666 in the
Andrews Bible Commentary
An ex-member of
the BRI gives his opinion on the Revelation Commentary of the new Andrews Bible
Commentary. His ideas as crucial for the faithful Adventist since the Editor of
the Commentaries made crucial errors in this Revelation Commentary. Listen to
dr. A. Treiyer’s short explanation on the current denial of Vicarius filii
dei in the commentary.:
The words of
dr. Treiyer this week March 2023: REVELATION 13
& 17 It is not my
[dr. A. Treiyer of BRI] intention to address all of the details of this new Andrews
Bible Commentary, but two other chapters of Revelation are striking, where
in some respects, an idealist interpretation is again resorted to rather than
the historicist one. Number of the
Beast as 600+60+6 The first has
to do with Rev 13:17-18, concerning the name and the number of the “beast.” The
passage reads as follows: “That no one
should be able to buy or to sell, if not the one having the mark—the name of
the beast, or the number of its name. Here is a call for wisdom: Let the one
who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a
man, and that number is six hundred and sixty six.” No Arabic
counting systems in John’s day In the days of
the apostle John there were no Arabic numerals that we have today, so the
letters were assigned a numerical value. Because of this it was common to refer
to people’s names by their number. Pagan Rome an
enemy of the church so Nero is seen by church-fathers Early on, the
number one enemy of Christianity was the Roman Empire. Early authors often
tried to find names of emperors or Roman institutions that contained the
letters that, added together, gave 666. Then after 538
AD the Holy Roman Empire papal system started But it was not
until the second Christian millennium that the antichrist foretold by Daniel,
Paul, and John began to be recognized in the Roman papacy, prompting
Protestants to seek blasphemous titles of the pope that met all the
requirements of prophecy. That was the most natural way to decode the meaning
of the number in connection with the “name” or “title” of the “beast,” in
reference to the Roman papacy according to the symbol. Protestant
Andreas Helwig 1610 decoded vicarius filii dei = 600+60+6 Among the
Protestant reformers, the famous German philologist Andreas Helwig was the most
prominent to represent this interpretation. At the beginning of the seventeenth
century, he saw that the only blasphemous name of the pope that meets all the
specifications of the Bible and whose Latin letters add up to 666, is Vicarivs
Filii Dei, “Vicar of the Son of God.” Uriah Smith
Introduced Helwig 1610 to Adventism in 1865 More than 100
interpreters followed this interpretation. That interpretation was introduced
into the Adventist Church in 1865 through a book by Uriah Smith on the book of
Revelation. But Prescott in
1919 objected But W. W.
Prescott who (as already seen in our review of Rev 8 and 9), denied the
prophetic dates of Daniel and Revelation, also rose up at the Biblical Council
of 1919, against the identification of that title with the Roman papacy. GC investigated
the topic between 1939-1943 and found Prescott wrong In response to
their requirements, the General Conference organized more than one committee
between 1939 and 1943 to study the subject. Different papers from both sides of
the ocean were prepared for those committees. They concluded that the
objections of Prescott, borrowed from Catholic authors, were false. So, the
official interpretation of our church remained that of Vicarivs Filii Dei for
the name of the beast. Rodriquez,
editor of the Andrews Commentary in 2002 returned to Prescott’s view in his
Sabbath School Quarterly shockingly Surprisingly,
in the Sabbath School Quarterly of June 8, 2002, Dr. Angel Manuel Rodriguez introduced
this liberal line of W. W. Prescott unaware of the conclusions of such studies,
denying any reference of the name and number of the beast to Vicarivs Filii
Dei. Members and
informed scholars reacted across the globe That produced a
very great concern in many parts of the world not only because it was a denial
of what the church had been teaching since its beginnings, but also because of
the lack of foundation of its criticisms. Past Catholics
becoming Adventists then went back to the Catholic Church There were even
former Catholics who after reading that Sabbath School Quarterly, left our
church to return to Catholicism, convinced that Protestantism (and we
Adventists) had been slandering the Catholic Church. Edwin de Kock
and his team and their 800 page book on Vicarius filii dei 2011 Edwin de Kock,
a lay Adventist polyglot, was among those who were disgusted by the Sabbath
School publication. He gathered a very extensive body of material to prove the
