Chapter 7

Blasphemy of the Mark

of the Beast

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is perhaps the least understood and most feared teaching of the Bible. There is a forgivable unbelief that is based on ignorance and there is an unforgivable unbelief that will harden your heart, making it impossible to repent and believe in God. Herein lies the difference: If you read a Bible verse and choose not to believe it, that is forgivable, but if the Holy Spirit reveals the meaning of His word to you, and you choose not to believe it, then you have crossed the line. That is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. In your heart you know it’s true, because the Spirit of truth revealed it to you. If you have experienced the Holy Spirit firsthand and then turned away from Him, it qualifies as a type of blasphemy from which you cannot repent. You cannot re-believe what God has revealed to you after casting it to the ground and trampling it underfoot with your unbelief.

It is not recorded that Adam ever apologized to God for rebelling against Him. He didn’t apologize because he wasn’t sorry. People have asked, ‘Did Adam go to heaven?” The answer is a resounding no, because Adam walked with God in the garden, making his sin in the likeness of Lucifer, who sinned in the presence of God. He may not have been present at the moment of transgression, but Adam was familiar with the presence of God, whereas man has never seen God (Jn 1-18), hence the difference between man and demon. We are fortunate that we have never seen God at any time; for that reason our sin is less than the sin of Adam, hence pardonable. Knowing God's physical presence and knowing Him spiritually are close to the same thing. For this reason God wants to introduce Himself to the world in the last days through a Great Endtime Revival. He wants to make a distinction between those who will follow Him and those who will not, instead will commit the unpardonable sin by rejecting Him in full knowledge of the truth. Manifesting Jesus Christ through the Great Endtime Revival will increase their sin and warrant the sentence of eternal hellfire. 

Remember what Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” (Matt 23-33  KJV). Jesus was saying that their fate was already sealed; there was nothing they could do to appeal to God’s mercy for stepping over the line. The question is: what did the Pharisees do to step over the line? They stood in the presence of Jesus Christ and saw the grace of God in human flesh and heard the words fall from His lips, from the source of all truth, and they refused to believe Him. Luke 20-17,18 says, “What is this then that is written, the stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner? Whosoever shall fall upon that stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder” KJV. They knew He was the Son of God but refused to believe in Him. In the same way, God will empower His Church in the last days, proving to the world that it is witnessing a divine act of God in the Great Endtime Revival, and God will prove that those whom the world is persecuting are His children, yet they will harden their hearts and continue martyring the saints in full knowledge, securing their fate by taking the Mark of the Beast.

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Taking the Mark of the Beast is the essence of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Millions will commit this unpardonable sin, searing the reprobate mind in their conscience as with a hot branding iron. Their fate will be sealed still alive in the body. They will have lost the ability to repent of their unbelief, according to Heb 12-16,17, “See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. He could bring about no change of mind, though he sought the blessing with tears” NIV. Here is another example of the reprobate mind:

"He answered, `Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.' "Abraham replied, `They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.' "`No, father Abraham,' he said, `but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.' "He said to him, `If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"  (Luke 16:27-31  NIV).

This is one of the most amazing statements of the Bible. Jesus exonerated the word of God, saying that it is more persuasive than a man coming from beyond the grave with a message from God. This statement moreover testifies against the reprobate mind in that no matter what happens or who brings the message, the reprobate mind will not repent of its unbelief. The reprobate Pharisees were incomprehensible to Jesus, just as the psychopath is incomprehensible to the scientific community. They have delved into his brain and looked for abnormalities and found none; the justice system agrees, calling him sane in a court of law, except that certain tests on the brain have proven that critical regions regulating empathy, remorse and other important emotions are far less developed and active in psychopaths than in other people. Clearly there are spiritual powers underfoot here. Instead of mother and father having a positive impact on his developing brain as a child, in most cases they worked with the demons and turned him into a heartless monster. The antichrist is leader of such people. Remember Hitler's Germany! It was like a light switched off in the heart of an entire nation, because a man brainwashed millions of people to believe that the end justifies the means.

