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Modern governments sometimes demand that entire populations participate in this program or that, which, quite naturally for Christians, regularly raises the question of the Mark of the Beast. So, what is this mysterious mark? Jimmy Akin joins us to give us some insights into how we can identify it.
How to avoid the mark of the beast. Jimmy Akin, next.
Cy Kellett:
Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host.
We live in a highly integrated society. In such a society, from time to time, there’s going to be things that everyone is required to do. What’s the relationship between those things and the mark of the beast? Because, almost every time there is one, like getting a Social Security card, or getting a COVID vaccine, or now that there’s some talk about getting an ID that says you got the COVID vaccine, how’s this related to the mark of the beast? Well, the guy to ask is Jimmy Akin. So we asked him. Here he is.
Jimmy Akin, thank you for being with us again on the Catholic Answers Focus.
Jimmy Akin:
Hey, my pleasure.
Cy Kellett:
A lot of talk about mark of the beast. We ask our listeners sometimes, well, we ask them pretty much every time. But sometimes, they answer us with ideas for future programs, and one of the things people are concerned with is the mark of the beast. They’re concerned with A, what is it? And B, how do I explain to friends and family that it’s not …? Then fill in the blank, the COVID vaccine or some other thing.
Cy Kellett:
You are the man to go to for the mark of the beast, as the proprietor of the mysterious world and a knower of many mysteries. Let me just start with this. For a person who says, “I think the vaccine is the mark of the beast,” is there biblical evidence that could be perhaps convincing that says, “No, that is not true?” Or do you just have to leave everybody to their own devices and go, “Well, whatever you think”?
Jimmy Akin:
Yes, there is biblical evidence that you can use to show that no, that is not true.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. That’s good. It’s not just a matter of-
Jimmy Akin:
Device leaving unnecessary.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. Because I was reading some reports. I just did a Google search of mark of the beast. You know how they hold that temperature gun up to people in the airport?
Jimmy Akin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Cy Kellett:
They were there taking the people’s temperature, and then some people were like, “Well, that temperature …” They didn’t see it as that. They said they’re checking to make sure they have the mark of the beast on before they get on the airplane. As someone-
Jimmy Akin:
Really?
Cy Kellett:
… who sometimes gets on airplanes, I didn’t remember getting the mark of the beast, but I have had my temperature checked.
Jimmy Akin:
I suppose if your body temperature goes up on your forehead to 666 degrees Fahrenheit, well, maybe.
Cy Kellett:
Ah, won’t do it. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I’m sure they will not let you on the airplane if you have that. That’s the mark of the beast that will keep you off. All right. Help me out, what can we say to the person who says, “I saw it on,” whatever website or channel?
Jimmy Akin:
[crosstalk 00:02:53] or channel, or-
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, right.
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
That it’s this virus’ cure, and not cure, but is the mark of the beast.
Jimmy Akin:
Okay. Anybody can make any claim they want. I mean, people can make all kinds of assertions, but that doesn’t mean they’re true. If someone wants you to believe an assertion, they need to give you a good reason for it. The mark of the beast is something that’s described in the Bible, so if someone wants you to believe that the mark of the beast is a particular thing, they need to give you biblical reasons why. That means, we need to take a look at not just the mark of the beast, but how marks in general are used in the Bible.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Jimmy Akin:
They come up a number of times. One of the times that they come up is in Ezekiel chapter nine. This is one of the Old Testament books. Ezekiel was a prophet who lived during the Babylonian exile, and he has a vision, Ezekiel nine, where God is preparing to judge the people of Jerusalem. And we read, “And the Lord said to the angel, ‘Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.'”
Jimmy Akin:
So these are the righteous, the people who don’t like what’s going on in Jerusalem. God says to the angel to put a mark on all their foreheads. To the others, he said, to the other angels, he said, “In my Ezekiel’s hearing, pass through the city after him and strike. Your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity. But touch no one on whom is the mark.” Here in Ezekiel nine, we have God marking the righteous for protection against a coming judgment.
Jimmy Akin:
Now, this mark is not a physical mark. It’s an invisible thing that the angels can see. And this is not the only place in the literature, in the Bible and surrounding the Bible, where this concept comes up. There’s another book. It was written probably in the first century, B.C. It’s not part of the Bible, but it’s still one of the works that was in circulation at the time. It’s called the Psalms of Solomon. In the Psalms of Solomon, chapter 15, we read, “For God’s mark is on the righteous for their salvation. Famine and sword, and death shall be far from the righteous, for they will retreat from the devout like those pursued by famine. But they shall pursue sinners and overtake them, for those who act lawlessly shall not escape the Lord’s judgment. They shall be overtaken as by those experienced in war, for on their foreheads is the mark of destruction.”
