Dr. Jeannie Constantinou:  In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Illumine our hearts, O Master who loves mankind, with the pure light of thy divine knowledge, and open the eyes of our minds to understand thy Gospel teachings. Implant in us also the fear of thy blessed commandments, that, trampling down all carnal desires, we may enter upon a spiritual manner of living, both thinking and doing such things that are well-pleasing to thee. For thou art the illumination of our souls and bodies, O Christ our God, and to thee we ascribe glory, together with thy Father who is from everlasting, and thine all-holy and good and life-giving Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Well, good evening and welcome, brothers and sisters! I’m Dr. Jeannie Constantinou, and you are listening to Search the Scriptures Live! Today’s date is November 2, 2020, and if you wish to join us this evening, if you wish to call in with a question or a comment, we’d certainly love to hear from you—the number to call is 855-237-2346, or 855-AF-RADIO. Well, you could also pose a question by writing to ask@ancientfaith.com; we get questions that way also. If you’re looking for the chat room this evening, there’s not going to be a chat room. I just want to let you know, there were some people who were misbehaving—not our people, of course, but other people who just wanted to make mischief, I think, for people who really wanted to participate in the program, some outsiders, and so we’re not having the chat function right now. I hope that’s not too disappointing, but of course you can’t control who comes into the chat room so easily, so we had to suspend that, at least for now. I’m not sure whether we’re going to have it in the future. But that doesn’t prevent you from listening and from asking your questions. So that’s just in case you try to come in through the chat room or ask a question; that won’t be available, but we still look for your questions at ask@ancientfaith.com or searchthescriptures@ancientfaith.com.

Okay. So of course we’re in the middle of our discussion on the book of Revelation, really sort of right in the middle, in the question of the mark of the beast, which is what we’re going to be discussing today, at least as we begin. What it means, how you get it—we never really talked about that last time. We are also going to revisit the question of the fall of the devil from heaven as described in Revelation 12, because of a listener email, and this sort of prompted me to see what St. John Chrysostom had to say about this. So we will hear from him as well. And also a couple of other interesting listener emails that I have to share with you.

So let’s just go back to what we were saying last week about Revelation 13: The beast of the sea is the Roman empire and/or the Roman emperor. So why the empire? Because it is surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. You see, it was really centered around the sea, and it was identified by its own people with the sea. We don’t really think of it so much as identified with the Mediterranean Sea, but for the people of those days, they did identify the empire with the sea. And also it can be both the emperor and the empire itself, because the emperor personifies the empire. He receives his power from his position within the empire, but where did the empire get its power? Of course, the emperor, from the devil—that’s the dragon who stands on the shores of the sea, at the very end of chapter 12 or the beginning of chapter 13, and he calls forth the emergence of the beast of the sea.

Now the beast of the land comes next, and he is the person who causes everyone to worship the beast of the sea, that is, the emperor, and everyone who worships him receives a mark or a brand, some kind of a sign on his forehead or his hand. And the beast of the land is the person who causes everyone to worship the emperor. So who was promoting emperor-worship? It was either the provincial governor or the leading pagan priests who were responsible for enforcing or encouraging the people to worship the emperor.

So what if you refused to worship the beast? The beast of the sea, of course. You’re not worshiping the beast of the land; he represents the false prophet. The beast of the sea represents the antichrist or is the antichrist. What happens if you refuse to worship him? You would be put into prison, you would be killed, and there would be certain economic consequences: you could not buy or sell. So we’re not here just talking about a person who’s involved as a merchant, a person who’s trying to buy or sell wares, their own product or something like this, but literally the idea that people would not be able to buy anything, including food. There would be an economic price, and it could come at the cost of your life.

So the number of the beast is the number of a man’s name, and that is the number 666, which spells out Nero Caesar. Now, I explained this to you last time. We’re going to come back to the question of gematria, which is the way that people used the alphabet of Hebrew or of Greek to spell out someone’s name, and each letter had a numerical equivalent.

Nero had been dead for a long time. We began this series by telling you that this book, the book of Revelation, was written during the rule of Domition, who ruled at the end of the first century from the year 81 to the year 96. Now, Nero ruled around the middle of the first century, and he had been dead for a while. So how can he now be the antichrist? So we were talking about that, and this, by the way… The reason, the fact that it’s kind of understood that Nero is the person whose name is spelled out 666, this is why many people believe that this book was written during the reign of Nero. That’s become a kind of modern trend, but everything else really works against that conclusion. The main thing that works against it is the overwhelming internal evidence within the book itself—I’ll come back to that—and also the historical evidence.

We have so many early Christian writers who tell us that John the Apostle and Evangelist is the one who wrote this book and that he wrote it during the reign of Domition. We had discussed this kind of extensively. The people who write about Revelation, who tell us about it and John’s authorship, are all from Asia, the Roman province of Asia, which was John’s region. So they were very, very familiar with the authorship and the circumstances of the writing of this book.

Now what do we mean by internal evidence, that it’s not written during the reign of Nero but the reign of Domition? It has to do with how you get the mark of the beast, which you receive on your hand or your forehead, and it has to do with emperor-worship. I mentioned this to you last time also. The emperor cult was the formal worship of the emperor. Now, divine titles being applied to the emperor were not something new. That had been given to Julius Caesar—he wasn’t even an emperor—Augustus, and virtually all of the emperors were given these sort of quasi-divine titles: “son of god, savior,” things like this. But they were not worshiped; they did not expect to be worshiped during their lifetime, only after their death—until along comes Domition.

So within the book itself, there is a certain repetition of this idea that the people who receive the mark are those who worship the beast and his image. So that does not apply to Nero; that’s why I am very convinced that Nero is not the person that… The book was not written during the reign of Nero. But what about the 666 which spells out Nero’s name? Well, to the Church, Nero… Nero was of course… This was a horrifying period in the history of the Church. The very first Roman emperor ever to persecute Christians was Nero, and he was very famous for being very sadistic, very cruel, and the return of Roman persecution now, under Domition, it was as though Nero had come back.

This fit in with a kind of, we could say, expectation or possible foreboding: an idea that Nero had not really died but would someday come back. And this kind of a legend was called Nero redivivus (Nero revived). So I wanted to tell you a little bit about that. There was this rumor that Nero would return, and this was partly due to the fact that Nero had committed suicide because the Roman Senate had turned against him. They had issued a warrant for his arrest. He was always, or had been, for several years, very unstable, very cruel. He started out as a very reasonable emperor. He was only 18 when he became emperor. He was very diligent, very careful, very thoughtful. He was listening to very good advisors, such as the Roman philosopher, Seneca.

But as time passed—remember, he was only 18—he got tired of ruling the empire; he just wanted to have fun. So he started to listen to other people who were very bad advisors, and he began to indulge himself in all kinds of debauchery, very perverse, naughty things we’re not going to talk about here on our show, but a lot of perversion, a lot of cruelty. [He] killed his own wife and also killed his mother. He had to try three times before he succeeded with that. Lots of stories about Nero that are pretty legendary, and also he did many things that were quiet embarrassing to the Roman Senate. So finally they had enough, and they issued a warrant for his arrest, and rather than be arrested and made a spectacle or put to death publicly, he committed suicide. So he never received a funeral, the kind that you normally get as the emperor, so people didn’t see his body, you see. This is why this legend arose that he would in fact return.

