so you may have worshipped teh beast and taken his mark before you got "saved" and thus are damned forever.
You are clueless. Why should we bother trying to explain what we believe when you are apparently unable to understand anything?
So what is th emark specifically. The bible goes into specifics saying it is the name of the beast or th enumber of his name or 666. What say you? And how does one take a spiritual mark on their right hand?
It marks a person as having their loyalties with this evil world rather than with God. Revelation 13:8 indicates that ALL whose names are not written in the book of life worship the beast. So, whatever the beast is, literally all unbelievers follow after it and are loyal to it. Jesus said that we believers are not of the world. Unbelievers are of the world. They love this evil world and what it has to offer which are only temporal things and things that are against God's will.
I believe the number 666 is a symbolic representation of fallen mankind. English translations differ, but I believe the correct translation of Revelation 13:18 is that the number of the beast is the number of mankind rather than the number of an individual man. The number 7 is commonly known to represent God's perfection and mankind falls short of that. The fact that there are three 6s may just be to emphasize just how short of God's glory and standards that mankind falls.
As far as a spiritual mark on the right hand, have you ever read this:
Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6
These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8
Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
This was not talking about the Israelites literally tying God's commandments on their hands and literally binding them on their foreheads. It's symbolic for obeying the commandments with their actions (using their hands) and with keeping them in the forefronts of their minds at all times. So, in the case of the mark of the beast I believe it is a symbolic representation of people's actions reflecting their loyalty to the beast (to the world and its evil ways) rather than to God. And having the mark in one's forehead represents someone's beliefs and thoughts being in line with the beast.
Do you think "the seal of God" written on the foreheads of believers is a literal seal? If not, then why do you think the mark of the beast has to be a literal mark?