Ellen White, in one of her seizures in which she contradicted scripture yet again, wrote, “I saw that the Holy Sabbath is, and will be, the separating wall between the true Israel of God and unbelievers” (Early Writings, p. 33; emphasis added). She also wrote of some Adventists failing to understand that “Sabbath
observance was of sufficient importance to draw a line between the people of God and unbelievers" (Ibid., p. 85).
This nutty woman said that Sabbath observance would be the “line of distinction” in the “final test” that will separate God's end-time people who “receive the seal of God” and are saved, from those who “receive the mark of the beast” (The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, p. 605).
That's what this is all about. A
nutty woman who dropped out of school in the third grade to informally study at home believed in George's false prophecy so much that she couldn't accept it for the false prophecy it was so she purveyed her trauma induced seizures as visions from God, plagiarized other people's work, and made stuff up to sell to disaffected followers of George's false prophecy. A small band of deluded people emerged twisting scripture to her nutty statements and then had kids and mistaught them to believe her nonsense as if it were second only to the Word of God. You're one of them. Remove the false prophetess from among you and return to orthodox Christian exegesis.
It's obvious from Revelation 13 that the eighth king is plainly Nero, in whom the nature and the destiny of the antichristian empire were embodied. Both share in the likeness of the dragon (Satan), both oppose the Lord in his people, both belong to the “abyss” and both are doomed to suffer the fate of those who make war on the Lamb (Rev 16:14).
But one major difference is apparent in the representations of the antichrist in Revelation 13 and Revelation 17: in the former the empire receives a boost from the antichrist, so that all in the world, apart from those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life, receive the mark of the beast and worship him (Rev 13:8, 16–18). You'd have to be grossly misled to think the mark of the beast represents worshipping God on Sunday.
In Revelation 17 the fears of many are fulfilled, and the Christ of Satan persuades the kings of the East to join him in attacking “Babylon the Great,” and the city is destroyed and burned with fire (Rev 17:15–17). Such is the outcome of the emperor cult. The beast and his allies remain in the hand of the God they defy, and by the impulse of the devil they fulfill the words of God (Rev 17:16–17; on this see Bauckham 1994, 329–417).
John was asserting a real person, a Nero, to fulfill the role of the antichrist. He utilized the current expectation to portray the works of the antichrist as those of another Nero, and that for a good reason: Nero was the first Roman emperor to persecute the Christian church, and he did so with such bestial cruelty as to provide a pattern for the beast of Satan to follow in his war with the Lamb (Rev 11:7–10; 13:7; 17:12–14).
By his presentation of antichrist as another Nero, John has made it clear that the cult of the emperor is a projection of what will take place when the seeds of its beginning reach their full harvest. It could not be otherwise. The emperor cult was a deification of power. History, not least in the twentieth century, shows that such deification is capable of reappearing with appalling results.
The mark of the beast on non-Christians is a counterpart of the seal of God on Christians (7:1–8); both show the allegiance of an individual, whether to God or the devil. The immediate effect of demanding that all receive the mark of the beast is the social ostracism of those who refuse it, and it entails economic warfare by the state against the church, with death to those who do not comply.
The mark is described as the name of the beast or the number of his name. Many ancient languages did not have figures for numbers but used instead the letters of the alphabet (a = 1, b = 2, c = 3 and so on). This made it possible for a name to be represented by the number obtained through adding the numerical values of the letters of the name. For example, there is a piece of graffiti on a wall in Pompeii which reads, ‘I love her whose name is 545’.
Doubtless the young lady knew whose name that was! So also despite the many possibilities that the number 666 yields, it is virtually certain that the individual thereby indicated was known in all the churches addressed by John, and probably far wider. The name Nero Caesar transliterated into Hebrew from Greek yields the number 666. If it is put into Hebrew from Latin it gives the number 616, which is read in some early manuscripts of Revelation. The number would have been seized on in apocalyptic circles where Hebrew (the language of the OT) was known. For Christians, 666 was an eminently suitable figure for the antichrist; it represents a consistent falling short of the divine perfection suggested by 777, whereas the name Jesus in Greek totals 888.
χάραγμα occurs frequently in Revelation and also once in Acts 17:29. Paul, in Galatians 6:17 applies the word for these brands, στίγματα, to the marks of Christ's service which he bears in his body. In 3 Macc. 2:29, we read that Ptolemy Philopator required all the Jews of Alexandria to be registered among the common people; and that those who were thus registered were to be marked (χαράσεσθαι) on their persons by the ivy-leaf symbol of Dionysus (Bacchus). In Leviticus 19:28, the Israelites are forbidden to make cuttings in their flesh for the dead and to print marks (γράμματα στικτὰ) upon themselves.
It's obvious this is the Great Tribulation (Mt 24:21) or the time when the Antichrist (or first Beast of Revelation 13) rules the entire earth. The second beast of Revelation 13, also called the False Prophet (Rev 16:13; 19:20; 20:10), will put in place a system of total control. They will attempt to brand every human with a mark that is needed for commerce. Obviously, without being able to buy or sell anything, you are not going to function in society or last long.
It has nothing to do with what day of the week someone worships God on and if an imaginative disappointed false prophetess had worked for a living instead of lying around inventing fanciful conjecture in a desperate attempt to make up a way out of George's false prophecy, there wouldn't be a few million deceived followers of her still believing it..
The SDA cult is a cult and not the only, true, remnant Church on the planet today. The SDA cult is amiss in teaching their children that only SDA cult members professions, prayers, and exhortations are pleasing in the sight of God and that all other Christians in the world's "professions, prayers, and exhortations an abomination in the sight of GOD" (Spiritual Gifts Vol 1­p. 189).
^ The SDA is a cult, with a false prophetess and false exegesis, that engages in typical cult behaviors.
Some interesting links:
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The Fallacy of the Mark of the Beast being Sunday worship:
Part 1
Part 2
Which Pope changed the Sabbath to Sunday?
Answered.