Count the Number

Solomon is the wisest man who ever lived and the type of the King, and he ends his life serving other gods. Adonikam's name means the Lord is risen or, as some read the two words, lord of the rising up, and his children number 666. The beast is the antichrist himself.

Now notice something in the wording, because it matters for everything that follows. Solomon's number and the beast's number are written the same way, threescore. Adonikam's alone is written sixty. The King James Bible keeps those two words apart, and it keeps them apart in a way that looks inconsistent until you count.

The six hundred and sixty sixth verse of the Bible carries the first appearance of the word threescore in all of Scripture. Not the first appearance of sixty: sixty has already come and gone six times before this point. The Book had every opportunity to write threescore earlier and did not, and every opportunity to write sixty here and did not.

That single word is load bearing. Threescore occurs ninety three times and sixty fifteen times, and if the two had been standardised into one another, as a modern editor would tidy them, every count on this page comes apart. The distinction that looks like inconsistent old English is the distinction the arithmetic rests on, and it begins in verse 666.

Six hundred and sixty six verses into the New Testament, the Son of man is betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, the men who taught the Scriptures. Six hundred and sixty six verses further on, He names what the scribes and Pharisees do to the word of God: they make it of none effect through their tradition.

The case in Mark 7 was Corban, a gift vowed to God so a man needn't honour his father and mother. The principle under it is older than the case, and it's outlived it: Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition (Mark 7:9). Now read the front page of any modern study Bible where a footnote tells you the earliest manuscripts do not contain the verse you are looking at. The tradition hasn't changed its trade.

Count every occurrence of the name Jesus in the King James Bible in order, including the one place where it is buried inside another man's name. The six hundred and sixty sixth is Bar-jesus: a sorcerer, a false prophet, and the only man in Scripture who carries the Saviour's name as a counterfeit.

Paul calls him what he is in the next breath: O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness. Subtil is the word Genesis uses of the serpent.

Those twelve verses are not filler. They hold the resurrection appearances, the great commission, and the only place in any gospel where the Lord Jesus Christ is said to have sat on the right hand of God. Matthew and John do not record the ascension at all. Luke records Him carried up into heaven and stops there. One verse in all four gospels seats Him on the throne, and here it is.

A man carries a mark. So does a book. Take the ascension of the Son of God out of the gospel of Mark and what is left of Mark is 666 verses long.

The footnote never gives you certainty in exchange. It cannot tell you the verses are false, because the great mass of manuscripts contains them. It can only make you the judge, standing over the text, deciding what belongs. That is the oldest question in the world, and it is the question this whole site is named after.