The Mark of the Beast

Have you ever watched the movie Apocalypse Now? One of the movie's memorable scenes is Colonel Kurtz’s monologue. Please read it and/or listen to it via the links provided below:

“I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us.”

Link to text @ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/quotes?qt=qt0324875

Link to video @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHrcD87aOCw

The Book of Revelation describes the mark of the beast in the following terms:

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Rev 13:16-17 KJV)

Jesus more than once uttered the following strange phrase (or variation of it):

And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. (Matthew 5:30 KJV)

The vaccinations of which Colonel Kurtz spoke were to the Vietnamese the equivalent of the mark of the beast. If your child was hungry and you could feed him by taking the mark, would you do it or would you let him starve? If your child had the mark on his hand and you could save his soul by cutting it off (literally or figuratively), would you do it or would you let him be damned? What will your family and your neighbors think about your choice, and how will you resist their pressure?

We are a weak people. Although we watch them daily on the Internet, movies, and TV, horror and moral terror are not our friends in the sense meant by Colonel Kurtz; they are our enemies. We don’t have the courage to do what Jesus and Colonel Kurtz described, and when the time comes we WILL NOT be able to do it.

[Thomas Jefferson took an interest in early cowpox and kinepox vaccinations as a preventive measure against smallpox, and he is said to have inoculated several persons himself. In the context of these posts, would that make him the beast and those inoculations the mark of the beast? More on that in a future post.]