Revelation 13:11-18 – Your Number’s Up
This passage contains probably the best-known prophecy in Revelation, and the best-known thing that isn’t in Revelation. I mean, people think it’s in Revelation but it’s not. I’m talking about the anti-Christ and the “number of the beast.”
First, the book of Revelation never uses the term “anti-Christ;” it only appears in the Bible in the books of 1 and 2 John. And incidentally, when it’s used there, it doesn’t speak of a single demonic super-figure. People can be anti-Christs, and there are more than one of them. Put simply, an anti-Christ is someone who denies Jesus’ divinity and that he came as a person to save us. More broadly, an anti-Christ is someone who rejects Christ and sets up some rival belief in his place. It’s often associated with the “abomination of desolation” that we read about in Daniel and in Mark 13/Matthew 24/Luke 21. And, it’s associated with the beast that comes from the earth, which our passage describes. In other words, Bible interpreters wrap up all these descriptions of figures who deny Christ and try to undermine his work, and they use the label “anti-Christ” to name them. Finally, in general we assume that there’s just one of these nasty critters floating around, and that believers in the end times will have to deal with it/him.
I’ll agree for the most part, but not entirely. Yes, the beast that comes from the land, who joins the dragon and the sea-beast to form the unholy Trinity, opposes and works against Christ. In fact, the land-beast sets himself up as a competitor with Christ; more on that in a moment. But I don’t believe that we have to wait until the end-times to encounter this beast. It’s been at work from the very beginning, and every Christian generation has had to deal with it.
The land-beast is false religion: a deceptive spiritual leader who calls for people to worship the sea-beast. We’ve seen in the last section that the sea-beast is dominant human power that appears to be invincible. The land-beast tries to make all of us worship it. By extension, it tries to get us to worship power in general. Not just those who have it, but a desire for the rest of us to get it for ourselves. As we’ve said already, in John’s day the sea-beast was evident most clearly in the Roman Empire that came from “overseas.” For John’s churches, the land-beast would be the local leaders who tried to get everyone to follow and cheer on Rome.
John’s description of the sea-beast helps us understand it as a demonic perversion of Christ. It looks like Christ, and people may think that it’s him. But it’s not. He looks like a lamb (the Lamb of Chapter 5), but he speaks like the dragon. It’s the original sheep in wolf’s clothing, or the book that you can’t judge by its color. And the Christian faith has been damaged over and over by the land-beast. There have been many religious leaders over the ages, and are still around today, who claim to be Christians, expositing the Bible and leading people to God. But they’re doing the exact opposite. Some of them may be intentionally trying to undermine the church, but I think most of them are deceived. After all, the best deception is one that you believe yourself. Cult leaders are an easy example to notice: anyone who sets themselves up as Christ returned, or someone who has new and special knowledge about God. However, the land-beast is more pernicious than just that. There are main-line, orthodox, “normal” Christian leaders who twist the truth and lead people astray. Again, they may believe fully that what they’re teaching is consistent with Christ. But it’s not. Their words come from the dragon-devil, not from our Lord. That’s why Paul told the Corinthians to “test the spirits:” never blindly assume that you can believe what someone tells you because they have the right pedigree or education or credentials, or because other people that you trust vouch for them. The voice of the dragon will come from all sorts of sources and try to lead us in a million different directions: any path but the one Christ has in mind for us.
The sea-beast is a sad imitation of Christ’s glory, just like all of Satan’s schemes are. He displays wonders in front of people, and inspires worship of just about anything by Jesus himself. The best lie is the one that looks a lot like the truth. Satan’s plots are most dangerous when they have religious trappings on them. It’s not the horror-movie stuff that’s most threatening; it’s the pleasant and “wholesome” stuff that causes the most damage. The sea-beast intimidated people with its power. But the land-beast leads people astray with its deception.
