Here, then, is the issue before us. Human organizations, controlled and inspired by the spirit of the dragon, are to command men to do those acts which are in reality the worshiping of an apostate religious power, and the receiving of his mark, or lose the rights of citizenship and become outlaws in the land; and to do that which constitutes the worship of the image of the beast, or forfeit their lives. On the other hand, God says by a message, mercifully sent out a little before the fearful crisis is upon us, Do any of these things, and you "shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation." He who refuses to comply with these demands of earthly powers exposes himself to the severest penalties which human beings can inflict; and he who does comply, exposes himself to the most terrible threatening of divine wrath to be found in the word of God. The question whether we will obey God or man is to be decided by the people of the present age, under the heaviest pressure, from either side, that has ever been brought to bear upon any generation. The worship of the beast and his image, and the reception of his mark, must be something that involves the greatest offense that can be committed against God, to call down so severe a denunciation of wrath against it. This is a work, as was shown in chapter 4, which takes place in the last days; and as God has given us in his word most abundant evidence to show when we are in the last days, so that no one need to be overtaken by the day of the Lord as by a thief, so likewise it must be that he has given us the means whereby we may determine what this great latter-day sin is which he has so strongly condemned, that we may avoid the fearful penalty so sure to follow its commission. God does not so trifle with human hopes and human destinies as to denounce a most fearful doom against a certain sin, and then place it out of our power to understand what that sin is, so that we have no means of guarding against it. That we are now living in the last days, the volumes both of revelation and nature bear ample and harmonious testimony. Evidence on this point we need not here stop to introduce; for the testimony already presented in the foregoing chapters of this series, showing that the two-horned beast is now on the stage of action, is in itself conclusive proof of this great fact, inasmuch as the power exists and performs its work in the very closing period of human history. All these things tell us that the time has now come for the proclamation of the third message of Rev. 14, to be given, and for men to understand the terms which it uses, and the warning it gives. We therefore now call attention to the very important inquiry, What constitutes the mark of the beast? The figure of a mark is borrowed from an ancient custom. Says Bp. Newton (Dissert on Proph., vol. iii, p. 241):--