illustrate. If you could just imagine up
here, if I put a dot on a piece of paper, and then I put two
dots underneath it, and then I put three dots, and then I
put four dots, and I keep doing that all the way down to 36,
it's going to be 666 dots. And it's gonna be in the shape
of a triangle, and you're gonna have actually 12 triangles within
each other in that triangle. So it's the sum of every whole
number from 1 to 36. And 36 itself is triangular,
and it's the square of 6. And if you study the mathematical
properties of 666, you can see why occultists love this number
and why any demon out there would be quite proud to be wearing
this number of 666. I mean, if even the dragon, his
master, Satan, owns that word, 666, why not
this beast? And you can see in your outlines
that, okay, the word therion is 666, but you can see that
one of the Hebrew words for dragon is a gematria for 666. But even
the way that this word is written in the Hebrew makes it into an
ominous word. And it's pronounced like a serpent's
hiss, and the middle letter looks like a twisted serpent. This
is how you would pronounce it. It's kind of a scary looking
word. Now I point all of this out to make you remember that
the beast is first and foremost a demon. I've been harping on
that ever since we came to the beast arising up out of the abyss
in chapter 11, verse 7. It is first and foremost a demon. Okay, so both the Greek And now
the others take on the name of the beast because they're possessed
by the beast, right, or controlled by him. But both the Greek and
the Hebrew point to the demon beast being 666, and to me this
shows again, John is reinforcing that statism and everything that's
going on in this chapter is occult and is demonic through and through. But the visible empire controlled
by the demon is also a gematria for 666. Now the very earliest
commentary by a Christian that we have on this passage is by
Irenaeus in the second century. And he applies this prophecy
to Rome, Daniel's fourth empire. And he said one of the common
names for the empire of Rome as a whole was the name Latinus. And as he pointed out, Latinus
is a gematria for 666. Another common name for Rome
was He Itale Basilea. You can see from your outlines
that the value of that gematria is 666. But there's more. Now, several authors have pointed
out that the first initials of every emperor, we've been dealing
with the emperors, seven heads, remember, of every emperor from
Julius Caesar through to Vespasian in exactly the same way that
those initials are used in the famous Sibylline Oracles adds
up to 666. And this confirms Chilton's view,
David Chilton's view that the number must relate to the corporate
beast and not just to the individual beast or the emperor. So the
beast itself calculates to 666 five different ways, whether
you think of it as the demon, or whether you think of it as
the corporate empire controlled by the demon. Now verse 17 also
says that this number is the number of the name of the individual
beast who put these war measures upon them. In other words, it's
the number of Titus, the man that John has just finished talking
about in the previous verses. Now did Nero add up to 666? Yes, sort of. On the website
I'll show how Nero's name does add up in one Hebrew spelling.
And since Vespasian had exactly the same name and title as his
son Titus, the gematria fits Vespasian as well. And to me
it makes sense that each emperor that this beast has possessed
would providentially bear this name, especially if they persecuted
the saints. And it's really the persecution
that's in focus. Persecution started with Nero
and it continued on through the Flavians, even through to Domitian. Nero was definitely a beast,
even the Roman Historians call him a beast. He dressed up like
a beast when he raped victims. But Nero, the seventh head, was
dead in verse 12. And the second half of verse
12, he says, we're talking about history that's post Vespasian.
And since context is king in interpretation, we need to acknowledge
the context makes it clear that the specific In other words,
the specific head that he is talking about in these verses
is not Nero, it's not Vespasian, it's not Domitian. It is the
emperor who was still in the land of Israel in AD 70 and following. Both Vespasian and Titus were
declared co-emperors at the same time in AD 69, but it was Titus
who was in the land of Israel enforcing these wartime measures.
