Walid Shoebat, the author of God’s War on Terror, grew up speaking and reading Arabic, so he believed he saw something in the Greek text that most of us could never see, which is that the Greek letters chi xi sigma, which signify 600 60 and 6, look very much like the Arabic word, Bismillah that means, “in the name of Allah,” along with crossed swords, which is found in many Islamic emblems and flags. He believes that John actually saw the Islamic word and the crossed swords and tried to copy it; so what we see as being 666 in the Greek is not that at all. However, there is plenty of evidence that this theory is very wrong.
Shoebat says the top half of the image is what John saw, and that John actually wrote down something like the bottom part. He says that scribes thought he had written the number 666 as seen in the Codex Vaticanus, seen here:
This new theory has taken off on many websites and youtube.com; even well-known Bible teacher Chuck Missler has taught it, but it is not accurate for several reasons. First, notice that the scribes would have had to turn the middle squiggle 90 degrees and move the line from beside it to above it. And then also turn the middle letter. That is major editing, not merely writing letters that resembled what John wrote.
Since the early Bibles were handwritten, it is probable that only a few copies of the Bible would resemble Bismillah and crossed swords. If Shoebat were to have seen a different manuscript, he would not have seen anything that looked like Bismillah.
Notice the letters above the white line. They don’t look very much like crossed swords and Bismillah. Look at the bottom line, there is another X and E with a line after it; is that another failed attempt to write Bismillah?
Shoebat references the Vaticanus codex found in the Vatican library, but it was not complete and was pieced together. The book of Revelation was missing, so they added a much later copy of Revelation to make a complete Bible. So Revelation in Vaticanus was not so ancient, but later. Another codex, the Sinaiticus, has 666 written out in words and in capital letters, which do not in any way resemble Bismillah or crossed swords! It was a very common practice to write the Bible in all capital letters.
This codex has 666 in words, not numbers. The arrow points to the line. Notice the number “14” in the left column. That begins chapter 14.
Also, the number 666 could have been written out in words. Which was in the original text that John wrote? Was it 666, or the words six hundred, sixty, six? We will not know this before the return of Christ, but it makes no difference insofar as this issue is concerned.
But more importantly, the text actually says it is a number. The word “number” appears four times in the last two verses, “for it is man’s number. His number is ___” So John was not trying to write something other than a number. Everything John wrote down, he either saw in a vision or is what an angel told him during the vision; he did not write down impressions or assumptions that a scribe mistook for a number; and he says it is a number!
Shoebat’s inaccurate interpretation includes much twisting of the meaning of the Greek text in order to smooth out the conflicts. Shoebat and his followers are doing this in an attempt to make the passage make sense with Bismillah. So they have contrived alternate meanings for “count” and “number” and end up making the verse say something totally different.
They claim an alternate meaning for “number” (arithmos) (706), is “multitude,” and they use “determine” instead of “count,” so they come up with this; “let him that hath understanding determine the multitude of men belonging to the beast: for it is a multitude of men; and his multitude is (crossed swords, Bismillah).”
They are using the word “multitude” incorrectly, as though it were not connected to arithmos. Using “multitude” this way is dead wrong. Here is what Thayer’s Greek dictionary says about arithmos:
1) a fixed and definite number 2) an indefinite number, a multitude
The word “multitude” as used in the above definition refers to a large number, not a specific group of anything; certainly not a group of people. The way Shoebat and his followers are using it, it refers to a group, the group being Muslims.
The word “multitude” from the Greek arithmos can be used only if its use retains the original meaning. As in, “he has a multitude of problems.” Notice that the sentence could have been worded this way; “he has a number of problems.” So it retains the meaning connected to “number.” But as it is being used by Shoebat, it has a totally different meaning; therefore, this is the worst kind of Scripture twisting, and is rewriting the text!
