The Mark of the Beast

by Sydney Watson

"The last twenty years of the nineteenth century, and more so the first ten years of the twentieth century, was marked as an age of centralization and concentration of all kinds of interests, commercial, and religious. Each year, the trusts and monopolies in the commercial world became more and more concentrated, until it has become perfectly easy for Lucien Apleon, Emperor-Dictator of the World, to govern and control (from that beautiful, hellish city, Babylon the great,) every business interest in the world.

"Two days ago, at Jerusalem, the 'Covenant Sign'—so called—but which God calls the 'Mark of the Beast'—was donned by three or four million people, in the holiday spirit. But what was donned voluntarily, in a holiday spirit, forty-eight hours ago, will have to be branded on every one's person in the universe in three and a half years time—or less—or else the refuser of the degradation will have to seal his or her loyalty to God by their life.

"In three and a half years from now, Sir Archibald, the image of Lucien Apleon, will be set up in the Temple of Jerusalem, and, I believe, in every other great religious centre of the World—St. Peter's, Rome; St. Paul's, London; and so on in all our great cities, and world centres. I have been studying this subject naturally, and I find that one great scholar (Hengstenberg) says, that though one image is spoken of, yet having regard to the sense of the original, 'a multitude of images is meant.'"

"But religiously, Bastin, religiously?" cried the old man. "How did the condition of things in the end of the nineteenth, and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, help to make it possible for all the world presently to worship the Beast, and his image?"

There was an almost childish querulousness of tone in the old baronet's questioning.

"All those years," began Ralph, "were marked by a wonderful activity on new lines of deliverance for the human race, from the ills that had grown up around the vast bulk of that race. God's plan was for man's regeneration, a change of heart and life—a working from the centre to the circumference. But the churches—all denominations—of the years we are speaking about, began endless schemes of deliverance that the man, as they hoped, might be changed from the outside—that is to say, man's idea of benefitting man was by an outward reform.

"They failed to recognize the fundamental fact that all the 'Ills of Humanity,' so called, proceeded from man's natural depravity, from man himself, and not from his environment. We failed to see that a reformed race would only mean a perpetuation of all the old natural lusts, and presently, bring about a return to the old condition of things, while a regenerated race would hold reform in it, and that that reform would not only be perpetual, but ever increasing in its perfecting.

"Then, too, the great religious denominations became fired with the idea of a consolidating, unifying process that should smelt down all denominations into one. To do this every type of religion should find a place. What would it matter if one or more of the religions denied the Deity of Christ? that others did not accept the Bible as the Inspired word of God and so on? 'The doctrine of Christ,' was gradually eliminated from almost all preaching and the doctrine of a divine humanism—'The divinity of man,' became largely the new cult.

"I believe, from all that I can gather, one of the first steps towards this elimination of 'the doctrine of Christ,' could be traced in the continued elimination from the various denominational hymn-books (as new ones were issued beginning as far back as the late seventies) of hymns relating to the facts of the Atonement and other kindred subjects, and the substitution of odes, poems, etc., in which aspiration took the place of experimental religion. The hymn-books of more than one, or two, or three denominations, showed this retrograde movement, through their several successive issues.

"Then, side by side with this Anti-christian movement, there went on silently that gathering out from the world, and from the merely professing Christian church, those who were, by virtue of their New Birth, through faith in Christ, the recipients of Eternal life, and who, when that glorious 'Rapture' took place awhile ago, were caught up into the air as a body of living believers to be joined for ever, to their head—Christ; thus robbing the world of what Christ Himself called 'the salt of the earth.'"