Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind (42 page)

Although it seems shocking to the modern Christian, Jerusalem not only cooperated fully with the Roman persecution of the early Church, but it even instigated that persecution. Although it is not true of modern Israel, the description of the land-beast in this passage actually matches the Jewish leadership of first-century Jerusalem perfectly. Not until 66 A.D. did they rebel against Rome, and at that point the Roman Empire turned its wrath on them. St. John describes the rift between Rome and Jerusalem in a later vision.

St. John’s description of the image of the beast has an uncanny resemblance to the image that Nebuchadnezzar built after his dream of the statue in Daniel. Three Hebrews were thrown into the fiery furnace because they would not worship the king’s gods. It is likely that St. John used this reference to remind his Christian readers about how that story ends. The three faithful Hebrews were spared death by the intervention of God, but they had clearly demonstrated their willingness to die rather than engage in idolatry.

The land-beast also makes life difficult for those who will not submit to “the mark” of the sea-beast. Just what this mark of the beast is has been the subject of almost unlimited speculation. But before we examine the mark, we should realize that St. John understands that the reader may be a bit confused.

He pauses to clarify the identity of this sea-beast with the mark. He instructs his readers to “reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, its number is six hundred and sixty-six” (13:18). This may have clarified the situation for the Christians of the first century, but these numbers have caused havoc ever since. Everyone agrees that it must refer to a human man. Beyond that, the number 666 has been taken to identify everyone from the Pope to Luther, from Hitler to Mussolini, from Stalin to Mikhail Gorbachev, from FDR to Ronald Reagan. But remember, the writer was trying to make his message clear to his
original
readers, without subjecting them to charges of treason or blasphemy. The number 666 is one of
sixteen
clues to the identity of the sea-beast that St. John gives in The Apocalypse.

Today’s scholars agree: to reveal the identity of the beast to Jewish Christians, while hiding it from outsiders, St. John used the rabbinic numbering system for names, called
Gematria
. When the Gematrian numbers of Nero’s official name in Hebrew are added together (fifty plus two hundred plus six plus fifty plus one hundred plus sixty plus two hundred), they total 666. The original Hebrew Christian readers of this vision would have understood this immediately. Without endangering the Church, St. John succeeds in fingering the present Roman emperor, Nero, as the sea-beast (GR4, 8).

The early Church universally understood these numbers to refer to Nero. Even the futurist Irenaeus mentions that Nero is the Gematrian solution to the puzzle of the 666. In some manuscripts of The Apocalypse, the number had been copied as 616. Irenaeus points out that even this number would work as the solution to Nero’s abbreviated name. This is further evidence that the early Church understood the 666 as a reference to Nero, the personification of the sea-beast.

The significance of the number
six
in triplicate would not have escaped the original readers either.
Six
stood symbolically as the number of man. Nero might be powerful, but he was only a man. Even the trinity of Nero, Vespasian, and Titus would never add up to more than just finite man. Nero could never be 777 (perfection), much less 888 (Christ conquered death on the eighth day).

Now we understand that the sea-beast clearly symbolizes Rome during Nero’s time. But we still need to examine “the mark” of this beast. Could it really be a microchip that will be imbedded in the forehead or hand at some point in the future, as some believe?

No. That is simply Winkle Warp again. Although everything that happened in 70 A.D. in the destruction of the Temple might give us a picture prophecy of what may happen in the still-future final battle, we cannot assume willy-nilly that details of this sort will be repeated (GR3).

The “mark” was a common symbol in the Old Testament, signifying loyalty. Cain was given a mark for disloyalty after he killed his brother (Gen. 4:15). The mark of lamb’s blood on the doorposts in Egypt just before the exodus of the Hebrews was a public announcement of loyalty. In Ezekiel 9:4–6, a mark was put on each loyal man’s forehead before God destroyed those in Jerusalem who were doing evil. This mark was the Hebrew letter
tau
, or
T
, and those without it were killed in judgment. The early Church saw it as a prophecy pointing to the sign of the Cross.

As the prophets preached to Israel over the centuries, this mark of loyalty evolved into a primarily interior reality that paralleled the evolving vision of a spiritual Kingdom. Jeremiah prophesied, “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 that 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.

Rapturists are not the first to take the spiritual meaning of a Bible passage and interpret it in an overly physical way. The Pharisees did the same thing. In Deuteronomy, Moses instructed the Israelites in the “Great Commandment”: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (6:4–5). He explains that this commandment should be kept always in mind and continually taught to the next generation. He goes on to say, “And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets [or phylacteries] between your eyes” (6:8).

How did the Pharisees interpret this instruction of Moses? Many of them seemed to miss entirely the spiritual meaning of Moses’ message: that this “Great Commandment” had to affect the way they thought, the way they saw the world, and the way they lived their lives. Instead, they literally tied phylacteries onto their foreheads and right arms. Phylacteries were small leather boxes with leather straps, and inside the boxes was printed the “Great Commandment.” Yet as Jesus makes clear, their adherence to the literal, physical interpretation of this passage lulled them into a false security. They failed to keep the spiritual command of Moses: to be ever mindful of the presence of their awesome God in everything they thought or did (Matt. 23:1–7).

