[Here are some of the questions I get asked and bullets which get fired at me on this subject. I have to say that this is my final post about this matter as there is nothing more to say. I have learned how stubbornness is a feature of many professing Christians’ response to rational and faithfully-formulated Bible teaching. So many secular ideas have been co-opted into the churches today. Anyway, the below Questions and Answers session will take you about 15 minutes to read. I hope it all makes sense].

QU: “I quite accept that salvation is a spiritual ‘mark’, but I’d still feel uneasy about accepting the said chip or whatever. Would you take that mark? I don’t know… there’s so much stigma attached to it”.

ANS: “I have to ask ‘Would I take what mark? The chip?’ That isn’t a mark, at least not in terms of the meaning of the word in chapter 13 of the Book of Revelation. But of course I would refuse any digital interference. “My body, my choice!” 🙂 Or, rather, “My body belongs to God, so just lay off it, you interfering nanny-state reprobates!” 🧐 The whole world is moving towards the implantation of chips in heads or elsewhere and possibly an ‘internet of people’ as well as an ‘internet of things’ because “humans are hackable”, according to Transhumanists (which I elaborated on in detail in “The Serpent & the Cross”). Transhumanism is the endgame of AI, which even Donald Trump and his tech-bro sidekicks are in the forefront of creating (though the deceived MAGA cult has not comprehended that yet!). Naturally, I would not comply with having chips and the like put in me. But that is not the same as refusing to have the ‘mark of the beast’ for I will already not have that mark. The mark of the beast means giving allegiance and paying homage to the satanic world-system as epitomised in a rabidly antichristian state, such as was in ancient Rome and will be in the time of the Antichrist, which I will elaborate on in another answer below.

I will say this though: By limiting the mark of the beast to a mere physical artefact, people are undermining evangelism. For we are not primarily to be warning people about how they must not queue up for a chip but rather that that they must give their allegiance to Christ and be totally His rather than giving their allegiance to Satan — warning them about being invisibly ‘marked’ by him, selling their souls to him, being his completely. Our job and role as disciples of Christ is to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that Christ has commanded us (Matthew 28:19-20). That’s it! That’s our job. Being a slave to Satan, having his ‘mark’, giving one’s allegiance to the godless pagan diktats of beast-government, bowing down to and kowtowing to its demands that we renounce Christ and worship its idols is what we are to reject and instead embrace Christ uncompromisingly. That is how one avoids having the ‘mark of the beast’”.

QU: “It says that all will be forced to ‘take’ the mark therefore it must be an actual physical thing and you are therefore wrong. Also, it says that as a result of taking the mark they will not be able to buy or sell therefore it must obviously be an actual physical thing”.

ANS: “What is the “it says” to which you refer? Do you mean the Bible? Okay then, let’s crack this wide open linguistically. A literal translation of that verse from the Koine Greek is as follows: “And the second beast caused all people, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, that it [i.e. the beast] should give them a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark—the name of the beast or the number of its name”. Nothing there about anyone “taking” anything or anyone being “forced”. There is causation and there is the “giving” of a mark. Why do you insist that it should be a physical thing? This ‘mark’ is being directly compared to another ‘mark’ just three verses later which is a spiritual thing. One does not deliberately and directly compare two things which have no true correlation. The correlation is in the fact that they are both spiritual. They cannot be physical because having the Lamb’s name and His Father’s name written on our foreheads is plainly not physical. So why do you argue for the other ‘marking’ to be physical? Here is a table of comparison between the two ‘marks’ which John offers here within three verses of each other. (Remember the chapter divisions are a later addition from the beginning of the 13th century and were not in the original manuscripts). I have put in corresponding colours those elements which are in direct comparison:

These are the elements directly contrasted: In black type there is a “beast” (authorized by Satan, Revelation 13:4) and there is a Lamb (sent by the Father, John 7:28-29; 12:45). It is the “second beast” which is involved because that is the religious/philosophical element of ‘beastdom’ (the first beast is the governmental aspect) and having the ‘mark of the beast’ is a religious/philosophical allegiance to Satan’s whole world-system via the beast. Then in red type there is the 144,000 symbolising the Lord’s people from the Old and New Testament times. symbolised by the twelve tribes with the twelve apostles and the symbolic cubic dimensional principle of the New Jerusalem as shown in the penultimate chapter of the Book of Revelation 21:10-17. I showed how that works in this equation:

