Sunday I made reference to Dr. Voddie Baucham, a black Reformed Baptist minister, and his public statements on the anti-Christian positions being welcomed by social justice leaders in the church and the protesting organizations.

If you search Voddie Baucham in YouTube you’ll find several sermons that are worth listening to, but here is a link to a video clip of a recent interview he participated in on the Glenn Beck Show: https://youtu.be/EtG0ylfWT_k.

Also, last night’s Prophecy Update by J.D. Faraq was particularly good to me because he touched on some things that I tried to articulate yesterday at church, but he does it by starting with the question Is Their Hope?

Here is the link to J.D. Faraq‘s video: https://youtu.be/5gGkCjhSyP8.

I should probably add that if you listen through his entire Prophecy Update, he will make a statement that he thinks taking the COVID-19 vaccine will eventually be the mark of the beast. I am not in complete agreement with him on a vaccine being the mark of the beast spoken of in Revelation 13:16-17, but it may be a means of the enforcement of that mark.

It’s possible that J.D. Faraq meant or understands it as the enforcement mechanism and is simply referencing it as the actual mark itself. In that case it’s just a matter of semantics and we share the some thought but are expressing it differently.

Whatever the mark is, I understand it as something that will stand in opposition to God’s mark — in opposition to true biblical worship — and that false worship becomes upheld by some type of global law.

It is likely, in my understanding, that the mark of the beast would stand in opposition to Christ’s mark as Creator or Savior, as in we worship Him because we are made in His image. The mark may very well be Satan’s distorted maligning of the image of God.

In Genesis 4:15, Cain received a mark on his forehead because he chose to worship God his way and was disobedient at not presenting a lamb (representing Jesus) but in clear disobedience but the fruit of his own doing as a sacrifice.

The mark placed on Cain kept him from being killed, and the mark of the beast in Revelation will do the same for those who take it, either because they believe it or are just going through the actions in order to keep from being killed.

It is hard for me to read Revelation 13:16-17 without thinking of the Old Testament references to our forehead and arms as indicating the exercise of our free will power by either believing it in our mind or just going along with it in our actions.

Deuteronomy 6:5-8 points this out, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart…You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes” (ESV).

Not that I meant to get into a study of the mark of the beast in this post, because it is one of those prophecies that is hard to honestly deal with without really pulling together all the scriptural implications that are applicable to Revelation 13.

One of these days I will take more time to develop the issues related to understanding the mark of the beast better. Here, I simply wanted to make mention simply because J.D. Faraq talks about it in his Prophecy Update.

Anyway, I hope you do enjoy Voddie Baucham and J.D. Faraq‘s videos and if you have any questions, please ask.