Who is the beast of revelation 13
Who is the Beast of Revelation 13? Ben Witherington
gyum atria what is it no it's not any
kind of pizza it's a Hebrew word for the
use of symbolic numbers one of the
things you learn when you study not only
Biblical prophecy but you still study
early Judaism as Jews were fascinated
with symbolic numbers and there are a
variety of numbers that were symbolic
numbers the number three number seven
was the number of perfection the number
ten the number twelve multiples of 12
like 144,000 gematria is not only the
use of symbolic numbers but it's when
you are actually assigning a numerical
value to letters of the Hebrew or the
Greek alphabet okay so let's deal with
that famous number 666 in the book of
Revelation though we have some variant
texts that have it as six one six I'll
explain that in a minute the way that
gematria works is that you've assigned a
numerical value to each of the letters
of the Hebrew alphabet okay and so let's
take a name like the name David you
would add up the numerical value of D
and then of the equivalent of the letter
V and then again of D and that would be
the number of David the name David would
have a certain numerical value based on
the numbers you've assigned to the
alphabet well that's what we're actually
dealing with when we're dealing with 666
and here's the most interesting part
there were plenty of coins minted by the
Roman Emperor in the 1st century AD that
had the following inscription which said
things like nay Ron Kaiser Divi Philly a
gusty and what that means is Nero Caesar
the son of the divine
now if you were to add up the numerical
value of that particular inscription in
Latin you would come up with the number
666
so who's mr. 666 well according to the
author of Revelation he's a Nero like
figure whether it's Nero in particular
or or he's just the symbol for the
persecutor of Christians the Antichrist
figure who persecutes Christians or not
but here's the other interesting bit the
other inscription you might have in the
eastern part of the Empire would read
Nero Kaiser Divi fili
Augusta in other words there would be
the letter what we would call the letter
n that's not there well if you add up
the numerical value of that that's six
one six okay that's where the textual
variants come from from the eastern end
of the Empire so either way whether it's
six six six or six one six the numerical
value of this adds up to a name and the
name it adds up to is the name of Nero
the emperor of the Roman Empire in the
60s it was the first famous persecutor
of the church when Christians thought of
an anti-christian figure they thought of
Nero of course they did and some of them
when Domitian at the end of the first
century AD started doing the same thing
they thought always Nero back from the
dead
here's Antichrist part 2 the sequel what
we're being told is that this is a world
ruler who is systematically persecuting
prosecuting and executing Christians and
that that is a very bad thing now the
author of Revelation John of Patmos
believes that human history in the
future is not going to be rather
different from human history in his own
day he believes that probably human
history is going to culminate with a
really wicked ruler who looks a lot like
Nero in his
behavior towards Christians this is a
description of the character of the
person it's not naming the actual human
name of the person it's describing the
character of that final wicked ruler of
the world and saying you better watch
out because he's coming Christians you
need to be prepared to be persecuted one
of the things about the book of
Revelation that makes it so actually
incompatible with the dispensational
interpretation of all this is that the
author of Revelation is going to say to
us be prepared to go through the
tribulation be prepared to be persecuted
and even executed Revelation is the book
of the martyrs it's it's it even uses
the Greek verb Nicolle which means to
conquer or to overcome to refer to being
faithful unto death and into death to
the faith of Jesus Christ it's the book
of the martyr so mister 666 one more
time who is he he's a world ruler that's
bad to the bone wicked through and
through and looks a lot like the
behavior of Nero or the character of
Nero and what we know about him is he's
going down for the count once and for
all when the rider on the white horse
Jesus comes
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