What does it look like to sell your soul? Maybe you can picture it from movies or cartoons. Maybe you imagine the musical Damn Yankees, or recall the story of bluesman Robert Johnson at the Crossroads, or when the devil annulled Spider-Man’s marriage to MJ. But what would it look like today, in real life? What would it take for a stranger, or a friend, or a cause to convince you to give up everything you believe?
Last month, on the eve of the National Day of Prayer, President Donald Trump hosted his evangelical advisors for a dinner to celebrate his election victory and to discuss the religious freedom Executive Order he would issue the following day. A blogger I follow posted a picture from that dinner and speculated that was what selling your soul looked like. I replied that I found it ironic their dinner was lobster (eating shellfish being an “abomination” according to Leviticus 11, just a few pages before the popularly quoted Leviticus 18). But in the picture I didn’t see money changing hands, or souls being wisped away.
During my Sunday school class this week, I reminded everyone that the “antichrist” according to John wasn’t a specific person, rather anyone who denied that Jesus was the Christ. More specifically it was directed towards the Gnostics, who believed that since the flesh was inherently sinful Jesus could not be both human and divine. Yet we like to throw that word around to describe anyone we think opposes our particular worldview (Christian, or not). George W Bush, Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump… you get the idea.
We do this because we are convinced the antichrist is a specific character in the end-times. He or she is the ruler of the “one world government” that comes before the rapture, Jesus’ return, or whatever other eschatological interpretation you may have. But Revelation never mentions the antichrist. Rather there are two beasts in Revelation 13- one, a political leader and the second, a religious leader -who work together in service of the dragon.
Nearly everyone agrees the dragon is Satan. But there is more debate about identifying the beasts. The first is often described by terms like “new world order” and can be interpreted as the United Nations, NATO, the global economy, the G8, et cetera. The second is popularly the Catholic Church or the Pope. It is sometimes interpreted to be Constantine giving rise to Christendom.
Regardless, the narrative of Revelation describes the beasts as religious authority ceding to political favor. In other words, selling your soul for the sake of politics.
Later on Sunday, President Trump’s new lawyer, Jay Sekulow, made the rounds on cable news to defend that the president was not under any investigation. Jay Sekulow, in case you didn’t know, used to be lead counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a counter-organization to the ACLU specializing in religious freedom cases. But over the years the ACLJ has become more and more political. And now Sekulow finds himself on the president’s retainer.
In one of the many articles describing his news-tour, someone commented that it was clear President Trump had God’s favor because Sekulow was representing him and therefore no powers of evil can defeat him.
That, right there, is what selling your soul looks like.
It’s not the dinner evangelical leaders have with presidents. It’s not paychecks received to appear on the news and advance a political narrative. It’s not even the political maneuvering that is done by religious leaders every time there is an election.
No, it is the common person, the sincere believer, who is deceived because someone they considered a spiritual authority takes a political stance signifying such politics as godly.
After the beasts are introduced in Revelation 13, their followers are then described. These deceived can be recognized by a physical sign- the mark of the beast. It’s not the politician or the religious leader we have to worry about selling their soul, rather it is you and me being deceived, being marked.