athenasius
Well-Known Member
It's a good question.I have to think about all that. I'm not saying you're wrong. Just not sure I completely agree.
What if people take the mark only to survive, not because they worship or agree with the beast?
Wouldn't God know that I'm only taking the mark to survive this horrific time?
The answer lies in the fact that God gave the warning.
The cost of not going in the Rapture because you didn't believe in Christ until after the Rapture is death for most believers and eventually for all the unbelievers as well.
That is quite clear thru the texts in Revelation after the church age is finished-- after Jesus finishes with Laodicea, and John hears that call to come up here.
Death is inevitable.
The only choice left is whether death is permanent or not. The second death.
That is the warning that God explicitly spells out over and over. Don't take the mark. Survival at this time is NOT WORTH IT. It will cost you everything if you try to survive by taking the mark.
So for the future Tribulation Saints, the choice is believe God and act on that belief, and be martyred or disobey God and suffer permanent death and separation as a consequence. That is KNOWINGLY chosen-- certain death now as a martyr for Christ or certain death later as a consequence of taking the mark.
God will obviously allow some, a very few of the gentile nation believers to survive to replenish the earth in the Millennium.
1/3 of the Jews that enter the Tribulation will also survive, but only because they became believers in Christ --and even among the 2/3 that die, there will likely be more than a few believing Jews who die also. All we know is that 1/3 of Israel survives, and that 1/3 is unanimous in believing Christ and calling on Him to save them.
So the one fact is death. Certain death that cannot be avoided except by God's sovereign will in sparing a certain few.
There will be NOTHING that can be done to avoid that death. Except by God's miraculous provision for the few He spares.
Everybody dies and the few that live, do so by God's miraculous provision.
With that in mind, the choice isn't whether God will forgive someone who takes the mark because they were just doing it to survive. He said He won't.
Instead the choice is death-- now or later. Now is better than later because if you survive by taking the mark you are damned for eternity.
If the mark is forcibly given, it obviously doesn't come by reason of accepting it, and that doesn't count so it seems that it cannot be given without consent. God has made that clear to Satan and the hordes of hell.
This is why the enemy MUST use the most drastic methods to persuade people to take the mark. Survival-- food and access to the money system to buy that food. And if you don't take the mark then you lose your head literally.
Because the mark MUST be voluntary, even if people only volunteer to take it to save their lives.
This time of Tribulation is so different from the Church Age, where we have forgiveness and grace for all but the sin of unbelief in Christ. In our day we come to faith and live for Christ.
In the Tribulation we come to faith and die for Christ.
Those few who survive by God's miraculous intervention will do so even as they continue to refuse the mark, yet are preserved thru till the end alive.
If any Tribulation believer takes the mark they are forever lost after that point. If the mark is forced upon them, -- given while they are unconscious for example or held down in chains and done to them while they scream NO!!!! it isn't valid. They have to consent to the mark for it to damn them.
Consent given to help one's family survive is still consent in a time when God states so clearly that all will die barring a few that He alone protects. Survival is by God's power alone to a select few. Anyone who survives by consenting to the mark will die and they will do so because they knew the truth of God and still chose to disobey.