Perhaps the best-known prophecy of Revelation is the prediction of verses 16-18: people will receive the mark of the beast, which is its name or number. And the number of the beast is 666. There are all sorts of theories about what this number means. Here are three of my favorites. First, in the ancient world, letters were assigned numeric values. If you take Emperor Nero’s full name, all the letters add up to 666. Or they add up to 616, depending on how you do it. So, Nero was the beast. Second, some people claimed that President Reagan was the anti-Christ. His first, middle, and last names all have six letters in them (Ronald Wilson Reagan). There you have 666, right? There’s one more that’s had a lot of people up in a tizzy: UPC price codes. You can’t buy or sell anything without that little sticker with the funny lines on it, right? The check-out clerks just don’t know what to do without it. And Revelation tells us that no one can buy or sell without the mark of the beast. If you look at the codes carefully, you’ll notice that most of them start with two narrowish lines, have two more narrowish lines, and end with two more. Those lines, the alarmists tell us, are the same code as the number 6. So all UPC codes have 666 in them. Oh no! Well, not so fast. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a UPC label try to lead me away from Christ, and I can’t imagine how it would. Plus, this isn’t really true. Not all UPC codes have these three sets of lines.
I go for a different understanding of 666. As we’ve seen before, 7 is the number that Revelation uses to represent divine perfection. The number 6 is human striving for the divine. Think of the story of the tower of Babel: people tried to set themselves up in the place of God. Their plan didn’t work, but that hasn’t stopped us from doing all sorts of things to replace God with ourselves. These plans always come to grief, but we keep doing it anyway. This is being an anti-Christ in the purest sense: setting ourselves up in the place of Christ. The number 6 is repeated three times to express fullness and completeness. If you remember your grammar, adjectives come to us in English in the regular, comparative, and superlative. Good, better, best. Big, bigger, biggest. And so on. Hebrew doesn’t have those handy little endings to stick onto words. So you if you wanted to say that a dog is bigger than a mouse, you’d repeat the adjective a second time: “The dog is big big to the mouse.” And if you want to say that an elephant is biggest of all, you say it three times: “The elephant is big big big.” That, by the way, is why the four living creatures of Chapter 4 sing “holy, holy, holy:” God is the holiest of all. So here, 666 means that human striving for divinity fails utterly and fully.
There’s something else to notice about the mark of the beast: people need it in order to buy and sell. In John’s day, this may have been a reference to the fact that the emperor’s image was on all the coins. For devout Jews, these coins were graven images. And because the emperor claimed to be divine, that makes a lot of sense even if you’re not a devout Jews. And of course, you can’t buy or sell without using those blasphemous coins. I think the economic aspect of the mark of the beast runs even deeper than that, however. The land-beast tries to get people to worship the sea-beast. We’ve already seen how the sea-beast represents human powers. And I’ve claimed that economics or money is the human force that seems most powerful to us. So it makes sense that the land-beast would deny access to the economic system for everyone who doesn’t want to play by its rules.
It’s crazy to see how well-known this concept of the “mark of the beast” has become. It’s so pervasive that people resist anything that seems to be a universal marking system, from Social Security numbers to microchip implants. If we’re being marked, it must be the mark of the beast. That’s the way the thinking seems to go. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Remember: Satan’s best plans are simply cheap knock-offs of God’s wonderful creativity. Satan didn’t invent the idea of marking people; he just took what God did and spun it on its head. To this day, devout Jews wear phylacteries on their foreheads and right wrists, in obedience to Deuteronomy 6:8’s injunction to write God’s law on your forehead and hands. The original “mark” is the word of God. And in Revelation 7:2-3, God marks the elect with his seal of blessing and protection. Marks can be used for both good and evil.
Notice the difference, however. God’s mark leads to everlasting blessing and protects you from the destruction of creation. The beast’s mark means that you can’t go shopping. Put in perspective like that, it seems pretty silly!
The passage calls for wisdom. We are called to see through the beast’s deception, and recognize God’s truth instead. And that’s the good news. The sea beast seems to be invincible, but he can be resisted. The land-beast tries to trick us, but we can figure him out.