(12 x 12) x (10 x 10 x 10)
= 144 x 1,000
= 144,000

The 144,000 is a symbolic figure denoting all the people of God (take note Jehovah‘s Witnesses!), His children, His saints from before and after the coming of Christ. This 144,000 (the elect people of God) is contrasted with the other text which is in red type, the “all people”, the mass of people from all walks of life, which is what is denoted in the words “small and great, rich and poor, free and slave”. This same way of denoting the mass of people from all walks of life is used on two other occasions in the Book of Revelation referring to those on whom the judgement comes in all its horror (Revelation 19:18; 20:12). In blue type is the contrast between the ‘mark’ on the right hand or forehead for the beast-people and the name written on the foreheads of the people of the Lamb and the Father — both very obviously being symbolic of ownership and allegiance to either Satan (via the beast) or Almighty God (via the Lamb). In green type we actually have the two ‘marks’ explained. The mark on the left side of the text image above is called “the name of the beast” and the one on the right is “the Lamb’s name and the Father’s name”. So the ‘mark of the beast’ is the name of the beast. What is its name? We are not specifically told an actual name here but we are told that it is the equivalent of “the number of its name”. The number given is 666. As I discussed in the original article, it is clear that the number seven symbolises the idea of Divine completion and the perfection of the Divine plan. Then also here in our text, we are told that 666 is “man’s number” — the number of Man, the number corresponding to humankind. Exactly so. 666 is the number of humanity. So why is the ‘mark of the beast’ described as being the number of Man, 666? Because those so marked fall short of 777, the number of God, and always will. All the problems of humanity go back to the satanic initiation in Eden when Satan falsely said that our first parents could be like God (Genesis 3:5). This is why disciples of Christ are referred to as having the name of the Lamb and of the Father. They are marked (so to speak) with the name of God, whereas those who are under the power of Satan and beholden to his beastly world-system are marked out merely as 666 people. Satan has always had pretensions of being God (7) but he can never be so and will always fall short (6). (There is a trinitarian aspect to 666 and 777 which I discuss in the original article). In the same way, his followers are branded, marked, stamped as being mere humans who cannot be “partakers in the divine nature”, a glory reserved for all the saints (cf. 2 Peter 1:4).

I hope that having apprised you of this linguistic analysis, you will now understand the true nature of the ‘mark of the beast’, which is clearly a spiritual branding of those who throw their lot in with the satanic world-system of the beast. We are dealing with all symbols here. Dumb literalism and a refusal to acknowledge symbolism where it clearly exists has caused so many problems in Bible exposition, especially in regard to the Book of Revelation. Just like with the thousand years in Revelation 20:1-2. The Abyss, the dragon, the ancient serpent, the key and the chain are all plainly symbolic but suddenly the 1000 years has to be literal, according to many. Dumb literalism par excellence. The scourge of the would-be Revelation interpreter! Please consult my commentary on the Book of Revelation to see how the symbolic 1000 years is plainly to be interpreted. (Hint: it refers to the Gospel Age. We are in that symbolic 1000 years right now! 🙂 That is why we have been able to preach the Gospel since the ascension of Christ and have not been slaughtered en masse by Satan!). [For eBook format, see https://diakrisis-project.com/2025/03/12/second-edition-of-the-essential-apocalypse-is-now-available-as-an-e-book-in-pdf-format/ or for paperback format, see here: https://diakrisis-project.com/2024/10/06/the-second-edition-paperback-of-the-essential-apocalypse-is-now-ready-for-purchase-delivery/  ”.

QU: “Okay, now I can agree that it is a spiritual thing… but it is also physical too!”

ANS: “Well done! You have conceded that the ‘mark of the beast’ is a spiritual thing but you still have to cling onto it being a physical thing such as a microchip, etc. It cannot possibly be both, for all the reasons that I have outlined. If the ‘mark’ signifies total allegiance to Satan and his beastly world-system then that is all it takes for a person to be damned. There is no need whatsoever for a physical mark leading to damnation. That just does not make any sense”.

QU: “It’s you who is the heretic as you’re going against the teaching of the church here. Everyone knows that the mark of the beast will be a physical mark like a chip. You are undermining vital teaching of which people need to be aware so they do not take this mark. It is a matter of the greatest urgency to identify it or we will not be able to buy or sell”.

