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Is the Mark of the Beast in the Needle?
A retired pastor in our church is part of a really wonderful ministry distributing wheelchairs in Nigeria. Most of those in need of the chairs are victims of polio. As recently as thirty years ago, Nigeria had thousands of new polio cases every year. Thankfully, at that time, Rotary International stepped in and spread the vaccine throughout the country. Other organizations also played a part, so cases fell from 350,000 cases worldwide to 407 cases in 2013. I believe there were just 22 cases in 2019, but people who contracted polio decades ago still need wheelchairs. My friend was planning to make his annual trip to helo distribute wheelchairs last year, but, you know, the Covid.
I understand why some people would have concerns about the vaccines for Covid-19. Through abrupt and often contradictory policy changes over the past year, the government and the medical establishment have done much to damage their credibility. The vaccine was made so quickly (thanks to the administration’s Warp Speed program), that it worries some. I can understand that those worries. Don’t agree the worries are sensible, but I can understand them.
But some people these days doubt the efficacy of vaccines in general — and if you don’t recognize the effectiveness of vaccines in battling polio and smallpox and measles and many other diseases, your opposition of the Covid-19 vaccine might be consistent, but your attitude doesn’t speak well for your intelligence (and possibly your sanity).
As bad as that kind of nuttiness is, I’ve come across an even worse story going around the vaccines among some Christians. They are claiming the vaccine(s) are the Mark of the Beast.
You might know of the Mark of the Beast from Scripture or from The Omen films. In the Bible’s book of Revelation, chapter 13, verses 16 and 17, Jesus’ disciple John wrote, “It [the Beast, the Antichrist] also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.”
So there are indeed some people typing into the internets that the vaccine is this Mark of the Beast, and anyone who takes it is buying a ticket straight to hell.
Is this idea even worthy of a response? After all, Proverbs 26: 4 says, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.”
But on the other hand, Proverbs 26: 5 says, “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.”
So I find myself trying to give a reasoned response to bat guano crazy:
Why the Vaccine is Not the Mark of the Beast:
- A shot in the arm is nothing like a mark on the head or forehead. If you are going to take this passage literally (not usually a good idea in the Book of Revelation), then the vaccine is just dealing with the wrong part of the anatomy. I’ve been persuaded through the years the mark is probably symbolic. The head is used to represent thinking like the antichrist and the hands represent acting like the antichrist. But people who take a vaccine for their own health and the health of others seems like a Christ-like action to me.
- Since there is talk that the vaccine will be necessary for travel and certain kinds of employment, this is obviously fulfilling the “they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark” portion of the Scripture. Of course, in the last few months, many of us couldn’t buy or sell without a mask. Is the mask the Mark of the Beast? (I’m sure there are a number of people who think so.) For years, restaurants have posted “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service” signs. Are shirts and shoes the Mark of the Beast?
- If taking the Mark of the Beast results in losing one’s salvation, perhaps we need to alter some Scripture. Ephesians 2, verses 8 & 9 should read, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and by not getting the vaccine — and this is not from yourselves (except for your foresight in not taking the vaccine); it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast (unless you boast about not getting the vaccine).” And Romans 10:9 needs to read “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, and don’t get the vaccine, you will be saved.”
- The idea that the vaccine is the Mark of the Beast is exactly what Paul was talking about when he warned (in I Timothy 4: 7) against people who listen to “godless myths and old wives’ tales.” Old wives’ tales may no longer be a politically correct phrase, but it captures well the “vaccine is the Mark of the Beast” vibe. This passage warns against allowing people to tell you what you should do. Earlier in that chapter, in verses 3 – 5, Paul wrote, “They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to rejected if it is received with thanksgiving because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.” “Medicine” or “vaccine” could well be substituted for “food” in that passage. I believe it is wise to receive the Covid-19 vaccine with thanksgiving. If you don’t want to take it, fine, but don’t condemn other people for doing so.
I very much doubt anyone here at Ricochet is of the “vaccine is the Mark of the Beast” crowd, but I hope this post is helpful if you encounter such people.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Helpful to whom? To them? Sadly nothing will move them off such articles of religious faith. To me? Well… I already agree with you – in that it is some consolation that I’m not alone in this crazy crazy world.