Jimmy Akin:
Here we have two groups of people. We have the righteous, who are marked by God for salvation. But then we have the wicked, the sinners, who are marked for destruction on their foreheads. This is again, one of the ideas that was in circulation. Again notice, these are not literal physical marks. They’re invisible things that God’s angels, his agents of judgment, can see.
Cy Kellett:
It does seem that there’s a certain consolation for the righteous person here. The idea that God doesn’t forget. That there’s an actual mark on you. If you’re groaning and upset about all the injustice and abomination, God remembers that.
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah. And so, then, with this as background, we can look at the book of Revelation and see what it has to say about marks. Interestingly, the mark of the beast is not the first mark we read about in Revelation. We read about the mark of the beast for the first time in Revelation 13. But earlier than that, in Revelation seven, John sees this. He says, “I saw another angel descending from the rising of the sun with the seal of the living God.” A seal is what you use to make a mark. “And he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm earth and sea saying, ‘Do not harm the earth or the sea, or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads.'”
Jimmy Akin:
Then he seals 12,000 members of each of the tribes of Israel. Many Bible scholars think that that’s a symbol of the church. Because, the very next thing that John says after the sealing takes place is, “After this, I looked. And behold, a great multitude, which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples, and tongues standing before the throne of the lamb clothed with white robes. And then they praise God.”
Jimmy Akin:
And so, most biblical scholars look at this and say, “Okay. This great multitude from every nation is the church. It’s the new Israel.” And so, what’s happening in this passage is, God is preparing to judge the earth through the angels. But first, he sends an angel through to mark his servants on their forehead so they’ll be spared. Just like we saw in Ezekiel.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Okay.
Jimmy Akin:
Then, we keep reading. We get to Revelation 13. In Revelation 13, John sees these two beasts. The first beast rises out of the sea, and it’s based on imagery that comes from the book of Daniel where the beast imagery represents pagan empires that persecute God’s people.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Jimmy Akin:
The Babylonian empire, the Persian empire, the Greek empire, and in a first century context, this is going to be the Roman empire. And so, he sees this great beast. It’s got seven heads and 10 horns. Later on, we learn the seven heads are both seven mountains, like the seven hills of Rome. And there are seven kings, representing the line of first century Roman emperors, who did indeed, like the beast, want to be worshiped as gods and who persecuted Christians.
Jimmy Akin:
Then John sees a second beast. This one comes from the land and it does a bunch of fake miracles that get people to worship the first beast. Biblical scholars look at that and say, “Okay, that’s the first century cult of emperor worship.”
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Jimmy Akin:
People were literally worshiping the emperor as a God. Concerning this second beast, john says, “It causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead so that no one can buy and sell unless he has the mark. That is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.”
Jimmy Akin:
“This calls for wisdom,” John says. “Let him who has understanding, reckon the number of the beast, for it is a man’s number. It’s number is 666.” A lot of people stop reading there, because that’s the end of chapter 13. But the chapter breaks are artificial. You want to keep reading. The very next thing that John says at the beginning of chapter 14 is, “Then I looked. And behold, on Mount Zion stood the lamb. And with him, 144,000 who had his name and his father’s name written on their foreheads.” So we’ve got a deliberate contrast between the mark of the beast and the mark of God. That needs to inform what’s going on here.
Jimmy Akin:
Now, one of the things that you may note is that John tells his first century readers that they can calculate the number of the beast. Okay? He doesn’t say, “People, 2,000 years from now do this.” He’s talking to his first century readers. He says, “This calls for wisdom, but you can do this.” That suggests, just like we’ve been seeing this beast linked to the Roman empire and the first century emperors, that suggests the mark of the beast was already there in the first century. Because you could calculate it back then. It so happens when you look at the first century Roman emperors, one of them, Nero, has a name, Nero Caesar, that adds up to 666 in Hebrew and Aramaic. And so, scholars these days look at that and they say, “Okay, this beast is in some way connected with Nero. That’s what John is inviting his audience to do, to calculate the fact that Nero Caesar is 666.”
Jimmy Akin:
Now, go ahead.
Cy Kellett:
It just seems to me that there’s a juxtaposition then of Caesar and Christ as well, so that some are marked to belong to Caesar, but some are marked to belong to Christ here.
