Evidence of the Bible's Validity

[Fidel_Castronaut]

[modhat] Guys and girls, please be mindful when quoting large chunks of text. I've been going through this thread looking at all the quote errors and I'm struggling to keep up with them.

Please make everyone's lives easier and ensure you're quoting properly and using the [ hide ][/ hide ] function when quoting big blocks of text. Thanks [/modhat]

[Mr Greene]

This one is kinda complicated, so here goes:

The Book of Revelation was written around the year 95 A.D. You can read up on that HERE.

In Revelation 17 an angel is explaining the vision of John. He speaks about seven hills, saying "They are seven Kings; five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain a little while." This verse is translated various ways, all to the effect that the 7th king must reign for a short time.

So he's saying that there are seven kings that all have something in common, that make them all part of this set of seven. It then says that the beast is the eighth and is of the seven. So the antichrist shares this same commonality with the seven kings. It is widely accepted that the antichrist is likely to be descended from the Romans, specifically the Holy Roman Empire. Here is a big reason why:

There have been exactly seven emperors of the Holy Roman Empire with the name "Charles" and you can read a complete list HERE. You will notice that the 7th Charles reigned for only about 3 years. The logical next step in following this lead is to look for an eighth ruler of the HRE named Charles. Sure enough, there is an heir to the throne of the United Kingdom (which is descended, of course, from the HRE) who is named Charles. The current Prince of Wales. He is set to become King of Great Britain after the current monarch.

Now, let's take a look at more of the prophecy that focuses on the identity of the antichrist. Revelation 13 contains one of the most famous passages in the Bible: "Here is the wisdom: let him who has understanding calculate the number of beast, for it is the number of a man. His number is 666." Virtually everyone knows of this piece of scripture. Many people have tried to calculate the number of the beast using various number systems. For example, increments of 6. A = 6, B = 12, etc.

There is only one system that actually makes sense here, the system of hebrew gematria. This is the system with which John would have been familiar. In hebrew, there are no numerical digits. Instead they use hebrew letters as numbers. Aleph, the first letter, is 1. Bet, the second, is 2, and so on. Once you reach the 10th letter, you start counting by tens. The 11th letter is 20, the 12th letter is 30, etc. When you reach 100, you count by hundreds. There are 22 letters in the hebrew alephbet. This means that the highest number is 400. This chart shows it all (hebrew is written right to left):



We can apply this same system to english letters as well. Note that we must stop at 400 or else we wouldn't be using the hebrew system, thus the last for letters of the english alphabet must be mapped to 0:

The official title of the man in question is "Charles, Prince of Wales" or as some call him "Prince Charles of Wales." Either way, the following still applies:

Add them together yourself if you like. Your result will be 666. This could be dismissed as a coincidence. But that explanation becomes less likely when you consider the following:

The name of the man in question in hebrew letters adds up to 666 as well. These two languages are important for this reason. If the Prince of Wales is the man spoken of in Revelation, then his name should add up to 666 in his native language (english in this case), as this is his given name. It should also add up in hebrew, as this is the language of the people to whom God was giving this prophecy. I won't go into it here, but the name also adds up to 666 in Greek, which was the trade language of John's day.

So, his name matches the other 7 kings (Charles)
His name adds up to 666 in English, Hebrew and Greek
The name "Charles" means "Manly" ("It is the number of a MAN")

What are your thoughts thus far? I am completely open for alternative explanation.

My thoughts are; 'Ignorant BS'

1) The Holy Roman Empire refers to Germany, and therefore not the descendents of the Romans.

2) The closest you could come to an heir for the Holy Roman Empire is the House of Hapsburg, not the House of Hannover from which the current British Monarchy is descended.

[Cato]

Be careful, if the prediction and result are authored at the same time it is not a fulfilled prophecy.

I think you mean unreliable? I don't know I'm not following here.

