Tuesday, September 16, 2014

The seal of the God or the mark of beast

Revelation 13:11-18
Second beast coming out of the earth. He deceived the inhabitants of the earth.
No one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.
This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666.
The second beast - the pseudo-lamb which speak with Satan's voice - is state-sanctioned, state-dominated religion(政府批准、主導的). Identify it as the 'false prophet'
It apes the real thing and misdirects people's worship.
Refusal to worship costs some their lives, others their livelihood.
For John, the two beasts were the Roman Empire and emperor-worship, But every age has its equivalents.
The Mark indicating ownership, and acceptance of the beast's authority. People bear either the 'mark' of the world or the 'seal' of God - and it shows.
The number: Many have tried to identify an individual, since the letters of the alphabet doubled as numbers in ancient times.  'Nero Caesar' is the modern favourite, 'but to get this result we must use the Greek form of the Latin name, transliterated into Hebrew characters, and with a variant spelling'.
The key may, rather, lie in the symbolism of the numbers, 6 being ' a human number', the number of humanity. No matter how many times repeated it always falls short of 7, God's number of completeness, perfection. No matter how powerful the 'beast', it is no God.
Why?
False prophet has some symbol of the lamb, with power in the world but it is no God, he always short than God.
What mark I have? It is the seal of the Lord, Jesus Christ gave me.
God's people has wisdom to count the number of beast, which is triple humanity character, the prophet, the name, the power.
How?
Let us keep the seal of the Lamb, for our God is the savior and I can stronger when I am walking with Him.




No comments: