You will read all over the web that in the 863-seat European Parliament, Seat 666 is vacant, awaiting the Antichrist.
The otherwise informative website linked above voices the thoughts of many: ‘Interestingly, the seat numbered 666 is never occupied. Perhaps they are leaving it open for someone special?’
CONSPIRACY IS FACT
Now, we don’t believe in conspiracy theories at Christian Voice. We believe in conspiracy as fact:
Psalm 2:2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, 3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. (KJV)
The number 666 certainly has notoriety. The Revelation to John says it is the number of the second beast, the one we know as the Antichrist:
Rev 13:11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.
Rev 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
SO THE ANTICHRIST WILL BE IN SEAT 666?
So is seat 666 in the European Parliament vacant, awaiting the Antichrist?
No it isn’t. The seating plan of the European Parliament shows seat 666 in Strasbourg is currently occupied by the Maltese MEP Roberta Metsola. Davor Škrlec, an MEP from Croatia, sits in the corresponding place in the Brussels chamber.
By the time you read this, different MEP’s may be in those two seats, because the seating changes every six months. Why the Brussels seating is different from the Strasbourg seating is an arcane EU mystery.
Previously, seat 666 has been occupied by Miroslav Mikolášik, a 63-year-old Slovak Politician. Before that, 666 was the seat of Italian (sorry, Sicilian!) politician Sebastiano (Nello) Musumeci, leader of the Sicilian Alliance. Neither Metsola nor Škrlec are the Antichrist, any more than were Mikolášik or Musumeci.
SO WHERE WILL THE ANTICHRIST SIT?
I predict that when the Antichrist does walk in to the European Parliament, he won’t sit at the back in seat 666. In fact, he won’t sit in the Euro Parliament at all, as it has no ability to initiate the legislation he requires. That power is reserved to the un-elected European Commission. So he will stand or sit right at the front and tell them what he has decided and what they are to do, Including the lowly inhabitant of seat 666.
Don’t get worried. Christian Voice has not gone soft. We still regard the European Union as a godless, corrupt, pretentious, expensive, wasteful, bureaucratic,oligarchic expression of Antichrist. It’s just that seat 666 of the European Parliament is not reserved for him. The Antichrist, the beast of Revelation, has something far grander in mind and that is world dominion.
Not that it will last. The Beast, the Antichrist, is heading for defeat at the hands of King Jesus:
Rev 19:11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. … 20 And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
If you are in Christ, you are on the winning side. Make sure you stay there.
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666 appears to be a very special number, 999 upside down, and most modern translations render it as 666 . Yet Stephen chooses to lose this effect with a translation which calls it “six hundred threescore and six”. It’s interesting that this was not inevitable at the time, but appears to have been deliberate: Wycliffe called it “six hundred and sixty six”.
It has often been pointed out that the 666 effect depends on Arabic numerals, since in Roman numerals (for example) it would be DCLXVI , which isn’t very exciting. However, Wycliffe points the way. The Vulgate has a memorable “sescenti sexaginta sex” (sounds good at the end of fierily preached sentence). In the original Greek, there are similar problems with the number in symbols, but solved by the number expressed in words.
So why “six hundred threescore and six” ?
Because that is how they spoke when the KJV was translated. Everyone at that time understood threescore as sixty, so the whole phrase can be represented by the numerals 666, which is what the Hebrew says.
The Authorised Version in fact maintains much of the language of the previous century from the Bishops’ Bible, which itself had an archaic style, as scriptures often do. Thomas Coryate’s famous travel book, which was published the same year (1611) is much easier to read.
If “sixty” was understandable in the 14th century, and was to be understandable in later centuries, you can be sure it was perfectly understandable in the 17th century too. People did understand “sixty” in 1611. Coryate expresses numbers usually just as we do, for example in his frequent measurements of buildings in Venice.
The point is, why go out of one’s way to obscure the repetition of the 6 ? We are not told to dial nine hundred, four-score and ten, nine. Or to dial a thousand minus one.