In a video that’s posted on Youtube and is making the rounds in popular Christian circles, an Arab Christian claims that there are three Arabic words in Revelation 13.18, the passage that speaks about the number of the beast.
Here’s the link to the video: Walid Shoebat – Mark of the Beast
Walid Shoebat claims in this video that the mark of the beast is Islam itself. Certainly, Christians can recognize that Islam denies the deity of Christ, vicarious atonement, and bodily resurrection; for this reason, Islam is a false religion. We can also recognize that there are small groups of Muslims who are radical and would like to destroy Israel and America. But does this make Islam the Antichrist? That’s rather doubtful.
Shoebat’s basis is this: “When I first saw the Codex Vaticanus, I was literally shocked because I could read the text. It was Arabic! … ‘In the name of Allah.’”
But Shoebat did not read Codex Vaticanus. This codex is the famous fourth-century Greek New Testament (and Old Testament) manuscript that ends at Hebrews 9.13. The material added after Heb 9.13 is all in a much later hand. According to the authoritative Kurzgefasste Liste der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments, 2nd edition (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994), the supplement (known as codex 1957) was written in the 15th century. What Shoebat saw was not technically Codex Vaticanus but Codex 1957, a text written over a thousand years after Vaticanus.
In his video, he explains how the three Greek letters χξς in Revelation 13.18 are not really Greek at all, but Arabic. On top of the stretch to make the Arabic words fit, there are other severe problems with Shoebat’s claims. As much as some Christians would like for Shoebat’s interpretation to be correct, it fails at many levels. Let’s examine Shoebat’s claims.
1. Rev 13.18 specifically introduces this symbol as the number of the beast. The word ‘number’ is used three times in this verse. We are thus expecting a number, not a foreign word, to be introduced. Shoebat offers no explanation how ‘number’ can mean anything other than number here.
All he says is that “God is not the author of mysteries… His yoke is easy. God is not interested in gematria. Gematria is a process that was used in witchcraft.” These statements are self-serving, contradictory, and incorrect. To say that God is not the author of mysteries is stunningly naïve. Of course he’s the author of mysteries. “Mystery” is a word that occurs 28 times in the NT. Almost every time it is used in collocation with a positive word: ‘the mystery of godliness,’ ‘the mystery of the gospel,’ ‘the mystery of faith,’ etc. Jesus’ parables were a form of mystery (something that was unknown to the listeners until revelation about the parables was given). Furthermore, if there is Arabic in Rev 13.18, why wouldn’t that qualify as a mystery for most readers? And if no one until Walid Shoebat had properly understood the meaning here, then the text has obviously been a mystery for 1900 years. To say that “[God’s] yoke is easy” is to wrench out of context what Jesus said about what it means to follow him in Matthew 11.29–30: his yoke is easy because it does not burden someone down with legalism. The text has nothing to do with interpretation. Judging by the disparate interpretations of scripture for the several millennia, if an easy yoke means that the interpretation of the text is plain and straightforward at all points, then scripture has created a brutally hard yoke for us.
Shoebat argues that Rev 13.18 can’t refer to a number because gematria was evil, used in witchcraft. That may be, but even if so (Shoebat gives no evidence of this), it was not always used for evil purposes. And the fact that Rev 13.18 explicitly links a person’s name to a number tells us that the author is thinking along the lines of gematria. If the number 666 is authentic, it may be significant that the gematria for the name “Jesus” (Ἰησοῦς) is 888. And just as 666 comes short of perfection, 888 is beyond perfection (since 7 is often viewed, biblically speaking, as the perfect number). Early Christians thought of some passages as involving gematria. For example, Barnabas 9.8 (early second century) says, concerning the 318 servants of Abraham mentioned in Gen 14.14, “For it says: ‘And Abraham circumcised ten and eight and three hundred men of his household.’ What, then, is the knowledge that was given to him? Observe that it mentions the ‘ten and eight’ first, and then after an interval the ‘three hundred.’ As for the ‘ten and eight,’ the Ι [iota] is ten and the Η [eta] is eight; thus you have ‘Jesus’ [the first two letters of the name ‘Jesus’ in Greek]. And because the cross, which is shaped like the Τ [tau], was destined to convey grace, it mentions also the ‘three hundred.’ [The Greek letter tau had a numerical value of 300.] So he reveals Jesus in the two letters, and the cross in the other one.”