And Rome itself issued a coin calling Titus Caesar in AD 70. And in the provinces, you see
those coins as well, but even Rome invented that. But does
Titus's name actually add up to 666? Yes, it does, and it
does so far, far, far more clearly than Nero's name does. His family
name was named after the Greek gods called Titans, who were
rebels against God. Irenaeus, the early church father
that I just quoted, he was the first one to solve this gematria
that we know of. We don't have any commentaries
on this beforehand, so I don't know, I'm sure others solved
it. But he said it not only refers
to the empire of Rome, Daniel's fourth kingdom, but it refers
to a Greek, the Greek name of a ruler of Rome with the name
Teton. And I need to make a correction
here in my notes. a ruler of Rome with the name
Teton. Well, it just so happens that Titus is called Teton on
the coins, and this deification not only harks back to the original
Tetons, but to the sun god, and I won't get into all of that
right now, but your outline shows how the Gematria comes to 666,
and Burnett shows, points out this very form of Titus's name
is used in Latin, and when transliterated into Greek would have the form
that I gave in your outline. So if the gematria was meant
to be calculated in the Greek text, which is what Revelation
is written in, then we have Titus being a prime candidate. There
is no Greek Demetria that fits Nero. But the Greek of his last
name, Vespasian, adds up to, oh wait, only adds up to 665. And so initially it doesn't seem
like it fits until you look at the coins that were minted in
his first year and they've got that word plus the number one
for year one of his reign. Well, you add up The name 665
plus 1 is 666, and of course that's what this passage is talking
about, the first year of His reign. Now, people might think,
well that's interesting, but you could actually ignore those
two things, especially since the advocates who say it's got
to be Nero say these were Hebrew Christians and the Gematria would
make more sense if it was written in Hebrew. So let's go to the
Hebrew and you could just ignore those other two. I first stumbled
onto the Hebrew connection in Isbyn Beckwith's comments that
the full title for Titus And, of course, I didn't stumble on
the full title, but his transliteration into Hebrew. Titus Flavius Vespasianus
Augustus adds up to 666 when transliterated into Hebrew. Now,
the audience was Hebrew Christians who spoke in Hebrew. They thought
in Hebrew. It would be very natural for them to be thinking the name
in Hebrew and say, now, way to shake. This definitely adds up. So the insight of Isbon Beckwith
and two or three other commentators was really fascinating to me.
But I tend to be skeptical, so I wanted to verify it. So I added
up the Hebrew letters manually, and then I quadruple-checked
my calculations, and I went to a Hebrew gematria calculator
on the web. Every single time it adds up
to exactly 666. What is remarkable is this is
exactly the name that was on Titus' coins. This is the thing
that would be in front of everybody that happened to see those kinds
of coins. So there are actually three ways
in which Titus's name appears as 666. No other emperor candidate
fits as perfectly as this. And of course the context, I
think, absolutely demands it. So sorry to disappoint those
of you who are hoping I'd pick on Nero. There's plenty other
places in the book to pick on Nero. He was a despicable, absolutely
despicable creature. But he died in verse 12 and the
empire revived in AD 69 as symbolized in verses 12 and 14. So this
number not only fits the demon, it also fits the emperor and
it fits Titus himself. And of course that's what we
would expect since in the book of Revelation Almost every commentator
agrees that John slides very smoothly between emperor, empire,
and the demon himself all being called the beast. So the mystery
is solved. But there's actually one more
thing that John says as a gematria of 666. It's man or mankind. The last phrase of verse 18 says,
for it is the number of man. His number is 666. So man as
man somehow is related to this number. And I think David Chilton
probably does as good a job as anyone in explaining how fallen
man is symbolized by this number. Six is the symbol of incompleteness. It falls short of seven, which
is the number of perfection. And this number six and its multiples
is connected in scripture with the day man was created, with
Goliath, with the image in Daniel chapter 2 of those, image of
a man which represents, you know, the four humanistic bestial empires. But the Daniel 2 is particularly
interesting. Chilton points out that the meticulous
Hebrew scribes counted up the numerical value of the Hebrew
letter is in Daniel 3 verse 1, which describes Nebuchadnezzar's
statue of man, and the value of 666 is repeated seven times,
plus an additional 21. But there are other places where
fallen, rebellious man is linked to 666. Both Chronicles and Kings
mention that when Solomon started operating in his own wisdom,
his own strength, his own backslidden power, what did he do? He started
piling up gold and wives and horses in blatant disobedience
to the instructions to kings given in Deuteronomy. And guess
what? The text says that he received
666 talents of gold every year. So Chilton says for the Hebrews,
666 was a fearful sign of apostasy, the mark of both a king and the
kingdom now in the dragon's image. And some of his explanations
are a little bit hard to follow, but I think the contrast that
we see between this number for man and the number for Jesus
really brings it home to me. The matrial value for the name
of Jesus in the Greek is 888. Eight signifies new beginnings
in the Scripture. And early church fathers contrasted
the number of man, 666, with the number of the restoration
man, Jesus, who marks a new humanity. Chilton said man was born with
the number of his creation. The repetition of the number
reveals man in opposition to God, trying to increase his number,
attempting to transcend his creaturehood, but try as he might, he can be
nothing more than a six or a series of sixes. Only in Jesus Christ
can we transcend the limitations that are symbolized by this number
and begin living in the realm of the supernatural, okay? It
is only as Jesus is in us and living his life through us that
we can overcome the limitations of this number. But what's encouraging
to me is that Rome is not omnipotent or unbeatable. It has the same
limitations of this number, 666, so do not despair over the power
of the state. It is no match for Jesus. Statism
will one day be defeated. and mankind will be converted
to Christianity. 666 will give way to 888 through
the perfect plan of God, whose number is 777. Okay? So John
ends with a heads up to all believers that they are called to discernment.