The Complete Word Study Dictionary, by Spiros Zodhiates, is a thick Greek dictionary that often has several definitions for a word, but it gives only one meaning for arithmos, NUMBER. If John wanted to convey the meaning of a “multitude” of people, as in a group or company of people, he would have used (plethos) (4128) or “ochlos” (3793). How do I know this? Because Revelation actually contains the word “multitude” from “ochlos.” It appears three times: 17:15, 19:6, and 7:9, “And there was a great multitude which no one could count.” CWD says:
A crowd, throng, confused multitude. . . . With polloi . . . Much, great, many crowds . . . Specifically used for the common people, the rabble . . . Generally a multitude, a great number.
Therefore, if John had intended to mean a large group of people, he would have used the word that actually does mean a large group of people, not merely a number.
You may notice that the Greek, arithmos, is the exact word from which we get our English word arithmetic; and arithmetic does not have any connection to a group or company of anything. Therefore, the correct meaning of arithmos is number, not multitude or group.
If you used this type of alternate meanings, as described above, with any other part of the Bible, you could get anything imaginable in the text. The Bible would be a book without any predictable meaning; you could make it say whatever you want.
I believe the whole chapter of Rev. 13 points to Islam, as I have shown in several chapters; which are my own insights, NOT Shoebat’s. The only thing of his I am using is this nonsense I am refuting, and a few quotes from Islamic books. I do not approve of Scripture twisting to show that something points to Islam. STOP the nonsense.
I include all of the above, because it shows the great extent to which people are twisting the Scriptures, and how people refuse to believe the truth even when shown.
I have a video on Youtube that presents the above information, yet, many people left comments that said I was wrong but Walid was right. So I now include additional information I learned in 2024, from the Hebrew!
The oldest Greek manuscripts still preserve multiple examples of direct influence from Hebrew grammar, which were smoothed out later to conform to Greek grammar. This shows that the Book of Revelation was originally written in Hebrew, and that the Greek version was translated from Hebrew. (A Hebrew Manuscript of the Book of Revelation, Transcribed and Translated by Nehemia Gordon, 2017, page 114, www.nehemiaswall.com)
The Hebrew says:
Appoint one who understands, to calculate the number of the beast, for it is a number belonging to a person, for you will discover the sum is six hundred and sixty-six. (The Book of Mysteries, Baca)
Therefore, no one could have seen what he wrote and thought he wrote 666 in Greek, because he was not writing in Greek! Therefore, John did not write crossed swords and Bismillah! GOT IT?
(5) Conclusion
I want to make something clear about the number of the name of the beast, 666. Even though it refers to the 2nd beast, Islam, we can expect to see it connected to the 1st beast and even to the leader, the final Antichrist. The reason is because Islam is more than a religion; it is also a ruling political system that will be the driving force behind the 1st beast. They are very much connected. Since we are not able to know in advance what the name of the first beast will be, we cannot examine it for evidence of 666. I would not be surprised if it had a name like, United Muslim States (666); but that would be too easy. I expect that we will yet discover more information on the number, name, and mark of the beast as time goes by. Perhaps the name of the Mahdi will add up to 666.
We have learned that some of the older Qurans have 6666 verses or 6616 verses. It is also interesting that a few of the oldest manuscripts of Rev. 13 have 616 instead of 666. The variant was even noted by the early church father, Irenaeus. This discrepancy has been examined and discussed for centuries, but I believe it is most likely 666. If it were 616, then we would expect to find things that literally add up to 616, whereas 666 is more likely to refer to multiple occurrences of the number 6.
The global elites may be working to try and bring everyone under government control and even a cashless society, but here in Revelation, the beast and false prophet are only the 10-nation Islamic empire. Therefore, the mark and number of the beast are only connected to the coming Islamic empire.
This does not mean that I would recommend taking part in any kind of government tracking and control in Western nations; not at all. All people should resist this type of control at all costs. The global elites are Satan worshipers, so they could program something into their mark that causes people to no longer believe in God, thereby, dooming you to hell.
That said, I doubt there will ever be a time when ALL governments will totally convert to a cashless system. Some countries in Europe and even the USA might, but that is a far cry from a global cashless society.