Matthew’s genealogy may also fit this, since his mention of three groups of 14 generations is somewhat artificial, since he skips some ancestors of Jesus. But since the name David had a gematria of fourteen, the evangelist may have been thinking along the lines of David’s gematria for his grouping. Among Jews, see a similar treatment of Gen 14.14 in the Talmud (b.Ned 32a).2. Arabic was a rather minor language at the time that the Apocalypse was written, almost surely unknown to John the Seer. Further, the alphabet looked quite different in the early centuries. Not only this, but the first written record we have of Arabic comes from the early sixth century—over 400 years after the Apocalypse was written. And the Greek script that Shoebat saw in Codex 1957 at the back of Vaticanus (and which he thought was Arabic) was Greek minuscule script, a form of script that was not used in biblical manuscripts until the 9th century! In the majuscule script (found in all NT manuscripts until the 9th century when the minuscule script began to take over), the letters would look like this: cxs. Are these characters Arabic? Shoebat’s entire thesis crumbles at this point. There are simply too many anachronisms here for the view to have any validity.
3. A further point on the majuscule script: Below is the drawing that Shoebat made of the Arabic, which bears almost no resemblance to the majuscule text.
He makes a big point about the first letter (going from left to right): this letter is the Muslim symbol of crossed swords. But in order for it to do so, there must be a tittle at the bottom of each leg (i.e., the font must be serif on the bottom but not the top). This is not the way the majuscule text was written, and only by a stretch of the imagination could one see the minuscule text fitting this style. Below is a picture of the chi in Codex Sinaiticus, a fourth-century majuscule. Notice that any curvature is at the top, not the bottom.
The next two letters, xi and sigma, as found in Sinaiticus:
No matter how you slice it, the Arabic above simply doesn’t look like the Greek.
4. Ancient Greek has no numerical symbols other than letters of the alphabet. When the Greeks wanted to write a number, they had two choices: either write out the name of the number (e.g., “six hundred and sixty-six,” as is found in Codex Sinaiticus, contrary to what Shoebat claimed), or write out the letters that were used for numbers. When they did the latter, they either wrote a horizontal line above the symbols or an acute accent afterward—both to show that this was not a word that was to be read, but something else. One of the features of the earliest copies of the Greek NT was that the manuscripts were written in a ‘documentary’ hand rather than a literary hand. A documentary hand is less elegant, but also utilizes some shorthand not found in literary hands. One of the major shorthand features is using alpha-symbols for numbers. This was not done in literary writing, but it was done in documentary texts. The earliest manuscripts of Revelation do this at Rev 13.18. The horizontal bar over these three letters indicate that the scribes recognized that this was not a word but a number.
5. As early as the second half of the second century AD, there is patristic discussion about the number of the beast. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, speaks about having seen early copies of the Apocalypse as having the number 666 written in this verse. He contrasts this with some more recent copies that have 616. If Shoebat is right, then what John wrote was forgotten almost immediately (for Irenaeus thought it represented a number), only to resurface after 1900 years. But John would have to have written the text in a form of letters that didn’t come into vogue for another 700 years in order to be read as Arabic words whose alphabet could not match the Greek letters, even with the employment of a wild imagination, for at least 400 years! In other words, what Shoebat thought he saw was later Arabic forms that did not exist in John’s day based on even later Greek forms that did not exist in John’s day. The chronology for both the Greek being confused for Arabic and the look of the Arabic itself simply won’t work in the first century.
Conspiracy theories tend to move in the realm of the non-falsifiable. They stoke the fires of imagination and fear, and give the uninformed a sense of enablement and mission because they are in the ‘know.’ But such theories are usually unproductive and even self-destructive, unless they are backed up with overwhelming evidence. This one isn’t.
