The Mark of the Beast? Just Pray About It
Some of the craziest speculation you’ll find on the internet today surrounds the idea of the Mark of the Beast. Microchips. COVID-19 vaccines. Facebook (seriously – some people are saying this because you hold your phone in your hand and put it up to your head). What if I told you that the Mark of the Beast is just a counterfeit to a command God gave Israel in the Torah? And that this command is actually a tool to help us obey Him? I’ll prove it to you in less than 10 minutes.
Remember Remez?
The Mark of the Beast idea comes from the Revelation written by the Apostle John. It’s Jewish Apocalyptic literature. It has lots of symbols and metaphors in it. And it uses the Hebrew Scriptures almost constantly. The passage where the concept of the Mark of the Beast is Revelation 13:
The second beast was empowered to give life to the image of the first beast so that it could speak, and could cause all those who did not worship the image of the beast to be killed. He also caused everyone (small and great, rich and poor, free and slave) to obtain a mark on their right hand or on their forehead. Thus no one was allowed to buy or sell things unless he bore the mark of the beast—that is, his name or his number. This calls for wisdom: Let the one who has insight calculate the beast’s number, for it is man’s number, and his number is 666. (Revelation 13:15-18 NET)
These verses are jammed with “hints” to passages in the Old Testament. If you haven’t listened to last week’s series on PaRDeS, go check it out. These verses have several “remez” in them that can make for a really fun study. But the most important one is uncovered when we think about the mark. It’s placed on the hand and the forehead. This language is all over the Torah.
The Mark of the Beast is About Idolatry, Not Technology
The Mark of the Beast is sensational and mysterious and a puzzle that’s really fun to try to solve. But, so much of what you read and hear about it is fantasy. The Revelation tells the story of history from the other side of heaven. It’s a spiritual story. And at its core is the war between YHWH and Satan. What you must remember is that Satan is not only a liar, he’s a fraud. He can’t come up with anything new. He copies YHWH and then distorts and twists and corrupts what is good. This is what’s happening with the Mark of the Beast. Satan is ripping it off from the Greatest Commandment:
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. (Deuteronomy 6:4-8 ESV)
Does YHWH Want Israel to Get Microchipped?
Why does YHWH instruct Israel to bind the commandments on their hands and between their eyes? Is there some supernatural event taking place here? Of course not. YHWH is helping Israel understand how important the commandments He’s giving them are. He wants Israel to own them, in their very soul. He wants Israel to be thinking about them all the time. Teaching them to their children from the moment they wake up till they go to bed. Talking about them at home and away. Israel isn’t supposed to literally bind these commandments to their hands and foreheads. YHWH wants them to understand that everything they do (symbolized by the hand) should be directed by the commandments. And everything they think about (symbolized by the forehead), should be guided by the commandments. Now, what does all this have to do with prayer?
Tefillin
Ancient Israel took these instructions very seriously; even literally. They developed what are called, “tefillin.” These are leather straps with the commandments on them that they wrap around their arms and foreheads during prayer. Jesus talked about them when He accused the Pharisees of making their phylacteries (Greek name for tefillin) really big so people would think they were more pious.
Now, I know I said that the instruction to place the commandments on our hand and forehead aren’t to be taken literally. And it isn’t. But the Jewish sages learned an important lesson about physical reminders that they applied to this commandment. Physical actions can help us in our spiritual walk. When Jewish men wrap tefillin around their right arm and forehead, it’s a physical action that helps them remember how critical it is that everything they think and do is filtered through the commandments of God. It’s not magical. But it is very effective.
Recently, I’ve begun integrating this idea into my daily life. There are physical actions that I’m turning into habits. And these habits help me refocus on spiritual truths. The Apostle Paul told the Christians in Thessalonica to “pray without ceasing.” I’m sure that Paul’s religious upbringing had created many of these habits. Could these habits help us with the spiritual discipline of prayer?
