Derek Prince - How Do We Calculate The Number 666?
This is an excerpt from: True and False Christ - Part 2
Now, let's talk for a little while on a very interesting theme which is the name of the antichrist. Let me not anticipate what I'm going to say, let me just say it. Jesus who was the true Christ and was a true prophet said in John 5:43, speaking to his own Jewish people, He said: 'I have come in My Father's name, and you do not receive Me. If another comes in his own name, him you will receive.' See, the question is the name. Jesus didn't come in His own name, He came as a representative of the Father. And as He said to the Jewish people as a nation with many individual exceptions, they did not receive Him. But He said if another one comes, another messiah in his own name, him you will receive.
The Jewish encyclopedia records at least forty false messiahs since the time of Jesus who have come and gained a following amongst the Jewish people. One of the most outstanding was Bar Kochba who led the final revolt against Rome in 130-some A.D. There was Moses of Crete who led several thousand people into the ocean to meet the messiah and they all perished. There was one called Sabbathai Spee in the 17th century who led a move to take the Jewish people back to their homeland, claiming that he was the messiah, but he didn't succeed, and eventually he was converted to Islam. Those are just some of the names. What I'm pointing out is that when Jesus said another will come in his own name, him you will receive, He was speaking the truth, and it's been historically fulfilled. There's a great deal in the book of Revelation, particularly about the name of the antichrist.
I'd like to turn to Revelation 13, reading verses 16 and following. Revelation 13 beginning at 16 This is speaking about the regime which the antichrist through the false prophet will establish, by which he will dominate humanity. And it says: He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand, or in their foreheads. People used to make fun of the Bible, and say that's ridiculous, but today there are many different techniques that can do that. I don't know how many of you have ever been to Disneyworld in Florida, which is just near where we live in the state. But if you go to Disneyworld, and pay the entrance fee for the full day and then you want to go out again and come in, they stamp your hand with something that can't be seen except in ultraviolet light.
But when you come back they shine the light on the back of your hand, and if you've got the right date on they'll let you in. That's just a very elementary example of precisely what the Bible is indicating. So, there will come a time when in order to shop, to buy food or to get any of the necessities of life, before you can buy anything you'll have to display a specific mark so that the people that do not submit to the antichrist will, in a certain sense, be isolated and cut off from the necessities of life. That's in a way a very simple, practical way of arranging it. Let's look at the mark or what you have to have. It says in verse 17: that no one may buy or sell, except one who has the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
So apparently there are three alternatives. You may have a mark and I don't know what the mark is. Or you may have his name and we don't know what his name is. Or you may have a number which is the number of his name. And then it says in the last verse of that 13th chapter: Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six. Now, there are certain things we don't know but there are certain things we do know. There are at least three languages Hebrew, Greek, Arabic in which every letter has a numerical value. For instance, to take Hebrew, you go through the first ten letters of the Hebrew alphabet, Alef is one, Bet is two, Gimel is three, Dalet is four, He is five up to ten, which is Yod.
When you've got to ten then you count by tens twenty, thirty, forty, fifty. Fifty is noon, like Nun. Sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, a hundred which is the letter Qof. And there are only three more letters in the Hebrew alphabet, it's only got twenty-two letters. So you get one hundred, two hundred which is Resh or r, three hundred which is Shin or sh, and four hundred, the last letter, which is Tav. So, if you want to know the number of a person's name in Hebrew, instead of writing it horizontally and you write it from right to left, let us include that. But write it vertically. Write the numerical value of each letter opposite the letter and add it up. You've got the number of the name. You can do the same in Greek and you can do the same in Arabic.
In World War II the Arabs discovered that if you spelled Hitler's name a certain way, beginning with a Gimel or gee, Gitler, it added up to six hundred and sixty-six. So, that was quite exciting for them at the time. I don't think it was the final identification. So, now I'm going to take my dear wife whose Hebrew name is Ruth. That's her English name, too, Ruth. Now, Ruth in Hebrew has got only three letters but they're very valuable letters. You see, this is the way the Jews think. They say the more the numerical value of the name, the better the name is. Understand?
So, now I'm going to take Ruth and write it vertically. The last letter is th which is one letter. Okay? This is quite exciting. Resh is the last letter but two, it's two hundred. Tav is the last letter, it's four hundred. Now, it's very exciting to know what this middle letter is. Well, it's the sixth letter so, it's six. So, you add it up, you see that? Six hundred and six. There's no mystery about that and you can do it with any Hebrew name, any Greek name, any Arabic name. I can't do the letters in Arabic.
Now, the interesting thing is we don't know what the numbers are but we know what they'll add up to, which is 666. Now, I was rather doubtful whether this was correct until I went to the Greek and I took the letters of Jesus and added them up. I'm not going to write them in Greek but just suppose we did it this way. They're Greek, all right? Do you know what they add up to? 888. Now, that convinces me personally that this is the secret. You see, you have to be careful getting into theories about numbers but seven is the number of perfection, completion. Six is just fallen short of it. Seven has completed it, and gone one further with resurrection.
So, the antichrist is 666, Jesus is 888. I mean, you can respond to that whatever way you please but I don't have any doubt in my own mind that when the antichrist appears and it's almost certain he'll be a Middle Easterner of some kind if you add his name up you'll find out who he is. And I think a kind of shudder will go through you when you realize. I could believe the antichrist has already been born. I would think he probably has.