43 replies to "Walid Shoebat Youtube Video on the Mark of the Beast"
Islam being the AntiChrist & Co. is a widely held Arab Christian thought among populars. Other passages used to argue so (Major one is Rev 6:8). However, about the Arabic script in Greek MSS, have you noticed the Arabic script in Sinaticus in the margins of Rev 6,7 & 8? It seems like a commentary of an Arab scribe who doesn’t know Arabic well.
You say:
Walid Shoebat claims in this video that the mark of the beast is Islam itself. Certainly, Christians can recognize that Islam denies the deity of Christ, vicarious atonement, and bodily resurrection; for this reason, Islam is a false religion. We can also recognize that there are small groups of Muslims who are radical and would like to destroy Israel and America. But does this make Islam the Antichrist? That’s rather doubtful.
It doesn’t make it THE Antichrist but is AN Antichrist system according to 1 John 2:22-23 which tells us that an antichrist is one who denies the Father and the Son. This Islam certainly denies!
Sigh
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=1&cid=1206632362598&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Form your own opinion.
Thanks Dan for the textual criticism on his claims
In Him
Mick
We now what the Bible teaches through it imparting knowledge/ information through the words. That is why translation works.
The idea that there is meaning based on how letters “look”, does not square with the concept of information. The shape of the letters and the material they are written on is irrelevant to meaning. Meaning is primary and choice of code is arbitrary.
Good post Dan.
Dr. Wallace, the third numeral that would indicate six is, as you know, the ligature stigma, not actually the letter sigma. At some point it began to substitute for wau/digamma, if I am not mistaken. Did ligatures such as stigma even exist prior to the minuscules?
Listen,for all you idiots that believe that Walid Shoebat is false, you’re wrong. I’ve been studying alot about what he talks about and its not to much about what he says that I started believing, no, it’s the things he say that are coming to life,that’s what made me believe. Now y’all can sit around and think about numbers or keep on arguing about who’s right or wrong but at the end they’re(Islam) still coming and going to behead y’all because of y’alls faith in Jesus. so quit fighting against each other like the Sunni and Shiite Muslim do and come together as the body of Christ and fight the real enemies.
Hi leo, I love what you had to say because it makes sense. When Walid Shoebat talks about the Bible it seems to fall into place. when Dan Wallace critiques Walid Shoebat findings he’s critical in which he should be. However, he too dan is not being accurate… example, dan says that walid does not gives no other explanation for the word number. however, I heard Walid Shoebat explain the word number could mean multiples. Also Walid Shoebat goes on to say that John while seeing gods prophetic vision he meaning John could have seen these symbols. Question dan says that this Arabic writing was not in existence when John wrote these letters. ok but if it’s prophetic isn’t that in the future so would that not answer in itself? I believe that Walid Shoebat is trying or suggesting what it may be and not that it is for certain. of course we are all trying to understand God’s Word. we all are trying and are guessing what is right and what is wrong pertaining to God’s Word. if anyone can give any better argument regarding 666, by all means let’s research it and work together. Until then, let’s give Walid Shoebat the respect he deserves and not throw him under the bus.
Good luck with that thought, no kingdom divided can stand, religion, all religion is the enemy of Christ.
There is no right religion, there is no religion of peace.
All religion is the enemy of God, all religion is designed to oppress and enslave via deception
The thief comes to do what?
When the son of man returns will he find faith on earth?
Marv, the final sigma served both for the sigma (worth 6 in gematria) and stigma (worth 200). If it’s a stigma here, it would give the number of the beast as 860.
