The Future and Endtime Archives - Page 3 of 14

Are you worried about “the mark of the Beast”?

Aug 28, 2020 · by Mark McMillion · In: The Future and Endtime

There’s a lot online now about “the mark of the Beast”. So many people are concerned about this that I feel I should say something. I put off writing this article but several people recently wrote me about this.

Is “the mark of the Beast” already here? Can it be forced on you? Is the Covid 19 vaccine “the mark of the Beast”? A great Bible verse to remember in times like this is, “God is not the author of confusion…” (I Corinthians 14:33).

I wonder how many people even know what “the mark of the Beast” is or, I should say, what it will be. It’s in the news a lot currently, even in some of the mainstream media. Briefly, “the mark of the Beast” is found in the book of Revelation, mainly in chapter 13. This chapter is about the last “forty-two months” (Revelation 13:5) before the return of Jesus to this earth as the King of God that he is.

Here’s the most specific thing in Scriptures about the mark of the Beast.

“And he causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads. And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that has understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. And his number is six hundred and sixty six.” (Revelation 13:16-18)

Of course, including this here may bring to mind more questions than it does answers. Who is the “he” mentioned at the beginning? What kind of “mark” is it talking about? Some kind of tattoo? Or like what many now say: an implant of some kind? What does that mean about “666”? Or even the simply question: what is “the beast”? I’ll answer that one right away. “The beast” is the Antichrist of the endtime who’s been predicted to come in many places both in the Old and New Testament.

But it gets worse. Because the next chapter, chapter 14, tells us that

“…the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If any man worships the beast and his image and receives his mark in his forehead or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation. And he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.” (Revelation 14:9 & 10)

So the Bible says that in the very last days, no person will be able to buy or sell unless they have “the mark of the beast”. And then it says that anyone who does accept the mark of the beast will be punished with the wrath of God. Wonderfully, we can fall back on the strong promise in God’s Word, that “He will not allow us to be tempted above that we are able to bear but with the temptation he will make a way of escape, that we may be able to bear it.” (I Corinthians 10:13)

And this is exactly what the Bible says that God is planning to do in this last period of 3½ years before the second coming of the Lord. We’ve seen what is said about all this in Revelation chapter 13 and 14. But in Revelation chapter 12, there are incredible promises to His believing children, the Christian believers of the final days. Twice in the chapter, it says almost the same thing. Verse 6 of Revelation 12 says

“And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and sixty days.”

Then perhaps for emphasis and to underline the Lord’s faithfulness to His bride, the body of believers in the final days, verse 14 says,

“And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time from the face of the serpent.”

For an explanation of that phrase referring to “a time, times, and half a time”, see the video I did on Daniel 7, at around the 24:32 mark, where I explain about this. Daniel chapter 7 is the first place in the Bible where that phrase, “a time, times, and half a time”, is used to refer to 3.5 years. But it comes up in other Scriptures many more times after this.

Where does this leave us? Are we all going to be killed if we don’t take the mark of the beast? Or sent to the lake of fire if we do? I certainly don’t believe that those are our only two options.

To keep this somewhat short, I’ll add in here the links to two articles I’ve done specifically on “the woman in the wilderness” that is spoken of in Revelation 12. Here is a recent article written on it. And here is one, “Fleeing into the wilderness… in Bulgaria” that I wrote a few years ago, when I was in Bulgaria, on the subject of “the woman in the wilderness” in the final days.

I don’t believe you can be forced to take the mark of the beast, when it does ultimately appear, probably in times soon to come. God is not going to pour out His wrath on you because you were compelled to go against His will. “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world”. (I John 4:4)

Neither do I believe at all that any upcoming vaccine against the corona virus is going to be, or contain, the mark of the Beast. This is ludicrous, unscriptural palaver. Christians really need to be reading up about things and not be victims of such shallow, politically motivated hearsay.

I get upset at how easily Christians nowadays are duped into believing the latest fad or “wind of doctrine” that blows their way concerning Bible prophecy. It may be a sign of how weak and unlearned the majority of believers are when it comes to knowledge of the prophetic end time.

If there is any good in the current hue and cry about the corona virus and the mark of the beast, it could be that at least it is getting out the basic idea that there will be a mark of the beast in the end time. This is similar to how the movie a few years back about “Left Behind” got out the idea of the second coming of the Lord, even though the central premise of that movie was that there would be a Rapture before the Great Tribulation which is false doctrine.