The reprobate mind is incapable of repentance; a person who refuses to believe becomes a slave to his unbelief, according to 2 Peter 2-19, “Promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved” NASB. When a person surrenders to his unbelief, his mind thinks identically to Satan, refusing to submit to God's absolute authority. If Satan has any hopes or dreams, we know that none of them will ever be realized, but Satan will never give up his cause to one day overthrow God's throne, and he incites man to join his cause, though God has willingly shared His throne with man, if he will humbly submit to Him. Satan is lost in his grandiose mental image of himself, lost in the principles of his own evil nature, unable to separate deceiving from being deceived (1Tim 3-13). After Lucifer received the entire universe as his inheritance and then threw it all away for an unavailing chance to be God, his attempt on God's throne proved to be a flagrant departure from reality. The reprobate mind is just as lost in his own ego and just as estranged from reality. While we are alive in the flesh we still have an opportunity to repent and believe in Jesus, but the reprobate is an exception to this, in that he has already judged himself unworthy of eternal life (Act 13-46). Following is an example of the Reprobate mind in the Pharisees:

Then came the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon's Colonnade. The Jews gathered around him, saying, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly." Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me, but you do not believe because you are not my sheep.  (John 10,22-26  NIV).

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These verses expose just how dense the reprobate mind is to God and to His truth. Jesus had to remind them that he performed innumerous miracles in their presence, but they still had to ask Him if He was the Christ. They didn’t know because they didn’t want to know. During Jesus’ mock-trial the high priest asked Him the same question, putting the words in Jesus’ mouth, “tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God,” and Jesus answered them, “You have said it yourself…” (Matt 26:63,64). They spoke the very words that would have saved them if they could have only believed. To them it was the wrong answer, because they didn’t want Him as their messiah. They were used to people respecting them as their spiritual leaders, but Jesus found fault with them and rebuked them openly, revealing them as religious frauds. Jesus was a man who had all the earmarks of their Messiah, except that He didn’t speak their language, and for this reason they rejected Him. The reprobate mentality that finds the thoughts of his own mind more fascinating than God's truth is quickly developing within society today, and is preparing for the great day of Satan. When the antichrist reveals himself, they will immediately clamor to him as a moth is drawn to a flame. He will be a match to their unbelief.

Taking the Mark of the Beast is a ticket to the lake of fire, and people will know exactly what they are doing when they receive it. You cannot accidentally lose your soul like you would misplace a pair of socks. In every respect they will be trading any hope of eternal life for a bowl of soup (Heb 12-16) and a glimmer of hope that their temporal lives might return to normal, in hope of enjoying a few more years of their fleeting lives before they must give an account to God, ignoring the fact that their bowl of soup will translate to suffering the Bowls of God's fierce wrath. The mark’s direct association with martyring the saints represents everything God hates. Everyone will know it is the mark of Satan, and that to receive it is to cast their vote in favor of eliminating whomever the Beast deems a threat to his kingdom, specifically Jews and Christians.

The world has seen many evil days, yet they have not precipitated the fulfillment of endtime prophecy. God has turned a blind eye without lifting a finger to stop the mayhem of past bloodbaths, because it did not involve the wholesale slaughter and attempted mass extinction of His people. Even the slaughter of the Jews in Hitler’s holocaust did not evoke God’s judgment on Germany the way He intends to judge the world in the last days, because the Jews did not believe in Jesus (see Deuteronomy 28). The world can kill each other as much as they want, and God will not interfere with the rights He gave mankind to exercise his will, but when people organize a campaign of mass genocide against His beloved people, who are serving Him in Spirit and Truth, whose cries are bleating in His ears, He will deliver them with a strong hand, and when he does, I pity my executioner.