Hmm? All right then I’ve got a couple of things wrong in my head. So if you don’t mind, let me say how I have understood it and you can set me straight. First, Gematria? Why even mention this? The Greek alphabet doubles as a numeral system right? So each letter simply has a normal value. Alpha is one, beta two, iota ten, right, because even though it’s now the ninth letter, there once was wau following epsilon, where we have f. Wau became obsolete very early on, well before the NT. Then we see stigma being substituted for its numeral use, not really a letter but a ligature, a combined sigma and tau. This I thought, LOOKS a lot like a final sigma but is not the same, straigher and longer along the top stroke, for example. I don’t know when stigma was invented, but I always assumed it came in with all the other ligatures used in the minuscules. Anyway, this I thought indicated a numerical value of six. And sigma, I thought was 200, whether final form or not.
Anyway, in terms of textual criticism, do we have any indication whether John wrote out the long form of 666/616 or used numeral letters as some MSS have it?
Marv, it’s difficult to tell which John would have written—the gematria (which this is, since John explicitly links a person’s name with his number) or the names of the number as in Sinaiticus. However, we do know this: the earliest manuscripts used the abbreviations for numbers, in line with documentary (as opposed to literary) texts. There is strong evidence that the earliest scribes were from the ranks of accountants, bookkeepers, etc. rather than literary scribes, since virtually all documentary texts in the early centuries CE used abbreviations for the numbers, while virtually all literary texts spelled them out.
Doesn’t look like a conspiracy theory. Merely a crazy and far out theory.
Dr. Wallace,
You mention this in your excellent article:
“When they did the latter, they either wrote a horizontal line above the symbols or an acute accent afterward—both to show that this was not a word that was to be read, but something else.”
Did not the Nomina Sacra also put a horizontal line above the letters yet not to indicate a number was being shorthanded, but rather a word?
CQ
It has to be admitted that a typical presentation of Allah is reminiscent of a sideways xi, even with a line across the top, that is if you first turn it clockwise and reverse it. I suspect this initially caught the gentleman’s eye.
The “bism” = “in the name of” doesn’t look very much like the sigma/stigma, i.e. the third character. And the crossed swords for chi is just a stretch.
I once had to correct some copy in which the typesetter managed to set all the author’s Hebrew into the closest looking Greek letters he could find. Alephs became chi’s. Heth’s became pi’s. What a mess! But the eye sees the patterns it is familiar with.
Cornell, yes, that is correct. However, since the numbers didn’t look like the nomina sacra, there would be no confusion.
Good job pointing out what should have been obvious enough to prevent this gentleman Walid from ever speaking on this topic in front of a group of Christians. It sort of reminds me of the folks who thought God’s name יהוה YHWH was equivalent to the nonsenical Greek word πιπι pipi.
Touche, Mitchell!
I don’t know who any of you are, but having grown up in Independent Baptist circles (and having a Bible degree of my own. . .), this article comes across as a bit of a classic tantrum–the kind I saw over and over again when an outsider would deign to have a “new” idea, or the audacity to disagree with THE interpretation of the annointed remnant.
No doubt all of you will hop back on here to criticize me and chuckle in your shirtsleeves with your superior abilities in textual criticism (excuse my rather jaded conditioning, but it was externally imposed).
I just wanted to inform you that if, in fact, Islam IS the mark of the beast (we’ll all find out rather soon, I believe), I’ll be grinning and saying “Nana-nana-boo-boo!” while I’m being beheaded for my faith. 🙂
(Nope. Not had a THING to drink–imagine how entertaining I’d be if I did. . .)
My own view is that the antichrist/man of sin is the worshiped Jesus, and the “man’s number” is the “trinitarian number” of 666. Jesus, being a man, is worshiped as God, claiming to be God (something Jesus never did).
The “spirit of antichrist” is actually the “breath” that speaks of Jesus being God.
Ephesians 2:2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of **the air [of] the spirit [breath]** that now worketh in the children of disobedience:
The worshiped Jesus is the “prince of the authority of the air of the breath that now works in the children of disobedience.”