So there was this legend that he had escaped to Parthia and he would return with an army. This was this wide kind of refusal to accept the idea that he had actually died, or that he had died and would return to life. So during his lifetime, Nero had good relations with the Parthians, which was a very kind of warlike, aggressive nation to the east. So there was this idea that he had gone into hiding among the Parthians and he had sought asylum, but he would return. There are some very famous Roman writers who talk about this, so we have a lot of evidence of this. There were also some edicts that people published falsely under his name to sort of frighten the populace, saying that he was actually alive and that he would return and take vengeance against people who were part of this plan to get rid of him.

He was very much hated in the West, especially among the Senate and people of Rome, but he had some popularity within the Greek East, and there were a lot of sort of false Neros, and actually some lookalikes who popped up pretending to be Nero himself. By the way, he was not only hated by the Christians because he was the first one to really persecute the Christians, but also by the Jews who identified him with evil. There was also this mythology among the Jews that he was sort of a personification of evil, both among Jews and among Christians.

Part of the hatred that they had toward Nero was his cultivation or his encouraging of the idea of the emperor-cult, because even though it was sort of expected and accepted that when an emperor died, he would be formally proclaimed a god, Nero really tried to cultivate this as part of his image while he was still alive. This was similar to what Domition did, but Nero never went as far as to demand actual worship, that people bowed down before his image and burned incense. Instead, what Nero did is there were statues of himself and also he minted coins of himself with a sort of a radiant headpiece, a crown, but that was very similar to what you would see on the heads of gods. So this is something that he encouraged, and of course this is something which is absolutely unacceptable among the Christians, because it reminds them of this.

Now, it’s not that John believes that Nero has actually come back to life, but in the person of Domition, who actually is not only continuing this idea of the emperor-cult but demanding worship of himself in his person as the emperor, whether he’s alive or dead that wouldn’t really matter for Christians or Jews. So this is why he is identified with Nero. I think I had explained to you last time that it’s very similar to our idea of who is in our culture or in our era the epitome of evil. Well, that’s Hitler; that’s what people say, right? When they want to talk about how evil somebody is, they’ll say, “Oh, he’s just like Hitler,” or “He’s Hitler.” That’s it. If somebody says, “Donald Trump is Hitler,” or if they were saying that somebody like Saddam Hussein is Hitler, or other people that somebody wants to tarnish their image or accuse them of doing very vile things, they will use the term “Hitler,” and everybody understands that he hasn’t come back to life in this person, but he represents that.

I want to read to you what Tacitus said about Nero. Tacitus was a Roman historian, and this is what he said about Nero and the first persecution of the Christians by Nero. Why did Nero persecute the Christians? It’s not that he cared about whom they worshiped or didn’t worship, because he was not demanding that they worship him. Nero had started the fire of Rome which burnt down—burned to the ground—three-fourths of the city of Rome. It was a terrible disaster, and everyone suspected Nero of being responsible for it because—this happened in the year 65 or so, 64—even though he began to rebuild the city and offer relief to the people who were the fire victims… I mean, can you imagine in your city or town if almost every building was burnt to the ground? Where do you begin? How do you rebuild?

So he begins these rebuilding efforts, providing food and shelter for people who were displaced by the fire, but also immediately begins building the Golden House, sort of a party palace, which he had designed and had wanted to build but there was not enough open land in the city of Rome for Nero to carry out this project. So as soon as people saw that Nero had begun to build the Golden House, along with it 100 acres of beautiful garden, including an artificial lake, and a giant statue of himself called the Colossus of Nero, which was about 30 meters high, about 90 feet high, in this garden that Nero had built, people immediately suspected him of causing the fire to be lit, not actually lighting it himself. So people were really blaming people for the fire.

Tacitus tells us that Nero blamed it on the Christians; he tried to find a scapegoat, someone else to blame for the fire. I’m going to read to you from the Annals of Tacitus, Annals 15.

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt of the fire and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.

Let’s start with the fact that they were hated for their “abominations.” What kind of abominations? The Christians, especially in this early period, were so saintly! But they were also secretive. You could not participate in Christian worship unless you were a baptized member of the Church. And the Christians were speaking about the body, receiving the body and blood of the Lord. So very many people believed them to be cannibals and all kinds of other things, because when something is a secret then sometimes rumors run wild.

...called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty (crucifixion) during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out, not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful, from every part of the world, find their center and become popular.

Notice here that he refers to Christ and his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate. So we see that we have sort of a non-Jewish, extra-biblical (that is, outside of the Bible) references to Jesus Christ and his movement, his death under Pontius Pilate, here under this Roman and a couple of others.

Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pled guilty. Then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city (setting fire) as of hatred against mankind, being misanthropes.

Hatred of mankind! How could anyone accuse the Christians of hatred against mankind, misanthropy? Well, because Christians did not participate in Roman life. They were considered antisocial. Why wouldn’t they participate in Roman life? Because Roman life always involved the worship of the gods. They would not go to gladiator games, for example, or even to the theater, because the plays, the pagan plays, were very immoral quite often. Or if you belonged to a club of any sort or a guild, then you would have a patron god, and your meetings would begin with a sacrifice or with prayers to this idol that was present. So the Christians really found themselves quite isolated. It was difficult for them to maneuver in Roman society, because so much of Roman life involved, even sort of indirectly, the worship of the Roman gods. People noticed this, so they called them “the haters of mankind.”

People thought it was not so much that they were guilty of the fire, but they were put to death for being haters of mankind.

Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths.

Now he’s going to begin to describe some of the ways that these first Christians were persecuted. This is really the very first Roman persecution of Christians. You might say, “What about St. Paul when he is put into prison, or other apostles?” When we see St. Paul put into prison or beaten or some other way being punished by Romans, it is not for being a Christian; it is because the Jews of that town were complaining about St. Paul, that he was disturbing the peace, that he was causing an uproar in the synagogue by saying that Jesus is the Christ. So this is the way that they used to get into trouble. The first real Roman persecution of Christians was done by Nero, and now Tacitus is going to tell us exactly what he did to the followers of Christ.

Covered by the skins of animals, they were torn by gods and perished.

So they would wait until they had these spectacles, shows, and they would cover the Christians—or smear blood on them, put them into the skins of animals, and set them out in the arena to be torn to pieces by wild animals.

Or were nailed to crosses.

Of course, we know this happened. This is how St. Peter died. Many of the Christians died by crucifixion.

Or they were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination when daylight had expired. They were tied to tall poles, covered with tar (which they called pitch), and then set on fire like torches, to illuminate the night.

So these were human beings that were burning. And it tells us that

Nero offered his gardens (the one I was telling you about) for this spectacle and was exhibiting a show in the circus. While he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft in a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment (you see, Tacitus thinks they kind of deserved it), nonetheless there arose a feeling of compassion, for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty that they were being destroyed.

You see? He says: Well, we kind of thought that maybe they deserved it, because they were antisocial and they were kind of weird and standoffish and haters of mankind, but really we kind of felt sorry for them; not too much, but somewhat, because we knew that they weren’t really causing harm to society; they weren’t being put to death for society’s good, but because of Nero’s cruelty. That’s pretty amazing, a pretty amazing statement that we have here, preserved by the Roman historian Tacitus.

