The Seal of God

The Seal of God

The Mark of the Beast

In Revelation 14:9-10, God gives us one of the most fearful warnings in all of scripture.

Rev 14:9-10
9 And another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, "If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or upon his hand,
10 he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

There have been endless efforts to identify the mark of the beast. Most recently, in this new age of technology, many people have speculated that this mark might be a bar code etched by laser into our foreheads or hands. Others have suggested that we might receive a micro computer chip implanted in our foreheads or our hands that could be programmed with all of our personal information, like identification, bank account balances, employment information, etc. These speculations are made partially because of what we read in Revelation 13: 16, 17.

Rev 13:16-17
16 And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand, or on their forehead,
17 and he provides that no one should be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.

The people who make these speculations argue that such a bar code or micro computer chip could be used to control whether we are able to buy or sell in an age of automatic teller machines and bar code scanners at checkout lines. These technologies might in fact be employed in such ways. However, even if they are, could a bar code or a computer chip be the mark of the beast? Instead of idle speculation, we need to look to the Bible for an explanation of this mark. Take a look at the text in Revelation 14:9-10 again. Notice that the mark of the beast has to do with worship. This is our first clue that a micro chip or a bar code cannot be the mark of the beast.

Rev 14:9-10
9 And another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, "If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or upon his hand ,
10 he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

Notice also that the mark is placed in the forehead or the hand. Revelation talks about another mark that is placed in people's foreheads - the Seal of God.

Rev 7:1-3
1     After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, so that no wind should blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree.
2     And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God; and he cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea,
3     saying, "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the bond-servants of our God on their foreheads ."

The prophet Ezekiel saw essentially the same vision as John about the Seal of God. Ezekiel referred to this seal as a mark.

Ezek 9:3-6
3     Then the glory of the God of Israel went up from the cherub on which it had been, to the threshold of the temple. And He called to the man clothed in linen at whose loins was the writing case.
4     And the LORD said to him, "Go through the midst of the city, even through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations which are being committed in its midst."
5     But to the others He said in my hearing, "Go through the city after him and strike; do not let your eye have pity, and do not spare.
6     "Utterly slay old men, young men, maidens, little children, and women, but do not touch any man on whom is the mark; and you shall start from My sanctuary." So they started with the elders who were before the temple.

Actually, although Satan is the father of lies, he is really not very creative. Satan's mode of operations is to take something that God has created to be good and pervert it to be bad. One example is love. Physical intimacy between a husband and a wife is one of the most beautiful gifts that God gave to the human race. But Satan has taken God's good gift, added selfishness, and perverted it into lust. Intimacy without love is just lust -something hollow, shallow and meaningless. There are an endless number of examples. Take something as simple as grape juice. It was given to us by God. It tastes good; it is refreshing; and it is full of nutritional value that helps your body grow stronger and fight disease. Compare that to grape flavor powdered drink mix. It looks similar and tastes very much the same, but it has virtually no nutritional value and enough processed sugar to actually suppress your immune system for several hours.

Satan has a counterfeit for every good thing God created. And remember that the best lie is the one that contains the most truth. The more closely the false resembles the true, the more likely people are to be deceived.

The mark of the beast and the seal of God are just such a matched pair. The Seal of God is a good gift that God has given to His people. The mark of the beast is a Satan's counterfeit, which he uses to deceive people. I think that as we look into the Bible and identify the Seal of God, the mark of the beast will become obvious.

Remember that both the mark of the beast and the Seal of God are placed in the forehead or the hand. Parallel verses in Revelation show us what these marks represent.

Rev 14:1
1 And I looked, and behold, the Lamb was standing on Mount Zion, and with Him one hundred and forty-four thousand, having His name and the name of His Father written on their foreheads.

Rev 22:3-4
3 And there shall no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His bond-servants shall serve Him;
4 and they shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads.

Rev 13:16-17
16 And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand, or on their forehead,
17 and he provides that no one should be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name.

The Seal of God is the name of Jesus and God the Father! The mark of the beast is the name of Satan! It is important to understand that in the Bible a name represents character. A person's name told something about their character. For instance the name Satan means "adversary" in Hebrew and "accuser" in Greek. The different names for God are almost endless in the Bible. The name Jesus means "God who saves". Emanuel means "God with us". Therefore, both the mark of the beast and the Seal of God are, in some way, a reflection of the character of Satan and the character of God in their respective followers. Revelation indicates that at the end of the age, at Jesus return, everyone will have one mark or the other - either the mark of the beast or the Seal of God. There will be no middle ground. You will either be a servant of God or a servant of Satan.

