Revelation 13:15-17 - The second beast was given power

13:15

Psalm 115 mocks idols and in 115:5 says “they have mouths but cannot speak, eyes but cannot see”. The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast so it could speak! And those who refused to worship the image were to be put to death. 2 Thess 2:11 speaks of God sending “a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie”. In Matt 24 Jesus warns that there will be many false prophets, and “the love of most will grow cold”. We should appreciate the seriousness and gravity of the Bible’s teaching on these matters.

13:16,17

We now come to three verses which have produced a significant amount of silliness and little light. I will try and avoid introducing any further silliness, but you can be the judge of the whether or not I succeed! The first item is the receiving of a mark without which one could not buy anything. There are various theories about chips being inserted inside us, and no doubt about the covid vaccine. The first thing to note about the mark is that there are two earlier positive references to a mark. The first is in Ezekiel 9:4-6 where the mark was put on the foreheads of the faithful and was a mark of protection. And Rev 7:3 refers to putting a seal on those who are faithful. So marks in themselves are not wrong. The significance of the forehead and hands was probably that the mark was visible, this could count against an embedded chip. What seems a more likely meaning is that people had to offer sacrifices to Caesar in order to function fully in society. Today in increasing parts of society you have to pay homage to the LGBTQ or BLM agenda in order to be fully accepted (or even accepted at all). This seems a more likely meaning of these verses. The issue is whether or not we bow down to the beast, to the ways of the world.