Maybe an example. Let's say a book is written stating that Joseph Smith foretold Kennedy's assassination. Both the prediction and the event are in the past. Did Joseph Smith really predict Kennedy's assassination or is it more likely that the story of the prediction is a fabrication? There's no prophecy unless there is some independent evidence prior to the assassination corroborating the claim that Smith made the prediction.

[Chas]

I prophecy that the OP is in for a rough time.

I'd just like to note that 'prophecy' is a noun and 'prophesy' is a verb.

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Anyone care to provide a logical counterpoint, or are you just going to try hard to be clever and use curse words in place of reason?

JimmyN, these people will not believe anything you can produce as evidence, they will not believe until they are face to face with God. Hope you stay around for awhile, what you are presenting is interesting, please let us see more.

GC

He hasn't yet produced any evidence. Numerology and post hoc twisting of data are not evidence.

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And yet, you present us with a name (not really, but we'll run with that) that "adds up" to a number with very specific meaning in most christer beliefs.

Numerology, plain and simple.

Nope, not numerology. It's not some mystical meaning to this number. It's the fact that it was predicted that we are concerned with. If I say that a short man with black hair and a mustache in a red car is going to drive up to you and ask for directions at exactly 7:32 tomorrow evening, that would make that event significant simply because it was foretold, not because of what it is.

BTW, Congratulations on quitting smoking.

Yes, numerology. You are using a variant of the Abjad system.

What do you think numerology is?

[JimmyNeutron]

Well, there seems to be quite a load of complete and total s**t to cut through in the above posts, but I'll try.

"Numerology is any belief in the divine, mystical or other special relationship between a number and some coinciding events." - Wikipedia

Numerology refers to the importance and mystical meaning of numbers, whereas I am simply pointing out the numbers themselves. This is actually really easy to understand if you use common sense. It's very much like if I said that I would pay you a million dollars if you could find me a pink-colored rock. The pink-colored rock itself isn't worth a million dollars. Now if you find a pink rock, you are likely to be excited, when before you might not have even noticed it. Likewise, the significance if the number 666 is external rather than internal. This number doesn't bear some inherent significance on it's own, rather because that is the number that we are looking for. So that's the end of that. It is MOST DEFINITELY NOT NUMEROLOGY, plain and simple.

Okay, so where are the sources that prove that Revelation actually says 616? I asked for those a while back but no one seems to be able to support that claim. Partly because it makes no sense. Why would the number be 616 instead of 666, when the verse explicitly states that it is the "number of a man" and, in hebrew thought, the number 6 means Man or Mankind?

The author, sitting in Jerusalem in 68 and no doubt shitting his pants while Vespasian's army cut the city off from the outside world, indulged in some Jewish apocalyptic writing which was later co-opted by xtians who invented all sorts of stupid stories about it. The author can be forgiven for not guessing the brief reigns of Otho and Vitellius. That was unprecedented and this is politics....not "prophecy."

Um... read the book. Isle of Patmos, not Jerusalem.

There also seem to be people who think that because Prince Charles doesn't look threatening or scary he can't be the antichrist. Let's see here, in Revelation does it not say "All the world marveled and followed the beast?" If I was going to try to rule the world I wouldn't do it by looking scary. I would do it by getting on the good side of the various peoples at the heart of world politics, something Prince Charles seems to be good at doing.Right, I'm sure if we scare the heck out of everyone, they will want to worship and make us the ruler of them all. Makes a lot of sense.

Anyone care to provide a logical counterpoint, or are you just going to try hard to be clever and use curse words in place of reason?

I don't see what there is to counter?

You wouldn't, would you? Some people who have responded to me have successfully proven that they haven't even READ THROUGH WHAT I ACTUALLY SAID before they posted their idiotic ramblings. For example:

It's also quite funny that the "Modern English" letters are what add up to 666.
Not Hebrew, not Greek, not Latin, not Aramaic, not Old English.... but modern English.

