DaDad said in post #34:
[Re: The Antichrist]
-- his name calculates to 666 . . .
That's right.
For the 666 in Revelation 13:17c-18 refers to the number six hundred and sixty-six, the "number of the name" of the individual man who will be the future Antichrist (the individual-man aspect of Revelation's "beast").
The number of a name (Revelation 13:17c-18, Revelation 15:2) is determined by employing the ancient method of gematria, by which numerical values are assigned to the letters of any alphabet as follows: the first nine letters are assigned a value of 1 through 9, the next nine letters are assigned a value of 10 through 90 (counting by tens), and the rest of the letters are assigned a value of 100, 200, 300, etc., to the end of the alphabet. In Revelation 13:18 the "counting", the adding up, of the gematrial number of the future Antichrist's name should be done in the same way that the gematrial numerical values of the three Greek letters (Chi, Xi, and Stigma) at the end of Revelation 13:18 (in the original Greek Textus Receptus) are added up to arrive at the number six hundred and sixty-six.
The numerical values assigned to the letters of the ancient Greek alphabet (including the three obsolete letters of Stigma, Qoppa, and Sampi) were as follows: Alpha = 1, Beta = 2, Gamma = 3, Delta = 4, Epsilon = 5,
Stigma = 6, Zeta = 7, Eta = 8, Theta = 9, Iota = 10, Kappa = 20, Lambda = 30, Mu = 40, Nu = 50,
Xi = 60, Omikron = 70, Pi = 80, Qoppa = 90, Rho = 100, Sigma = 200, Tau = 300, Upsilon = 400, Phi = 500,
Chi = 600, Psi = 700, Omega = 800, Sampi = 900.
Just as the numerical values of Chi, Xi, and Stigma at the end of Revelation 13:18 (in the Textus Receptus) add up to 666, so the numerical values of the letters in the future Antichrist's name will add up to 666 (Revelation 13:17c-18). The apostle John used the Greek alphabet because it was the most common one used by Christians when the book of Revelation was written down in the first century AD. Today, the English alphabet is the most common one used by Christians, insofar as English is the current lingua franca of the world. So the Antichrist's name will most likely add up to 666 in the English alphabet. The purpose of Revelation 13:17c-18 is to facilitate for Christians, not to make difficult for them, the identification of a certain man as possibly being the Antichrist. If the letters in his name had to be transliterated into the Greek alphabet, this would vitiate this purpose, for almost all Christians today would not know how to properly perform this transliteration, and so different Christians would come up with different transliterations, and so would come up with different gematrial numbers for the name of the man in question.
If Christians think that someone is the Antichrist, then they need to check to see if his name adds up to 666 in gematria (Revelation 13:17c-18). If it does not, then he is not the Antichrist. If it does, then he could be, and they need to be especially wary of him, and not be taken in by any deceptive charisma, intelligence, or amazing deeds which he might display. But even if someone's name does add up to 666, this does not mean that he is definitely the Antichrist. For just by chance there could be more than one person in the world whose name adds up to 666. The Antichrist also has to come from a country the territory of which used to be part of one of the four Diadochian Greek kingdoms which succeeded Alexander the Great (Daniel 8:8-9,21-25). These kingdoms stretched from Greece over to Iran, and down into Egypt. So the Antichrist could come from the Middle East. He could be an Arab who will come from Lebanon, from the modern city of Tyre (Ezekiel 28:2; 2 Thessalonians 2:4), and have a name like (for example) "Nabil Abdullah Falakal al-Hakim", which adds up to 666.
But if a man from the Middle East has a name that adds up to 666, even this does not assure that he is the Antichrist. For he also has to sit (at least one time) in a future, third Jewish temple in Jerusalem and proclaim himself God (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, Daniel 11:31,36, Matthew 24:15, Revelation 11:1-2). Once he does that, there will not be any more room for doubt over whether or not he is the Antichrist. His identity will have been definitely revealed (2 Thessalonians 2:3b-4).
The gematrial numerical values of the letters of the English alphabet are: A=1, B=2, C=3, D=4, E=5, F=6, G=7, H=8, I=9, J=10, K=20, L=30, M=40, N=50, O=60, P=70, Q=80, R=90, S=100, T=200, U=300, V=400, W=500, X=600, Y=700, Z=800. The way that the gematrial number of a name is "counted" (Revelation 13:17c-18), is added up, is simply by adding up the gematrial numerical values of all of the letters in that name. So, for example, the number of the name "John Mark Smith" is 636, because: J=10, O=60, H=8, N=50, M=40, A=1, R=90, K=20, S=100, M=40, I=9, T=200, H=8. Total = 636. The future Antichrist's name will add up to 666 (Revelation 13:17c-18).