First, the book of Revelation never uses the term “anti-Christ;” it only appears in the Bible in the books of 1 and 2 John. And incidentally, when it’s used there, it doesn’t speak of a single demonic super-figure. People can be anti-Christs, and there are more than one of them. Put simply, an anti-Christ is someone who denies Jesus’ divinity and that he came as a person to save us. More broadly, an anti-Christ is someone who rejects Christ and sets up some rival belief in his place. It’s often associated with the “abomination of desolation” that we read about in Daniel and in Mark 13/Matthew 24/Luke 21. And, it’s associated with the beast that comes from the earth, which our passage describes. In other words, Bible interpreters wrap up all these descriptions of figures who deny Christ and try to undermine his work, and they use the label “anti-Christ” to name them. Finally, in general we assume that there’s just one of these nasty critters floating around, and that believers in the end times will have to deal with it/him.
I’ll agree for the most part, but not entirely. Yes, the beast that comes from the land, who joins the dragon and the sea-beast to form the unholy Trinity, opposes and works against Christ. In fact, the land-beast sets himself up as a competitor with Christ; more on that in a moment. But I don’t believe that we have to wait until the end-times to encounter this beast. It’s been at work from the very beginning, and every Christian generation has had to deal with it.
The land-beast is false religion: a deceptive spiritual leader who calls for people to worship the sea-beast. We’ve seen in the last section that the sea-beast is dominant human power that appears to be invincible. The land-beast tries to make all of us worship it. By extension, it tries to get us to worship power in general. Not just those who have it, but a desire for the rest of us to get it for ourselves. As we’ve said already, in John’s day the sea-beast was evident most clearly in the Roman Empire that came from “overseas.” For John’s churches, the land-beast would be the local leaders who tried to get everyone to follow and cheer on Rome.
John’s description of the sea-beast helps us understand it as a demonic perversion of Christ. It looks like Christ, and people may think that it’s him. But it’s not. He looks like a lamb (the Lamb of Chapter 5), but he speaks like the dragon. It’s the original sheep in wolf’s clothing, or the book that you can’t judge by its color. And the Christian faith has been damaged over and over by the land-beast. There have been many religious leaders over the ages, and are still around today, who claim to be Christians, expositing the Bible and leading people to God. But they’re doing the exact opposite. Some of them may be intentionally trying to undermine the church, but I think most of them are deceived. After all, the best deception is one that you believe yourself. Cult leaders are an easy example to notice: anyone who sets themselves up as Christ returned, or someone who has new and special knowledge about God. However, the land-beast is more pernicious than just that. There are main-line, orthodox, “normal” Christian leaders who twist the truth and lead people astray. Again, they may believe fully that what they’re teaching is consistent with Christ. But it’s not. Their words come from the dragon-devil, not from our Lord. That’s why Paul told the Corinthians to “test the spirits:” never blindly assume that you can believe what someone tells you because they have the right pedigree or education or credentials, or because other people that you trust vouch for them. The voice of the dragon will come from all sorts of sources and try to lead us in a million different directions: any path but the one Christ has in mind for us.
The sea-beast is a sad imitation of Christ’s glory, just like all of Satan’s schemes are. He displays wonders in front of people, and inspires worship of just about anything by Jesus himself. The best lie is the one that looks a lot like the truth. Satan’s plots are most dangerous when they have religious trappings on them. It’s not the horror-movie stuff that’s most threatening; it’s the pleasant and “wholesome” stuff that causes the most damage. The sea-beast intimidated people with its power. But the land-beast leads people astray with its deception.
