Revelation 13 Part 3
Revelation 13 ends with:
The Mark of the Beast
16And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
To recap, we have seen this beast would be a king who had lived, had died, and yet somehow lived. This king would be worshiped by the entire world, and a second beast resembling at least in part a lamb, would deceive the entire world into worshipping the king who lived, had died, and yet lived.
This false prophet would deceive many by false miracles and cause the 'IMAGE' of the beast, not the beast, but the 'IMAGE' of the beast to say things.
We know that from the beginning mankind has lied, spreading falsehoods against Yahuah, to corrupt both his image, and to corrupt his character.
Jeremiah 8 says (NASB):
8“How can you say, ‘We are wise,
And the law of Yahuah is with us’?
But behold, the lying pen of the scribes
Has made it into a lie.
And most of us have inheritted lies from our fathers, who inheritted lies from their fathers, who inheritted lies from their fathers...... and so forth as said in Jerimah 16 (NKJV):
“19.........Surely our fathers have inherited lies,
Worthlessness and unprofitable things.”
We know who the beast is. The only thing we have left to discover is his mark and 'calculate the sum of the beast'. The mark would be placed on the right hand or on the forehead. If I said would is the most common mark of Jesus, what would you say. To me the most obvious mark of Jesus would be the cross. Has christianity placed this mark on "believers" right hands and foreheads?
The answer is yes! As you can see to the right (or below if on mobile) the catholics still place the mark of "believers" forheads during ash Wednesday.
I plan to add more to this page later (or possibly on the next part) how this was required to buy or sell during the dark ages.
And his number is 666
By now you, and probably just about everyone you know has heard of the number 666. That numbers invokes fear in many people. I remember going through the sonic drive through with my mom when I was a kid. The lady at the window refused to take my mom's money because our total was $6.66. Clearly people view this number as an omen of sorts.
But would 'holding people down' and marking them with 666 fool anyone? Everyone knows of this number, and I actually wonder if many atheists would agree to be marked with 666 on their foreheads in order to buy or sell. They may not believe in the bible but I think many of them would get suspicious and feel pretty uneasy with marking 666 on their forehead. Yet many people have no problem taking the real beast's mark and placing it on their forehead during Ash Wednesday. Christians today also have no problem wearing the mark in the form of cross earings, cross pendants, crosses on shirts, crosses on jeans, backpacks, bill folds, or even marking their body, which is Yahuah's temple with a tattoo of a cross.
The cross is very important to Christians across the world today. Catholics are known to form the sign of the cross when they pray. Le's see what the Catholic website has to say about the sign of the cross.
What is the sign of the cross, and why do we make it?
Not all prayers are made with words. Prayers may also be made by gestures. Christians, like followers of all other religions, practically always pray by the position of the body—say, kneeling or standing—and of the arms and hands—for example, praying with hands outstretched or folded in front. Because we are both body and soul (a human being is not one or the other; a human being is both! We are not angels or simply spirits), we pray with both.
Now, all religions have gestures that express a devout attitude before the divine or heavenly beings they invoke, but the gesture that is most expressly Christian, and used only by Christians, is the sign of the cross. By making it, we profess the central truths of our faith: that God became one of us, with a human body and soul; that he died on the cross to save us
People have turn God into a man just like Paul rebuked people for doing in Romans 1:
21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man
And Yahuah could not be more clear that he was not a man NOR THE SON OF MAN!!!!
Numbers 23:
19 God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent
Yet Yahusha states he IS A MAN and THE SON OF MAN
Mark 16:
27For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.
So as christians would state that God became a man and died (BLASPHEMY!), true believers know better than to change the image of the uncorruptible God into the image of a man.
But remember....the cross is the beast's mark but NOT his number....... So, what about his number?
Well this is where the lying pen of the scribes have deceived many, and therefore the majority of the world has inheritted lies from their fathers.
In many Greek translations of Revelation 13:18 we read:
Greek NT: Stephanus Textus Receptus 1550
Ὧδε ἡ σοφία ἐστίν ὁ ἔχων τὸν νοῦν ψηφισάτω τὸν ἀριθμὸν τοῦ θηρίου ἀριθμὸς γὰρ ἀνθρώπου ἐστίν καὶ ὁ ἀριθμὸς αὐτοῦ χξς
If you don't read Greek, no worries. The only part you need to remember is what the three final letters look like.
χ - Chi, 600
ξ - Xi, 60
ς - Stigma, 6
Some translators chose to replace the letters of Chi, Xi, and Stigma with their numerical values. This is what has hidden the beast for so long, because we have been looking for the numbers 666 instead of the letters or symbol of the beast.
What is interesting is, when doing a simple search for 'Chi' on Bible Hub it returns the symbol of the beast.
STRONGS NT 5516: χξς
χξς, six hundred and sixty-six (chi Χ = 600; xi Ξ = 60; sigma ς' = 6) .......
The letters Chi, Xi, and Stigma tell a story. But before we get to that story, lets look at the picture to the right (or below if on mobile) of Jesus. At the left of the picture you will see the letters 'IC', which is the first and last letters of the word Jesus in Greek. At the top right of the picture you will see the letters 'XC', which are the first and last letters of the word 'christ'. If you look at the top right of the picture you will see the entire symbol of the beast that John warned about. The letters χξς. The letter is χ easy to see. Above it you will see the ξ laying on its side, and underneath the ξ and beside χ the you will see the letter ς (Stigma).
You may ask why the Stigma looks slightly different on the picture than it does as it is listed above. That is because many greek letters have had their appearance slowly changed over time. Enwikipedia states when searching for stigma:
In its handwritten forms, its shape changed.
Note: When pasting the way Stigma has changed over the years from enwikipedia there was some problems. So I have provided the excerpt to the side or you can click and read the following link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigma_(letter)
following the exerpt wiki continues to show how this letter was often used to write the number 6.
Originally called wau, it was called digamma in classical Greek and episemon during the Byzantine era. It was conflated with the στ ligature owing to the accidental similarities of their shapes. The association between the numeral 6 and the letter sequence στ became so strong that today, in Greece, the letter sequence ΣΤʹ or στʹ is often used in lieu of ϛ itself to write the number 6.
So the symbol of the beast (not number) is and as we can see portraits of Jesus contain this VERY symbol.
As a funny side note. When I searched for 'Greek letter stigma' the above photo was in the search results.
And as you can see from the above picture, the monogram
χξς
means Christ, on a stake (not cross), pierced. This is the idolatrous image worn on the necks of so many today.
I hope to wrap things up next week, where we can look into each letter of the symbol or monogram of the beast. When deciphering each letter we will see means Christ, Stake (Cross), Pierced.
But as a final thought, should we be looking at revelation to see if Yahuah's words will one day be fullfilled, or should we rejoice when reading revelation, fulling understanding that Yahuah's word's have been fullfilled. If you said the latter, then surely the book of revelation will cause your faith to grow, as you understand that Yahuah is fully in control, and he knows the beginning to the end, and announced these things long before they ever happened. Just like people could not recognize the christ even when he was staring them in the face, people today do not recognize 'the anti-christ', even while staring it in the face.