Last time we talked about the mark of the beast, and the mark of the beast being the name of this person, 666. How does “Nero Caesar” translate into 666? If you write it out in Hebrew or in Aramaic, the same thing: letters, the letters which also stood for numbers in the Hebrew culture—the letters also represented numbers—it spelled out “Nero Caesar.” He was the epitome of evil and also, because of the repetition of the number 6, because six is evil, but it seeks to imitate the good. Now, six doesn’t always represent evil, because of the six days of creation, but in this case it is the antichrist, evil, which seeks to imitate good, which is represented by the number 7.

I was corrected today by somebody who said this to me, because I said that when I talked about the number 6 we’re all picturing the number 6 in our heads and the shape of it. I said that this is an Arabic numeral and that the Arabs invented this, so I was corrected by somebody smarter than me, obviously. It should teach me not to talk about things outside of my field. So he said the following, who wishes to remain anonymous.

Dear Presbytera, you mentioned that Arabs invented Arabic numerals, with zero, last Monday. Just to let you know, it was the Indians in India. They transmitted them, along with the concept of zero, to the Arabs.

I’ve never studied this. I stand corrected. I take your word for it.

Now let’s talk about getting the mark of the beast and how it is… Where we get the mark of the beast, as we mentioned, on the forehead and on the hand; and also I want to talk to you about what does it mean and who gets the mark. Let’s start out with: How does someone get the mark of the beast? Now, the mark of the beast is mentioned specifically in five places in the book of Revelation, and in every single instance, it tells us how someone receives the mark. It looks like we’re about 30 minutes after the hour, so we’ve reached the half-hour. Let’s take a quick break at this moment. When we return, I will tell you how to get the mark of the beast.

All right. So where do we… See if you can follow the pattern here, because every time Revelation mentions the mark of the beast, it mentions a specific act. The first time we hear about it is in [Revelation] 13:17. This is the beast of the land.

It causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.

That’s the first time. Here’s the second time it’s mentioned, [Revelation] 14:11. This is after the fall of Babylon.

And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest or night, day or night. These worshipers of the beast and its image and whoever receives the mark of its name.

In chapter 16:

Then I heard a loud voice from the temple, telling the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.” So the first angel went and poured his bowl upon the earth, and foul and evil sores came upon the men who bore the mark of the beast and worshiped is image.

Have you noticed so far the common thread? How do you get the mark? By worshiping the image. And the first Roman emperor to insist on being worshiped, him or his image, his statue, is Domition. The person who made that possible was the pagan priest, or who sort of encouraged it or facilitated it, was either the pagan priest in these temples or the provincial governor. They would want to encourage everybody to show loyalty to Rome, because remember it wasn’t so much that they really felt like the emperor needed or required the worship; it had become a sign of loyalty, because as soon as they realized that Christians refused to do this and they remembered that Jesus, the founder of what they called “vile superstition,” had been crucified by a Roman governor on a charge of treason, they began to see the Christians as people who were disloyal to Rome, so this became a loyalty test, and a way of finding out who really is a Christian.

So you only get the mark if you worship the image of the beast. Chapter 19, verse 20. This is after the big war between the Lord of lords with the kings of the earth, etc.

The beast was captured and the false prophet, who had worked the signs by which he had deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped its image.

That’s the fourth instance. The fifth instance, chapter 20, verse 4, when everything is over and there’s going to be judgment.

Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom judgment was committed, and the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or its image, and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands.

So we see here that the mark of the beast is a sign which a person will receive on their forehead or their hand which is directly tied to worshiping the image, because if you engaged in idolatry, you’re worshiping Satan. This was always understood in the Church. Idol-worship was the worship of demons. This is what is said again and again. This is how you got the mark: by worshiping the image. This is what John is encouraging his congregation not to do under any circumstances: not to bow down before the image of the emperor and to worship his statue.

Now, does this mean that for John’s congregation or anyone else—let’s say you’re a pagan and you worship this image of the emperor. Does this mean they would tattoo a 666 on your forehead or on your hand? No. It is invisible. The mark is not visible to people. This has been variously interpreted through history as different things. In different times there have been many sort of ideas of what it will consist of. It is just as your mark, if you’re an Orthodox Christian, baptized and chrismated, you have the mark of Christ on your forehead, that is, the seal of your chrismation.

Remember, a lot of what happens in the book of Revelation is intended to be a contrast between good and evil. So we have the lion of Judah, who is also the Lamb who is slain and conquers; and then also we have this lion who is the dragon. The lion of Judah, the Lamb, has horns and many eyes, so he is powerful and he is wise; then we have this idea of this many-headed, many-horned, many-crowned dragon, which is the devil. There are a lot of contrasts that are rather subtle.

Earlier in the book there was a description of the sealing of the servants of God, that they are sealed on their foreheads. They are marked by the angels, and they are preserved from one event—not from all the destruction, not from all of the plagues and calamities that will afflict the world at the end times, but just from a certain one. So they are known to God. He knows his own, right?

So the 666 is a name, and it means, it basically identifies you as belonging to the devil. So when you own something, very often people put their name on it. We have all kinds of things with our name on them; or within our car, the car registration says the name of the owner. You have identification: a driver’s license that identifies you. In school, you put your name in your books so if they get lost, people know whom the book belongs to. That is just a way of saying that this item, this object, belongs to this person. By having the 666 on the forehead or the hand, it shows that you belong to the devil, you belong to the emperor, because you have worshiped the emperor. But really, through the emperor, you have worshiped the devil himself, because the power of the empire has come from the devil.

There have been some Fathers of the Church who talked about this, of course. Andrew of Caesarea tells us that they will strive to put the mark on everyone, but we have to refuse it. I’m going to talk about the future, we could say, application of this event momentarily, but the point is that the antichrist will try to put his mark upon everyone. Hippolytus says; he makes the point—I think this is a very good observation—it’s not both the forehead and the hand; it’s one or the other. The forehead represents your thoughts: you belong to him in your thoughts; your thoughts were clouded because you were following the devil. You belong to him in your way of thinking. But let’s say there might be a Christian who would reject that and wouldn’t ascribe in his thoughts to the way of the devil, and yet he receives the mark on his hand. This represents, as Andrew said, the cutting off of doing good deeds. So in order to acquire the kingdom of heaven, we have to have thoughts that belong to God and deeds that belong to God. Here is what Hippolytus says that a Christian who refuses to recognize the authority, for example…

The antichrist (he says) will not demand that everybody shares his way of thinking. In this case, he won’t put his seal on the forehead, but only will demand that they recognize his authority, and that is the seal on the hand.

So here is what Hippolytus says.

By doing this, he will cut himself off from the possibility of doing good and righteous deeds, because the chief sign of uprightness is the confession of God, and the recognition of him as the Being that stands above all.

So the purpose of the mark is to prevent you from doing the right thing. You can’t be saved if you don’t do the right thing. It’s not enough to have taken over the mind; also you cannot submit in your behavior. This is what the hand represents: the doing of the right thing.