Jimmy Akin:
Right. And so, given that the mark of the beast was … Really, what John is envisioning is, you got to choose sides. Are you going to go with Christ or are you going to go with Caesar? If you choose Christ, you’re going to have God’s mark on your forehead and his name, Christ’s name. If you’re going to choose the beast, you’re going to have his mark on your forehead or right hand. This is like in Ezekiel and like in the Psalms of Solomon. This is not a visible literal mark. It’s an invisible spiritual mark that either marks you for salvation or destruction. It’s something the angels can see, not something that’s literally tattooed or branded on you.
Jimmy Akin:
That seems to be the original fulfillment of the mark of the beast. You were choosing, “Am I going to go with Christ or am I going to go with Caesar?” Indeed, that had economic consequences. Because, Christians were frequently excluded from being able to do their trades, to buy and sell. There’s an interesting aspect to this. If you look at coins from the first century, the emperors would frequently put their picture on a coin. Like when Jesus says, “Whose image is on this? Caesar’s image is on this.” Well, the emperors would do that. But because they wanted to be worshiped as gods frequently, they would also depict themselves as gods on their coins. And they would have divine titles on their coins.
Jimmy Akin:
We have, for example, coins of Nero, where he’s depicting himself as the sun ode. And so, if you wanted to buy and sell, you had to take these coins in your hand that had these divine images on them of Caesar ,and use those to buy and sell. You took them in your right hand and bought and sold. And so, this looks like it could be another aspect of the first century, original fulfillment of the mark of the beast.
Cy Kellett:
In the way John is writing the book of Revelation then, he’s primarily writing a message of, “Be alert to this. This is the reality we live in,” and consolation to the people of his time. He’s not primarily, and maybe even not consciously in any way, well, I’d like to know your take on that, writing to us or people of the future.
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah. Now, one of the things you find though, when you study biblical prophecy, is that sometimes it has more than one fulfillment. It will have an initial fulfillment in one period of history, and then it’ll have a later fulfillment at a point in history further down the line. And so, even though I think, we’ve identified the first century mark of the beast, it was participating in the cult of emperor worship, that doesn’t mean there won’t be a future fulfillment.
Jimmy Akin:
There are going to be bad times before the end of the world. There could easily be another world leader like Nero, who wants to be worshiped as a God. That may have economic consequences and, just like in the first century, Christians had to choose sides, Christians near the end of the world may have to choose sides. But if you want to claim a particular future thing as the ultimate part of the mark of the beast, it needs to fit the biblical data.
Jimmy Akin:
In the first place, it could be exactly the same as the original mark of the beast. It could be, there’s a future dictator. He wants to be worshiped as a God. And that’s what the mark of the beast is in the end, the final fulfillment of it. You agree to worship this future dictator. Okay, well, that’s not a credit card or a vaccine, or a computer, or an RFID chip, or anything like that. Now, could some of these other things potentially be involved? Well, yeah, if they are involved in worshiping a future figure like Nero. But thus far, none of them have been if you sign up for a …
Jimmy Akin:
Originally, when Social Security cards were introduced, a lot of people in this country thought, “Oh man, that’s got to be the mark of the beast. They’re going to give everybody a number, and you need it to earn a living.” So you got to get this card if you’re going to buy and sell. And you can carry this card in your right hand, or memorize your Social Security number and have it on your forehead.” Okay. Well, all those things are true, but they’re not relevant. Because, none of them involved worshiping FDR as a God.
Cy Kellett:
I see. Yeah.
Jimmy Akin:
Also, none of them had the number 666. The whole point of the Social Security system is, everybody’s got a different number. That’s how they keep track of how much money people make. And so, it doesn’t fit the biblical data. In fact, they don’t even give people Social Security numbers that start 666. Because they’re aware that people would freak out. So it doesn’t have anything to do with emperor worship, and it doesn’t have anything to do with 666.
Jimmy Akin:
Then in the ’70s and ’80s, there was this rumor that there was a big computer in Brussels, Belgium called The Beast that was going to introduce a cashless society. That was all just a rumor. That wasn’t true. But computers, unless you’re worshiping one as a God, it doesn’t fulfill the mark. Similarly, with let’s say the COVID vaccine. Okay? How well does that fit? Well, number one, you’re not worshiping anybody as a God if you receive a COVID vaccine. The COVID vaccine has nothing to do with the number 666, and it’s not administered where it would need to be for it to be a literal fulfillment. I mean, when was the last time, Cy Kellett, that you went to the doctor’s office and they took a syringe, and jammed it into your hand?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. No. Right. It doesn’t happen.
