Evidence of the Bible's Validity

[Angrboda]

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?

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:

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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:

A = 1
B = 2
C = 3
D = 4
E = 5
F = 6
G = 7
H = 8
I = 9
J = 10
K = 20
L = 30
M = 40
N = 50
O = 60
P = 70
Q = 80
R = 90
S = 100
T = 200
U = 300
V = 400
W = 0
X = 0
Y = 0
Z = 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:

C = 3
H = 8
A = 1
R = 90
L = 30
E = 5
S = 100

P = 70
R = 90
I = 9
N = 50
C = 3
E = 5

O = 60
F = 6

W = 0
A = 1
L = 30
E = 5
S = 100

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.

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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.

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First of all, as noted, it's not a valid prophecy until it's fulfilled. Regardless of what you think of Charles, it's yet to be demonstrated that he is the anti-Christ, and until you do, this is just interesting doodling with numbers.

However, even if I grant all your observations, there are firm mathematical reasons why this would not count as prophecy, and it has to do with what is known in mathematics as Ramsey theory, but more on that later.

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Basically, when we speak of prophecy being fulfilled we are referring to a pattern or specification, say, "a king named Horatio III will die on a Wednesday," being found in a set of data (in this case, the data set of king's named Horatio III). Now it's well known that if the pattern or specification is vague, finding a "hit" is not particularly impressive. This is one well known way an "apparent prophecy" may be nothing but.



What's not as clear is that vagueness in what data is to be searched for the pattern can also weaken the value of the prophecy.




Why this is the case has to do with the work of a mathematician named Frank P. Ramsey and a branch of mathematics named after him, Ramsey theory. The basics of Ramsey theory illustrate that if you look within a large set of data, you are bound to find patterns; the larger the data set, the more interesting patterns you will find. An example already given is if you flip a coin ten times, the odds of it coming up heads each of the ten times is small. However, if you repeat the ten coin tosses one thousand times, the odds of one set of ten tosses all being heads is actually fairly high. This is the general rule: more data = more patterns.

So how does this relate to Prince Charles and Rome? Note that both the name and its relationship to Rome are both arbitrary choices: neither is in the original prophecy. So the data sets chosen have been picked arbitrarily. They could have been chosen differently, say to refer to leaders with classical names or people born in the 20th century. Neither choice is less arbitrary than the other. So the data sets which you could have searched for the pattern or specification '666' in is essentially unlimited, as you could have chosen anything as the further specification of the pattern.

And here is where Ramsey comes in. Because the data sets to be searched for the pattern is vague, the data within which you might have found the pattern and claimed victory is essentially unbounded; if you didn't find the pattern in one set of data, there's nothing stopping you from picking a different set of data to search. That makes your data set essentially infinite. Remember the general rule? More data = more patterns. If the data is essentially infinite, then according to Ramsey theory, a "hit" is basically guaranteed to be true, by virtue of the arbitrariness of the data searched.

So if finding a hit in the way you did is supposed to be significant prophecy, but finding a hit is guaranteed, then it's not prophecy, because finding the pattern in an arbitrarily selected data set is guaranteed, there's no chance of failure and therefore no foretelling.

So, Prince Charles and '666' = not prophecy but an illusion caused by the way you conducted your search.