Like the Kingdom that is being revealed, the marks of The Apocalypse are
internal
. There are two marks: the mark of the beast and the mark of the Lamb. Popular sentiment concentrates on the mark of the beast, but God’s mark—the mark of the Lamb—is actually much more important in The Apocalypse. It is first alluded to in the sixth letter to the churches, the letter to Philadelphia. God’s mark is mentioned specifically in the sixth seal of the initial vision (7:3). The four angels are held back from judgment until God’s children can be marked with His name. In the later vision of the Child’s strategy, the redeemed 144,000 all have been marked by God (14:1). This mark of God is evident even in eternity. In Heaven God’s faithful “servants shall worship Him; they shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads” (22:4).

The mark of the beast and the mark of the Lamb are inward and discernible only through the actions of those marked. Having it on the hand signifies the change in what we Christians
do
as a result of our loyalty, while the forehead mark signifies how our loyalties change the way we
think
. The loyalty to God’s Law within the Christian community would be obvious to everyone when emperor worship was demanded in the marketplace. Christians refused to “go along to get along,” and they ended up as a people marked by Rome for death. At the same time, God marked these martyrs for eternal life.

In a later vision, we see evidence that St. John intended us to understand the mark of the beast in this spiritual fashion. In the vision of the winepress, “anyone [who] worships the beast and its image” is equated with “receiv[ing] a mark on his forehead or on his hand” (14:9). This spiritual understanding of the marks dovetails best with the mark of God’s presence even in eternity.

God’s mark is actually much more important to the message of The Apocalypse. Yet for some reason, few try to understand it in the physical, literalistic way in which the mark of the beast is portrayed in contemporary prophecy novels.

Rapturists try desperately to place all of this in the future. But the fulfillment would have been clear to the first-century Christian, so why bother?

At the time of St. John’s writing, Nero personifies the Roman Empire. He is the human whose symbol is 666, and he demands worship in violation of God’s Law. This is the only time in history that the Church was persecuted by both the Roman beast and the Jerusalem beast. Even the eighth emperor of the later vision has already lived and died. We know him as Titus, the son of Vespasian. Unless we have slept through the history of the first century and are suffering from Winkle Warp, there is no reason to look for any future fulfillment.

That said, the lesson of the two marks is timeless. Throughout history, the strategy of the dragon has been to make it socially advantageous to compromise with evil. Derision and death have always accompanied those who have refused his deceptions (GR3).

In the first century, the mark of the beast was the willingness to worship Rome’s power. God’s mark was revealed in the refusal to worship Satan’s great deception.
It still is today
. Deception of any kind is straight from Hell, and it usually still stinks like smoke.

Now in beautiful fashion, St. John uses these opposing marks to make the transition from the battle strategy of the dragon and his beasts to the battle strategy of the Child and His followers who have “His Father’s name written on their foreheads” (14:1). As you may remember, the Child is none other than the Lion and the Lamb of the initial vision.

What can be the battle strategy of Christ in response to this powerful, deceitful strategy of Satan? That is the question of this vision. We will learn not only how the Lamb opposes the dragon, but also the benefits that the Lamb’s followers can expect. Remember, the Lamb’s followers are the same people as the offspring of the Woman.

This vision begins with a scene on Mount Zion in Heaven. The author of Hebrews mentions Mount Zion as being associated with the heavenly Jerusalem. “You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in Heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect” (Heb. 12:22–23).

On Mount Zion stands “the Lamb, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand who had His name and His Father’s name written on their foreheads” (14:1). These martyrs have God’s mark of loyalty upon them. They should remind us of the “saints” in the heavenly scene of the initial vision (5:9).

The number
144,000
was used in Chapter 7 to symbolize the entire number of those who came into the Church from biblical Judaism. But we noted that it also had all the earmarks of a symbolically large number. There is no good reason to change our mind here.

In this instance, the 144,000 are all “chaste.” But the Greek word,
parthenos
, is more accurately translated “virgins” (14:4). Without a doubt, this is a difficult passage for the average rapturist. As a group, rapturists vehemently disagree with the Church’s historical teaching concerning the need for sexual continence within the leadership of the Church. Lest there be any doubt, St. John emphasizes his point by describing them as those “who have not defiled themselves with women.” “Defiled” is probably too strong a translation for the relatively rare Greek word
moleno
in this passage. It carries with it the idea of becoming ceremonially unfit for service. (The only other occurrences in the Bible are 1 Corinthians 8:7 and Apocalypse 3:4.) Although rapturists and modernists hate to admit it, here is evidence that the early Church’s demand for episcopal celibacy was just that—very early. Although the marriage bed is certainly holy, the sexually continent are held up to the reader as exemplary. They are to be esteemed precisely because of their virginity.

Once again the Catholic is free to take the text for what it actually says. Being “eunuchs” for the Kingdom is a sacrifice that does not go unnoticed in Heaven (Matt. 19:12). Although some modernist Catholics try to argue the point, the Church’s historical teaching is that this is a higher calling
(CEC)
.

The 144,000 “sing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders” (14:3). St. John acts as though we should know who these creatures and elders are, and so we should. They appeared at the very beginning of the initial vision in the throne room. This indicates that these two visions have the same starting point, the throne room of God. In fact, the events are almost identical. Because of this, we will use the symbolism mentioned in both places to clarify the battle strategy of the Lamb.