Beast of Revelation.pdf - Friends of the Sabbath Australia

The Beast of Revelation
“Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the
number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: his number is
666” (v. 18). So this is clearly something God wants us to do.
How do we go about calculating this number? The original
King James Version says it more clearly: “count the number.” But
what are we to count? Verse 17 says it is the “number of his [the
Beast’s] name,” while verse 18 says it is the “number of the beast”
and the “number of a man.” Which is it? Actually, it is all of the
above. For what is the Beast? It’s the Roman Empire as well as its
leader! But how do we “count” this? Before Arabic numerals
became accepted in the Western world in the 13th century, letters
of the alphabet doubled as numerals. Most of us are familiar with
Roman numerals, where the letters of the Latin alphabet have
numeric value. In this system I=1, V=5, X=10 and so on. Hebrew
and Greek, the languages in which the Bible was primarily written,
both used similar systems. In such languages, any name could
have numeric value by converting each of its letters to the number
it represented and then adding them all together.
That brings us to the earliest proposed solution to the meaning
of 666. It is a tradition attributed to Polycarp—disciple of the same
Apostle John who wrote Revelation—preserved in the secondcentury
writings of Irenaeus. The number 666 is “contained in the
Greek letters of Lateinos” (Jamieson, Fausset and Brown,
Commentary on the Whole Bible).
This fits well. Revelation was written
in Greek to Greek-speaking
Churches in Asia Minor—and
Lateinos is a Greek term meaning
“Latin man” or “Roman.” This is
certainly the name of the Beast for
“Roman” is the name of the empire
itself as well as every citizen of it.
It should also be noted that Greek
writers usually referred to the
Roman Empire as “the Latin kingdom”
(h Latine Basileia), which
52
(Lateinos)
Greek for “Roman”
(L) = 30
(A) = 1
(T) = 300
(E) = 5
(I) = 10
(N) = 50
(O) = 70
(S) = 200
Total = 666