Fingerprinting is the "mark of the beast"?

Pam McLaurin, a 22-year veteran kindergarten teacher in Big Sandy Independent School District (northeast of Houston) could lose her job for refusing, on religious grounds, to give fingerprints under a state law requiring them.

She claims that fingerprinting amounts to the “mark of the beast,” and hence is a violation of her First Amendment right to practice her religion. This article cannot explore the legal ramifications of this lady’s dilemma, but I would like to comment on the idea of the “mark of the beast.” The first reference (and probably the most well-known) is in Revelation 13:17-18: “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. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”

There have been a lot of ideas about the “mark of the beast” as technology increases, but the idea in Revelation was simple. As God had sealed His people unto Himself by impressing His own name and the name of the Lamb upon their foreheads (7:3; 9:4; 14:1), and has promised to write His name upon the foreheads of the victors (3:12; 22:4), so the beast imitates this by requiring all to indicate their allegiance to him by a mark upon their right hand or upon their foreheads. In “causing” this to be done, the beast established a policy which required that they all be marked. The mark itself was probably a stamp of paganism impressed upon the character and conduct of the idolater. Whatever the mark was, no one could enter the field of trade or earn a living without it. The saints who refused the mark even at the risk of death, were boycotted by the world, being discriminated against even to the point of hunger or possible starvation.

In the time of Revelation, this “mark” denoted someone as worshiping the emperor, the head of the Roman government. While someone may be uncomfortable with being fingerprinted or even with the government knowing too much information about them, this does not constitute a “mark of the beast.”

Kyle Campbell