Solomon and the Number of the Beast

The Book of Revelation is one of the most fascinating biblical books. It’s full of strange descriptions and imagery. It’s also deliberately cryptic. One of the main figures of Revelation and the Tribulation period is known as the Antichrist. An antichrist is defined as an opposer of God. There have been many antichrists in history past, but this Antichrist will be the worst.

The Antichrist is mentioned by the Apostle John. While the Antichrist is not mentioned by name, he is called “the beast”, “the man of sin“, “son of perdition” and a “little horn.” We know that he will have certain qualities like intelligence, lawlessness, charisma, and self-exaltment. He will also be a economic, military, and political genius. These skills will probably help him in his effort to unite all the nations, forming what is known as the “New World Order.”

The most famous thing about him that even nonchristians know of is his number:

• Revelation 13:18- “This calls for wisdom: let the one with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.”

Now we get to the part that you’ve probably never heard of. The number “666” only shows up four times in the Bible. The other most notable mention of the number is found 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles.

Solomon, the son of David, was king of Israel after David and is known as the wisest and wealthiest man that ever lived. In fact, his wealth is estimated to have been $30 trillion in today’s standards. Solomon did a lot of good, but he also disobeyed many of God’s commands for kings.

Solomon received tribute from many other places such as mines of Ophir. 1 Kings 10:14 and 2 Chronicles 9:13 give an account of how many talents of gold Solomon received in one year. How many talents did he receive? You probably guessed it- 666 talents.

So what does this mean? To understand the connection between Solomon and the Antichrist figure of Revelation, let’s look more at what Solomon did, both good and bad.

The Good:

• He built the Temple
• Had humility
• Wisdom, especially during disputes like the two mothers who argued over the infant
• Wrote many poems and proverbs
• Impressed the Queen of Sheba
• Built a fleet of ships
• Was blessed by God
• Israel had a period of peace under his reign

Now comes the bad. And if you read God’s instructions for what a king should not do in Deuteronomy 17:14-17, you find Solomon pretty much broke all of those commands. He

• Acquired many horses
• Accumulated a large amount of gold and silver
• Had many wives and concubines (in the hundreds)
• Built idols to Moloch (a god that required infant sacrifice) to appease one of his wives
• Built idols and sacrificed to many other pagan gods
• Built up a large slave labor force

So what do we make of this information? First, think about King David, Solomon’s dad. He wasn’t perfect, but he was a very righteous man who God called “a man after his own heart.” Becuase of this, David is known as a type of Christ, which essentially means that he reflected many characteristics of Christ.

But when it comes to Solomon, it’s mixed. Therefore, we regard him as a type of Christ and a type of Antichrist. He reflected both qualities of God and of someone opposing God and His commandments. The Antichrist of Revelation will be like Solomon. He will appear to do good things like rebuilding the Temple, but will actually be in opposition to God the whole time.

We don’t know who the Antichrist is yet, what his name is, where he will come from, or what ethnicity he will be. And it’s useless to do endless speculations about him. All we can do as Christians is to always have discernment so that we won’t be fooled by false prophets and antichrists. We must thoroughly know what the Bible says so that if the Antichrist does appear in our lifetime, we won’t be deceived like so many will be.

So to summarize all this up- we don’t know who the Antichrist is. But what we do know is- he will be like Solomon.