Wounded Ego, I’m afraid that your view not only has absolutely no basis in the New Testament, but it is also heresy of the worst kind. You have twisted the scriptures out of all proportion. Ephesians 2.2 and Revelation 13.18 are referring to the devil and the antichrist, not to Christ. How in the world can you get this meaning out of these passages? And to say that Jesus never claimed to be God flies in the face of many passages, including Mark 2.5, John 5.17-18, 20.28-29, Mark 14.62-64, etc. You should read Bowman and Komoszewski’s _Putting Jesus in His Place_ if you want to see what Jesus said and did that showed that he did indeed see himself as deity.
In John 5.23, the Lord said, “all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. The one who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.”
>>>…are referring to the devil and the antichrist, not to Christ…
You may have misunderstood me. I was not saying that they referred to Christ, but rather to the antichrist (the one “in the stead of Christ”). In other words, the authentic Jesus was a man and not God. The antichrist is the false representation of Jesus. For example:
1 John 4:3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
The “breath of antichrist” that John refers to is the breath that misreprents the humanity of Jesus.
Now, as to Jesus forgiving sins, that does not represent a claim to “deity”, or the “Trinity” would have to get huge:
John 20:23 Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.
And for an intelligent person, that is a pretty claim verse to cite. And what of the verses the show that *only the father* is God?:
1 Corinthians 8:6a But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him…
Did you read the rest of Mark 2? Jesus forgives the sins of a person who did not sin against HIM. Obviously, we can forgive each other when they sin against us. But who can forgive someone who sins against others? Notice the context: two verses later the religious leaders say, “Why does this man say this? He blasphemes. No one is able to forgive sins except God.”
As for John 20.23, the excellent note in the NET Bible says, “This is probably not referring to apostolic power to forgive or retain the sins of individuals (as it is sometimes understood), but to the “power” of proclaiming this forgiveness which was entrusted to the disciples. This is consistent with the idea that the disciples are to carry on the ministry of Jesus after he has departed from the world and returned to the Father.”
Regarding 1 Cor 8.6, you only quoted the first part of the verse. The rest says, “and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through him we exist.” Many have noted that this is Paul’s Christological expansion on the Shema, Deut 6.4: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” Paul almost always uses “Lord” to refer to Christ, rather than to the Father, and in such a way that clearly points to his deity. He often quotes from the Old Testament in passages which speak of Yahweh, and Paul now uses such passages to speak of Christ.
>>>…Notice the context: two verses later the religious leaders say, “Why does this man say this? He blasphemes. No one is able to forgive sins except God.”
Jesus addresses the objection, not by saying “But I am God!” (which is apparently how Trinitarians read this. Rather he defends the authority of the son of man. The appeal is to Psalm 8, where God sets the son of man in authority over all things, as well as to Daniel’s vision, where, likewise, God gives to a human being all authority. So, it is not necessary to take a reckless logical leap from Jesus great having authority (which we are explicitly told was given from God to a human being) into a redefinition of God. Jesus *constantly* insists that he can only do what he is directed by God, and that he does nothing originating from himself.
>>>…Regarding 1 Cor 8.6, you only quoted the first part of the verse.
It is in the first part of the verse that Paul unambiguously affirms the Shema. Jesus does the same here:
17:3 Now this 7 is eternal life 8 – that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, 9 whom you sent. 17:4 I glorified you on earth by completing 10 the work you gave me to do. 11
Jesus likewas affirms that the father is the **only** true god. And like Paul, Jesus is the one that God sent. He glorifies God by performing that which God assigned to him to do. What could be clearer?
>>>The rest says, “and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through him we exist.”
That’s not a very accurate translation. But at any point, it does **not** proclaims Jesus to be God.
>>Many have noted that this is Paul’s Christological expansion on the Shema, Deut 6.4: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
Not at all. It is his **affirmation** of it!!
>>>Paul almost always uses “Lord” to refer to Christ, rather than to the Father, and in such a way that clearly points to his deity.
This is because God made Jesus to take the job of being lord from himself, because Jesus was obedient (see Phil 2). In other words, God used to be the KURIOS of his people, but he temporarily entrusted that role to Jesus. But Paul says that once the 1000 year reign is over, Jesus will go back to being a civilian, of no more authority than anyone else so that God himself may be “all in all.” See 1 Cor 15
Thanks for posting, but please read the blog rules and don’t post one right after another. Next time we will have to delete them.