The Bible also indicates that the mark in the hand represents our works and the mark in the forehead represents our minds or our understanding. (See Eccl 9:10, and Hebrews 8:10). Somehow, then, the Seal of God is a reflection of God's character in our understanding. The mark of the beast is a reflection of Satan's character in one's understanding or one's works.

In the case of the people of God, we are primarily sealed with the Holy Spirit. Note that when the Bible talks about our hearts, it means our minds or our affections, not our physical heart. Prov 23:7 tells us "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he." We think with our minds, not our physical hearts.

2 Cor 1:21-22
21 Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God,
22 who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge.

Eph 4:30
30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

As we yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit, He changes our attitudes and those changed attitudes reveal themselves in our actions.

Rom 8:4-5
4 in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit .
5 For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.

Gal 5:16
16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.
(See also Gal 5:17-26)

Yes, the Seal of God is god's character revealed in our thoughts and our actions. However, the Bible actually makes it more specific than that. We find the key in Deuteronomy. The book of Deuteronomy is really just a summary of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. Chapters 1-4 tell about Israel's wanderings in the wilderness after the exodus from Egypt. It highlights how God had led and provided for them. Chapter 5 restates the Ten Commandments. Chapters 6-8 are admonitions, warnings, and promises of God associated with obeying or disobeying His laws. Chapters 9 & 10 tell of Israel's disobedience and of how the tablest containing the Ten Commandments were broken and then replaced. Chapters 12 and onward begin to reiterate the Sanctuary laws and civil ordinances. The interesting part is in Chapter 6. Just after God restates the Ten Commandments, He emphasizes the underlying principle of the Commandments. Look at how God describes the Ten Commandments to His people.

Deut 6:4-9
4     "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!
5     "And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
6     "And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart;|
7     and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.
8     "And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.
9     "And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

This passage tells us that the Ten Commandments are a reflection of the love of God in our hearts, and that they were to be as a mark on the forehead and the hand!! Obedience of the Ten Commandments is a visible sign of being sealed with the Holy Spirit!!! Obedience of the Ten Commandments is the visible Seal of God.

Isa 8:16,20
16 Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples.
20 To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn.

Deut 11:18-22
18     "You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead .
19     "And you shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up.
20     "And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates,
21     so that your days and the days of your sons may be multiplied on the land which the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens remain above the earth.
22     "For if you are careful to keep all this commandment which I am commanding you, to do it, to love the LORD your God , to walk in all His ways and hold fast to Him;

Heb 8:10
10 "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their minds, and I will write them upon their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

God only refers to two sets of commandments in this way - binding them on the forehead and hand. We just read here about the Ten Commandments. The other situation God refers to in this manner is the Passover. The Passover was the day God delivered Israel out of in Egypt.

Exod 12:6-7, 11-13
6     'And you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight.
7     'Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.
11     'Now you shall eat it in this manner: with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste-- it is the LORD'S Passover.
12     'For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments-- I am the LORD.
13     'And the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

Look at God's instruction to Israel regarding the institution of the Passover feast.

Exod 13:9, 16
9 "And it shall serve as a sign to you on your hand , and as a reminder on your forehead, that the law of the LORD may be in your mouth; for with a powerful hand the LORD brought you out of Egypt.
16 "So it shall serve as a sign on your hand, and as phylacteries on your forehead, for with a powerful hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt."

This next point is very important. Revelation identifies the Seal of God as being the name of God in the forehead. There are two institutions that God identifies in this exact same way in the Old Testament - the Ten Commandments and the Passover. The Passover represents our deliverance from to sin. Jesus was our Passover lamb and He was crucified on Passover. The Passover represents the character of Jesus as our SAVIOR. The underlying principle of the Ten Commandments is love to God and love to our fellow man (Matt 22:36-40, Deut 6:5, Lev 19:18). Obedience to the Ten Commandments represents the Character of Jesus as our LORD. Jesus must be both our LORD and SAVIOR.

John 14:15
15 "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.

Rom 6:16-18
16     Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness ?
17     But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed,
18     and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness .

The Ten Commandments and the Passover are symbols of Jesus as our LORD and SAVIOR. They are both referred to as being bound on the forehead and hand (also the heart and as blood on the doorpost). The Ten Commandments and the Passover are the Seal of God!!

But this is where it gets really interesting. There is one institution, and only one, that God identifies as a sign or symbol of both the Ten Commandments and the Passover. This institution is specifically identified in the context of the Ten Commandments as representing God's deliverance from Egypt, or the Passover.

