I second David Currie, whoever mentioned it. He makes good points regarding Marking and Sealing.
“I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” (Jer. 31:33)
No serious scholar of Jeremiah assumes that God meant He would write the words of the Law on their hearts with a ballpoint pen. Nor could “the law within them” be something an X-Ray machine could detect. The loyalty of the New Covenant, which is the focus of this beautiful passage in Jeremiah, is an inward commitment of the will that manifests itself in the way we live.
(Rapture: End Times Error that Leaves the Bible Behind, p. 297)
Currie adds that the Mark or Seal on the forehead refers to the way we think, and the hand refers to the things we do. These are the Mark of the Beast or the Seal of the Lamb.
(He adds that Jesus was Sealed in
John 6:27. So why would it look different on us than it did on Him?)
Could a Mark or a Seal be a physical manifestation? Well, yes. But it would have to support the decision of the person, not make it for him.
Let’s use the ubiquitous
Left Behind series as an example. (I like to think that the last 20 years, on and off, of toiling over the books might be useful to someone somewhere.)
Their Mark of the Beast is:
- a tattoo …
- of a barcode …
- which encodes a multiple of 6 …
- and is located on the body wherever a microchip was implanted …
- on a consenting person (more or less).
It covers all known bases, but it can be construed as overkill: like James Bond swallowing poison whilst juggling knives whilst playing Russian Roulette whilst jumping out of an airplane without a parachute into an active volcano.
Their Seal of the Saved likewise is very involved.
Revelation 7:3 and
Rev. 22:4 says
The NAME will be written on their foreheads. In L.B. it isn’t The NAME at all. It’s a 3-D cross … that only other Saveds can see … but you can’t see your own … and no Unsaved can see it. (I am not aware of any of those descriptions being in the Bible, but hey, that’s just me.)
…
So here’s the real issue. It’s about choices. Everyone in L.B. who gets the Seal knows what they are getting, and wants it. But many of the people in L.B. do not know what they are getting when they choose the Mark of the Beast. (It certainly is not advertised to them as such!) Instead, they get it because The Antichrist character wants them to get it. It serves both as loyalty oath and as a replacement for physical money.
But why do they want to pledge loyalty to him? The answer is twofold. The Antichrist becomes a politician so that he can grab power more efficiently. And the result is that people follow him. “And people marveled after [The Politician] and said, Who is like unto [The Politician]? Who can do what [The Politician] does?” That’s why they get marked. They often don’t figure out who he is until long too late.
Yes, tagging people with microchips, numbers, markings, and so forth is dehumanizing and therefore dangerous. But I think our choices are the most dangerous factor of all. Choose wisely.