I talked with some such person who God had told him this was true, so even the evidence of Scripture can’t overcome “God told me”.
Beautiful.
Christians not grounded in their faith can be as easily swayed as anyone.
That is not to say there is nothing to be concerned about with the vaccines. For example, 23 seniors in Norway and a Florida doctor are dead after being vaccinated.
For those not familiar there was a disaster with the Salk vaccine in 1955. There were about 200,000 kids given a defective vaccine made by a small company named Cutter. 40,000 developed poliomyelitis,200 were paralyzed and 10 died. The Salk vaccine was made from a live virus growth in monkey cells and then killed after being filtered first and killed in a solution of formaldehyde. Cutter’s process somehow took a recess. I am aware of all of this because I had polio in 1949 and have done a lot of reading about the subject. I suffered for several years and need to relearn to walk but have only slight residual problems. If anything it made me appreciate determination. I was lucky again.
Since my church is still remote, the pastor added a short question time to the livestream services where he answers Biblical questions that people submit online. Sure enough, that was the very first question he got. You could almost see a smile start to form on his face before he caught himself and realized they were serious. He then answered with a simple, “No” but did go on to a more detailed answer.
Glad to hear you came through it hale and hearty, PHCheese. Reminds me of other more recent vaccine travails.
https://journal-neo.org/2020/09/28/gates-vaccine-spreads-polio-across-africa/
People should have information and be able to make up their own minds whether to take Covid vaccines.
Yes, but how many are dead before being vaccinated?
Very interesting link Mim 526. Thanks.
Okay let us focus on several important aspects of the situation that you are either totally unaware of, or else you deliberately did not want to bring forth.
First of all, it stands to reason that when the subject of vaccinations comes up, the extremely important principle of “Risk Vs Benefit’ should come up.
You mention polio and that is a good jumping off point. Polio was a real epidemic. People across the nation knew of real victims of polio who were toddlers, children or young adults. Many died or were left paralyzed.
At the time that Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine, it is important to consider:
One: Polio was an infection that affected many people of all ages and often a serious paralysis was a lifelong result that the individuals were forced to cope with. Even in 1960, with many people vaccinated and others who were offered immunity by having experienced more minor infections of this plague, some 3 out of every ten thousand cases died.
Two: Jonas Salk was motivated to create the vaccine as there was no other suitable remedy. He was not part of an inner circle of Big Pharma investors and officials who stood to gain by pretending this was a serious infection, and pretending that there were no suitable remedies. In fact it is my understanding that Salk did not gain significantly in terms of profits from this vaccine program.
Three: Jonas Salk utilized a time period of at least one year to undertake test studies of the vaccine. And this was not the first vaccine that had been undertaken. Rather it was a vaccine that was developed by examining what did and did not work in earlier vaccines for polio, which were failures.
COVID does not resemble polio in any significant way. If you subtract out the group of people most likely to become fatalities from the equation, that is those over 70 living in nursing homes, or those with a terminal illness, and those over 70 with several comorbidities, the fatality rate is a mere 0.0235% of the population. On top of that, remedies exist that are available, cheap, effective and have only one obstacle is preventing their being prescribed: the profit motive.
So we know for most people that the risk in not significant. We also know that the this newly developed group of “COVID vaccines” are an absolute unknown as far as both risk & benefit. A previously developed “mRNA vaccine” for a different strain of corona was tested on cats several years ago. Although the cats did okay with the vaccination program trials, the vaccine left them open to being more vulnerable to a different strain of corona virus, which many of the cats then contracted. Then they went on to experience serious cases of it and then they died. Is this to be our fate?
Already the number of individuals whose families are reporting serious adverse health problems after being vaxxed with the Pfizer vax is considerable.
Links? Actual data? Not just anecdotes.
Great points. I support the right of anyone who wants to participate in the largest human experiment ever undertaken in the history of the world by taking this “vaccine”.
