I’ve hesitated to write this article because I can feel the guffaws coming. But those guffaws are now quieted by masks which do far better at muzzling chortles than germs, so I now care less than I used to. This is the thesis: mask directives are an eschatological dry-run for the Mark of the Beast, and if you don’t think so, you’re insanely naive.
FANATICISM ASIDE
You can use the search function at PNP and discover that ‘Mark of the Beast’ has only been the subject of a few articles out of tens of thousands, and each one makes a mockery of hyper-charismatic snake oil salesmen who use the topic as a sales pitch for their venereal disease elixir. Those who see the Mark of the Beast in every news story or technological advance have received nothing but derision from me for their prophetic sensationalism and failed soothsayery. Additionally, you’ll find that I have always instructed readers to “make eschatology the caboose of your theology and not the engine.” Again, I’ve done nothing but roll my eyes at End Times timelines behind the pulpit, Late Great Planet Earth-type prophecies, and the endless parade of “here’s how [fill-in-the-blank news story] fits into Matthew 24.
I am a historic pre-millennialist, but most wouldn’t know it because I speak of it that rarely. Indeed, I believe that Jesus is returning to rule the nations, raise the dead, and judge in righteousness. But how those things will unfold I place into a tertiary camp, so long as we can admit full-preterists are heretics, post-millennialists ought to chill just a bit on Reconstruction, amillennialists should stop being so smug (just saying), and dispensational pre-millennialists get weird with their charts and graphs (I’m looking at you, John Hagee). Did I offend everyone yet? Anyway…
The point is, I’m hardly the eschatology-hound you might ordinarily like making fun of. And I’m certainly not the guy calling Barack Obama the anti-christ or arguing that the locusts of Abaddon’s pit are murder hornets.
STILL, RFID TRACKING CHIPS FREAK ME OUT A BIT
Granted, I can’t help but share some of the eccentricities common among pre-millennialists. Ideas that I find particularly worrisome are standard fare (not just among premillennialists, but plenty of civil libertarians as well). You know, stuff like RFID tracking chips put into dogs and employees (the state of Michigan just banned mandatory chips in employees, so Christians aren’t the only ones creeped out by it) are especially concerning.
For that matter, I don’t like the Internet of Things (IoT), self-driving cars, cashless societies (like coin shortages that happen right after the federal reserve announced the ‘digital dollar’), tracking devices masquerading as phones, the NSA knowing what you ate for breakfast, asking Amazon or Google to eavesdrop in your home just for the convenience of having a ‘virtual assistant’ tell you the weather or turn on your music (PS they’re also storing every word you say), or television sets that watch you more than you watch them.
I’ll admit it: my view of the End Times from the Bible gives me healthy skepticism of these things, but not irrationally. I cover my cams when they’re not in use (because Zuckerberg does). But I also have most (but not all) of the conveniences listed above (I also know the first thing to throw out my car window when I go on the lam). I’m not a Neo-Luddite, and neither am I against all vaccines, nor assume that 5G causes erectile disfunction or that chlorine necessarily makes frogs gay.
At the same time, we have to recognize that the things exposed by Edward Snowden aren’t science fiction. Anyone who isn’t worried about some of these things is foolish, just as anyone who believes all of them is crazy. But as Christians who believe what the Bible says about things that are coming, we have an extra reason to be concerned about our evolving world, even above and beyond that of regular civil libertarians.
YEAH, I BELIEVE ENDS TIMES PROPHECIES. DEAL WITH THAT REAL QUICK.
Yes, I believe that the Bible gives us a vague but accurate picture of what the world is heading into. These aren’t extrapolations of Scripture like seers peer into chicken gizzards and tea leaves. These are explicit prophecies in the Bible with explicit guarantees that these things will explicitly happen before the return of Christ.
So without apology, I believe that Jesus is bodily returning, establishing a thousand-year-long kingdom in Jerusalem, turning Commies into his footstools, raising the dead, and unpacking in his own good order the cumulative end of the world as we know it.
If that seems strange, consider that I also believe God became man, took on flesh when he was conceived of the Holy Ghost, was born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, died as a substitute for sinners, and rose again from the dead.