St. Ephraim the Syrian said that the mark on the hand was done to prevent people from making the sign of the cross, which is especially fearful to the antichrist. I thought that was a really nice comment about the mark.

So what are we supposed to do, and what does this mean? How will this manifest itself? It certainly manifested itself at the time of John. John’s congregation was living through this actual event. John’s congregation was living through a time where they were expected to worship the image in actuality, in reality, and he was encouraging them not to do this, and said that if, in fact, they do worship the image, of course, this is what it means.

Earlier in Revelation, in the letters to the seven churches, we see him warning people that some of them would be put into prison and also that one of them had already been martyred. His name is Antipas; he was already a martyr. So this is a reality.

How is this going to be worked out, we could say, or how will it manifest itself in our time, our day, or in the future? I think we have to expect that there will be something similar that will happen for us or to us in the future, when the end times come. Just because there was an actual fulfillment which took place at the time of John doesn’t mean that there isn’t a future component of this. There was an antichrist for them at that time, and, yes, it was the Emperor Domition. However, there will be an antichrist in the end times, and maybe more than one. There have been many antichrists and false christ, and the Lord told us to expect this and to be on guard for this, to watch out for them, that people will say, “Look! There he is!” but it’s not him. Remember the references to false christ or antichrist is the same thing.

We don’t necessarily have to wait until that one moment at the very end where we’re looking for certain signs or certain details of somebody who’s going to stand in the temple and demand to be worshiped. How is it that he might demand to be worshiped? In what kind of a temple? Is it the Jewish temple? Will they rebuild the Jewish temple? Will it be a church? We don’t know.

What we have to do is make sure that we don’t become susceptible to receiving the mark, that we don’t open ourselves up to receiving the mark. How do we do that? How do we accept the worship of evil or the doing of evil? Because we certainly don’t want to do that, right? We don’t want to be worshiping the devil; we don’t want to receive the mark of the beast. Is this something we need to be concerned about? I think that we do, but we should be careful mostly in the way we live our lives. Many of the Fathers of the Church who do talk about this tell us that it is really not possible for a Christian to receive the mark if they are vigilant. This means that we do not compromise the faith in any way, and this is difficult.

Let’s talk about what the mark is. As I said, I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be a visible thing like a tattoo, but throughout history there have been different theories, and people have been suspicious of new developments. For example, when, in this country, President Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, issued social security numbers, people said that’s the mark of the beast. Then in the early 1980s, when these strange codes began to appear on boxes, supermarket bar codes—before there were scanners to read them, by the way, I remember us looking at these things and saying, “What is this? What is this?” And some people were saying it’s the mark of the beast. Some people think a national identification card is the mark of the beast. More recently, people are talking about computer chips. Is it possible that in the future someone will try to place a computer chip under your skin and know immediately by scanning you who you are and what you believe in and where you belong and what political party you belong to and what your religion is? That’s possible; that is not outside the realm of possibility.

So we don’t know, however, how this will be fulfilled in the future, but, as I told you, we’re not at that point yet. Do you remember how I told you how I know that we’re not at this point yet? Because there will be a time when we will see some of these things being fulfilled, and it will be quite obvious. The destruction that is described by the trumpets and the bulls that we’re going to be taking a look at momentarily, by the opening, after the sixth seal, is on a massive, global scale. So we’re not at that point, but this doesn’t mean that we’re not in danger of sometimes denying Christ and aligning ourselves with evil.

So this is what we really have to think about and be concerned with, because this is happening today. There are a lot of groups today who really see Christians as kind of the enemy, because we stand up for certain types of morality. We are opposing evil and bad things, and we’re trying to do good in the world, and people wish to control us. So we’re supposed to stand firm, and even if this costs us, we have to do this even if this costs us our livelihood.

And we have seen that in recent years, haven’t we? We have seen in recent years, for example, when there were people—the government was trying to require… And this has happened in Canada; I know this for sure. In Canada, the government does not allow medical doctors not to perform abortions. This came about—I don’t know if that has changed, but I read about that a couple of years ago, that if you wish to be a medical doctor in the country of Canada—and if those of you who are listening in Canada, if I’m wrong about this, you can let me know, but I recall reading this—you cannot refuse to perform an abortion. There were similar things that were done here by the American government, requiring even nuns—it’s a very famous case that went to the United States Supreme Court called the Little Sisters of the Poor. This little Catholic monastic community was being required to provide birth control, which is against Catholic teaching, and also the option for abortion, to cover this. So they sued.

This is the kind of thing that we are going to be faced with I think increasingly in the future, in which, by participating in daily life in the society, we’re going to be forced to make a choice, whether we’re going to compromise our values, whether we are going to accept this, we could say, mark, a mark upon ourselves—it’s an invisible mark—or whether we’re going to be willing to stand for Christ and accept the consequences, regardless of what they may be. I think that the danger for us as Christians really is the fact that we can sort of easily slide into these very subtle ways of denying Christ by going along with things that are kind of popular in the culture, even saying things like, “Yeah, it’s okay. You can believe whatever you want, and it’s all the same. All religions are basically the same.”

We sometimes give a tacit… People don’t want… They say, “Oh, that’s judging if you say that this is right or this is wrong. You can’t say that; you can’t do that.” Immediately you’re branded; immediately you’re vilified. The phrase that has been coined for this, which has been happening today, is the cancel culture. If you say something which people think is politically incorrect, they want to shut you down, they want to ostracize you, they want to vilify you. That is already happening today.

Whether or not that changes and improves, or whether or not it gets worse, I don’t know; God knows. But we are to do one thing. What is it that St. John is encouraging his congregation to do? To be faithful to Christ and to endure. There is no such thing as a rapture. There is no rapture that will deliver us from these difficult issues that we are going to confront. We have to be willing to give up everything for Christ. Isn’t this what he said we have to do? “He who does not hate father or mother or brother or sister or wife or children is not worthy of me. He who is not willing to pick up his cross, follow after me, is not worthy of me. He who denies me, I will deny him.” So we have to really be ready for this.

One of the reasons why it is important for us to be part of the Church, to be actively participating in the life of the Church—I understand that it’s difficult right now because of COVID, but to the extent that you can go to church, to receive the sacraments as often as possible, to continue in your prayers, to watch the Divine Liturgy, whatever it is that you can do to remain close to church, to Christ, especially sacramentally—to fast, to pray, to exert yourself in ways to exercise self-control, these are techniques. The fasting is not going to save us, but it can give us a certain degree of discipline that will allow us to stand up and say no when we are asked to worship the beast, because we are all asked to do this in some manner in our lives. So we have to be prepared for this, and we have to be ready.

I see that we have a call. I’m trying to read my screen here. Alex is calling. Okay, Alex, you have a question about the 666?

Alex: Yes, good evening, Dr. Constantinou.

Dr. Constantinou: Hello, Alex. Welcome to Search the Scriptures. What is your question?

Alex: The question is: If the numbers represent letters, wouldn’t it have been obvious to the readers and to the non-Christians that it was a reference to Nero? I guess in asking the question, I realize it kind of betrays an underlying assumption on my part, and that is that the Revelation was written with a lot of symbols that Christians would understand, but it was probably written so that the non-Christians would not understand them. Am I right?

