The Mark of the Beast

Now I’m really starting to wonder what I got myself in for with this FAQ series! Here’s the next question:
“Mark of the Beast (no buying and selling without it—Christians shouldn’t receive it.) What does the Bible say? What are we looking for? How do we prepare?”
Let me get us started with a quote from Eugene Peterson, in his book Reversed Thunder:
“There is much in St. John that is puzzling. We need intelligent and wise guides who will accompany us through the often daunting terrain of St. John’s text without serious mishap. Unfortunately, while there are wise teachers available, they often get missed because there are so many more around who are simply foolish and who, like pushy guides at a tourist site, try to get us to hire them to tell us all about the ‘furniture of heaven and the temperature of hell’, the number of the beast, and the calendar of doomsday. G. K. Chesterton once remarked that ‘though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creatures so wild as one of his own commentators’.”
Pastor Paul