shturt678s said in post 133:
It is a part of the vision when John records: "Here is the wisdom!"
The "wisdom" given in Revelation 13:18 is that six hundred and sixty-six is the number of the Antichrist's name (Revelation 13:17c-18). And the "understanding" in Revelation 13:18 that is required to properly "count", to add up, the number of his name, is having an understanding of gematria, which scripture itself employs with the 3 Greek letters at the end of Revelation 13:18 (in the original Greek Textus Receptus), and which scriptural gematria, sadly, many Christians today are either unaware of, or, even if they know about it, they refuse to employ it, mistakenly thinking that it is occult numerology/divination.
There are some verses in the Bible which in order to for us to understand them properly today, we need to recover the common, extra-Biblical knowledge that people back in Bible times already had without the Bible having to give it to them.
For example, when Revelation 6:6 says "A measure of wheat for a penny", the original Greek says a "choinix" of wheat for a "denarion". But the Bible doesn't explain how big a measure a choinix is or how much money a denarion is. For back when Revelation 6:6 was written, those who knew Greek already knew how big a measure a choinix is and how much money a denarion is. But today we need to go to extra-Biblical sources to recover the knowledge that a denarion is a full day's wages, and a choinix is probably about a quart. So Revelation 6:6 is saying that food will be so expensive that people will have to work an entire day just to be able to buy a quart of wheat. But without going to extra-Biblical sources to properly understand Revelation 6:6, believers today could read the KJV of that verse and go away with completely the wrong idea: that food will be so cheap that people will be able buy a measure of wheat for just a penny.
Just as the translators of the words of the Greek scriptures into English had to learn from extra-Biblical sources what those Greek words meant before they could translate them into English, so translators of Revelation 13:18 in the original Greek Textus Receptus had to learn from extra-Biblical sources that the last 3 Greek letters in that verse stand for 3 different numbers, according to the rules of gematria, and that those numbers have to be added together, again according to the rules of gematria, before the translators could properly translate those 3 different Greek letters into the number six hundred and sixty-six.
shturt678s said in post 133:
Again, only for lucidity, our versions and almost all Commentators even before 1930 translate: "for it is the number of a man," ie, of some individual man as I stated before.Just from an IQ below ambient, ie, me, This cannot be valid, for John has just said that it is 'the number of the beast."
"Beasts" can refer figuratively to men (Titus 1:12). Revelation uses a Greek masculine-pronoun "him" to refer to its beast (Revelation 13:8) when it is referring to the individual "man" (Revelation 13:18) aspect of its beast, commonly called the Antichrist, the individual "man of sin" (2 Thessalonians 2:3) who will sit in a 3rd Jewish temple in Jerusalem and proclaim himself God (2 Thessalonians 2:4, Daniel 11:36). He will bring the world into the worship of Lucifer (the dragon, Satan) and himself (Revelation 13:4,8, Revelation 12:9).
He will rule the earth for 3.5 literal years (Revelation 13:5-10, Daniel 7:25, Daniel 12:7), and will have a miracle-working False Prophet (Revelation 19:20, Revelation 16:13), who by amazing, Satanic miracles (cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:9), such as calling fire down from heaven (Revelation 13:13), will deceive the people of the world into worshipping a speaking (possibly an android) image of the Antichrist (Revelation 13:15), and receiving a mark of the Antichrist's name or gematrial name-number (666) on their right hand or forehead (Revelation 13:16-18). The Antichrist and his False Prophet will ultimately be cast into the lake of fire at Jesus' 2nd coming (Revelation 19:20), whereas at that time Satan will be bound in the bottomless pit for 1,000 years (Revelation 20:1-3). None of these things has happened yet.
A 2nd aspect of Revelation's beast is that it is a powerful fallen angel (referred to with a Greek masculine-pronoun "he" in Revelation 17:11) who is now literally in the bottomless pit and will ascend from it during the future tribulation to spiritually empower the empire of the Antichrist (the individual-man aspect of the beast) (Revelation 17:8-11), empire being a 3rd aspect of the beast, represented by the animal symbols of Revelation 13:1-2. The fallen-angel aspect of the beast could be the angelic prince whom Satan had assigned to spiritually empower the ancient empire of Babylon, just as Satan had assigned other fallen angelic princes to spiritually empower the subsequent ancient empires of Persia and Greece (Daniel 10:13,20). When the ancient empire of Babylon was defeated, the fallen angelic prince empowering it could have been cast into the bottomless pit. This same fallen angel could be released to empower a revival of the empire of Babylon during the Antichrist's future, literal 3.5-year worldwide reign (Revelation 13:5-18).
The release of the powerful fallen angelic prince of Babylon from the bottomless pit could occur at the same time as the unbinding of 4 other powerful fallen angels now bound at the Euphrates (Revelation 9:14b), who could have been bound there at the fall of the ancient empire of Babylon. When these 4 fallen angels are released at one point during the future tribulation, they will cause an army of 200 million weird horse-like beings to kill 1/3 of mankind (Revelation 9:15-19). This could be done in order to make mankind completely desperate before its total takeover by Satan and the Antichrist mid-tribulation, when Satan and his fallen angels will be cast down from heaven to the earth permanently after losing a mid-tribulation war in heaven (Revelation 12:7 to 13:18).
