Page 12 - The Mark of the Beast

The choice of words that the apostle John employed reveal that what is spoken of is
not something superficial, such as taking a marker and writing something on a person’s
forehead, but it is permanent, indelible and deeply formed. John is describing two types of
people. One group has been altered until they bear the image of the beast nature, and the
other group has been transformed until they bear the image of the divine nature. These
images are so deeply formed that it is as if a sculptor has chiseled an image out of stone and
the image is permanently set.
The scriptures employ similar imagery in other places, for Paul writes:

Ephesians 2:10
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Yahshua for good works...

The word rendered as “workmanship” is the Greek “poiema” and this word speaks of
something that has been fashioned into a masterpiece. What is it that God seeks to fashion?
As the first chapter of this book reveals, God determined that man should be formed in His
image, after His likeness, and when John writes that there are a group of overcomers who
have the names of the Father and Son engraved in their foreheads he is indicating that there
will be a firstfruits company of believers who come to a fulness of expression of the image
of God. There will be those who are full stature saints who have attained to the image of
Christ (Ephesians 4).
We read earlier about the terrible judgments of God to be poured out upon those who
receive the mark of the beast. God’s wrath comes upon the children of disobedience
(Colossians 3:6), and this mark of the beast is merely a sign that points to men and women
who have given themselves wholly over to disobedience. They have sold themselves to serve
the natural appetites. Their god is their belly and their end is destruction. Those who receive
a physical mark will be those who have already been stamped with the spiritual mark of the
beast nature. It is those who will trade the blessings of God away in order to satisfy their
belly, imitating the error modeled by Esau.
In this book we will explore God’s desire for men to bear His image and His likeness,
and we will also examine the enemy’s plan to form within man his own corrupted beast
nature. As the end of the age approaches we will see both of these plans coming to a fulness
as the light seen in the overcomers grows brighter, and the darkness of a fallen world grows
darker. Both the divine nature and the beast nature will come to fuller expressions until one
group is sealed in their foreheads as being a mature expression of the divine image of God,
while a much larger group are sealed in their foreheads as being a mature expression of the
beast nature.
The church at large does not realize the peril of the moment. The church of this hour
is depicted as a great whore riding upon a beast, and this is but another sign given by our
Lord to give the wise understanding of the days we live in. Rather than subduing and ruling
over the beast nature, the church has made an unholy alliance with the beast. The sinful
flesh is protected by the church, and the preaching of the disciple’s cross has been so
diluted, and in many cases removed, that even the grossest of sins are tolerated and
embraced by the harlot.
It is my hope that in reading this book that you will begin to understand the peril of
the hour, and the deep deception that has fallen upon the church. We live in an age of
apostasy where sound doctrine is rarely tolerated, and men and women prefer to focus upon
teachings which are unsound. Many are at risk of coming to a full expression of the beast