This man clearly has no idea what he is talking about, nor did he read my entire post. For one thing, OF COURSE it's going to be in modern english! Prince Charles is a MODERN ENGLISHMAN for shrieking out loud. There is no reason why it would be in old english. You also said that is wasn't in hebrew. Well, according to my original post, which you can see I have not edited from it's original form, yes I DID in fact say that it adds up to 666 in HEBREW as well. Guess what? I said the same thing about GREEK. Now maybe if you want to appear as though you still have a single shred of credibility you could try reading the posts to which you respond BEFORE you respond to them.

[Anomalocaris]

POINT 1#: The Bible contains various prophecies. If a sufficient number of these prophecies is true, than it is very likely that these prophecies are what they claim to be. Some kind of supernatural or divine revelation. Either that or they are a highly unlikely and EXTREMELY lucky guess. Can we agree on this first point?

No.

Now get lost.

[Chas]

Well, there seems to be quite a load of complete and total s**t to cut through in the above posts, but I'll try.

"Numerology is any belief in the divine, mystical or other special relationship between a number and some coinciding events." - Wikipedia

Numerology refers to the importance and mystical meaning of numbers, whereas I am simply pointing out the numbers themselves. This is actually really easy to understand if you use common sense. It's very much like if I said that I would pay you a million dollars if you could find me a pink-colored rock. The pink-colored rock itself isn't worth a million dollars. Now if you find a pink rock, you are likely to be excited, when before you might not have even noticed it. Likewise, the significance if the number 666 is external rather than internal. This number doesn't bear some inherent significance on it's own, rather because that is the number that we are looking for. So that's the end of that. It is MOST DEFINITELY NOT NUMEROLOGY, plain and simple.

Okay, so where are the sources that prove that Revelation actually says 616? I asked for those a while back but no one seems to be able to support that claim. Partly because it makes no sense. Why would the number be 616 instead of 666, when the verse explicitly states that it is the "number of a man" and, in hebrew thought, the number 6 means Man or Mankind?

The bolded part - that's numerology.

You have quoted only part of one definition - that's called quote mining. That's a kind of lying.

[Minimalist]

Um... read the book. Isle of Patmos, not Jerusalem.

Do not confuse the later adaptation with the original.

A major role of the apocalypse was to explain why the righteous suffered and why the kingdom of God delayed. Prophecy had dealt primarily with the nation’s ethical obligations at the time when the prophet wrote. Apocalyptic focused on a period of time yet future when God would intervene to judge the world and establish righteousness. (The Book of Revelation, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, p. 19)

In 68 the Jews were most definitely suffering as they waited for the Roman attack. Vespasian, in a brilliant strategic move had cut the roads to the city and then sat back to watch political developments in Rome...where Nero was fast going down the shitter. The Jews had plenty of time....while they were beginning to starve....to wonder why 'god' was letting them get fucked over.

Conversely, there is no evidence whatsoever that there was any "persecution" by Domitian. This is a later xtian myth - much like the myth of Nero persecuting "multitudes" of xtians in Rome itself in 64.

If you are going to insist on reading this nonsense at face value there is little to talk about. Go play with your numbers.

[max-greece]

Okay, so where are the sources that prove that Revelation actually says 616? I asked for those a while back but no one seems to be able to support that claim. Partly because it makes no sense. Why would the number be 616 instead of 666, when the verse explicitly states that it is the "number of a man" and, in hebrew thought, the number 6 means Man or Mankind?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_beast

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index...310AA6bOVw

http://knowledgenuts.com/2013/08/12/the-...s-not-666/

I could keep doing this. Don't you have Google?

[Cato]

"Numerology is any belief in the divine, mystical or other special relationship between a number and some coinciding events." - Wikipedia

Do you have shit for brains? Did you bother reading the rest of the Wiki article you quoted? As if the definition itself wasn't immediately applicable to your exposition, the exact methodology you use, already pointed out to you, has a section devoted to it. Invoking a definition that plainly disproves your assertion (not numerology) is not the best defense.