Wondering if any of the Republican presidential candidates are the Antichrist? Well, maybe one of them. Maybe.
Ah, gematria. It’s just good clean fun.
Gematria, if you’re not familiar with it, is a system of numerical value that a letter or word has. Before Arabic numerals were invented, if you wanted to indicate numbers, you had to make do with your alphabet. Hence Roman numerals, with all its Is and Xs. Or in the case of Hebrew-speakers, they just gave each letter in the alphabet a value. Alef is one, bet is two, gimel is three, up till ten… then kaf is 20, lamed is 30, and so on till 100… then resh is 200, and so on till we’re out of letters.
So when Revelation refers to the number of one’s name, this is what it means. When it says to double-check the number of the beast by saying it’s the number of a man’s name, you’re supposed to take a person’s name, convert it to Hebrew, convert the Hebrew letters to number-values, add ’em up, and get 666. (Or, in a few ancient copies of Revelation, 616. But that’s a textual variant; likely a copyist’s error. Unless 616 is correct and 666 is the error. Unlikely, though.)
Pick a name, like fr’instance Willard Mitt Romney, and convert it to Hebrew. (Instead of converting it myself, I went with the way the Israeli press prints it. Easy enough to look up.) Then add up its numbers like so.
| letter(s) | Hebrew letter | value | running total |
|---|---|---|---|
| W | ו | 6 | =6 |
| I | י | 10 | =16 |
| LL | ל | 30 | =46 |
| A | א | 1 | =47 |
| R | ר | 200 | =247 |
| D | ד | 4 | =251 |
| M | מ | 40 | =291 |
| I | י | 10 | =301 |
| TT | ט | 9 | =310 |
| R | ר | 200 | =510 |
| O | ו | 6 | =516 |
| M | מ | 40 | =556 |
| N | נ | 50 | =600 |
| EY | י | 10 | =616 |
…well, that’s interesting.
Still, it’s only a textual variant. We hope.
Years ago I had a student who was scared to death that she was the Antichrist. I have no idea where she got the idea. Probably she had been a little anti-Christian at some point, and someone accused her of anti-Christlike behavior, and she had reinterpreted this into Antichrist. Or someone, fed up with her rambunctiousness, had called her a little devil or a little Antichrist, and it stuck in her psyche. People gotta be careful with impressionable kids. Still, this idea was wedged in her head pretty good, and it bugged her. As it would anyone, if you believed you were on the losing end of the End Times and were headed to hell.
Well, lucky for her I knew a thing or two about gematria. So I explained it to her: The reason John had said the beast’s number, referring to the number of his name, is so that if we ever encountered someone who would make a really good Antichrist candidate, we have a little checksum against him.
Now it may be that the checksum is meant to be done with the Greek alphabet. It’s entirely possible; the Greeks did the same as the Hebrews in converting their letters into numbers, and of course Revelation was written in Greek to Greek-speakers. However, deducing the number of a person’s name is, in ancient literature, purely a Hebrew thing. The Hebrews were big on it. Still are; in Kabbalah, there’s even an odd form of interpretation where you can replace any word in the bible with any other word, provided that other word has the very same number-value as the word you’re replacing. So if you want the “secret hidden meaning” of a scripture, start swapping words until you get an interpretation you like. …Yeah, this is problematic, and the rabbis will tell you that’s an oversimplification, and we Christians have our own problems with people taking the bible out of context. Anyway.
To alleviate the fears of this student, I decided to write out her name in Hebrew, then put the number-values to the letters, then add ’em up. Lo and behold and no surprise, it wasn’t even close. “You are definitely not the Antichrist,” I told her.
“But what if I get married and change my last name?” she fretted.
“Won’t make any difference,” I pointed out. “Because between your first and middle names, you’re over 700. Change your last name to whatever you want.”
Huge relief on her part. She wasn’t going to hell!… well, provided she displays the appropriate fruit of the Spirit that indicates God has saved her, but at least we don’t have to worry about her leading the armies of Armageddon, or something like that. Not, between y’all and me, that she really had the aptitude for leadership at that particular time. But who knows? Things change. Someday, with effort, if she applies herself, she could lead the armies of the damned. Yet I doubt it.
Anyway, for all those folks who are paranoid that they’re the Antichrist, or that someone they know is the Antichrist, I usually shut up all the Antichrist-talk by telling them to add up the name. I usually go with full names, but I allow for the possibility of nicknames, maiden names, and first and last names only. Certain final forms of letters also play with the number-count—the last K, M, N, F/P, and TS/CH in a word use a slightly different letter, and therefore have a different number value—so I let ’em swap them out with the usual form and let ’em try that number too. However they juggle the numbers, they never get 666, so it usually quiets them. And then we can get to the real issues of a campaign. Well, closer to them anyway.
Okay, if you want to calculate the number of someone’s name yourself, it’s not rocket science. First, get their name. I stick with full names, but if you want to go with first and last names, or include senior or junior or third or whatever, or use maiden names or pre-adoptive names or whatever, go right ahead. The odds of totaling 666 are so small that it’s okay to monkey around with all legitimate permutations of their name. What would be illegitimate? Pretty much anything that would cause on objective observer to reply, “Oh, come on.” (Objective observer, not your biased conspiracy-theorist buddies.)
Next, convert to Hebrew. Google Translate will do the job just fine. Sometimes, if a name is also a proper word—like a “mitt” can refer to a baseball glove—Google might miss the context and translate it. Like
Next, get a gematria chart—a list of all the numeric values of the Hebrew letters, like you’ll find on its Wikipedia page—and add ’em up. Or you can just go to the Gematria Calculator website and have them do it for you: Paste the name into the textbox, click “
If you find some politician whose name totals 666, do not start up any of that Left Behind or Omen crap where you conspire to kill the Antichrist. I know the Dispensationlists claim to have the End Times all figured out, but they don’t. In any case, the Antichrist’s assassination and resurrection is part of most of their End Times timeline, and if they actually turn out to be right, you’re screwed; and if, which is more likely, they turn out to be wrong, you’ve committed murder out of religious paranoia, which has no relation to Christianity whatsoever, and you’re not winning any prize from Jesus for that. The checksum is so that you know who to look out for, not so that you know who to take homicidal action against. Don’t vote for him, but don’t shoot him.
If your name turns out to total 666, relax. Statistically, it’s not impossible. Just remember that you have free will; you don’t have to be an antichrist if you don’t want to. Confess Jesus as Lord, make that relationship nice and obvious, and you can spend the rest of your life having a chuckle about your unfortunate number. (And be on the lookout lest some religiously paranoid person tries to shoot you.) But try to hide it, and it’ll come out; try to take any positions of authority, and people are always gonna wonder about you.
No, I’m not kidding about Romney’s name adding up to 616. I was joking around with some friends about what Newt Gingrich’s name adds up to, but in his case (adding up the full Newton Leroy Gingrich) we get 2213. And in case you were wondering, Barack Hussein Obama is 1150, Richard John Santorum is 2145, and Ronald Ernest Paul is 627. Yes, Paul’s number is closer, but it’s not the number of the beast; it’s only the neighbor of the beast.
But when, out of curiosity, I added up Romney’s name, this is what I got. Which shocked them. As it may you. But remember: Textual variant.
…Ah well, it’s only a matter of time before one of the other campaigns gets ahold of this and plays merry hell with it.