Hence, for the mark to take on the meaning of absolute evil implies that it is directly associated with the killing of Jews and Christians, indicating the fact that martyrdom is underway before the mark is introduced, which also carries with it the implication that a spiritual revival greater than the glory of the early church is also underway before the world organizes a scheme to purge Christians from Satan’s New World Order. An accurate scenario of endtime events involves Satan playing a manic game of catch-up with God, who forces Satan to be constantly on the hustle, trying to stifle the saints who are awakening from their millennial slumber and shining the light of God’s truth in the eyes of the world and testifying against their leader. Nevertheless, the world will continue in the ways of evil, completely ignoring the signs, just as the Pharisees ignored the signs pointing to Jesus’ true identity, and God will use His church to prove the world is following the devil.

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At this point it looks as though God is doing nothing to counteract Satan’s wrath, but when He does go to work, He will muster His people very quickly. Without a revival there would be no reason to kill Christians, since the current complacency of the Church was the very tool Satan used to establish his world dominance in the first place. Just when the devil thinks God will not move a finger in response to martyring the saints, miracles, signs and wonders will suddenly become commonplace among His people, and the world will understand that God is living and working among the very people the antichrist is trying to destroy. This will cause his mark to be directly associated with mass genocide of the saints, and will engender the reprobate mind within society. They will know it is God’s people they are trying to destroy, but will cast their vote against them anyway by receiving the mark. The world will follow the path of the Pharisees who required the death of Christ even after they heard His words and witnessed His healing power that proved His identity. So it will be in the last days that God will give His people authority to prove their identity as His people by giving them power to perform miracles in the presence of their enemies. The world will close its heart to them and to the truth, and forge ahead with Satan's plan to destroy the Church without the slightest remorse, but none of his plans will succeed. Taking the Mark of the Beast will become a person’s ticket to hell to those who receive it.

There will be no doubt about this man being the antichrist, no doubt the people they are murdering are the children of God, and no doubt that taking the mark is their vote to side with pure evil. It will be as in the days of the Egyptians who saw the signs coming from Aaron’s staff with Moses telling Pharaoh to let his people go. When the Red Sea opened and the children of Israel walked across it on dry land, the Egyptians fool heartily followed them and paid the price with their lives. They should have known better than to venture into a miracle that was intended for the very people they were trying to destroy. So it will be in the last days that God will pour out His Spirit on all mankind (Joel 2,28-32), and when the world lays their hands on the saints to destroy them after witnessing so many miracles, they will bring down the judgment on themselves. There is another very good reason the Mark of the Beast will automatically condemn those who take it: God said it would; all we have to do is read it for ourselves in the Bible. Those who take the mark Jesus said, “It would be better for that man if he had never been born” (Matt 26:24 NASB).

A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: "If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink of the wine of God's fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name." This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God's commandments and remain faithful to Jesus.  (Rev 14:9-12 NIV)

After so many Christians have been sacrificed on Satan’s altar of malevolence, the Rapture will finally occur as though tardy. Those who serve the devil will make up a story to explain what happened to everybody, and they will believe their own made up stories, conveniently forgetting that they had just fabricated them. It says that signs were given to the false prophet to deceive the inhabitants of the earth in order that all might believe in the antichrist. Although the world was well acquainted with the signs of the two witnesses, nothing they do will impress them, but the Beast will impress them.

Instead of being persuaded by the Two Witnesses, people will send gifts to each other after they are killed (Rev 11:10). The world will interpret their death as proof that the Two Witnesses were inferior to the dragon who killed them, who financed the campaign to eliminate everything that reminds them of God in the world. After the two witnesses come back to life and are raised to heaven in the presence of their enemies, the world will conveniently erase the event from their minds. No doubt after their bodies begin to stir and they stand on their feet, they will call it another hoax. They will no doubt pay someone a lot of money to make up a story just like they did about Jesus’ resurrection, saying that his disciples came and took Him away while the guards were asleep (Matt 28:11-15). The world will believe whatever they are told, because they were not chosen to inherit eternal life, nor will they consider believing in Jesus.