Also, understand that this is a very old post and, as a general rule, will not have much engagement from the author (as it is impossible).
Okay. Shalom.
Islam neither denies “the Father” (the God that Jesus worshipped) nor Jesus Christ, although it does deny that Jesus is “the eternally begotten God the Son”, something that Jesus himself never claimed to be anyway. And if denying Jesus’ deity makes a religion “false”, then the religion of Jesus was also false since Jesus clearly stated, “The Father is greater than I” and “No one is good except God alone.” Does this make Jesus “the anti-Christ” too??
Sir wallace do you think walid’s overall take on islamic antichrist is baseless? He maybe wrong in this 666 but how about the rest of what he is saying about this system.
I agree about the “1” in the mark of the beast. Mention of this number even makes me uncomfortable. It is nice to know that God is outside of the world’s “dark secrets” and slavery to sin.
I thought your talk at the special dinner was great. I also liked the risotto.
In other videos and books, Shoebat explains his view further. He talks about greek word definitions. For example – while the definition for Psephizo is “count”, it is also “reckon”. Arithmos is defined as “a fixed and definite number, an indefinite number, a multitude”. And finally, Anthropos “a human being, whether male or female generically, to include all human individuals, people”. So he felt that the verse could read “Let him who has understanding reckon the multitude of the beast, for the multitude is that of a man/people”
Regarding the 666/symbol/number issue…. he felt that when John was in his vision, he “saw” the symbols/letters – whatever they were – and just wrote them down as he “saw” them. So, even if the arabic language in question had not been invented at that time, it wouldn’t matter – he recorded what he saw even if he didn’t understand it. It goes without saying that most of what he saw had not been invented at that time!
So true. What is the main roadblock preventing Christians from recognizing eschatologic revelation when it is presented to them? It’s called Dispensationalism, a false interpretation of end-times prophecy that has been strongly promoted for the past 190 years, w/ Darby and Scofield being its chief promoters. Check out James Perloff’s excellent expose on the history of the movement.
This is the problem with those that deny the connection between the antichrist and Islam. They take one point they have an argument against and beat is to death. They ignore the rest such as:
So in summary we conclude this section with a final review of the many startling similarities that exist between the biblical narrative of the last-days and the Islamic narrative of the same period.
· Bible: The Antichrist is an unparalleled political, military and religious leader that will that emerge in the last-days.
· Islam: The Mahdi is an unparalleled political, military and religious leader that will emerge in the last-days.
· Bible: the False Prophet is a secondary prominent figure that will emerge in the last-days who will support the Antichrist.
· Islam: the Muslim Jesus is a secondary prominent figure that will emerge in the last-days to support the Mahdi.
Rev 15:2……the beast and his image and the number of his name…..
Rev 13:17….given the mark, the name of the beast or the number of his name.
The beast and image have a number?
Everywhere else in the NT (Strong’s), arithmos (number) is always, always in reference to people. Even in Revelations. Yet!, only in chapter 13 does it have reference to an actual literal number? Rev 15:2 uses the same language phrasing as Rev 13. In 15:2 we see the “number” takes the name/title (creed) of the beast and image (a man). In other words, John sees a people who take the creed of a man. The beast and image are also the title/creed. Know the creed and you have the mark.
So:
Rev 13:18….count the people of the creed, for the people are that of a (certain) man; and his people are…..666??
Can’t be: barcode, man’s number, Regan (Pres. was his title), etc
Interject: count the people of “Allah is great”, they are of Mohammad’s, saying “no god but Allah & Moh is his…
Imagine this. John writes down the symbol he sees being worn on the heads/arms of the followers of the beast. Suppose it is arabic script for “bismillah”. Nobody alive at the time would know what it was. So, it is reasonable to assume that, in the first copies of John’s original, there would be some confusion about what those arabic symbols were, no? And one might expect that the scribe would assume it was written in error, or attempt to re-cast those symbols as characters from the familiar Greek alphabet. Reasonable, no? (Earlier in the thread, someone mentioned errors from someone typecasting Hebrew into Greek)
Two crossed swords is easily interpreted as Chi. I expect that it would be copied as Chi without a second thought.