Is there anyone here who doesn’t understand, if not agree with, Christian warnings? We have two of the three events prophesied 2,000 years ago in the Book of the Revelation of John happening now, and you all seem to be poo-pooing the possibility of the mark. Those three events have been bundled up into the phrase a “One World Order” (renamed by G.H.W. Bush the New World Order in 1992, and now seen in Globalism and The Great Reset). They are in no particular order:
1– One World Government, which we see consolidating as I type this, as a part of the governmental Great Reset;
2– One World Economic system, in which no one will be able to buy or sell if they don’t take the mark of the beast; and we already have experience with wiping out bank accounts, and are facing digital currencies; and
3– One World Religion, though this final religion is yet to show itself, in it people will be beheaded in they don’t worship the beast. The exact expression of this religion is still unknown, but I wasn’t surprised when beheadings started making a world-wide comeback.
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I don’t think the vaccine’s the mark of the beast, but I think the embedded chips or nano-particles that are intended to monitor your health, and additionally provide the benefit of holding your bank account so you can pay for things with a wave of the hand, very well could be associated with this mark of the beast.
I won’t elaborate any further on any these things, or try to convince anyone of their plausibility, but then again, I’m rather a Bible-believing Christian.
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All this prophesied 2,000 years ago. Houdah Thunkett? Who would have thought that this would ever literally become a real possibility? Maybe the prophesies are true.
Well to be fair, I suppose if God ever told me something, I’d be inclined to believe it too.
No maybe about it, far as I’m concerned. To me it’s important right now especially that people remain level headed and resolute. If it comes to forced vaccinations in order to work, buy goods/services, etc. we have a real problem. I believe Christians should be present in the “public square”, standing shoulder to shoulder with fellow Americans encouraging all not to easily give up our freedoms.
I don’t know why this is such a big … deal.
Get the vaccine. Don’t get the vaccine. You have your reasons and I have mine. If someone’s reasons for not getting it sound a little weird … so what?
I know people in their 20s and 30s who have quit their jobs and crippled their children psychologically because of this stupid virus. To question their rationale is to wish upon them death.
Everyone accommodates their neurosis. So I’ll happily accommodate those who don’t wish to get the vaccine.
Massachusetts just reversed its mandatory vaccination order.
Anecdotes are part of the First Principle of Science. Which happens to be the principle of observation.
If you are out watering your lawn one spring evening and a car comes down the street, zooms over the curb across the street, and takes out three kids playing on the lawn of a neighbor, do you go, “Well this is just an anecdotal experience… I’m done watering the lawn and I think I’ll go in and take a nap.” Or do you call the police?
Hundreds of thousands of parents have taken healthy happy toddlers into the doctors’ office, gotten them jabbed with a trivalent shot and watched the toddlers immediately go into convulsions. The health practitioners assure the parents that taking the toddler home is the best course of action. If the convulsions continue, the parents go to the ER and are told that this is just a coincidence, in terms of the child having been vaccinated.
This event is then followed by two or three weeks of continual seizure-like events, continual diarrhea. The child no longer makes eye contact, and no longer speaks words, let alone the sentences that the child used to speak, prior to the vaccination. For some parents, the diagnosis of autism comes about quickly – for others, it is months or even years later.
At one point, in Apr 2000, Sen Burton (R) of Indiana held a hearing on the role of vaccines in autism. Much of the five hour plus testimony is no longer viewable over on C Span. But parents’ testimony remains up and running. (Note one of the 3 autistic children seems to have been autistic at birth, not from a vaccine.) You should view this testimony:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?156441-1/autism-childhood-vaccines
As far as COVID vaccine injuries and problems, it has just been announced today that a single lot of the Moderna vaccine that was supposed to be distributed here in Calif has been recalled due to problems with it.
Then here are some assorted stories:
13 Israelis suffer facial paralysis after coronavirus vaccine. “Second dose should of course be only provided if and when the (facial) paralysis passes.”
Israeli Health Ministry, Covid vaccine rollout in Israel
52 adverse results in India from COVID jab – one person in serious condition:
https://theprint.in/health/52-adverse-event-after-covid-vaccine-reported-in-delhi-on-first-day-of- immunisation-drive/586877/?fbclid=IwAR2GirH9XpmeDjA62XL9cI58rHVZo98lCkMGS8309bupqQJbZobT33Xof7I
1 of 2
2 of 2
66 adverse effects from COVID vaccine in US reported to Vaers – 19 of the 66 were same day
https://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/findfield.php?EVENTS=on&PAGENO=2&PERPAGE=10&ESORT=&REVERSESORT=&VAX=(COVID19)&VAXTYPES=(COVID-19)&DIED=Yes
Then think about this: the vaccine does not provide immunity – except for two months.