And secularists believe men came from chimpanzees and Marxism might actually work this time…we all believe crazy things. My beliefs just happen to be true. Anywhoo…
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT THE MARK OF THE BEAST?
The gist is this: Prior to the return of Christ, his followers are going to become increasingly unpopular and the world will grow increasingly wicked. It will be characterized by unruly children, self-centered vanity (food selfie, much?), homosexuality, and general ungodliness. Although all ages have had these sins to varying degrees, the generation before Christ returns will actually take pride in them.
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.6 For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
2 Timothy 3:1-7
This will be accomplished by incredible technology that allows the comings-and-goings of people to be micromanaged and they will be excluded from buying or selling things in the marketplace. This is to accomplish a “soft extermination,” basically starving out believers or forcing them to assimilate.
16 And 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:17 And 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.
Revelation 13:16-17
After it’s clear from muscling non-conformists into a corner by restricting their access to the market, a global, powerful government will then begin a “hard extermination,” rounding up believers and murdering them like dogs in a persecution worse than anything the world has ever seen (including the Holocaust).
9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake…21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
Matthew 24:9,21
This will, in part, be possible by some kind of contraption – whether natural or supernatural – that will detect believing non-conformists who have refused to identify with the global grand poobah (known as the anti-christ) and it will sound an alarm, alerting people that an ‘unauthorized person’ is nearby.
15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.
Revelation 13:15
You can figure out how that will be done, because it doesn’t leave much to the imagination in a period in which we’re talking about “health passports” scanning temperatures of passing crowds of people, putting everyone into a facial recognition database (even liberals in America’s cities are scared over this one and have started to ban the tech), and are micro-chipping Lassie. I’m not a prophet or the son of one, but I surmise it will be one of these things, a combination thereof, or something eerily similar. In one way or another, those little images are going to scream out and snitch, something that John was seeing in his revelation and trying to convey to us with his 1st Century vocabulary.
And when all this fails to round up believers for the gas chamber, people will snitch on each other. Even family members will turn one another in for not conforming to the government regulations.
“Now brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death.
Matthew 10:21
SO YEAH, THE MARK OF THE BEAST IS A REAL THING, IT WILL HAPPEN, AND IT WILL HAPPEN JUST LIKE WE ARE NOW SEEING
No, masks aren’t the Mask Mark of the Beast. But if you don’t think this is a dry-run social experiment (whether organized by men or of the devil) for that eventuality, you’re insanely naive.
In more than twenty states, you can’t buy or sell without wearing a mask. Stores have up signs that they will snitch on you to the authorities. Health departments have created snitching hotlines for your acquaintances who aren’t doing it. Departments of Family Services have created policies about how to steal your kids if you don’t comply.
And worst of all, virtue-signaling evangelical leaders are demanding that you wear a mask to show your love for Jesus or if you want to “have an economy” (like Beardy McGoatFace over at Wheaton College, see below).
These jackhats will 100% deliver you up to the councils and tribunals when that great day comes, and they’ll do so in the name of Jesus. How Stetzer could tweet such a thing without a single thought about the eschatological implication tells me he probably doesn’t believe in eschatology at all (unless it’s some kind of Marxist utopia he’s betting on).
From what I ascertain from history and human nature, the chance of the Mark of the Beast being branded “Mark of the Beast” will be next to zero. No doubt, it will be predicated upon some kind of appeal to public safety or the public good. It will likely be called something like Doubleplusgood Public Health for Happy Homes Initiative #3. For citizens to snitch on citizens as the Bible prophesies, they’ll have to be convinced that you not having the Mark of the Beast will somehow kill them.
So, no. I’m not going to wear the mask.
These mask mandates are nothing but practice for things to come. It is a testing and trying of government power, and right now it seems almost omnipotent.
If they are practicing for things to come, will you? Will you resist this? Will you practice saying no? Or will you buckle under the slightest pressure to grab that Snickers bar for the low-low price of your bodily autonomy?
Jesus is coming. And so is the Mark of the Beast. Wake up Christians. You mustn’t slumber.
