The mark of the beast has long been one of the most debated aspects of Biblical eschatology. I remember over 20 years ago when I first started studying eschatology that the mark of the beast never made any sense. What was this mark? How could you not buy or sell. What was this beast that the mark is from?
All too often no one would have an answer for me on this. The answer was always wait and see. If the tribulation happens we wont be here to begin with, so what does it matter. Well it matters quite a bit to me. The mark is important because we need to know the devises and weapons of the enemy. And even if it is true and we are raptured away, shouldn’t those left behind have a clue of what is coming?
Below we shall take a look at what John’s Revelation had to say. The text that was translated in revelation 13 as 666 may not have been translated correctly. When we examine the original text of the mark it provided some clarification to us of this mystery. Some fragments of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri of the New Testament did not count the number of the beast as 666 but 616 and in another manuscript 646. How can we determine which is the answer.
The letters that were translated chi xi stigma in reality are in fact the Bismallah which is translated in Arabic as “in the name of Allah”. Also look at the cross in the text. It looks like the crossed swards you see in almost ever symbol of Islam.
The next graphic shows an image of the so-called “666” from the Codex Vaticanus of Revelation which dates to around 350 C.E., a manuscript dated to somewhere between 250-300 years after John actually penned the Book of Revelation:
This is the name “Allah” written in Arabic (reading from right to left):
Here is the same name rotated 90 degrees and inverted:
But what about the so-called Greek letter Chi? Very simply, these are two crossed Islamic swords. To support this idea, here is a picture of the 1961 Saudi civil ensign. These crossed swords look almost identical to what we see in the Codex Vaticanus manuscript at Revelation 13:18.
These same crossed swords are used throughout the Islamic world. For example, crossed swords appear on the flag of Oman and the flag for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The example shown here is from the flag for Hamas which clearly shows the crossed swords.
As we can see it is most plausible that the symbols that John saw are indeed the symbols of Islam. When we start to view these prophecies from the perspective that the beast is Islam, and we look at the doctrine and history of Islam, it becomes very clear that Islam is the prophesied Beast, and the mark is nothing more then the same mark used all over the Islamic world, “in the name of Allah” and the crossed swords.