After all the COVID vax trial ended and two months later, the vax was declared to be 95% effective in providing immunity – so what is the meaning of that? We get two months of immunity! That is all we know. Yet they called parents who knew their children had descended into autism as “purveyors of anecdotal info.” Well two months of observation is not enough months of observation to be considered anything at all – it is worse than anecdotal – it is deception!!
We also know the poor cats who were part of the other mRNA vaccine trials a few years ago were simply unknowingly set up to succumb to the next type of corona virus they were then exposed to. So we should risk a vaccine that is not going to provide immunity in any proven way, for more than two months, then we are possibly being set up to be more vulnerable to the common cold, or the next flu bug we encounter, and suffer extreme results from that, and also face the possibility of Bell’s Palsy, paralysis, and death. (A physician in Miami got his jab right before Christmas and he suffered greatly. He was dead two weeks later – and being part of the med community, he had some top people helping him battle the adverse results he experienced. You and I won’t have that type of help if we end up suffering an adverse effect.)
Should we really be doing this for an infection that has a 99.053% survival rate if you are not in the vulnerable group. Risk verses benefit – unknown risks for paltry benefits.
And again, if the infection is that scary – then damn it to hell, let’s prosecute everyone in Gates’ inner circle who has kept the remedies away from the public.
Here is an excellent talk by Dr Simone Gold who explains the situation:
https://rumble.com/vcqw73-dr-simone-gold-on-covid-hydroxychloroquine-and-the-vaccine.html
We need to isolate anti-vaxxers and their children, separate from them, and let them die off. There isn’t much else to do with them really.
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Henry Castaigne
Born near Seattle. I spent a lot of my life living in China. Currently I am obsessed with CRISPR technology because I want humanity to recreate itself to become less human.
And your point is?
I’m sorry CarolJoy, the car accident example is just an absurd analogy. @caroljoy
You and others argue that we shouldn’t be taking the vaccine because in reality “the rate of people dying from COVID is so small, so why risk the vaccine?” Then you use “reports” of adverse reactions where the rate of problems is even lower.
From your many, many posts on Ricochet, your bias against vaccines is very apparent. Much of your evidence is based on people telling their stories on weblogs about their child’s autism. Anecdotal evidence is harmful. Say you have 500 stories of some problem. Firstly, you have no idea how accurate the stories are or if the person is even telling the truth.
You also don’t know if that is 500 people out of 1,000 or 500 people out of a million or 50 million. That’s the problem with anecdotes. They sound sad and scary (or in some cases hopeful of a cure), but in reality – they tell you nothing of value. And worse, they can persuade people not to get needed treatment. Ask people who believed that Laetrile would cure their cancer.
The Pfizer tests went for almost four months. The vaccine was still providing immunity when the test ended at 110 days:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/10/1013914/pfizer-biontech-vaccine-chart-covid-19/
I don’t know if similar data have been provided for the Moderna vaccine.
The immunologist (Shane Crotty) interviewed on MedCram said all the signs so far are good for longer immunity. People who are infected with sars-cov-2 still have all four types of memory cells 6-8 months out, which is as long as his study ran. So if the vaccine reaction mimics the reaction to an actual infection (which is what it is supposed to do, since it is responding to some of the same proteins) then immunity should be longer lasting. But of course we don’t know yet how long or how effective at longer periods until we’ve had data from those longer periods.
But we do know from the vaccine tests that we get more than two months of immunity.
You, sir, are slandering well informed people by lumping them together with fools and ignoramuses.
I don’t doubt the efficacy of vaccines. I do know that if you inject foreign proteins (bypassing the membrane barrier systems of the respiratory tract and gut which generally prime the immune system against diseases) often enough into animals with no genetic autoimmune propensity that they can develop autoimmune pathologies.
