<p>13:17 <em>So that no one should be able to buy or to sell, unless he has the mark, the name of the beast or the number of his name</em>-</p><p>This is very much the language of how those excluded from the synagogues were treated for accepting Jesus as Christ (Jn. 9:22). The figure of 666 (:18) is only found in the Bible concerning Solomon's Israelite kingdom. This of course was but an incipient fulfilment of the final terrorizing of Jews and Christians by the jihadist entity. Likewise it has been shown that in Nero&rsquo;s time it was forbidden for Christians to use Imperial coinage, with its&nbsp;images of Caesar as Lord. It was in this sense impossible to buy or sell unless one was willing to accept the mark of the beast- exactly as in Rev. 13:17. The next verse goes on to identify the number of the beast / man as being 666. And yet this is the sum of the Hebrew letters in &lsquo;Neron Caesar&rsquo; Whatever other application these verses may be seen to have to Catholic persecution, there can be little doubt that their first century context applies to the persecution of the early converts. Later, Domitian demanded that he be worshipped as Lord and God, &quot; Dominus et deus noster&quot; (Suetonius, <em>Domitiani Vita,</em> 13.4). John records how Thomas called the Lord Jesus &ldquo;my lord and my God&rdquo;, in active opposition to this kind of thinking (although Domitian came after Thomas). One couldn&rsquo;t worship Caesar and the Lord Jesus. The Lord Himself had foreseen this when He warned that His followers couldn&rsquo;t serve two masters. Domitian demanded to be called &lsquo;Master&rsquo;, but this was impossible for the Christian. Indeed, much of Revelation seems taken up with this theme of the first century refusal to worship the Caesars and deified Roman empire on pain of persecution (Rev. 13:4; 14:9,11; 16:2; 19:20). &ldquo;Following the Neronian persecution, being a Christian was tantamount to being part of a criminal conspiracy, and Christians (unlike other religious groups) were punished simply for being Christians (Tacitus <em>Annals</em> 15.44.5; Pliny <em>Letters</em> 10.96.2-3). Their crime was an unwillingness to worship any God but their own, an exclusiveness the Greeks labelled &quot;atheism.&quot; The refusal to sacrifice to pagan gods and on behalf of deified emperors was perceived as a threat to the harmonious relationship between people and the gods&rdquo; (J.L. Mays, Editor, <em>Harper&rsquo;s Bible Commentary</em>, (New York: Harper and Row, 1988). Although in many parts of the 21st century world the tension between the believer and the beast is not articulated so starkly, the essential realities of the conflict remain, and must be felt by us.&nbsp;</p>