First Upload: Sunday November 20, 2022
Last Modified: Sunday October 1, 2023

The Mark of the Beast and the Number 666

The Number 666

This old webpage concluded that verse 18 is bogus.

The Plausible Mark

Verses 16-17 have dubious credibility. According to this Wikipedia page Ancient Rome sometimes branded (i.e., marked) slaves as a form of punishment. In particular a captured fugitive would get his forehead branded with the letters F, U, G.

What is patently absurd is to get branded as a form of reward. That is what verses 16-17 claim.

Fortunately this kind of protruding Greco-Roman nonsense has been encountered before in the canonical text and the way to deal with it is to dispose of it resolutely. The webpage, Criticism of the Book of Revelation, exposes many canonical gaffes. The webpage entitled, The Fourth Trumpet, shows how the Greek myth of Phaeton son of Helios snuck into Revelation 8:12. The remedy applied was to truncate the verse mercilessly. Similarly the webpage entitled, New York City Is "Babylon The Great", demonstrates that an irrepresible desire to witness the return of the Lord tainted Revelation 17:9 (cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4). The effect spilled over into Revelation 13:18.

Presently a remorseless truncation of Revelation 13:16 injects some credibility into the narrative,

^{truncated 16} He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark, ¹⁷ so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark.

Here "mark" no longer implies a compulsory physical branding.

Consequently truncated-16 plus canonical-17 can address the Chinese government's drive to replace cash with a digital currency. The QR code of a digital payment network can be regarded as a modern "mark" on the screen of a mobile phone, even aesthetically. Pointedly the QR code is received from and is the access "key" to the network. The management of such a network can in principle deny a customer's access to her/his funds arbitrarily and immediately.

Other countries are exploring the feasibility of digital currency. Would their QR code constitute a "mark of the beast"? The answer is no. When would a Chinese QR code become the "mark of the beast"? After the war that kills a third of mankind in one hour. The reader can discern both answers in the Fifth Seal, Sixth Seal and Sixth Trumpet sections of The Revised Book of Revelation.

The Candidate Beast

The People's Republic of China was from its inception in 1949 the second logical candidate to be the Red Beast of Revelation after the Soviet Union.

Adopting the presentation of The Soviet Union Almost Was the Red Beast of Revelation webpage, the following are Mainland China's relevant political parameters at the time of this writing.

Five heads:

Mao Tse-tung

Deng Xiao-ping

Jiang Zemin

Hu Jin-tao

Xi Jin-ping

Footnote: Mao Tse-tung appointed Hua Guo-feng to be his successor. Chairman Hua headed the Chinese government between 1976 and 1981, but after Deng Xiao-ping came to power the Party deemed Hua's tenure unworthy of the title, "head of the People's Republic of China." The official Party posture is illustrated by this casual snapshot of a CCTV program from the year 2019 and by this clip of the show on June 28, 2021, commemorating the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party.

Horns: Indefinite.

The invitation extended to six nations on August 24, 2023, by the 15th BRICS Summit in Johannesburg to join the group from January 1, 2024, will bring to ten the number of China's partners in this economic alliance. "Horns" are military allies of a "beast," so these ten are not "horns." Nevertheless BRICS' move reaffirms China's resolve to expand globally, a feat the Soviet Union never achieved.