Revelation 13: 11-18
The beast’s mark, implemented by law, will be a sign of allegiance to Satan. In identifying the sign, know that in order for Satan to get people to worship him, it will be through subterfuge. He will accomplish that by counterfeiting God’s sign of allegiance.
Allegiance translates into worship. Worship is the end-time issue of this spiritual war. The worship controversy, then, will be centered on God’s commandment law, particularly the first four. That’s because those four denote the vertical relationship between God and man (the last six characterizes the horizontal relationship between person and person). The first four constitute the proper way to worship God.
That Satan’s strategy would be to attack the first four commandments shouldn’t be a surprise. For God laid it out for us, saying that the little horn would think to change His times and laws (Daniel 7: 25). Incidentally, the little horn, the man of sin, and the sea beast, are considered by scholars to be synonymous terms that fill the role of Antichrist.
The first commandment is attacked by the beast’s demand for worship. That an image is raised with the demand to worship it, is an attack on the second commandment. The third commandment is violated by the blasphemies hurled against God. But it is in particular the fourth commandment that is the main object of Satan’s onslaught. That’s indicated in God’s final appeal to the earth to worship Him in the way that He wants to be worshiped. He makes the appeal within the context of the fourth commandment (Rev. 14: 7).
It should be understood that the distinctive sign of obedience to God is the seventh-day Sabbath (Exodus 31: 12-17; Leviticus 23: 2, 3); Ezekiel 20: 12, 20). With that being the case, plus the fact that Satan wants to be like the Most High, doesn’t it make sense that Satan would want a day of his own for worship? In order to make that happen and divert worship to himself, Satan has instituted the sign or symbol of his mark by counterfeiting the Sabbath. That would be the first-day of the week, known in our times as Sunday.
The time is coming in which legislation will create and enforce a national Sunday law. Though that may sound preposterous, Christians in America have tried to bring it into being. The first effort was made through a senate bill, S.2983, introduced in the 50th congress on May 21, 1888. The bill failed in a relative time of peace. It is not unrealistic to imagine how much easier it would be for such a bill to pass if the terrors of the probable nightmare scenarios strike our country.
Under the Sunday law, one will have to have the sea beast’s mark or number of the sea beast in order to buy or sell. The number is 666. Scripture says that is the number of a man (a human organization). That also helps us confirm who the beast is.
Following the Reformation up until the last one-hundred years or so, the interpretation that gained traction was that 666 stood for Vicarius Filii Dei. That’s Latin, meaning “Vicar of the Son of God,” one of the titles of the Pope. The Roman numerals we learned in school are Latin letters. For instance, “V” is 5; “I” is 1; “C” is 100. When calculated, the assigned numbers of the letters in the title Vicarius Filii Dei equals 666.