The arabic script for “allah” would resemble sigma. That mutation error would occur relatively easily too, I expect.
However, the last (or first, depending) character, bism-, would not be so easily mistaken for any known Greek character.
The Codex Sinaiticus, as I see here in front of me, shows the word form of six-hundred sixty, followed by a strange character that very much resembles bism-. The problem with believing that this last character is a “stigma” is that the Sinaiticus predates the evolution of “stigma” as a Greek character. Obviously, the scribe believed the first character of the symbol was a number, hence why it is spelled out literally as “six hundred”. Then they include a sigma. However, the last character appears to be an attempt at reproducing a non-Greek symbol. It does not appear anywhere else in Sinaiticus, as far as I can tell, and certainly not within the same page as the verse Rev 13:18. It resembles a simple, non-calligraphic “bism-“.
It stands to reason that a small bit of arabic script, recorded by John to the best of his ability, injected in the middle of John’s Revelation would not last more than a few iterations of copying. Translating in Greek, the last character (or first), “bism-“, would take the longest to meld into Greek typeset in terms of copying iterations.
Now, the Codex Vaticanus was originally complete, but Heb 9:14 through Revelation was lost and then later supplemented with a minuscule version. But this minuscule supplement originates much later than Codex Sinaiticus, and yet the same stigma-like, “bism-“-like symbol appears in the original Sinaiticus. But neither “stigma” nor “bism-” existed at the time of Sinaiticus.
Then there’s the plethora of other Biblical prophesies that point toward Islam as being the antichrist. One of my favorites is the tale of the great harlot who sits on many waters (Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Persian Gulf) and all the nations get drunk on her wine (Oil). Sounds like Saudi Arabia to me. And in fact, a few verses later, sure enough, its identified as Babylon, mother of harlots.
I would encourage everyone to take a closer look at the rest of Walid’s arguments for his assertion that Islam is the antichrist. It does not at all hinge on this single translation issue.
In fact, when taking into account all of the other prophetic clues and what we know of historical and modern-day Islam, it corroborates the idea that this small piece of Revelation was mistranslated.
I will make one last post. The Catholic Encyclopedia says that the doctrine of the church, the trinity is not in the Bible. It cannot be understood but it must just be accepted. This is a mystery babylon teaching. Dan mentioned the gospel of Barnabas. This is nothing but an attempt by muslims to prove that they are right. They use this gospel to refute the new testament. It first appeared on the scene in Holland 1709. If you read it you will see its a fake immediately because it mentions that Pilate was governor when Yehushua was a child. We all know that he wasnt until Yehushua was 29 or a couple of years earlier, so to use this to explain anything is ignorant. I believe we need to follow the Bible not the explanations of those who lived centuries later and we must look at their fruits and who they were before we follow anything. Why take a chance, nowhere in the Bible does it say that we must believe that Yehushua is God Almighty. It says that GOD is ONE, not three. This is a fact. Yehushua said that we must follow two commandments which is the whole law and to observe only one event. Not His birthday which is also become a pagan festival, but follow the last supper. Do this in memory of me. Believe that He has come in the flesh and that He died for our sins. I hope that many will listen to those words and he gave us the keys to find out if someone is of the truth. The weeds and the wheat and by their fruits you will know them. Study history and see all the evil, deception, murder, greed, lies etc of these people who are the originators of many doctrines. Constantine was a pagan, so could he be a fair judge over the council of Nicea in 325 and why did this council occur? Can a tyrrant like king james who is a homosexual 7 a catholic, whos sole purpose was to become king of all england & britain & who wanted revenge against elizabeth the 1 who beheaded his mother, be on the side of a protestant and allow a Bible be written against his catholic beliefs. Be careful
The problem of those who are against the trinity is the basing of their arguments on the assumptions that, God has physical limitations like a human being and has a single dimension not multidimensional. God is one but not unity and limited to a body. If you can define God as he really is, you can not get lost to understand the principles of his attributes manifested in the Father, Son and Holy spirit.