If you are currently worrying about the mark of the beast, I suggest you don’t. Instead, try to really get into the Word about it and the whole subject of the final days before the second coming of the Lord. I’ve spent the last few years in making a series of videos on the prophecies of Daniel which are featured on my website by that name where this article appears. There are also many blog articles that go into various aspects of the end times. I hope the material will be a blessing to you and that you will be able to grow in a knowledge of His Word for the difficult times that already face us and for the more difficult times soon to come.

Daniel 11-a, verses 1- 31

Aug 26, 2020 · by Mark McMillion · In: Daniel videos and texts, The Future and Endtime

I’ve been able to complete the next video in English in the Prophecies of Daniel series. This one covers the verses in Daniel chapter 11, up to verse 31. Daniel chapter 11 is where Jesus pointed His disciples to when they asked about His return at the end of this age. A three week battle went on between the forces of God and Satan before the message given to Daniel in chapters 11 and 12 was able to reach the prophet. The chapter is long and somewhat intricate; the lynchpin verse is verse 31. This portion of Daniel 11 pertains to “the first 3½ years” of the last 7 years before the return of Jesus. Here is the link to the video:

Anarchy and stable government

Jul 29, 2020 · by Mark McMillion · In: Basic Christianity, Current events, The Future and Endtime

Perhaps the November elections in the USA will pass without violent unrest. Some people here now flirt with the idea of an uprising if the election doesn’t go their way. Talk show host for years have spoken against the government, declaring that the government is our enemy. My friends, I’ve lived in over 50 countries as a missionary, 36 years on the mission field and I can tell you this: you don’t know how good we have it.

Do you know what a civil war is really like? Do you know what you are contemplating or being lured into contemplating? Just a few years ago a long time friend of mine really wanted to get into a fist fight with me. I didn’t go for it but they really pushed me. They told me later, “I didn’t want to kill you; I just thought we’d slap each other around a little.”

But so often, Pandora’s box being opened, you don’t realize what will come out. And people in America are talking amongst themselves about civil unrest, both on the Right and on the Left. People have been heavily armed here for years. And sadly the Christians are just as much in the middle of all this as anyone.

I wish I could scream at some people right now. Do they have any idea what they are thinking about and contemplating? No, 99% don’t. They’ve lived in the incredible bubble of America all their lives which, as bad as it is in some ways and places, is nothing when you compare it to the conditions of anarchy and civil war that can come to a country and stay there, if they open the door to violence.

I wish the voice of history could call out to American hearts and minds, all the millions of people over the last hundreds of years could speak to you from beyond, our ancestors who lived and died in anarchy and societal collapse because some ones thought that the time had come to rise up against the government. Or their neighbors. Or the opposition. Or whatever.

But Americans don’t know history anymore. They don’t even know their own history. Almost all my relatives came to Texas after the Civil War in the 1860’s, from Mississippi and Alabama after the war there had brought their lives to ruin and havoc. They fled like Syrians have done in our times; they crossed the Mississippi River and came to Texas.

Many Americans today are spoiling for a fight. They’re “fed up and not going to take it anymore!” “They have no choice!” Sad, foolish people bringing on their own sorrow. It’s like a dream that you see happening but you can’t intervene to stop it. If you don’t like the election in November, are you going to take up arms against the other side?! Your side lost so that’s the last straw?!

“It must be rigged! It’s all a conspiracy! We have to take back our nation!”

YOU ARE BEING DUPPED. You are going to reject the democratic processes that have worked here for close to 250 years and instead rely on your gun rage? Or your “woke” comrades on campus and their neo-Marxist agenda?

But many people are past reasoning. “The lines have been drawn, the curse it is cast”, sang Bob Dylan over 50 years ago. And it may be truer now than it ever has been. This is the spirit of the times, just before great cataclysm. People are all jazzed up for their cause, full of hate of their “enemies”, even though it be their own neighbors. And off they go to the jolly war they have been prepped and hyped up for over years. When will we ever learn?

I’m concerned about the US election in November. I’d love to be proven wrong. I’d love to see everything turn for the better, the flaming rhetoric get turned down, a little bit of reconciliation appear in the air, the Corona virus begin to subside and happy days be here again.

We’ve had a period of relative peace and safety here in North American for over 150 years, at least when compared to places like the former Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Syria, Northern Ireland, Israel, Rwanda, Sri Lanka and perhaps you can think of many more.

Yes, there have been injustices, oppression, racism, inequality and a host of inexcusable grievances that were unwarranted. But we haven’t really had major wide spread civil unrest and war within our borders since 1865.

Maybe we are at the high-water mark. Perhaps soon cooler heads will prevail. Maybe in the next days and weeks things will swing back towards dialogue and away from violence and escalation. Because if the centrifugal forces keep increasing that are pulling this nation to its edges, then violence may in fact be the end result of where things are going at election time.

