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I want to shift gears here to another topic
That is of interest to most bible teaching Christians
And that's this business of the 666
There are thousands of books lying on the shelves of libraries
On the 666, virtually all of them are wrong cause they haven't read it carefully
And they're pointing in the wrong direction
I'll come back to that
But what we're talking about, of course is Revelation 13, the last few verses
Where it says, this Antichrist causeth all both small and great, rich and poor, free
and bond,
to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark,
or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
And so, now we have this famous verse at verse 18
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast:
for it is the number of a man;
and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
How many have read that before?
Okay, it's a familiar topic, alright
Now, most people presume, that this comes from three Greek letters
And these three Greek letters happen to have ...
...both Greek and Hebrew have every letter of their alphabet has a numerical value
And people can play games with that in lots of different ways. That's called Gematria.
These three letters, stands for 600, 60 and 6. And that's where we get the 666
Many places in the Bible, the numerical value of a word or letters
Carries a second meaning, nowhere in the Bible, does the numerical value of those letters
convey its primary meaning
There's a very clever secondary meanings that are fascinating to look at
But understand that nowhere does the Holy Spirit use Gematria to be the primary connector
You follow what I'm saying? Okay
Now, here those letters of course have names and so forth
But the first and last of those two letters, also happen to be
First and last letters of the word Christos in the Greek
So that's kind of colorful and many people dwell on that,
And the middle, the letter that is missing in the middle which look something like a
serpent
Makes this the symbol of the Antichrist, so you can play with that, it has a design appeal
And I am not disparaging that I just want you to be aware of that, but all of this may
be a false start.
I'll get back to that in a minute. Now, to go one step further this has led to studies
But everyone misses the point, of that verse 18
We have articles about insertable chips, about bar codes, all these have to do with the number
666
With the 666 being his number, okay
And remember it is His number and name that are the critical thing and not ours
This has nothing to do with pin numbers. It got nothing to do with bar codes other than
some barcodes, not all, use the 6 as a separator signal
I was on the board of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis
I have been in that technology world, and let me tell you candidly, I think most of
what you read about that is utter nonsense
Not that it is not real, and not that it leads to political control.
Obviously electronic funds transfer, provides a means of control to a regime.
But that's not what we are talking about.
We are talking about, some kind of an identity of the guy
What happens in the Book of Revelation is that people, who identify themselves with
the leader.
Forgo and chance of salvation. So having a pin number is not the issue, swearing allegiance
to some leader whose symbolism is here.
Is no be avoid. Do you follow what I am saying here?
Articles confuse that, I am talking about the wrong side of that point.
We are all worried about insertable chips, who cares?
That has nothing to do with who your allegiance is to.
Anyway, in the Greek Alphanumerics, indeed those three letters do have those values
There's a couple of those, and its one of three letters that had been abandoned in the
Greek alphabet long ago
But I don't want to complicate our session because of all that
We are fumbling here in the are of Gematria, where you try to draw meaning from those letters
There are people who have taken every person you can imagine, from Nero, to Napoleon, to
Bill Clinton, you name it and found a way to make it come out 666 with Gematria
Well first of all that's English not Greek and so forth that's foolish
Furthermore in Gematria, if you get into that you will discover, that there are several
basic types, and I won't go through these here
But what it really says, that using a different form of Gematria you can prove anything says
anything
You can indulge in a lot of foolishness with that bluntly
Now I have been fascinated by an observation. That the only physical description of the
Antichrist in the Bible is in Zechariah 11:17
Zechariah is full of these funny little, small little nibbles
Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, and
upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly
darkened.
What does that mean? I have no idea?
But I have a suspicion, we know from other passages, in fact several of them
Relate to the fact that he will apparently suffer a head wound, be regarded as dead and
apparently come back to life
And there are some good scholars that have studied that and you can argue that it's a
real death and he came to life
You can argue that's it is just simulated, who cares?
It obviously fools everybody, in any case. But notice, it could be that when he comes
back and takes charge
People who swear their allegiance to him, might take his emblem or mark. Where?
