“I will give him a new NAME.” -Jesus (Revelation 2:17)

“It causes all to be marked with the NUMBER.” -Revelation 13

The Lamb gives you a NAME.
The Beast gives you a NUMBER.

Is the Lamb analog and the Beast is digital?

The Lamb is personal
The Beast is impersonal.

The Lamb is all about persons.
The Beast is all about numbers.

(One of the few direct mentions of the satan in the Old Testament is when the satan moved King David to number the people.)

Be suspicious of things that are too obsessed with numbers.

Be nervous when churches are too obsessed with numbers.

Be wary of dehumanized forms of communication that turn everything into 1′s and 0′s.

(Is this why it’s so easy to behave beastly on Facebook and Twitter?)

A “virtual” world is a Gnostic world — not the good Creation of God.

I use digital communication. A lot. Obviously.

But I’m also suspicious of it. I think it’s inherently dangerous.

Turning names into numbers. It’s a kind of mark of the Beast.

Calling things by their names is the way of the Lamb and the first vocation of man. (Genesis 2:19)

So go for a walk. Outdoors. See some birds and trees. Learn their names.

Have a conversation. With a human being. Face to face.

We are names, not numbers.

The Beast gives us a NUMBER.
But the Lamb gives us a NAME.

BZ
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Let’s play a little game. I’ll ask some questions and you answer them. OK?

First question: Did God tell Abraham to kill his son?

You say, yes? (Adding that God didn’t actually require Abraham to go through with it.)

Next question: Did God tell Joshua and Saul to kill children as part of the “ethnic cleansing” of Canaan?

Is that a hesitant yes I hear — like walking in untied shoes?

My next question is simple and straightforward: Does God change?

No?

Well then, since God doesn’t change — and you have already acknowledged that in times past God has sanctioned the killing of children — is it possible that God would require you to kill children?

You say you don’t like this game? I understand. I don’t really like it either. But stick with me, I have one more question.

If God told you to kill children, would you do so?

I know, I know, I know! Calm down.

Of course you answer without hesitation that under no circumstance would you participate in the killing of children!

Yet in answering with an unequivocal no to the question of whether or not you would kill children are you claiming a moral superiority to the God depicted in parts of the Old Testament? After all, God commanded the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites, including children…didn’t he? Yet you obviously find the very suggestion of participating in genocide morally repugnant.
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Gitmo Is Killing Me
By SAMIR NAJI al HASAN MOQBEL
Published April 15, 2013 in the New York Times

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba

ONE man here weighs just 77 pounds. Another, 98. Last thing I knew, I weighed 132, but that was a month ago.

I’ve been on a hunger strike since Feb. 10 and have lost well over 30 pounds. I will not eat until they restore my dignity.

I’ve been detained at Guantánamo for 11 years and three months. I have never been charged with any crime. I have never received a trial.

I could have been home years ago — no one seriously thinks I am a threat — but still I am here. Years ago the military said I was a “guard” for Osama bin Laden, but this was nonsense, like something out of the American movies I used to watch. They don’t even seem to believe it anymore. But they don’t seem to care how long I sit here, either.

When I was at home in Yemen, in 2000, a childhood friend told me that in Afghanistan I could do better than the $50 a month I earned in a factory, and support my family. I’d never really traveled, and knew nothing about Afghanistan, but I gave it a try.

I was wrong to trust him. There was no work. I wanted to leave, but had no money to fly home. After the American invasion in 2001, I fled to Pakistan like everyone else. The Pakistanis arrested me when I asked to see someone from the Yemeni Embassy. I was then sent to Kandahar, and put on the first plane to Gitmo.

Last month, on March 15, I was sick in the prison hospital and refused to be fed. A team from the E.R.F. (Extreme Reaction Force), a squad of eight military police officers in riot gear, burst in. They tied my hands and feet to the bed. They forcibly inserted an IV into my hand. I spent 26 hours in this state, tied to the bed. During this time I was not permitted to go to the toilet. They inserted a catheter, which was painful, degrading and unnecessary. I was not even permitted to pray.

I will never forget the first time they passed the feeding tube up my nose. I can’t describe how painful it is to be force-fed this way. As it was thrust in, it made me feel like throwing up. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t. There was agony in my chest, throat and stomach. I had never experienced such pain before. I would not wish this cruel punishment upon anyone. Read more