We don’t know what “often enough” is for people, and we don’t have a reliable way to tell, though it is certainly an area in which YMMV. We also don’t know what injecting multiple foreign proteins at once does; the current childhood vaccine schedule is found here; the US pediatric vaccine schedule entails vaccination against up to 8 diseases at one visit.
Most vaccines are formulated using adjuvants which enhance the immune reaction by priming the immune system to produce antibodies; this priming is believed to occur inappropriately, priming the immune system to attack self, as part of the development of autoimmune disease.
I’ve got autoimmune arthritis and other autoimmune diseases; the arthritis was probably triggered by a couple of years of weekly injections of aluminum (an adjuvant) treated allergen in a desensitization process. The aluminum was supposed to make each injection last longer, so I wouldn’t have to go in for multiple injections per week of foreign proteins formulated to have an ongoing effect and to continuously make my immune system go into alarm mode.
I won’t go into detail, but this has had a significant impact on my life.
I have been in worse pain ever since an arthritic flare following a tetanus booster after an injury over five yeas ago. A substantial downturn.
You had better believe I’m skeptically examining each and every vaccine recommended to me and weighing the possible downside as well as the (generally) overhyped benefits.
You had also better believe that I value informed consent and as a default position, not as an absolute position am biased against mandatory vaccination.
Some Christians may reject this vaccine as part of a pro-life belief.
https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/how-to-object-to-an-abortion-tainted-covid-19-vaccine
Every study that has been done comparing America’s unvaccinated children to vaccinated children shows:
less autism
less cancer cases
less ear infections
fewer respiratory problems
less seizure disorders
less MS
and on and on, with the unvaxxed kiddies being healthier than the vaxxed
Vaccines have their purpose. Polio was something that I think warranted a vaccine. Same with smallpox.
The smallpox vax offered in the 1950’s was so well designed that a friend of mine who works for the vax industry told me that should a major outbreak of the wild version of smallpox hit our shores, there is a fifty fifty chance I would be immune to it, due to the smallpox vaccine I had in the 1950’s.
They do not make vaccines like that any more.
The most important consideration with regards to getting vaccinated is risk vs benefit. A concept you seem to wish to avoid considering.
In 2011, Japanese government officials announced they were discontinuing the vaccination of their children under the age of two. They made this determination based on their scientists careful studying of data they obtained from the US CDC. They did not want the deaths of babies and toddlers from “SIDS”, the paralysis, migraine headaches, transvere myletis, MS, cancer cases etc to occur among their infants and toddlers at the numbers we see here in the USA.
Dr. C. Ben Mitchell talked on The Colson Center’s Break Point Podcast and said his research showed the American vaccines, at least, have been researched and manufactured in an ethical way, consistent with prolife values.
So thank you for this information extending it out to 110 days. Dr Simone Gold stated it might be a much as 98 days immunity, so it probably could be a full 110 days.
However, once again, when I look at the idea of taking a new pill, or a brand spanking new type of “vaccine,” that is not really truly a vaccine at all, I want to undertake such a situation only if there is a significant benefit to risk gain for make.
The Pfizer “vaccine” is still a huge unknown risk, and offers very little to me in terms of benefit. Especially given I think I already had the dread COVID, back in March. (Was feeling under the weather, ran a slight fever, and had no sense of taste or even food texture. A steak or a bowl of oatmeal was pretty much the same to me.)
Here is my spouse’s question: How do we know the average person in the USA didn’t avoid getting COVID across the same 110 days? We don’t.
And another concern he brought up: it appears that after you have the vaccine, you then test positive for COVID. How long does that positive result continue? Will we all be locked down until no one who has had the vax is testing positive for COVID? (I haven’t looked into this at all, and it might be it is the other vaccines, and not Pfizer’s, that then cause the vaxxed individual to test positive.)
I am not arguing for mandatory vaccination and I believe people may have prudent reasons to object to this or other particular vaccinations. (When our children were in school, we didn’t agree to all the vaccinations that were encouraged.) But there’s a fringe in our society that argues out of hand against any vaccinations, and that I believe is not sensible. Doctors get things wrong, and there are valid reasons to object at times to the experts. But we have enough research and history to show that some types of vaccinations have provided great benefits to public health.
But there are objections to this vaccine, such as it being the Mark of the Beast, that I find theologically unsound, and yes, nutty.