Buck had never been fearful, never one to back down in the face of mortal danger. But Nicolae Carpathia was evil personified, and the next day Buck would be in the line of fire when the battle of the ages between good and evil for the very souls of men and women would burst from the heavens, and all hell would break loose on earth.
EPILOGUE
Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth.”
So the first went and poured out his bowl upon the earth, and a foul and loathsome sore came upon the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image.
Revelation 16:1-2
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JERRY B. JENKINS, former vice president for publishing at Moody Bible Institute of Chicago and currently chairman of the board of trustees, is the author of more than 175 books, including the best-selling Left Behind series. Twenty of his books have reached the New York Times Best Sellers List (seven in the number-one spot) and have also appeared on the USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and Wall Street Journal best-seller lists. Desecration, book nine in the Left Behind series, was the best-selling book in the world in 2001. His books have sold nearly 70 million copies.
Also the former editor of Moody magazine, his writing has appeared in Time, Reader’s Digest, Parade, Guideposts, Christianity Today, and dozens of other periodicals. He was featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine in 2004.
His nonfiction books include as-told-to biographies with Hank Aaron, Bill Gaither, Orel Hershiser, Luis Palau, Joe Gibbs, Walter Payton, and Nolan Ryan among many others. The Hershiser and Ryan books reached the New York Times Best Sellers List.
Jenkins assisted Dr. Billy Graham with his autobiography, Just As I Am, also a New York Times best seller. Jerry spent 13 months working with Dr. Graham, which he considers the privilege of a lifetime.
Jerry owns Jenkins Entertainment, a filmmaking company in Los Angeles, which produced the critically acclaimed movie Midnight Clear, based on his book of the same name. See www.Jenkins-Entertainment.com.
Jerry Jenkins also owns the Christian Writers Guild, which aims to train tomorrow’s professional Christian writers. Under Jerry’s leadership, the guild has expanded to include college-credit courses, a critique service, literary registration services, and writing contests, as well as an annual conference. See www.ChristianWritersGuild.com.
As a marriage-and-family author, Jerry has been a frequent guest on Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio program and is a sought-after speaker and humorist. See www.AmbassadorSpeakers.com.
Jerry has been awarded four honorary doctorates. He and his wife, Dianna, have three grown sons and six grandchildren.
Check out Jerry’s blog at http://jerryjenkins.blogspot.com.
DR. TIM LAHAYE (www.timlahaye.com), who conceived and created the idea of fictionalizing an account of the Rapture and the Tribulation, is a noted author, minister, and nationally recognized speaker on Bible prophecy. He is the founder of both Tim LaHaye Ministries and The PreTrib Research Center.
Dr. LaHaye speaks at many of the major Bible prophecy conferences in the U.S. and Canada, where his prophecy books are very popular.
Dr. LaHaye earned a doctor of ministry degree from Western Theological Seminary and received an honorary doctor of literature degree from Liberty University. For 25 years he pastored one of the nation’s outstanding churches in San Diego, which grew to three locations. During that time he founded two accredited Christian high schools, a Christian school system of ten schools, and San Diego Christian College (formerly known as Christian Heritage College).
There are over 59 million copies of Dr. LaHaye’s 50 nonfiction books, some of which have been published in over 37 languages. He has written books on a wide variety of subjects, such as family life, temperaments, and Bible prophecy. His fiction works include the Left Behind series and the Jesus Chronicles, written with Jerry B. Jenkins. LaHaye’s other fiction series of prophetic novels consist of the Babylon Rising series and The End series. Dr. LaHaye is the father of four grown children, grandfather of nine, and great-grandfather of eleven.
TEST YOUR PROPHECY IQ
What is one of the key things that must be done before the abomination of desolation, portrayed in Desecration, can take place?
See answer at the end of this section.
THE TRUTH BEHIND THE FICTION
THE PROPHECY BEHIND THE SCENES
Ask people about the end times and one of the concepts likely to come up is the mark of the Beast. Quite a few people have looked with fear at current events and technological innovations as though the mark could occur at any time. While we may experience precursors to the real thing, it is something reserved for the Tribulation, as explained by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins in chapter 14 of Are We Living in the End Times?
The Mark of the Beast
One of the best known prophecies of the Tribulation is that the Beast, or Antichrist, will have the ability to put his mark “666” on the forehead or hand of the world’s people. According to Revelation 13:17, during the second half of the Tribulation, Antichrist will have such total control of the earth “that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark . . . or the number of his name.” Whoever has the power to decide who can work, buy, or sell has absolute power.
Revelation 13:13-18 teaches that after the midpoint of the Tribulation, all men and women will be ordered to bow down before the image of the Beast and worship him. Those who do will receive “a mark . . . on their foreheads” that is “the name of the beast, or the number of his name”—later identified as 666. This will identify them as worshipers of the Beast. All those without that mark will be killed.
Scripture makes it clear that receiving the mark of the Beast is no accident but the result of a deliberate choice made during the Tribulation. Concerned believers sometimes worry that they might somehow inadvertently receive this devilish mark. But this is impossible. The mark is obtained only by those who sell their soul to the Beast and the devil who gives him his power. This involves a willful rejection of God—something a true Christian could never do.
The Bible is quite clear that a person cannot take the mark of the Beast accidentally. It will become the external sign of a deliberate decision to give oneself to the devil. Also, the mark of the Beast does not appear until the middle of the Tribulation, so no Christian alive today need worry about inadvertently taking the mark and becoming a follower of the Beast and the devil.