If any of you are toying with the idea that taking up arms is a way to make America a more righteous place, I just wish there was some way I could impart to you how that idea has failed to deliver over and over again for hundreds of years, no matter how righteous it may have looked at the time.

And especially if you are a Christian, just get a grip on the Lord and your own heart and reject that idea! It is not the leading of God; it is not what the Lord is leading you to do. But instead it comes from strident, secular, Satanic forces which don’t have the mind of Christ working in them.

Please pray for peace in our country. Amen.

“The Woman fled into the wilderness”

Mar 15, 2020 · by Mark McMillion · In: Current events, Insights, The Future and Endtime

What a difference a day makes. A few days, a week or two and the world is vastly different from how it was. Rationing, national lockdowns, schools closed, air travel curtailed and most nations utterly changed from a few weeks ago. For the people of faith, especially those who look to the prophetic future that’s foretold, this is a lot easier to take and to have been prepared for than perhaps for many others.

Recently I wrote an article called “Are we there yet?” which talked about what Scripture says about the times before the return of Jesus. There I went over some of the “signs of the times” (Matthew 16:3) that Jesus Himself mentioned would be apparent before His return.

But even in the short time between when I wrote that and now, things have been changing very fast. Today where I live some major grocery stores have started restricting how many people can be inside the store at one time. There are rationings for many basic staples and the cash register will not allow purchases over a certain amount. This is unprecedented in my lifetime. I think you’d have to go back to World War II in the States to find anything remotely similar to how things are at the moment.

This reminds me of what a friend years ago told me about what he had thought about the Bible, before he got saved. “Just a book for old ladies to cry in,” was his opinion of Scripture. But we know it is so very much more than this. So much more that it has many specific, exact conditions that it predicts will be a part of the world at the end of this age. And that includes economic conditions.

For example, more and more people around the world have become familiar in recent years with the prediction in the book of Revelation that focuses precisely on how shopping for groceries will be in the last years of this age. Speaking of a final demonic world government that will arise at that time, it says that it “causes all, both small and great, rich and poor to receive a mark in their hand or forehead. And that no man will buy or sell unless they have the mark.” (Revelation 13:16 & 17)

Cryptic but clear. Are we there yet? No, not quite. But the technology is already here. I don’t have to tell you how close something like this is now in our times. How simple it will be to implement a cashless society, all connected online and thus able to be controlled in a way unimaginable only a few decades ago. There just has to be an atmosphere, perhaps some international crisis like the present one, to make it easily accepted by the masses.

For the people of faith, this is going to be a major moment of crisis and decision. Because the Bible warns that this “mark of the beast” to come will be utterly Satanic and that the people of God are warned in no uncertain terms not to receive this coming mark that will be enforced in order to buy and sell.

So what will we do? How will we get food and survive? Wonderfully, the same book in the Bible also answers this question, in a somewhat amazing way. I’ll add in the verse, Revelation 12:6, that explains God’s plan and provision for His people in the final days and then examine its meaning. “And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.”

That phrase “the woman” is speaking of the saved of God in the final days, the body of Christ out of every nation. The “1260 days” mentioned there equals 3½ years, the period of time of the “great tribulation” (Matthew 24:21) that is referred to in so many places both in the Old and New Testament of the final time before the return of Jesus.

And when something is really important, sometimes God will “sprinkle a little dust on it” to make it have a special shine. That verse, talking about 1260 days, is Revelation 12:6. When originally written in Greek, the verses were not separated like they are now. So this was just one of God’s “little coincidences” that the length of time and the Bible reference were almost identical.

There’s more. Since this provision of our physical welfare that God will have for His people in the final days is so important for us to know about, the Lord even went ahead and said it twice in the same chapter. Here’s where it’s virtually repeated again, in Revelation 12:14: “And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.”

I like to try to limit these articles to not be too long but there’s a whole lot more to all this. So if you want to know more about “the woman in the wilderness” and how this will play out in the not-too-distant end time, I’ll refer you to an article I wrote almost exactly 5 years ago called “Fleeing into the wilderness… in Bulgaria.” I’d been visiting dear friends in a remote part of Bulgaria and was struck by how it felt like a place that could be a refugee for believers in the future. In that article I go into the particulars of “the woman in the wilderness” and God’s world-wide provision for His people in the final days.

And you might also wonder what this thing is about “3½ years” of “Great Tribulation”; where in the world do I get that from? I’ve made a video on this, based on what Jesus of Nazareth said in Matthew 24, as well as the last verse in Daniel chapter 9. That video, called “The Last 7 Years”, can be seen here.