Dr. Constantinou: Okay, so what you’re trying to say that Revelation is kind of a code? Because I was taught this back when I was in college. That is was kind of a secret writing, so that in case the Romans got ahold of it, they would not understand it. Is that what you’re talking about?

Alex: You have to also realize that that’s an assumption on my part that’s probably not accurate…

Dr. Constantinou: It’s not coded, but it is symbolic language, because this type of writing was not unique to this book. Apocalyptic writing was very popular from about the year 200 BC until about the year 200 of the Common Era, AD. So it’s not… Because, listen, the Romans despised Nero, too; it’s not just the Christians. They didn’t have to put that in code. Why he didn’t write down “Nero Caesar”: I think that the symbol is more powerful, to tell you the truth. And some of the different people, like Irenaeus, said that it wasn’t right that his name should besmirch the sacred writings, so he wrote it down in code. I don’t really know, but you are correct that many people have come up with different ways to explain the 666, and it can—I read some of the descriptive words like a different sort of wicked harm, bad harm, wicked guide, things like that, that can also… They’re words that, added up, can equal 666.

So if you’re asking about whether it was done on purpose so that the Romans wouldn’t know what it’s referring to, I don’t think so. Was that your question?

Alex: Yeah, as I formulated the question in my mind, I think it really, really was. So if I understand you right, Revelation is symbolic, but it wasn’t done on purpose so that it could not be understood by non-Christians. It’s apocalyptic literature.

Dr. Constantinou: Yes, it’s the style, and particularly because this is a vision and because it is something which cannot… What he experienced cannot really be described. You see, we can’t really say it like you might describe what really happened to you today: you woke up, you turned off your alarm. That’s very visual; people can visualize it. We cannot visualize these things. Sort of an experience of heaven, and an experience of Christ, a message, some kind of spiritual experience cannot be described. So it’s partly because it’s more powerful, it’s partly because it’s part of the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition. Okay?

Alex: Thank you for taking my call.

Dr. Constantinou: Thank you! My pleasure, Alex.

We talked about how will this manifest itself in the future. We do have chips… I had heard about this, actually; I had read about this. We have microchips for our pets, and we have things also in our cars so that they can track your movements. I had heard about a couple that wanted to have a chip, that did have a chip embedded in their fingers so that they could get into their house by just touching this sort of thing on their door. This is certainly a possibility. I don’t know if this is what’s going to happen to us, but it wouldn’t surprise me. We just have to be vigilant, and we have to be prepared, because this is a reality which we might in fact face.

But let’s say we don’t face exactly that scenario. Why is it that I’m not really telling you what’s going to happen? Because I’m sure you’re disappointed, because everybody wants to know exactly what is going to happen and how is it going to look, etc. We do not know. And it’s a dangerous thing to try to describe what’s going to happen in the end times, because if you are looking for very specific things, like I mentioned to you at the beginning of this that I had as a teenager read the book, The Late Great Planet Earth, and he had it all figured out, supposedly. Hal Lindsey, a false prophet, described exactly what would happen at the end times: first this, and then this, and then this. And of course he was wrong. And he’s never said, “I was wrong”; he just keeps printing the book and keeps changing the description of the end times, which shows how he’s a false prophet, isn’t he? Because he was wrong, because he said it was going to be the Soviet Union and what they called Red China back then, and all these different groups are going to conspire against Israel, and things like this.

What we should be looking for is not a specific event. I think when the time comes, those of us who are close to Christ will know it, and we shouldn’t worry about taking the mark of the beast. We should be always vigilant to be sure we have never compromised our faith. That’s what we need to watch out for, never to compromise our faith, and to be prepared, to be disciplined, in case we are asked to do something. There are people who are martyred today. I’m hearing from people in different parts of the world, including Ethiopia, where I’m hearing from people that there’s a lot of persecution going on today in Ethiopia. It’s also happening in other parts of Africa. This is a reality. It’s happening for Christians in China and in many other parts of the world. We have to be prepared to suffer for Christ and not expect to be raptured.

So I’m not going to describe for you a scenario for the end, because no one knows what it will look like. I’ve given you this comparison and I’ll give it again. When the Lord appeared in his ministry, in his earthly life, in his earthly ministry, doing all of these incredible signs—giving sight to the blind, the deaf were hearing, the lame were walking, casting out demons—these incredible, undeniable signs that Jewish leaders, who knew all of the prophecies—that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, he would be born of a virgin, that he would be full of the Spirit, that he would do all of these incredible things. They did not recognize the Messiah, because they had in their minds an idea of who the Messiah would be, a picture, not necessarily what he would look like, but what kind of person would he be.

So they missed him! They failed to see the Messiah and instead they crucified him. So my suggestion to you is that if you’re looking for specific signs to be fulfilled because you’re following some preacher who is saying that this is exactly how it’s going to play out historically, you might very well miss it, because it won’t fit the image that this person—because you’re following the idea of one person—has said, “This is what it’s going to look like. First this will happen and then this will happen and this will happen.” That person could be wrong, and if you’re looking for those specific signs, you might very well end up taking the mark of the beast. So this is what we’re supposed to do. We’re called to be faithful to Christ regardless of what happens, and there have been antichrists, there are antichrists today, and there will be in the future.

Now it’s almost… I’m going to read you one little email which I really appreciated getting, and then we’ll take a break. This comes to me from Fr. Bill (Vasili) Christ, who was the priest of the Greek Orthodox Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a number of years, and actually had invited me to come to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I did one time to talk about the book of Revelation. Now this, of course, this is Oklahoma, where there’s a lot of people who are very interested in Revelation, and there were a lot of people who came to that talk—I remember it very well—and afterwards Fr. Bill took me to Oral Roberts University to sort of drive around the university. Oral Roberts, in case you’re too young to remember, was a kind of very well known Evangelical television evangelist. So this is like the heart of the Bible Belt, as we could say, the buckle of the Bible Belt, as they say. Here were Fr. Bill’s comments to me.

Regarding the Rapture, the premise of this heresy is the idea that God wouldn’t want his people to suffer in the tribulation or anything else.

That’s very good. I actually never thought about what was so… what was the rationale behind it. “Yeah, God wouldn’t want his people to suffer.” Basically, it’s a corollary to the “health and wealth” gospel. This, of course, depends upon a gross ignorance of history, and Church history in particular. Our Lord was crucified. Many prophets were killed in the Old Testament. All of the apostles except John died a martyr’s death. How many thousands of Christians throughout the ages were martyred? In the 20th century alone, I would argue that more Orthodox Christians suffered and died in that century than all the martyrs throughout the history of the Church, considering those killed under Communism, not only in Russia, but in Croatia, who were with the Nazis in World War II, while the Serbs were with the Allies. They claim their own numbers to have killed 753,000 Serbian Orthodox Christians in Nazi death camps. This is true. The Jews were not the only ones to suffer in World War II; that is true.

My grandparents immigrated as refugees from Turkey, a little over 100 years ago, with the clothes on their backs and people shooting at them. Think of the slaughter of 35,000 Greeks at Smyrna, and the 1.5 million Christians killed in the Armenian Genocide of the same period. That’s true. Or the Genocide of Chios, where my grandparents were from. One of my grandfathers was also from the region outside of Smyrna, so, yes, the Turks killed a lot of Greeks, so we’re very familiar with this.