The only people who should be concerned are those who miss the Rapture and are left behind to go through the Tribulation. For if they live into the Tribulation, they had better be prepared to make a choice. But they should understand this: Once the choice is made, it is eternal!
Taking the Mark—Irreversible
It seems quite clear that once the decision is made to worship the Antichrist and receive his mark or his name, it is an irreversible decision—which is why we should warn the unsaved never to consider taking that mark or worshiping the Antichrist. During the Tribulation the Holy Spirit will convict people and warn them of sin and of their need to receive the gospel.
The important thing, however, is that no one reading this ever has to make such a decision. By accepting Jesus Christ by faith as your Lord and Savior, you can keep yourself from ever being put into this terrible situation. That’s what the Bible means when it says, “Now is the accepted time; . . . [today] is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2, emphasis added).
The Cashless Society
Thinking people who read Revelation 13 have long wondered how the Antichrist could exercise such total control over billions of people. How could it be possible that they could not buy or sell without his mark?
For the first time in two thousand years, it is now technologically possible to enforce such a system. Microchips have already been invented that can be placed in the body to enable others to track an individual. Combined with checkout scanners, it woul
d be easy to require the mark on people’s accounts (or hands or foreheads) in order for them to buy or sell. Mark-of-the-Beast technology is already here!
In The Truth Behind Left Behind (Multnomah, 2004, pp. 149-50), Mark Hitchcock and Thomas Ice suggest that the mark itself will be a literal, physical 666 mark, like a tattoo. They see the role of technology as a way for Antichrist to exercise his authority and implement the cashless society.
Still, technology by itself is nearly powerless. It will finally become prophetically potent in the coming worldwide move to a cashless society . . . and a common global currency.
Officials of the world already have begun using both natural and man-made catastrophes as a basis to call for a cashless society. For example, they know it would help solve the burgeoning crime problem. All it would take is for you to agree to have your paycheck automatically deposited (many Americans already do); then you would use a “smart card” to purchase everything you buy.
IN THE MEANTIME . . . since the Left Behind series was first published.
Concerns for various kinds of ID have been around for a long time, concerns that center on fears of government control at the cost of personal freedom. Now, whenever you go out in public it is increasingly likely that you will not be anonymous but caught in the growing “surveillance society”—something many citizens accept in the post-9/11 world. Mark Hitchcock first wrote about this in the Left Behind Prophecy Newsletter (2003–2009) in 2005. By the time he updated it for the August 12, 2009, issue, the situation had become even more Orwellian.
After the bombing in my hometown of Oklahoma City in April 1995, I remember seeing the grainy pictures from cameras in downtown Oklahoma City that authorities used to investigate who was responsible for the unthinkable devastation. The camera images, shown day after day to an audience hungry for news, were a key part of the case against Timothy McVeigh and spurred all kinds of theories about possible coconspirators. This was my first introduction to the presence of surveillance cameras on the streets of my hometown.
I knew that convenience stores had cameras but was totally unaware that people walking down the street were being watched. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, electronic surveillance was taken to a whole new level in this country. Most of us are unaware of the number of times we are on camera every day. But we have nothing on Great Britain. They are truly a surveillance society. It’s Orwellian in scope. This is stuff right out of 1984.
Fox News has reported that 4.2 million surveillance cameras have been installed over the years in Great Britain. That’s a staggering one for every fourteen people! According to experts, every person in England is caught on camera about 300 times a day. Someone is watching every move of every person all the time. But Britain has gone even further. Money has been appropriated to install 24-hour CCTV supervision in problem homes to curb potential neglect and abuses. The Daily Express says, “They will be monitored to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time and eat proper meals.” Could this be only the beginning of government intrusion into families for other behaviors that are deemed to be against the public interest?
Not to be outdone, China has installed 2.75 million surveillance cameras since 2003 and is expanding the system into the largely neglected countryside. “The cameras are the most visible components of police surveillance and notification systems installed around the country, mainly in urban areas,” according to a news release posted Monday on the Public Security Ministry’s Web site. Beijing alone has 265,000 cameras, with more being added all the time. But even with 2.75 million cameras, that brings the number of cameras in China up to one for every 472,000 people. Of course, under a totalitarian regime, no debate over privacy rights has taken place in China.
The desperate need for security in our world of ever-increasing threats and danger has spurred the need for government to watch our every move. While this makes perfect sense in many ways, it’s easy to see how this kind of intrusion into daily life could easily be used to control the lives of citizens in an inappropriate fashion and invade precious privacy rights. National Big Brother could easily be transformed into international Big Brother.
The Bible says that the time is coming when one man will control the world government, economy, and religion (Rev 13:11-18). While nothing we see today is the fulfillment of that prophecy, the surveillance technology that is mushrooming worldwide, even in places like rural China, is another striking foreshadow of the kingdom of the prince of darkness who is to come.
How far has the surveillance society penetrated the area where you live? How do people you know feel about it? As these kinds of things happen, it should increase your desire to study prophecy. As you get into discussions about events today, it should also provide an opportunity for presenting a biblical perspective. According to Dr. LaHaye, one of the things that should arise from an interest in prophecy is a heightened desire to introduce people to Jesus and the ability to live in the hope of eternity.
TEST YOUR PROPEHCY IQ—ANSWER
The abomination of desolation (Daniel 9:27, Matthew 24:15) will occur when Antichrist enters and desecrates the temple. Of course, the last temple was leveled during the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70. Standing on the temple mount now are the Muslim al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, the latter occupying the location where the temple is to be rebuilt. More on the prospects of this happening in Desecration.
Tim LaHaye, The Mark: The Beast Rules the World
(Series: Left Behind # 8)
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