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.