Continuing with Fr. Bill’s comments:

The self-centered ignorance of Americans who are so focused on themselves never consider that there were other Christians in the world and throughout history. Christians have suffered and died in the millions over the centuries, yet because they have no memory, they are ignorant.

He’s talking about some Protestants.

And this leads them to the selfish conclusion that they are so important that God would never want them to suffer, even though millions of Christians have been killed throughout history, hence there must be some way for God to save them from suffering while punishing all the evil non-members of their small Christian group, ergo, the Rapture.

Wow, that’s a fantastic point! I had never thought about why people were so drawn to this idea; I thought they just didn’t want to… It did make them feel special, that’s for sure, but you have to be ignorant of Christian history to think that somehow God is going to… as a Christian you’re going to be spared from this. Because the Lord himself said, over and over again, we have to be willing to pick up our cross and follow after him, and that doesn’t mean “deal with the bills” or something like this, or illness. It means be willing to die for him. That’s very true.

We’re at six o’clock. Fr. Bill does have some interesting things to say about the 666 and his experiences with Protestants in Tulsa, so I want to take a break at this moment. When we come back, we’ll finish up with his email, and we will talk about the question of the fall of Satan. So join me after the break.

We’re returning to our email from Fr. Bill Christ who has retired as the Greek Orthodox priest in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He’s going to say a few things about the 666.

Over the many years that I have conducted church tours with non-Orthodox, I finally one day got fed up with the perpetual question of the number of the beast, etc., because of course they’re obsessed with the book of Revelation. I asked them this question: Why is there this concern with the mark and the number of the beast? I think what’s more important is having the mark or seal of the Holy Spirit and the number of Jesus. They were totally baffled. Then I educated them about chrismation and receiving the seal on our heads and other members, with the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Interesting that we call ourselves Christians, meaning Anointed One, because that’s what the word “Christ” means, Christos, yet very few Protestants have actually ever been anointed. Next I showed them our books on the psaltirion. Being in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, they are in Greek. (The psaltirion is the chanter’s stand.) And I showed them that the numbers used for the dates in the Menaion are Greek letters—alpha, vita, gamma; iota-alpha means eleven, etc. When we were taught in our schools that we use Arabic numerals, we just tend to think of those as normal. People are aware of Roman numerals, and I think you know how often people have tried to adapt those to figure out the number of the beast as well, which makes no sense at all, because John wasn’t going to be writing with Roman numerals.

Well, the book of Revelation was written in Greek, and considering that the Greeks used their letters as numbers just as the Hebrews in the practice of gematria, it would be commonsense to calculate the number of the beast using Greek letters. Then I showed them that one can calculate the number of Jesus’ name [in] Greek letters, which of course turns out to be 888.

We haven’t talked about that, but eight is a representative number of Christ.

If you could educate people as to the symbolism of the number eight, the day of resurrection is the eighth day, the octagonal Constantinopolitan style of church architecture. Why focus is on the mark of the beast and 666 when one can receive the mark-seal of the Holy Spirit and join oneself to [him] who is 888, the number of salvation? If you have these, who has to worry about anything else?

That’s excellent. Thank you, Fr. Bill, for sharing that. You’re absolutely right, of course. That’s the whole point. As long as we remain close to Christ and the Church, then we don’t have to worry about that. But it will require vigilance on our part, that we don’t compromise, and it’s easy to sort of slide into kind of compromise, because sometimes our livelihood is at stake or we fear social ostracism. But we have to accept that. Didn’t Jesus accept that? Wasn’t Jesus mocked? Of course he was. Wasn’t Jesus put to death? Of course he was.

Now let’s talk about the fall of Satan. I have a little bit of time left, and I promised that we would discuss this. When did Satan fall? Was it before or after the creation of the world? We received an email from David, and he said:

Greetings and God bless! My wife and I both love Search the Scriptures and Lord of Spirits. We’re both catechumens, to be received on the Feast of the Nativity.

How exciting! We’re looking forward to that. Bless you and your wife, David.

I have a quick question regarding the timeline of Satan’s fall. Dr. Constantinou, from your episode on Tuesday (this was a couple weeks ago) about the mark and number of the beast, you alluded to the Hebrew’s reckoning of Satan’s fall, somewhere before the time of creation, I think; definitely before recorded time, but if I remember correctly, there wasn’t too much specificity about when Lucifer’s fall would have been. Fr. De Young and Fr. Damick, on the second episode, were talking about the fall of Satan as being after the creation of the cosmos, and there were of course later rebellions or falls from the bodiless beings, just as there was a steeper fall for humankind from the expulsion from the garden to the murder of Abel. Basically, I just want to know: is there a dogma within the holy Church regarding the timeline—if that even means anything, considering the timelessness of God’s eternal present—of Satan’s fall? And if we reject Milton’s Paradise Lost as a story being just that, not the traditional view and understanding of what the Fathers meant when the angels fell, correct?

I responded to this, but I’ll go ahead and talk to you a little bit about it. First of all, I did hear part—because this is like the third email I received on this question—because around the same time that I’ve been doing this podcast, [Fr. Stephen and Fr. Andrew] were doing a podcast, and they also mentioned the fall of the evil one, and they said that he had to have fallen to earth, because how do you fall from heaven? Where do you go to? And I didn’t agree with this, and here’s the reason why, and I will give you the patristic response to this in a moment.

When we talk about the fall of Satan—this we discussed in chapter 12; in the middle, there’s an interlude where it talks about the fall of Satan, Michael and the angels fighting the dragon, and he takes a third of the stars of the sky, sort of what had been angels become demons—when we talk about this, we are really talking about an even which took place probably before recorded time, before the creation of the world. These two priests disagreed with me, and that’s okay, but they said he had to have fallen to something. But here’s the point: they’re not bodied; they don’t have a body. So if I am expelled from my house, I have to find some other place to live, so I have to go somewhere; I have to go to some other place. But when we’re talking about spiritual beings, they don’t have to fall down to a specific place. It’s not necessary that the earth be in existence for them to fall down, because that is this idea that heaven is somehow “up there,” and when they’re kicked out they fall down to “here.” Do you see what I mean? So I reject this, because I don’t think that it is necessary to have this idea of a fall. This is just biblical language which is being used to describe the expulsion or the rejection of Lucifer and the angels that followed him. Do you understand what I’m saying? It doesn’t mean that they’re occupying a space. So that’s why I said that I don’t agree with that as an explanation, even though they thought it was illogical to think otherwise.

I did have to look into this. I talked to you about that last time, how Fr. Costa helped me to scramble to find some references to this. The first one that I found was St. Gregory the Theologian, who says that he fell before the creation of the world, the fall of… By the way, there’s different opinions, and I’m going to tell you various ones. But he agrees with me, or, I should say, I agree with him. He talks about first the creation of the angelic powers, that they were the secondary— This is, by the way, Oration 38. He says that after the creation and then the fall of the angelic powers, the bodiless powers, that Lucifer of course, through pride, revolted against God, and then it says that after, when everything was put back in good order, the Lord conceived a second world, material and visible, and this is a system and compound of earth and sky that is in the midst of them. So his point here is that the creation of the world happened after the fall of the devil. I have a whole thing to read for you, but I think we will not have enough time. So this is St. Gregory the Theologian, that his fall was before the creation of the world.

