# Rev. 13:16-17



## The Mexican Puritan (May 20, 2010)

Can anyone well-versed in the amillennial position please give me your take on these verses? Never in world history have we seen anyone demand this of the global populace. I'm studying eschatology now.


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## MW (May 20, 2010)

It is the religion of world power, or the world power using religion to gain its ends. It has always been present in history. Sometimes it is has been restrained and at other times it has risen to great heights, but it has always been a reality which the saints have battled.


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## Peairtach (May 20, 2010)

Buying and selling is symbolical of the preaching of the Gospel and the reception of it. See Revelation 3:18 and Isaiah 55:1-3.

In the context of the first century, 666 refers to Nero Caesar. As the first pagan, statist, persecutor of Christianity, Nero is a fitting symbol for the Beast in all ages, which is civil persecution of Christianity and adherence to paganism/secularism rather than Christianity.


The binding of God's law or God's Word to the hand and the forehead indicates the commitment to see all things in terms of God's Word and do all things in terms of God's Word which the true Christian has (See Deuteronomy 6)

Anti-Christian forces (e.g. the Papacy and Liberal Theology) in the Visible Church encourage compromise with secularism/paganism/atheism/godlessness and with godless governments that would restrict the freedom of Christians to sell the Gospel and of others to embrace it. These anti-Christian forces (in the place where the True Christ should be honoured) are the Beast from the Earth with two horns like a Lamb.

This kind of thing is going on in many countries and under many regimes today.

It is beginning to be felt in Great Britain where the freedom of Christians to say that homosexuality is sinful is being challenged in various ways.

E.g.Ministers in "mixed" denominations like the Church of Scotland are sometimes no doubt curtailed in their "buying and selling" by the rampant concessions to godless thinking and speaking that have been made by many in that denomination in their bowing to Beastly and worldly thinking.

E.g. Chinese pastors in the "official" churches being told what to preach.

E.g. the Medieval Roman Church (Beast 2) with the assistance of the Medieval State (Beast 1) forbidding Hus and Wycliffe and Luther from preaching the Truth. 

Sometimes the civil beast acts without the ecclesiastical beast's help. Sometimes there is no Church allowed and no ecclesiastical beast.

E.g. Christians in Islamic countries being forbidden to evangelise by the authorities.

Please take this with a pinch of salt because Revelation is a difficult book. But that's broadly how I see this passage at my present level of study.


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