Reading: Revelation 13:1-18

We’ve come to arguably one of the most misinterpreted sections of Revelation (perhaps even in all of Scripture). So. Be forewarned, this is going to be a long post—because it’s the chapter that deals with the mark of the beast, and the beasts themselves. 

But. Here’s what’s important to remember: we know that the first beast (from the sea) is a sign, because we’re consistent with our interpretation—and since the dragon in the previous chapter was a sign, this beast is also a sign—not to mention the fact that John says, he was like a leopard and it’s feet were like a bear’s and it’s mouth was like a lion. So. We’re not looking for some kind of Godzilla creature to come out of the ocean. Instead, we need to figure out what this sign is pointing us to.

Which. If we allow Scripture to interpret Scripture, we discover that most likely this beast represents godless governments. It’s why the dragon gave the beast his throne and authority. We can also make this assumption based on Daniel chapter 7 where a very similar scene unfolded for him.

Additionally. According to verses 9 and 10, the point of the text is not to figure out a when. It’s not to figure out a why. It’s not a code to unlock a secret. No. It’s a call to persevere. Endure. John is saying, “godless anti-christ governments are going to kill you for not worshipping them, but they can’t kill all of us. He who as an ear, let him ear—keep worshipping the one, true God.”

Now. In verses 11 on, we read that there’s a beast of the land who also exercises the authority of the beast of the sea—and it too wants people to worship the first beast. Verse 12. Therefore. The beast from the land represents godless, anti-christ, religion. The first beast represents government. The second beast represents religion.

How do I know? Because the point of religion is to worship the one true God—the King of the universe. And what God creates, Satan counterfeits. So he’s trying to create his own government and his own religion to garner worship. He wants to be king, and he wants to be worshipped.

Now. To be clear, God didn’t create the Holy Spirit—He has eternally existed, just like Jesus, but Satan is trying to counterfeit what the Holy Spirit does. So. Just like the Holy Spirit compels people to worship Jesus, the beasts compel people to worship the dragon. And just like the Holy Spirit seals believers, this beast marks unbelievers. And just like the Holy Spirit does signs, acts, and wonders, so does this beast. Verse 13. Fire came down from heaven. Which. What’s that sound like? Acts 2. Tongues of fire come down on the Apostles.

But. Before we dive too far in to that, lets talk about this “mark of the beast.” Because everybody always wants to know what’s the mark of the beast? What’s 666? Right? Matter of fact, when I was preaching through Revelation, a pastor asked me, “What are you preaching on?” I said, “Revelation.” His first question, “Who’s the anti-christ?” His second question: “What’s the mark of the beast?”

Ok. So. Here’s the deal: for hundreds of years people have been trying to make this text be about their timeline. And in this country specifically, the mark of the beast has been: social security numbers, then it was credit cards, then it was barcodes; most recently it was the vaccine, and you couldn’t travel without your vaccine passport…and…in every one of those situations, the prediction was WRONG.

So here’s all you need to know: The mark of the beast represents godless anti-christ association. That is: the mark is a way to recognize who’s part of the dragon’s kingdom and who’s not. The mark isn’t necessarily visible, but the results are. Just like prior to this, all the believers were sealed with a mark.

Now. Lets chat real quick about this number 666. What is that all about? Well, just like people have been predicting what the mark is, they’ve been predicting who this man is: it’s Adolf Hitler. No it’s Joseph Stalin. The wildest one I’ve ever heard: Ronald Wilson Reagan. Because that’s 6 letters in each of his names and he lived on 666 St Cloud Street in Bel Aire—seriously. Look it up. In 1989 he actually got the address changed to 668 St Cloud because he didn’t want people thinking he was the antichrist. In related news, I figured out my name: Landon, Thomas, Jordan also 6 letters each. So…there’s that…thanks, mom and dad…

But. Throughout history there have generally been 3 accepted ways to interpret this. So. I’ll give you all 3, and then you can decide for yourself what this means. First, this is in reference to some evil man yet to come (like a Hitler) who will be in charge of an earthly government and he will demand worship and he’ll use economic incentives or even kill people who don’t worship him. That’s interpretation 1.

I find that one kind of hard to believe because John knew who he was thinking of. And he also supposed that any member of one of the 7 churches would also be able to figure it out. It’s why he says, “Let the one with understanding calculate the identity of the beast.” So. It would be odd, then, if young Timothy at the church in Ephesus stayed up late the night reading Revelation pondering who is Ghenkis Khan? Right? It can’t mean to us what it did not mean to them. Nonetheless. Option 1. 

Interpretation 2. This is not a specific individual, but rather 666 is the number of all mankind. Mankind demands worship. Mankind sets up governments to control people and generate power. The reason they land there is because the literal translation of verse 18 is: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of “anthropos”, where we get the word anthropology. Quite literally mankind.

So. If John meant a singular man, he would’ve used the Greek word,  ‘aneer’. But he didn’t. He used anthropos. They further speculate that this makes sense because man was made on the 6th day. Genesis 1. So the number of man is in fact, 6. And since we know that 3 represents the number of completion—God is Triune, 3. Father, Son, Spirit. And Jesus rose on the 3rd day. So if we repeat 6, 3 times, we discover that mankind is completely incomplete apart from God. It’s why we need to be sealed. That’s interpretation 2.

Interpretation 3 is a lesson in grammar. So. Follow me on this: in English we use Roman letters and Arabic numerals. Therefore, when we want to spell out a number, we write: f-o-u-r. However. When we want to use a symbol for it, we write 4. Except. Hebrew, Greek, and Latin do not work that way. They used the letters of their alphabet for both phonetic sounds and numbers. For example. In Greek, the first letter alpha, also represented the numerical value of 1 (it’s called gematria if you want to go full on crazy). But. If we were to use the greek alphabet, it would be easy to compute the numerical value of our names. For instance, Landon. Lambda (300) alpha (1) nu (500) delta (40) omicron (700) nu (500). The number of my name would therefore be 2041. This sounds odd, since we’ve never done it, but it was very common in the ancient world. Matter of fact, archaeologists have found graffiti at Pompeii that said, “I love her whose number is 545”.

But. Scholars say that the numerical equivalent of the Roman Emperor Nero equals 666. They get this because if you write Nero Caesar in Hebrew, quite literally NRWN QSR (it’s pronounced Neron Kaiser) the numbers are: 50 200 6 50 100 60 200, which add up to 666.

Now. All that said, I don’t think the best question is: Who is it? I think the best question is: what do we do because of it? Like. Because there’s a dragon, and a couple of beasts, that mark their followers—and because Jesus has yet to take control of His Kingdom, what do we do?

In my experience, people get sidetracked by asking who because they don’t want to do. Like. If they would apply what they already knew, they wouldn’t be worried about who. But. Here’s what I think we do in light of all this: we must trust the Lord, test His Church, and transform the government. So. Get to work.

With Gratitude,

pLJ