I have other sources, too, and one of them here is a book, The Holy Angels by Mother Alexandra, which you may have heard advertised here on Ancient Faith, because they republished this book, and I will tell you what she says about it, on the angels. Of course, she is writing from the Orthodox tradition; she’s not a Father of the Church, but she is a Mother of the Church, and she is writing, presenting the Orthodox tradition.

Jesus testified to having seen how Satan was cast down like lightning from heaven.

That’s in the Gospel of Luke. Now, that does not necessarily refer only to his fall, his initial fall, but can also be that he fell again. This is true. The point that was made by David in the email is correct. Lucifer didn’t just have one fall. Definitely he was affected by the coming of the Lord, by the incarnation of the Lord, by the fact that the Lord gave his power to the apostles, and they went out and were casting out demons, and when they came back and they told the Lord, “We have cast out demons and we healed people,” the Lord says, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” This is an allusion to his original fall, but also he fell again in a sense. In other words, he was weakened by the presence of the Lord, by the presence of the Church, and also St. Mark’s gospel describes him as the strong man who was bound: he was chained; he was tied. That means he is still around, he’s still active, but his ability to inflict harm on us is lessened because of the coming of Christ and the grace which is available to us through the Church.

So here is Mother Alexandra from her book, The Holy Angels, which was reprinted recently by Ancient Faith.

Jesus testified to seeing how Satan was cast down like a lightning-flash from heaven. Christ the Word spoke from his divine knowledge of what was from before the beginning of time. In the flash of lightning are seen Satan’s two aspects: light and the zig-zag movement of the serpent. Jesus, in alluding to Satan’s fall, accentuated Satan’s demonic mastery over this world only, as well as the deceiving and deceptive nature of that mastery. For this reason, we find Michael the Archangel at war with Satan. Nowhere is the story of Satan’s fall more splendidly depicted than in St. John the Divine’s magnificent vision in the book of Revelation. We must, at the same time, keep in mind that St. John is giving a symbolic account of the heavenly war which began long before the earth’s creation and in which the Church is still engaged.

You see? We don’t think about that, do we? Why do we call ourselves the Church Militant? That’s a common phrase. Because we’re still fighting the devil; the war is ongoing. I think that was a really brilliant way to explain that when the Lord said this, he’s talking about the initial fall but also the continued fall, and that Michael and the angels are still fighting the evil one, and so should we.

Now, to be completely fair and to give the other side, even though I have to admit… Oh, let’s do one more, one more person. St. John of Kronstadt tells us that it was before the creation of the world, and actually that human beings—this is really interesting—were created to—this is really interesting—replace the lost angels that had fallen. So this is in a book called Ultimate Things: An Orthodox Perspective. I think it’s quite good. Here’s St. John of Kronstadt.

The Lord deigned to create man out of dust, and with such earthly beings to complete the lack in the angelic world which was a consequence of the falling-away of the proud spirits. This was infinite shame and infinite punishment to the proud ones.

So this idea that God created the world after the fall of Satan is also something which St. John of Kronstadt says. But it is not universal. To answer David’s question, “Is there a dogma?” No, there’s no dogma of the Church. Dogmas are things which are very important that all of us must believe, and these things are still mysteries; there’s a lot we don’t understand yet. So I will read to you right now from Origen, who says we don’t know. Here’s Origen, who came, of course, before St. Gregory the Theologian.

This also is part of the teaching of the Church, that there are certain angels of God and certain forces which are his ministers for accomplishing the salvation of men. However, it is not clearly stated when the angels were created, of what nature they are, or how they exist.

There he’s talking about the angels, of course, but he’s also saying we don’t know a lot about their creation, their mode of existence, certainly, of course, not about what happened when they fell.

Now, lastly, I’m going to read to you from St. John of Damascus in his The Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. So first he quotes Gregory the Theologian, that talks about that the fall happened before the conception of the world, even before God even conceived—which was very interesting—the idea of our physical world, and here’s what he says.

But there are others who say (this is St. John of Damascus) that they were made after the creation of the first heaven. However, they all agree that it was before the formation of man. For my part, I agree with the Theologian, because it was fitting for the spiritual substance to be created first, and then the sensible, and finally man from both.

And he says:

One should note also that the fall is to the angels what death is to men. For just as there is no repentance for men after death, there is none for these angels (the spirits, the evil angels, the demons) after their fall.

There you go. So he does suggest that there is disagreement within the Church about this, and, frankly, it really doesn’t matter that much. The question exactly when… So I know we become very interested in these things—When did the angels fall? When did the demons fall? What was the timeline? We don’t know the answers to these things, and I know that people love to discuss this, but it’s not very useful. Here’s where our Orthodox phronema comes in—remember that word? I haven’t used it for a few weeks—our Orthodox mind. What should we be focused on? Should we be focused on trying to determine exactly when the demons fell? Is that where we should put our efforts? No, we should put our efforts into making sure that we don’t follow them, and recognizing that they have no power over us.

To that end, we are going to read from St. John Chrysostom, because this is what he talks about. He has a number of sermons where he talks about the evil one, and we tend to be sort of afraid of the devil—except for the great saints, of course; they see him and they are not afraid. The rest of us are afraid, but he’s telling us not to be afraid, because he has no real power over us. These words of St. John Chrysostom are taken from his second homily, a series of three homilies On the Power of Man to Resist the Devil. Of course, we don’t fight him by ourselves; we fight him by the power of Christ. This is something I believe I have mentioned this to you, especially for your children or anybody who has little children in their lives, to teach them to make the sign of the cross when they’re afraid, that at the sign of the cross the devil flees. So if they wake up at night, they have a bad dream or something like this, teach them to make the sign of the cross, to say a prayer, to turn over and go back to sleep if they can. But you, if you welcome them to your bed or they call you because they’ve been frightened, this is a really good thing to teach them, and something for us to remember as well: the devil flees at the sign of the cross, something so simple, because the cross was the beginning of his final fall, his ultimate downfall. Here is St. John Chrysostom, from Homily 2, On the Power of Man to Resist the Devil.

We have said lately that he does not overcome by force nor by tyranny nor through compulsion nor through violence. If this were so, he would have destroyed all people. And the testimony that we brought forth was the swine and also Job, the flocks of Job.

In other words, the devil was not able to do anything to the swine or to the flocks and herds of Job, or to harm Job without getting permission.

From this we learned that he does not venture even to destroy these unless he receives power from above. We learned this thing first: he does not overcome us by force or by compulsion. Next, we learned that even when he overcomes by deceitfulness, he does not prevail over all people. And then we are brought to the athlete Job.

Look at how he describes Job as an athlete!

He has countless games but does not get the better of Job, but withdrew, defeated.

So Chrysostom’s point is what are we learning from this? When we learn that the devil really has no power over us, that he tries to frighten us, of course… If you read the Life of Anthony, you see how these terrible monsters that appear in Anthony’s cave and even the devil himself appears, and they try to frighten Anthony into abandoning his cave and his way of life and his prayers and everything, so there are many ways we have to be on guard, especially against the deceit of the evil one, but he doesn’t have any real power over us. So Chrysostom is asking: What do we learn from this?