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The false prophet ordered a statue rendered in honor of the antichrist, and the first beast will command the whole world to worship the image of the second beast (the pope), whose fatal wound was supposedly healed. Setting your gaze on the Beast and his image will be like looking into a fire, where the observer loses the will to look away. He will be like Medusa in Greek mythology, who if you look upon her, the beholder turns to stone. People without a personal relationship with Christ will be hypnotized by his human attraction, and will fall to his global deception, in that anyone who does not worship him will be killed. The man of lawlessness will establish his New World Order around this image, and people will clamor to him. They will make their choice and call it life, but in the end it will be the way of death (Proverbs 16-25). The other choice is Jesus Christ, who is the opposite of man’s evil nature and opposite of the Beast. To choose Christ is to choose eternal life, but initially it will be a choice of potential martyrdom. The book of Romans talks about figuratively dying to the flesh as a means of living in the spirit, but in the last days this may become literal (Rom 6:1-23).

One of the names of Satan is the Great Deceiver (2Jn 1-7). What they really worship is money, which itself is a great deceiver. These will be times when the world will simply refuse to believe in anything beyond their money and their self-preservation, without concern for truth or their fellow man. Society already has this mentality. To them, their flesh is god. It says that power was given to his False Prophet to give breath to the image of the beast, so it can speak and cause all who refuse to worship his image to be killed. Can an inanimate object come to life? Of course not, it is another deception. The twisted part is that people will know it is not really alive, like their money, yet they will worship it just the same. To them it is better than worshipping the God of heaven.

The false prophet and the antichrist are analogous to king Ahab and his wife Jezebel. It says in 1Kings 16,29-33 that Ahab (the false prophet) did more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any other king before him. He married Jezebel (representing the antichrist), a Sidonian, who subsequently influenced Ahab to worship and serve other gods (Baal – the dragon). Ahab was the one in authority, but Jezebel wielded the power of his kingship.

There was another woman who had the same spirit of Jezebel, who was responsible for the death of John the Baptist. Herodias, a woman of standing with the king, hated John the Baptist and had her daughter dance for Herod. The king asked the young dancer what she wanted in exchange for her beauty, offering her half his kingdom (Mat 14,1-12). She turned him down at the request of her mother, who instructed her to ask instead for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Herodias could not dance for the king herself, because she had no beauty of her own, just like Satan has no beauty of his own, but needs human slaves to do his bidding. In this case Herodias represents the false prophet and her daughter represents the antichrist. 

Herodias could have been mother of the queen, but she sacrificed her status to satisfy her hatred for John the Baptist, who opposed the demon spirits that tormented her. What she did was unnatural, to hate the Spirit of God more than her love of power and prestige. This made her all the more dangerous and fearful. Even Elijah of the Old Testament was afraid of Jezebel after calling down fire from heaven; he ran for his life in dread of her. The antichrist and the false prophet will relate to each other very much like Ahab and Jezebel.

The antichrist is God’s opposite: God loves mankind, so the antichrist will butcher the human race. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, so the antichrist is wayward, deceitful and murderous. Jesus obeyed His Father in every way, following Him even to the cross to secure victory over death for the sake of those who would believe in Him, so the antichrist is free of all laws, rules and human authorities and cares only for himself. Dan 11-21 says, “And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honor of the kingdom,” and Dan 11:37 says, “Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all” (KJV). Instead of going through the proper channels to receive the kingdom, he will take it through flattery and intrigue. There is no limit to this man’s rebellion and arrogance.

In other words he will steal the world, refusing to allow any man, culture, society or laws to preside over him. Nor will he rise from the ranks of human governments, but will be an entity of his own, like Melchizedec, who had neither father nor mother nor genealogy, “Having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he abides a priest perpetually” (Heb 6:3). The priest Melchizedec, originally mentioned in Genesis 14-18, is a type of Christ, whereas the antichrist is His counterfeit, who will claim to come from nowhere, rejecting all religion, but will invoke his own religion of self-worship, and will require the world to believe in him. The religion of self-worship is already embedded in society. When the false prophet requires humanity to worship him, it will be the same as worshipping self, for to worship self is to worship Satan. It is no wonder God will permanently close the door on man’s reign on earth and open a thousand year reign where Christ Himself is emperor, and He will create a heavenly environment on earth that man never came close to achieving; he never even tried.

James R. Wuthrich

www.jeansbiblestudy.com