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Jimmy Akin:
They don’t. You’ve got lots of blood vessels and nerves, and tendons there. They don’t vaccinate you in your hand. How about this? When was the last time you went to a doctor’s office, Cy Kellett, and they took a syringe and jammed it into your forehead?
Cy Kellett:
Not since the Botox. I have not …
Jimmy Akin:
Well, they don’t vaccinate people in their forehead.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Jimmy Akin:
And so, these things don’t correspond to the biblical data, even if you take it as some kind of literal physical thing. By the way, that’s not what the church fathers said it was. The church fathers understood it, like if you read, for example, Hippolytus of Rome in his book on the antichrist, where he comments on this passage. He says that what the mark of the beast is going to involve is emperor worship, and the emperor is going to set up incense pans, where you have to throw incense with your hand into the incense pan to worship the emperor and the gods. Then you get to buy and sell. Or he compares it to pagans who would wear these wreaths on their foreheads as part of pagan worship ceremonies. And so, that’s how he sees it as being on people’s foreheads, as a wreath that you’re wearing. But it’s not literally tattooed on your forehead, so-
Cy Kellett:
That’s interesting, because it comes from the time where, if you’re going to speak symbolically, you have to have a shared symbol system. He’s more likely to have a shared symbol system with John than we are.
Jimmy Akin:
Right. So I would say that the mark of the beast is a really interesting thing. And it could have a future fulfillment. It may well have a future fulfillment. But the track record on people identifying them, is not good. So far, they’ve all been wrong. And if you want to propose something as a fulfillment of it, it needs to fit the biblical data. None of the things that are out there right now, like RFID chips or credit cards, or Social Security numbers, or vaccines, none of those fit the biblical data. There is more to say about this, by the way, than we can do here on Focus. If people are interested in hearing a fuller treatment, they can check out episode 138 of Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World, which is devoted to this subject.
Cy Kellett:
Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World’s on the internet. Just put in Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World and you’ll come to it. Is there a way in which, for those of us who don’t live either in the first century or what we might imagine as the last century, can interpret this like, “Well, how does it apply to me then, that there is a general warning in here about being entangled with the world to such a degree that that’s what marks you more than love of Christ marks you”? Would that be a fair-
Jimmy Akin:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
… reading?
Jimmy Akin:
There’s a sense in which you could apply this to any age. If your primary loyalty is to something other than Christ, then in a kind of loosey-goosey way, you could say, “Well, that kind of corresponds to the mark of the beast.” You certainly would be one of the wicked who’s marked for judgment, like in Ezekiel and in Psalms of Solomon, in order to really make it … And so you can kind of extract a principle from the mark of the beast and apply it more generally. But if you want to say, “Oh, this particular thing is the mark of the beast specifically,” it needs to fit the biblical data and it’s going to need to involve something like emperor worship.
Cy Kellett:
All right. So that would be more like maybe the password to Amazon Prime, where they force you to worship … Okay. No, they don’t actually.
Jimmy Akin:
I haven’t encountered-
Cy Kellett:
I remember-
Jimmy Akin:
… that.
Cy Kellett:
I haven’t seen the part where you have to throw incense for, oh, now I’m forgetting his name. What’s the guy that started Amazon?
Jimmy Akin:
Jeff Bezos.
Cy Kellett:
Jeff Bezos. Yeah. I haven’t been asked to worship Jeff Bezos yet. All right, Jimmy, thanks for clearing it up. It produces no end to anxiety. I hope that we’ve addressed some of that anxiety. There’ll probably be a next thing that’ll come, and that’ll be the mark of the beast. Then we’ll have to have you on again and talk about it.
Jimmy Akin:
Sounds good.
Cy Kellett:
It seems like a pretty easy formula, and I’m grateful to Jimmy for giving it to us. If you just keep your life focused on God, especially in the person of Jesus Christ, and you don’t worship other gods, you’re safe from the mark of the beast. It’s that temptation to worship other gods that gets us in trouble. So avoid that and you won’t have the mark of the beast on you.
I’m Cy Kellett, your host. And we’d love to get your emails, focus@catholic.com is our email address, focus@catholic.com. Also, don’t forget that it really helps us if you like and subscribe on YouTube. Or, if you’re listening to us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, if you just give us that five-star review and maybe a few words about what you get out of this podcast, that’d be very helpful.
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