What are your views on the theory that the mark on the forehead and in the hand might be the Muslim prayer bump and a sword. This coupled with the contention that 666 was a mistranslation of letters which very closely resemble “praise be to Allah” which appears on Muslims head/arm bands makes me wonder.
Sounds like you’ve been listening to a certain ex- muslim terrorist who has now become an expert in Biblical prophecy. It’s typical for people with new ideas about Scripture to claim that all the best scholars of the age have misinterpreted it, and they’ve all misinterpreted it the same way. Here’s what Rev. 13:18 says,
This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666.
The Greek word translated number 3 times in this verse is arithmos, from which we get arithmetic. In 18 appearances in the New Testament it’s always translated number.
The numbers we use today are Hindu-Arabic in origin, but this was not true in Biblical times. In the Greek language certain letters were given numerical value, so the actual Greek is chi-xi-stigma. It literally means, 600, 60, and 6. I don’t buy the claim that these Greek numbers are really Arabic words.