Revelation 13:16-18

Revelation 13:16: “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.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”

As many times as I’ve read Revelation, I never realized before that the person who issues the famous 666 “Mark of the Beast” is actually the false prophet, and not the antichrist. Of course, the false prophet creates it in order to support the antichrist, but it is still an interesting distinction.

Let’s get this out of the way right now: the Mark of the Beast is not a microchip that uniquely identifies each person and ties them into a global monetary network. That is silly. In order to identify each person, the chips would have to have unique numbers – but here everyone is given the same number. The point of this system is not to tell people apart, but to identify everyone as a worshiper of the devil. The rule is strict: no one could buy or sell anything if they did not have the Mark. However, God’s rule was equally strict: anyone who took the Mark would be damned forever, and it would be impossible to save them. Taking the Mark meant there was no going back: once you had it you were damned and could not be forgiven. There was no longer any hope of salvation. The same goes for worshiping the beast: that was a sin that could not be forgiven. Once you crossed that line you were lost for all eternity.

What verse 18 is getting at is that in some languages (such as Greek, which was the language Revelation was written in), each letter also has a numerical value. If you add all the letters of the antichrist’s name together, you get six hundred and sixty-six. So, once the antichrist appears (and this will not happen until after the Rapture), it will be easy to identify him because his name in Greek will add up to 666.