Perhaps the best-known prophecy of Revelation is the prediction of verses 16-18: people will receive the mark of the beast, which is its name or number. And the number of the beast is 666. There are all sorts of theories about what this number means. Here are three of my favorites. First, in the ancient world, letters were assigned numeric values. If you take Emperor Nero’s full name, all the letters add up to 666. Or they add up to 616, depending on how you do it. So, Nero was the beast. Second, some people claimed that President Reagan was the anti-Christ. His first, middle, and last names all have six letters in them (Ronald Wilson Reagan). There you have 666, right? There’s one more that’s had a lot of people up in a tizzy: UPC price codes. You can’t buy or sell anything without that little sticker with the funny lines on it, right? The check-out clerks just don’t know what to do without it. And Revelation tells us that no one can buy or sell without the mark of the beast. If you look at the codes carefully, you’ll notice that most of them start with two narrowish lines, have two more narrowish lines, and end with two more. Those lines, the alarmists tell us, are the same code as the number 6. So all UPC codes have 666 in them. Oh no! Well, not so fast. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a UPC label try to lead me away from Christ, and I can’t imagine how it would. Plus, this isn’t really true. Not all UPC codes have these three sets of lines.
I go for a different understanding of 666. As we’ve seen before, 7 is the number that Revelation uses to represent divine perfection. The number 6 is human striving for the divine. Think of the story of the tower of Babel: people tried to set themselves up in the place of God. Their plan didn’t work, but that hasn’t stopped us from doing all sorts of things to replace God with ourselves. These plans always come to grief, but we keep doing it anyway. This is being an anti-Christ in the purest sense: setting ourselves up in the place of Christ. The number 6 is repeated three times to express fullness and completeness. If you remember your grammar, adjectives come to us in English in the regular, comparative, and superlative. Good, better, best. Big, bigger, biggest. And so on. Hebrew doesn’t have those handy little endings to stick onto words. So you if you wanted to say that a dog is bigger than a mouse, you’d repeat the adjective a second time: “The dog is big big to the mouse.” And if you want to say that an elephant is biggest of all, you say it three times: “The elephant is big big big.” That, by the way, is why the four living creatures of Chapter 4 sing “holy, holy, holy:” God is the holiest of all. So here, 666 means that human striving for divinity fails utterly and fully.
There’s something else to notice about the mark of the beast: people need it in order to buy and sell. In John’s day, this may have been a reference to the fact that the emperor’s image was on all the coins. For devout Jews, these coins were graven images. And because the emperor claimed to be divine, that makes a lot of sense even if you’re not a devout Jews. And of course, you can’t buy or sell without using those blasphemous coins. I think the economic aspect of the mark of the beast runs even deeper than that, however. The land-beast tries to get people to worship the sea-beast. We’ve already seen how the sea-beast represents human powers. And I’ve claimed that economics or money is the human force that seems most powerful to us. So it makes sense that the land-beast would deny access to the economic system for everyone who doesn’t want to play by its rules.
It’s crazy to see how well-known this concept of the “mark of the beast” has become. It’s so pervasive that people resist anything that seems to be a universal marking system, from Social Security numbers to microchip implants. If we’re being marked, it must be the mark of the beast. That’s the way the thinking seems to go. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Remember: Satan’s best plans are simply cheap knock-offs of God’s wonderful creativity. Satan didn’t invent the idea of marking people; he just took what God did and spun it on its head. To this day, devout Jews wear phylacteries on their foreheads and right wrists, in obedience to Deuteronomy 6:8’s injunction to write God’s law on your forehead and hands. The original “mark” is the word of God. And in Revelation 7:2-3, God marks the elect with his seal of blessing and protection. Marks can be used for both good and evil.
Notice the difference, however. God’s mark leads to everlasting blessing and protects you from the destruction of creation. The beast’s mark means that you can’t go shopping. Put in perspective like that, it seems pretty silly!
The passage calls for wisdom. We are called to see through the beast’s deception, and recognize God’s truth instead. And that’s the good news. The sea beast seems to be invincible, but he can be resisted. The land-beast tries to trick us, but we can figure him out.
posted by Rev. Peter de Vries, Old Union Presbyterian Church @ 12:27 PM
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