Deut 5:12-15
12     'Observe the sabbath day to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you.
13     'Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
14     but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God ; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you.
15     'And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day.

The Sabbath of the Fourth Commandment is a memorial of the Passover!!! No other institution represents both the Ten Commandments and the Passover! No other institution points to Jesus as both our SAVIOR and LORD! No other institution is specifically identified as being a sign between God and His people! The Sabbath is the Seal of God!!!

Exod 31:13, 16-18
13     "But as for you, speak to the sons of Israel, saying, 'You shall surely observe My sabbaths; for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you.
16     'So the sons of Israel shall observe the sabbath, to celebrate the sabbath throughout their generations as a perpetual covenant.'
17     "It is a sign between Me and the sons of Israel forever ; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day He ceased from labor, and was refreshed."
18     And when He had finished speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, He gave Moses the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written by the finger of God.

Ezek 20:10-12
10     "So I took them out of the land of Egypt and brought them into the wilderness.
11     "And I gave them My statutes and informed them of My ordinances, by which, if a man observes them, he will live.
12     "And also I gave them My sabbaths to be a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD who sanctifies them.

Ezek 20:19-20
19 'I am the LORD your God; walk in My statutes, and keep My ordinances, and observe them.
20 'And sanctify My sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between Me and you, that you may know that I am the LORD your God .'

Exod 20:8-11
8     "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9     "Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
10     but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you.
11     "For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.

The Sabbath is an outward manifestation of the Seal of God. The Bible only identifies one day as the Sabbath day - Saturday. This is an undisputed fact among theologians. If the seventh day Sabbath is the Seal of God, what do you think the mark of the beast could be?

The mark of the beast is a counterfeit of the Seal of God. It may look and feel like the Seal of God, but it lacks the underlying power. Observing Sunday as the sabbath is a purely human tradition, without any Biblical basis. Just as lust is like true intimacy that lacks the love, Sunday is just like the true Sabbath, but it lacks God's special blessing.

Gen 2:2-3
2 And by the seventh day God completed His work which He had done; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.
3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

The true issue is not a day, but worship and obedience!!!

Mark 7:7-8
7 'But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.'
8 "Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men."

Please note this fact! Revelation only speaks of the mark of the beast and the Seal of God in context of the very last days of human history, just before Jesus returns. The Sunday/Sabbath issue only takes on this significance in context of last day events. Many pure hearted Christians now keep Sunday as their holy day. Sunday only takes on the status of the mark of the beast if the truth about the Sabbath is fully understood and then rejected. The real issue is not a day - the real issue is obedience and authority. Whose authority will you acknowledge in your life? Is Jesus your Lord and Savior? Will you forsake the traditions of man and keep the commandments of God? God only holds us accountable for how we react to the light He has given us.

Look again at what Revelation has to say about the mark of the beast and the Seal of God. Read through these passages and see if the thoughts are consistent with this Bible study.

Rev 7:1-4
1     After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, so that no wind should blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree.
2     And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God; and he cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea,
3     saying, "Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the bond-servants of our God on their foreheads."
4     And I heard the number of those who were sealed, one hundred and forty-four thousand sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel:

Rev 14:1
1 And I looked, and behold, the Lamb {was} standing on Mount Zion, and with Him one hundred and forty-four thousand, having His name and the name of His Father written on their foreheads.

Rev 13:11-18
11     And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spoke as a dragon.
12     And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence. And he makes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose fatal wound was healed.
13     And he performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down out of heaven to the earth in the presence of men.
14     And he deceives those who dwell on the earth because of the signs which it was given him to perform in the presence of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who had the wound of the sword and has come to life.
15     And there was given to him to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast might even speak and cause as many as do not worship the image of the beast to be killed.
16     And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand, or on their forehead,
17     and {he provides} that no one should be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, {either} the name of the beast or the number of his name.
18     Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six.

Rev 14:9-12
9     And another angel, a third one, followed them, saying with a loud voice, "If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives a mark on his forehead or upon his hand,
10     he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.
11     "And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; and they have no rest day and night, those who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name."
12     Here is the perseverance of the saints who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.

Rev 16:1-2
1 And I heard a loud voice from the temple, saying to the seven angels, "Go and pour out the seven bowls of the wrath of God into the earth."
2 And the first {angel} went and poured out his bowl into the earth; and it became a loathsome and malignant sore upon the men who had the mark of the beast and who worshiped his image.

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