Q. A popular prophecy commentator claims that the letters representing 666 are not Greek but are Arabic and mean “Allah is Lord” which is written on the head gear of Islamic militants. I know that this man has some questionable theology, but could there be some validity to this and that this head gear could actually be the mark of the beast?
A. Neither the Hebrew nor Greek languages used numbers. Instead, the letters of both alphabets have numerical values and were used in place of numbers. Rev. 13:17-18 says that 666 is the number of the anti-Christ’s name. This means the numerical value of the letters in his name add up to 666 (literally six hundred, sixty, and six ).
But the Arabic language is different. It’s letters have no numerical value because it has a separate system of numbers. They’re called Arabic numerals and today most of western civilization uses them, including all of the English speaking world. In order to learn the numerical value of the anti-Christ’s name it will have to be translated into Hebrew or Greek (no one knows which) before its value can be calculated.