falsity of the statements of Ángel Manuel Rodríguez, and published them in a
book with more than 800 pages entitled: The Truth of 666 and the History of
the Great Apostasy. Let me
essentially summarize Rodriguez’s objections, and the way de Kock responded:
Objection 1. The Bible does not say that the number has to do with the
aggregate numerical value of the letters of a name. Brief Answer: He comes to this conclusion ignoring the earliest way in which Rev
13:18 was interpreted, and what the passage itself implies by requiring the
calculation of the number of the name. It was common for people to do so in
John’s day. This is confirmed by the most modern commentaries on the book of
Revelation. Rodriguez’s problem here is based on his central and most serious
problem that we will see in the next objection. It demonstrates his trend to
spiritualize what he finds difficult to explain, denying definite and concrete
facts of history. His methodology in this is not historicist, but idealistic. Objection 2. The symbol can serve to represent humanity without divine rest
(the seventh day). It is not necessarily the “name of a man,” but the “name of
humanity.” Brief answer: Here Rodriguez admirably overlooks the beast to move on to talk
about humanity. That is idealism, a way of dodging or softening the true
purpose of prophecy. The beast represents an institution, the papacy, not
humanity in general. E. de Kock shows well, especially in appendix VII
(866-870), that the translation offered by some versions for anthropos by
“humanity” is not correct, because the text refers to the name of the beast,
not the name of humanity. This is the reason why the most serious translations
follow lexicons that translate “the number of a man,” which in Rev 13:18 is a
reference to “the man (anthropos) of lawlessness,” who “sits as God in the
temple of God, displaying himself as being God” (2 Thess 2:3-5). In his effort
to find a supposed symbolic meaning of the number, Ángel Manuel Rodríguez
forgot the name of the beast. Objection 3. Calculating the numerical value of the letters of a name leads to
speculation, since many names can contain that value. Brief answer: It is not a question of speculating, but of identifying the
“blasphemous” name of the beast, within the context of the description in
chapter 13:1,5-6. The only blasphemous title of the papacy whose letters
contain the number 666, is Vicarivs Filii Dei. Objection 4. It cannot be proven that the title Vicarivs Filii Dei is an
official title of the Roman papacy. Brief answer: De Kock overwhelmingly proves that it was an official title of the
Roman papacy, which many popes applied to themselves, even the most recent
ones, just as many great dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church did to
highlight the blasphemous political and spiritual authority of the papacy. Objection 5. The Bible does not say in which language the name should be read,
so any language chosen will be arbitrary. Brief answer: What is arbitrary is to pretend that when the time came, it would
not be possible to know in what language the calculation should be made.
Already Helwig in the Seventeenth Century, (the German philologist who
discovered the blasphemous title of the papacy and its numerical correlation
with 666), defined the obvious principle that should be sought to determine the
language of the name, that is, the official language of the blasphemous entity
represented. And the official language of the Roman papacy is Latin. It makes
no sense to look for the number in a language that is not the official one of the
blasphemous authority predicted. Objection 6. The best option for the moment would be an intensified rebellion
reflected in the triple use of the number six. Brief answer: Arabic numerals were invented about a millennium later and were
introduced to Europe centuries later. In Greek no one could have understood
that number as three sixes. Andrews Bible
Commentary? What does the
new Andrews Bible Commentary now say? It insists on
maintaining that liberal line of Prescott, passing over what the church always
believed. Introducing the
fallacy of Idealism instead of Historicism And the worst thing
is that it does so without any foundation, emulating the Hellenized Jews of
Alexandria, who allegorized everything they could not or did not want to
explain. Rodriquez made
the error a second time without listening to de Kock or GC work of the past on
it The comments of
Angel Manuel Rodriguez in that Sabbath School Quarterly was a testimony to ignorance
on his part. Thus, a lie has
been introduced in Revelation 13 of the Andrews Bible Commentary It now becomes
a stubborn and blatant lie in the Andrews Bible Commentary. [Thus far the
words of BRI member dr. A. Treiyer].