Here is wisdom. Let the one who has understanding
calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of man.
His number is 666. Knowledge is filling our heads with facts. Understanding is seeing how those
facts should be interpreted, how they relate to each other.
Wisdom is the ability to apply that understanding to the new
situations that we face in life. And so I will end by calling
you to be sons of Issachar who can do all three things. 1 Chronicles
12, 32 speaks of the sons of Issachar who had understanding
of the times to have the wisdom to know what Israel ought to
do. So this morning I call you to
try to have understanding of the times that you live in. That's
really what the book of Revelation was encouraging the first century
church to do. Look at life through God's eyes.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking the world's thoughts after them.
We're called to think God's thoughts after him. There is an analysis
of modern culture, quite a few analyses of modern culture that
are better than Rush Limbaugh. And I really highly encourage
you to stop wasting your time on some of those talk shows.
It's less entertaining, much less entertaining. It'll require
a little bit of thinking. But it'll give you understanding.
If you want a mixture of entertainment and understanding, try the fire-breathing
Christian blog, okay? He's got a little bit of humor
thrown in there as well. But there are a lot of sites
out there that will help you to have understanding. Now, to
be able to do that, you've got to study the Word, be willing
to put your thinking caps on on Sunday mornings, and not just
turn your minds off if it gets boring. And I admit, I get boring
sometimes. So the Word of God is applicable
to all of life, and we must have an understanding of it. We cannot
be eating milk all of our days, okay? We need to dive into the
stake of the Word. Just think of it this way. Can
you imagine how shallow your homeschooling would be if the
only thing you allowed your kids to do is what they found fun
and entertaining? Like, ah, that's so boring. They'd
never get educated, would they? Treat this as an education, brothers
and sisters, and just expect deep things from the pulpit,
not just milk. Part of Sabbath observance is
deep teaching. And then finally, be willing to guide other Christians
into what they should do to navigate the times that we live in. Spread
the message. You know, most Christians, I
think, are sincere but clueless as to the number of ways they
are violating the scriptures every day of their lives. For
example, they embrace democracy as if it is a good alternative
to dictatorship. It is not. It is not. As Benjamin
Franklin has often been misquoted as saying, democracy is two wolves
and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a
well-armed lamb contesting the vote. Now even better though,
even better, Revelation gives I think a better antidote. It
tells us that all forms of statism are demonic and we should seek
to cage and to chain down the beast of government because it
is dangerous. That's exactly what George Washington
said. Chain it down. It is dangerous. It is a fire. For sure do not trust the beast
to be your Savior. If there is no other message
you catch from this chapter than this, that without Christ's grace
transforming and His law informing civil governments, they are beasts
then you will have learned a valuable lesson. You will have learned
that it is disastrous for Christians to stop being salt and light
in culture. All of life will one day be put
under the feet of Jesus, and we need to be a part of that
process. Amen. Let's pray. Father God,
help us to be faithful in a faithless generation. Help us to be a hopeful
people. in a generation that has false
hopes or perhaps has lost all hope. Help us to reflect your
love, which is defined by your law. in a culture that proclaims
love, but all it can think about is lust. Help us, Father, to
develop an antithesis, a Christian counterculture. Help us, Father,
to be a light to which people could repair, to have a standard
that is objective and not constantly changing. Help us to have blueprints
that we could offer when humanism all around us begins to crumble
and they realize that their idols have let them down help us father
to not have empty platitudes that Jesus has the answers and
when they say well what's the answer to this we can't give
it help us father to be like sons of Issachar do bless this
your people with knowledge, with understanding, with wisdom, and
bless us with the prudence to live it out. And we pray this
in Jesus' name.
The Mark of the Beast
Series Revelation
This sermon identifies the mark of the beast, then applies the lessons to every age.
| Sermon ID | 1241888100 |
| Duration | 1:02:49 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Revelation 13:16-18 |
| Language | English |
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