ANS: “Teaching of the church? I have to laugh. Since when? From the early church Fathers onwards the idea of the ‘mark of the beast’ has been that it was deliberately placed by John as a direct parody of the sealing of the saints which comes just three verses after that (Rev.14:1). The notion that the mark of the beast is a microchip is a novelty which first emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, coinciding with the development of barcode/microchip technology and has been increasingly latched onto by sensationalist people (professing ‘Christians’ and non-Christians) who have no understanding of biblical symbolism and who have never studied deeply the Book of Revelation, or they have studied it but through a warped filter such as dispensationalism, Preterism, Futurism, or Scofield’s Bible!

What is so often overlooked is that the events of chapter 13 are not merely confined to some far off future date but are instead revealing the consequences of what is described in chapter 12 which shows that the ascension of Christ (verse 5) gave rise to a massive angelic battle, as a result of which Satan was cast out of heaven to the earth (verses 7-9), whereupon he began to wage an age-long terrible war against the saints (verses 13-17). One of the outcomes of that terrible war is the concoction of the beast-system of governance which persecutes and liquidates Christians. John, the author of the Book of Revelation, had first-hand experience of that beast-system with the Roman state, which made life very difficult for Christians by preventing them from normal business (as in Revelation 13:17, being able to buy or sell) and trying to force them to renounce their faith, feeding them to lions and other wild animals, burning them alive as street lights, threatening them to sacrifice to the gods of Rome and even to worship the emperor of Rome. Remember that the chapter numbers were added later and were not part of the original manuscripts. What is being described in chapter 13 is the fruit of what is in chapter 12 and it applies to the entire age since the ascension of Christ but coming to a climax at the end of the age with the advent of the Antichrist. So that when the whole beast system is described in chapter 13, it is not just referring to the Antichrist at the end of the age. So many people make the mistake of thinking that ‘the beast’ only represents the Antichrist in the far-off future. This is not the case at all. Just as I showed in my commentary on the Book of Revelation how the seals are not something that are opened solely towards the end of the age but they apply to what happens all through the age, to a greater or lesser degree, though climaxing at the end of the age. So it is also with the beast system of antichristian governance. The whole beast system was just as applicable in John’s time when he wrote his Book of the Apocalypse. That is why he could see it so clearly. He himself had been exiled to life in the rough on the island of Patmos as a result of his faith (Revelation 1:9). The Roman Empire was a manifestation of ‘the beast’ every bit as much as the Antichrist system will be a manifestation of ‘the beast’. This is where both Preterists (who believe that the prophecies of the Book of Revelation have already been fulfilled) and Futurists (who believe that the prophecies of the Book of Revelation have yet to be fulfilled in the future) go off the track. Many of the events described in the Book of Revelation are not all merely in the future (unless they very obviously reference the day of judgement; neither are they all merely in the past. They apply to the entire age but increase in intensity as the end of the age approaches. One cannot treat the Book of Revelation as if it is merely a manual for Endtimes afficionados. It is made up of a series of tableaux, vignettes, scenes, in which the proceedings of this age are presented from different standpoints. (In my commentary, I outlined six of these tableaux/vignettes). When one approaches the Book of Revelation one needs to have a bird’s eye view of the whole of history. The ‘mark of the beast’ has been taken as some solely distant future incident because of a complete failure to take the book as a whole. Sure, the Book of Revelation is a book of prophecy. But you have to realize that prophecy is not just about fortune-telling, about telling what’s going to happen in the future. It is also about ‘telling it how it is’. Those are the twin aspects of Prophecy: Forthtelling and foretelling. The Book of Revelation does both of these”.

QU: “What you are teaching is downright dangerous. I want to make sure that I watch out for the mark of the beast and warn others not to take it. And so should you!”

ANS: Oh dear! Don’t you get it? If you are a disciple of Christ, you have the Lamb’s and the Father’s name written into you so you do not have to concern yourself one little bit about the ‘mark of the beast’ as it does not apply to you but describes those who are under the power of Satan and who have given their allegiance to his beastly world-system. If you want to prevent unbelievers from having the ‘mark of the beast’ (i.e. from giving their allegiance to Satan and his beastly world-system), then jolly-well preach the Gospel to them and encourage them to have the Lamb’s and Father’s name “written” on them instead of trying to spook them unnecessarily about microchips!”

Here endeth the Question and Answer posting. I hope that you have found it helpful.

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2025
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

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