This guy shoebat could be right but im dont know because i have never seen the codex nor do i read that text. We must Love one another and most importantly we must love GOD ALMIGHTY with all our heart and all our mind and all our might. We must also believe that Yehushua came in the flesh and died for our sins. We can never go in the presence of GOD if we have sin. Wearing a band on our arm will not cleanse sin. If John did see this symbol in a vision, how would he describe it or write it? Isnt anything who doesnt believe that Yehushua died for our sins, Antichrist? This article does not say this. Any belief against the kingdom and the promise of a savior who did die is antichrist. If you look up the first geneology from Adam to Noah and look up the meanings of their names you will see that a sentence can be spelled out that shows that Yehushua was on His way and this was planned from the beginning. I do not believe that the original manuscripts of the Bible were written in greek. Of course there is no real evidence of this, its just a personal belief. If the codex vaticanus is legit and accurate, it would make sense that John would write down what he saw which was Arabic writting. Whoever traslated the originals might have wondered what this writing was and compared it to the language it was originally written and came up with those numbers. It says the number of a man so they figured it was a number not a sentence. Muslims believe that lines on our palms are a number. one is a kind of straight line and the one over looks like a triangle. They say this is the number 18. 6×3 is 18. who knows. The point is that this number is not neccessarily a microchip or still not here because it was around the days of John which his letters are the only place that antichrist is mentioned and was around during his lifetime. It is a system of belief against Christ. Mamon is apart of this system so todays hunger for riches and its system is antichrist too.
You liberals get some letters in front of your name after going to school for years but know little except what someone else written. You are like my late Dr. Brother-in-Law(when young), the president of a college, whom I called an educated idiot- and not behind his back. — Walid Shoebat has been on many shows, videos and has been around. What Walid has said, if you watch or listen to more than one video, (Revelation never calls him anti-Christ) is maybe called the Assyrian and most likely comes out of Turkey or eastern leg of the revived Roman Empire. You like so many other so called Christian tax-free orgs. hit the scene and pretend you know it all. Walid has experience and knowledge and is not attacking Christians. As one smart man said, “If two people agree on the same item, one of them is redundant”. You are taking one video and lying by accusing him of saying: “the mark of the beast is Islam itself”, he did not say that on the video you posted, watch it again. I knew before I watched it again that he did not say that because I have seen many videos with him on them. You could also learn things from Chuck Missler unless pride won’t let you. I am getting sick and tired of so-called Christians attacking the ‘body of Christ’ – ‘the Church’. You remind me of Robert Conrad of heisnear.com. (look him up you may be there) . This is the first time I have seen your site and what do I see, supposed Christians attacking someone who I have investigated and listened to enough to know his testimony and that he is a true Christian with a real testimony. No wonder RELIGIOUS orgs. 501c3’s are not bringing the lost to Christ, you are too busy arguing eschatology, trying to sell books, trinkets and a line to get the gullible to spend $ instead of sharing the shed Blood of Jesus Christ. Are you like the Jesus movement and young so-called Christians who (as I saw the other day on a female’s song lyric) “we are not your grandma’s church. That…
Wounded ego,Jesus was referred to as the everlasting Father in the prophecy of His birth in Isa9:6-7. He was also called The mighty God. In first Jhn 5:20 he was called The true God,Titus 2:13 called Him our great God. Jesus is God in flesh
Islam denies the deity of Jesus and His death and resurrection. They are expecting their messiah called The Mahdi who will islamise the world whose character fits the biblical Antichrist. Allah has proven to be the devil by the meaning of some of his 99 names Al multakagri which means the most proud one,Al makri the greatest deciever,Al mumeet the one who causes death or the destroyer. Lucifer in Arabic is Hilal which means