[geocentrism] Re: 666
- From: "Martin G. Selbrede" <mselbrede@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 21 May 2007 16:54:56 -0500
this assumes you already have a certain degree of understanding
I understand enough to know that when John writes "arithmon tou
theriou, arithmos gar anthropou estin" that the beast's number is the
number of a man -- the key to knowing the identification of the
number. At no point in your analysis do you show a correlation
between a man and the number 666, let alone a point in Scripture
where 666 is associated with a man's name.
The question has nothing to do with the "children" of Adonikam,
solely with the name "Adonikam." There is NO other verse in scripture
that associates an "arithmos anthropou" with the number 666. This
text fits the requirement.
Moreover, you're importing alien meaning into the verb "psephisatou,"
as if totaling up years (!) makes some kind of point (it doesn't).
You've imposed that meaning from outside the text, and have not
extracted it from what John actually is saying. The adjective
"anthropou" is genitive: the number is a man's number, a number
pertaining to a specific man, not a span of time, which would require
a neuter nominative to have any possible validity. John's text
obliterates that option on the face of it. Not to mention that 666
years is vastly longer than any single man's life span, which is
logically inconsistent with John's statement as well as being barred
from consideration grammatically.
The Powerpoint presentation labors under the assumption that putting
666years [sic -- word space omitted in original] in large red letters
lends it interpretational authority. I call it "the old debater's
trick" -- namely, "when your case is weak, pound the podium and shout."
Jesus says "the Scripture cannot be broken." The efforts to railroad
Rev. 13:18 into something other than what it explicitly says, in its
own inspired words, is a sad misfire.
To reiterate: the Old Testament knows A LOT about counting. Both
David and Moses numbered Israel, as did Ezra, and St. John uses
Ezra's format for the census in Revelation 7. We even know the result
of the numbering of Abraham: 318. There's no Biblical mystery here --
people are just intent on creating mystery where there isn't any.
Talk about correlations, is it raw coincidence that the one time in
the Old Testament where the numbering of the people links the name
Adonikman with 666, that the actual name Adonikam fits the
description of John's beast rising from the sea in grammatical
detail? "Rising up" is a VERY rare word stem for proper names in
Hebrew, and it's not a very common verb either. The odds of these
disparate details matching by chance are immense.
I've not touched on my views of the various beasts of Daniel, or the
statue of Nebuchadnezzar, or the details concerning the seven-headed
beast beast of Revelation 13 beyond the scope of the 18th verse. Do
not assume what my views might be concerning these other issues. What
John says at 13:18 has to be taken seriously, as written, because
"the scripture cannot be broken" and because "the spirit of the
prophets is subject to the prophets." The verse isn't a starting
pistol signaling a race to amass wild speculations as fast as they
come to us, particularly with convoluted appeals to other scriptures
justified on esoteric grounds.
In short: a legitimate, genuine search of the Scriptures always
brings us back to Ezra 2:13 if we're interested in 666. Rejection of
this option, in the face of all its strengths, is mere impatience
with John and misplaced zeal for human theorizing and wrestling of
John's statements into preconceived ideas erected (quite dubiously)
on purported biblical foundations that, on examination, don't bear
the weight they're supposed to support. So far as what the Powerpoint
presentation teaches: where it is correct, it doesn't bear on the
question, and where it bears on the question, it isn't correct. I'm
saddened by this, because it appears the author may be taking a
different tack from most "prophecy teachers" in focusing on historic
circumstances, and if this is so, I'd be sympathetic with his
efforts. But the presentation is so convoluted, and his point so
obscured (he never makes his case clearly), that it's hard to tell.
With Paul, I'd have to charitably say that "I bear witness that he
has a zeal for God, but it is not after knowledge."
The citation of Jeremiah 31:27 makes no sense. The verse itself says
God will do the sowing, and it refers to His restoring children to
both the men and animals in the Hebrew republic, because (as the next
verse, 31:28, teaches) God is no longer plucking, breaking, and
throwing down, but will now build and plant. The prophecy of the New
Covenant in Christ (see Hebrews 8) follows at verse 31, indicating
the applies to the period leading up to Christ's birth. In NO WAY
can verse 27 be construed as teaching that God is sowing man and
beast together into some kind of composite thing (something He
elsewhere calls an abomination). Of course, there are bibliographic
sources for THAT idea: I refer the reader to David Seltzer's
novelization of the movie "The Omen," where such things are
"documented." The fact that this book is a work of fiction doesn't
seem to dissuade some from adopting its position vis-a-vis end
times. 'Tis a pity.
But I need to let the other shoe drop. I see lots of arbitrary
manipulation (highly dubious!) in the chart in the Powerpoint slide.
The 36 years he inserts makes no sense based on the reckoning of Dan.
9:24 (why he even cites the verse as if it supported this insertion,
I can't even guess -- it's a blatant error). But let's consider this
more damning circumstance: July 596 BC to July 70 AD -- how many
years is that? The Powerpoint slide calculates this to be 666
years. This is completely wrong: there is no Year Zero. This is a
common mistake made by folks who don't understand calendars. This is
the kind of trick question that Martin Gardner proposed long ago to
snag the ignorant and unsuspecting: Demetrius was born in January 30
BC and died January 30 AD.... how old was he went he died? Correct
answer: 59. Lots of people lost bets (and, I suspect, beers) on this
one. Twelve months after January 1 BC comes January 1 AD. Not twenty
four months. So, we have a big whopping DISPROOF of the thesis of the
author: the years total 665, not 666. Total self-inflicted implosion
of the proof. "Let him who hath understanding reckon the number..."
Apparently, understanding of calendars was included here. We have
the same problem with the well-intentioned (but still erroneous)
attempt to make Nero be the Beast of Revelation, on the claim that
the sum of the Hebrew letters of his name totals 666. It does not:
it totals 676. The 666 is obtained by misspelling Nero Kesar by
omitting the letter yod. In other words, people make blatant
mistakes and errors and they pass into print as if they were
apodictic truths. But they don't survive even cursory examination.
So, we see goofs big and small. See, this is why Paul said to show
ourselves workmen approved, not ashamed. This Powerpoint slide is in
the latter category -- woefully uninformed scholarship going under
the name "biblical." It's a grievous thing.
Martin
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