The devil does not injure, but everywhere overthrows those who are careless because of their own slothfulness. Let the devil be allowed to be exceedingly wicked, not by nature, but by choice and conviction. The devil is not by nature wicked—learn this from his name.

The Lord made the devil, too, right? He didn’t make the devil; he made Lucifer. He made angels, and they turned against the Lord. But he didn’t create them wicked; he created them to be good. But the word “devil” means slanderer, so this is who he is, but he doesn’t have any power over us. He only acquires power by our laziness and our carelessness, and he is called the devil on that account. Do you wish that I call him by another name? He is called wicked, but his wickedness is not from his nature but from his choice. Although many people are called wicked, he alone is called wicked by preeminence. Why is he thus called? Because, though in no way was he wronged by us, having no grudge, whether small or great, when he saw humankind being honored, he envied us his good. What therefore could be worse than this wickedness except when hate and war exist without reasonable cause?

Isn’t that interesting? Chrysostom was quite the pacifist, so where there was hatred and there was war for no reason, that is worse than the wickedness of the devil; this is what he’s saying.

So let the devil then be let alone.

In other words, let’s stop talking about him.

And let’s bring forward the creation in order that you may learn that the devil is not the cause of ills to ourselves. If we would only be careful that you may learn that the weak in choice, the unprepared, the slothful, even if there were no devil, falls and casts himself into the depth of evil.

All these things have been said by me, not in order that I may discharge the devil from blame, but that I may free you from slothfulness.

So Chrysostom, the great pastor, this is what he has to say. He’s a great pastor! He says, “I’m not trying to excuse the devil; I’m trying to tell you that it’s not his fault: it’s your fault!” Because we are lazy. He is so right, isn’t he? We are slothful.

For the devil (listen to this!) wishes extremely to attribute the cause of our sins to himself.

Think about that! Why would the devil want us to attribute our sins to him? Chrysostom answers it.

In order that we, being nourished by these hopes and entering into all kinds of evil, may increase the chastening in our case.

In other words, that we will have no excuse for having transferred the cause to him. His point for that is that by saying, “Hey, it’s not my fault; the devil made me do it”—that was a slogan from the ‘70s: “The devil made me do it!”—well, once we say he’s the responsible cause, we’re trying to excuse ourselves, and he points out (Chrysostom here) that this is exactly what Eve did in the garden, and so did Adam. He blamed Eve and he blamed God; Eve blamed the serpent.

So as long as we say that this is because of the devil—of course he tempts us, but he doesn’t have any real power over us—we give him the power, and we do it by being lazy, by being slothful, by being careless, by not exercising our powers of self-control, by not exercising our prayer life, by not receiving the sacraments.

I know that, especially right now with COVID, some of you have not been to church for a long time. If you have the ability to go to church, and there’s perhaps a limited number of people who are allowed in the church, please do it. You have to receive the sacraments. Fr. Costa will tell you right now something that happened in our family, because we are liturgizing here at our house, and we have invited our relatives, one family at a time, on a Sunday to come. Most Sundays they don’t come, and my husband actually had me email our family and tell them that they’re excommunicated, because—can you imagine? Many of you out there would love to have a priest in the family who could liturgize so you could continue to receive the sacraments. But even in our own family, they’re not coming!

What does that say? How can we possibly resist the deceitfulness of the evil one? How can we recognize him if we don’t have the strength, the nourishment which comes from the body and blood of Christ? If we don’t have that grace, if we don’t say, “I can’t stand to live without the sacraments of the Church!” we are powerless; we have nothing; we are fading away. There is no question in my mind that a lot of what’s been happening when we have casinos, literally, in the state of California: casinos can be open to accommodate more people than churches; and liquor stores and all kinds of other things. I’m not saying our governor is doing this on purpose because he’s doing the work of the evil one; I don’t know that. But certainly it’s working in the favor of the evil one, isn’t it? By weakening the churches, by causing the Christians to perhaps get used to not going to church every Sunday.

So we have to think about these things. I’m going to take two more minutes and finish Chrysostom’s words. He says that it’s because we are slothful and careless, and we cannot put the blame for our personal fall at the feet of the evil one, because he has no power over us. Let us remember that. So now he gives us, turns to talk to us about the way of repentance: how can we overcome this?

Do you wish that I speak the ways of repentance? (Yes, St. John, yes! Tell us the ways of repentance.) There are many and various and different, and all lead to heaven. The first way is condemnation of sins. Condemn yourself.

It doesn’t mean other people; he means us!

Condemn yourself therefore, and your sins. It is enough for the Master by way of self-defense, for he who condemns his sins (in other words, we repent) is slower to fall into them again. Awaken your conscience, that inward accuser, in order that you may have no accuser at the judgment seat of the Lord.

Because there’s a verse that says if we condemn ourselves, we will not be condemned. St. Paul says that.

This is one way of repentance, the best, and there is another, not less than this: not to bear a grudge against your enemies, to forgive the sins of our fellow servants. For so will those which have been done against the Master be forgiven to us. See the second expiation of sins!

So the first thing is we condemn ourselves, we recognize our own sins, we think about, we let our conscience work in us, we repent for our own sins, and then he speaks about forgiving others.

For if you forgive your debtors, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. Do you wish to learn the third way of repentance? (Yes, St. John! Tell us the third way.) Fervent and diligent prayer. Do this from the bottom of your heart. If you would learn a fourth way, I will say almsgiving, for this has a great and unspeakable power.

We don’t usually think about that, do we, as a means of salvation? It’s very important.

What could be compared with this lovingkindness? After countless sins and so many transgressions, he promised he will be reconciled with the one with whom he has come into conflict if he will show kindness to his fellow servants. By showing love and kindness to other human beings, the Lord will show kindness to us.

How powerful is that.

And modesty and humility, no less than all the words spoken, exhaust the nature of sins, and the publican is proof of this, being unable to declare his good deeds in the sight of all and bringing forward his humility, laying aside the heavy burden of his sins.

So we have shown five ways of repentance: first, the condemnation of sins; next, forgiveness of our neighbor’s sins; third, prayer; fourth, almsgiving; fifth, humility. Do not, then, be lazy, but walk in these every day.

Well, I can’t think of a more perfect way to end our lesson for tonight. I’ve missed St. John Chrysostom, haven’t you? What powerful words he gives us. This is how we fight against the evil one, and frankly, dear brothers and sisters, this is how we will fight against the beast. When the time comes, the antichrist, this is how we will recognize him. If we are spiritually strong, spiritually sensitive, we will recognize him, and we don’t need to be afraid of him who is simply a human being, nor should we ever be afraid even of the devil. We shouldn’t even be afraid of the devil who has no power over us. We certainly should not be afraid of the antichrist, who will also have no power over us, because we should not fear those who can kill the body, but fear the Lord, who can send both body and soul into Gehenna.

So with those cheerful words, let’s close with our prayer. I would like to end on a positive note, but I hope you understand that we should not be afraid of evil, because the Lord has conquered. Jesus Christ is victorious. Now let’s close with our prayer.

Lord, now let your servants depart in peace, according to your word. For our eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples: a light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of your people, Israel. Amen.

Good night.