I heard somewhere long ago that there is a Chinese curse that says, “May you live in interesting times.” Well, here we are. I hope you are praying, staying close to the Lord, loving your neighbor and staying in God’s Word. Those things are our only hope in times like these.

Are we there yet?

Mar 6, 2020 · by Mark McMillion · In: Current events, Insights, The Future and Endtime

Are we there yet? Are we now actually in the very final events just before the second coming of Christ? Some utterly mock that whole concept. But many millions know what Jesus said would happen before His return. I’ve studied these things all my adult life and looked almost daily at “the signs of the times” to try to find where exactly we are in relation to what Godly prophecy reveals of the final signs before the end of this age.

But I’ve often shied away from getting into “the signs of the times” (Matthew 16:3) when it comes to current events and daily occurrences. So many teachers have gone out on a limb about something, only to find that they’ve prematurely predicting some specific final event in the Word of God which didn’t happen as they’d come to think it would. And they were made fools of while the truths of Bible prophecy were made to look false because of their misguided pronouncements. I made a video about some things like this called “Famous Failures of Prophetic Interpretation.”

However, common sense will tell you that simply because someone has falsely called “Wolf, Wolf!” and been proven wrong, certainly that doesn’t mean there are no such things as wolves. And if you know the end of that little story, eventually there did turn up a wolf when the people had come to no longer believe because of the false cries of “Wolf!” that they’d heard for so long. And the wolf had his way because the people, calloused and hardened in unbelief, didn’t take heed when the real wolf appeared among them.

Are we there yet? Where are we? In the videos I’ve done on this subject, mainly based around the prophecies of Daniel, I’ve tried to keep to the most explicit, definite things that Scripture points out will happen in the last years of this age.

Personally, one of the things that I watch most closely is the possible rebuilding of a Jewish temple in Jerusalem , “the third temple” as it’s called. I believe that a temple like that, and subsequent animal sacrifices there, will be one of the most significant and definite signs that the final months and years before the second coming of Christ will have definitely started.

And you ask, “How’s it going with that?” Well, it’s surprisingly very far along. You could do a Google search on “The third temple” or “The Temple Institute” to discover how much work has already been done towards this in modern Israel. There are even reports of some who’ve begun to offer animal sacrifices again there. However, I don’t think that it’s yet fulfilled what is spoken about this in Scripture.

But now there are also many other things. Jesus told His disciples, “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness to all nations. Then shall the end come.” (Matthew 24:14) Certainly for 18 or 19 centuries that verse had not been fulfilled. Just as certainly, now in the last 30 to 100 years it has been.

And other verses about the final days are also becoming more and more relevant. Jesus said, “There shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in diverse places” (Mathew 24:7). The problem I’ve always had with these verses is that it’s very easy for skeptics to just say, “Yes, but that has always been happening”. And of course in some ways they’re right.

It’s just that in our times, right now, there really are a lot of things going on. It remains to be seen how this current crisis with the Corona virus will go. Some say it will all just blow over and we’ll go back to business as usual. But many in the scientific community are saying that it’s just about time to call it a worldwide pandemic and to prepare accordingly. Already, at the time of the writing of this, substantial changes are happening daily in the economies of nations around the world in response to the Corona virus.

It was just a few weeks or months ago that Australia experienced the worst fires they’ve ever had. At the same time, the unprecedented melting of the permafrost in the Arctic religions is releasing huge amounts of CO₂ into the atmosphere, contributing to the climate change that is already a major concern of much of the world.

As you know, I could go on. It is common knowledge that here in America the country is as politically and socially divided as it has been since the Civil War over 160 years ago. Another concern that many parents are only now coming to realize is that there are agendas being relentlessly pursued in most Western nations now to make mandatory indoctrination of elementary school children in the most explicate elements of the “gay” perception of sexuality to be something that parents’ of these children have no legal rights to oppose. This gets almost no news coverage but it is pervasive everywhere and ongoing.

This would also tend to fulfill another of the things that Jesus pointed out would be a sign of His imminent return, “As the days of Lot, so shall also the coming of the son of Man be. But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.” (Luke 17:28 & 29) So it would seem that elements of Sodom and Gomorrah are also predicted by the Lord to be a part of the spirit of the times, just before His return.

And to go back to my original question, “Are we there yet?” Recent events have caused me to look again at how I’ve been viewing these things. I’ve always expected that there would need to be some kind of major international economic/social crash or war to bring on conditions that would be ripe for the final days of the endtime. But there are just many increasing earmarks on every side that certainly look like the things I was expecting to see many years ago. It all very much bears watching closely, as well as being prepared for, both spiritually as well as physically.