Fear mark of the beast? State OKs special license

It's not "666," but it's close enough to the New Testament's "mark of the beast," says a small religious group in West Virginia that won an exemption from the state's requirement that driver's license photos be stored in a digital database.

Phil Hudok, a high school physics teacher in Randolph County, pastor Butch Paugh and 12 others raised the issue in 2006 during meetings with Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Joseph Cicchirillo as the state prepared to bring its driver's license policy in line with the federal Real ID Act, passed a year earlier. Under Real ID, states would be required to share information about licensed drivers, including photos, with agencies in other states.

"We see us getting closer and closer to the mark of the beast," Hudok told the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

According to John the apostle's vision in Revelation 16:1-2, those who are found with the mark are the objects of God's wrath:

Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, "Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth."

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So the first went and poured out his bowl upon the earth, and a foul and loathsome sore came upon the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image.

In 1999, WND reported Hudok's fight with the school board over his refusal to wear a photo ID with a bar code that had to remain visible at all times.

Hudok said his religious beliefs prevented him from wearing the ID because it had a bar code displayed next to his photo. He said he believed the card was the "mark of the beast" as referred to in Revelation.

Although he was given an exemption based on his religious beliefs, he was fired because he would not enforce the rule against students who refused to wear the computer-coded ID.

"I can't do that. How can I possibly ask someone to do something that I can't do myself? They've already given me permission to cut off the bar code, which I did," Hudok said at the time. "But they're saying that I have to enforce the students to wear their cards which have bar codes."

The school implemented the policy based on federal guidelines for reducing campus violence.

In August 2000, WND reported, the West Virginia State Supreme Court ordered Hudok reinstated with back pay and benefits.

Now, eight years later, without having to go to court, Hudok has succeeded in winning an exemption for people like himself who believe the growing computerization of personal information – in this case, photographs – have spiritual meaning and consequences.

Under the agreement worked out with the DMV, members of Paugh's group will be allowed to have their DMV pictures taken at the Capitol DMV office, where a hard copy will be kept on file. The digital version, however, will be deleted from the computer system.

"What these people objected to was the digital image," Cicchirillo said. "All the other information stays there."

Cicchirillo said he had received few objections to the state's digital-photo requirement.

"Right now, I have three or four people who have requested it for religious reasons," he told the Gazette. "I think what they told me was it had to do with the mark of the beast.

"The only reason we're trying it is these people's religious beliefs and they don't want their pictures stored," he said of the "pilot program."

For Hudok, the digital photographs are "getting closer and closer to the mark of the beast" associated with the arrival of the Antichrist.

"They haven't defined what the limits will be on the Real ID," he said.

According to Hudok, the digital images can be used to establish "unique facial" characteristics that identify people better than their fingerprints.

"My children won't even have yearbook pictures taken," he said, adding that companies taking the images also forward them to the national Amber Alert for storage in the missing children program's database.

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