Over the right eye and on the arm. The darkened eye, in effect, may be vestiges of the head
wound and people may use that to identify with himself
Imagine people in Israel that might wear an eye patch to identify themselves with Moshe
Dayan, clumsy example but you see what I mean.
The point is, if your leader has some kind of manifest defect. It is natural for his
followers, to somehow make an emblem of that.
That's the possibility, I would not press it too far. I just called it to attention
just for your notes
But I'm indebted to Walid Shoebat, for suggesting a possibility that I want you to be aware
of.
In Islam, he was watching a movie called "Kingdom of Heaven".
It reminded him of something he knew that Islamic warriors, always had a headband, saying
"In the name of Allah"
And also a shahadatan, a band on their right arm, that's a symbol of an Islamic warrior
And in the movie, they were faithful to that so, it reminded him of that.
That's what caused him to start connecting something here
The shahadatan is a declaration of allegiance to Allah and Muhammad and worn by millions
on their forehead and their right arm, interesting
It's in the Greek, it shows up there too, moving on here
The number of his name? The multitude? There's a question mark here.
Let's go back and take a look at this verse 18 of Revelation 13
"Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast..."
Now the word 'wisdom' is pretty straightforward, its 'sophia'; wisdom; full of intelligence
just what we think it means
But the word 'count' in English is actually the Greek word 'psephizo' which is to count
or reckon or decide by voting
But then we have this word, 'arithmos', which is in this verse 3 times
What can that mean in the Greek, it can mean one of two things.
'Arithmos' can mean a specific number, it also can mean an indefinite number!
Such as a number of people came over last night, how many, don't know. In other words
an indefinite number
It used that way in the Greek or it's used as a precise number, either way, okay
Now, 'man' is straightforward, a human being in other words
And his number is six hundred, three score and six
That could be those three Greek letters, it might be something else
Now, let's take a look at the manuscripts. On the Oxythynchus Papyri, if you look at
the third line, you see what apparently are three Greek letters
That gives rise to the translation that we got in English, with the 600, 60 and 6. You're
with me so far.
However, it turns out that if you take a look at the Codex Vaticanus, if you look at that
more closely.
Walid suggests the possibility, that those are not Greek letters at all
They may be Arabic letters. He would argue that in the manuscripts says John wrote what he
saw!
And he may have written down stuff that we assumed to be Greek letters that are not
Now you need to understand that all languages, flow towards Jerusalem.
All nations east of Jerusalem read right to left. Not only Hebrew but Aramaic, Arabic,
Sanskrit, you name it.
All nations west of Jerusalem read left to right. Obviously Latin and all its derivatives
like English, German, and what have you, Greek, Cyrillic. All go from left to right.
If that's Arabic it doe not go from left to right, it goes right to left!
And it's Walid who suggests a valid interpretation of that, if it is Arabic. Would be Bis'm Allah,
starting from the right hand those first two letters would be Bis'm Allah
What looks like an 'X' to us, could be two crossed swords, which is the traditional insignia
of Islam
So that suggest the possibility that, well some people say that one is up at an angle.
It is that way on the flag of Iraq by the way! At an angle so I won't make a big thing
about that.
The point is the possibility, that if this is Arabic. The sign that's being talked about
is "In the name of Allah"!
The very thing that Islamic warriors wear on their forehead and on their right arm when
they go into battle!
Now if you look at the various renderings of this. If you turn that little symbol on
its belly, it looks like a serpent.
How interesting!
I won't make too much of that but I think it is interesting so I'm showing it to you.
Now, let's read the way Revelation 13:18 could be translated, not necessarily, but it could
allow the following translation:
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding decide (who) the multitude of the beast (is):
for it is the multitude of a man (that is, Muhammad); and his multitude are "In the name
of Allah".
Interesting possibility, don't misunderstand Walid or myself. Now Walid is a good friend,
I respect him profoundly.
Not only as a practitioner but as a scholar. He does his homework, and he does not sell
this. He points it out as a possibility.
We won't really know until we can get a much better rendering from some of the manuscripts
to get a clearer perspective.
But it certainly appears to be a possibility that has been overlooked
And so I share it with you, in that way. By the way, I want to acknowledge Joel Richardson
and others that have picked up on this whole thing
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