YouTube’s algorithms recently brought before me a video from a few years ago that referred to an interesting detail that had previously escaped my attention. I have generally focused only on Charles III’s former title, Charles, Prince of Wales, which he held for 64 years, from 1958 to 2022. This title adds up to the number of the Beast, 666, in both English and Hebrew when we use the most commonly accepted method of calculation that prophecy researchers have applied to the prophecy in Revelation 13 concerning the Beast whose name has the numerical value of 666.

By the most commonly accepted method of calculation, I am referring to the numerical system used in Greek and Hebrew, in which each of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet also has a numerical value. The first ten letters represent the numbers 1–10, the next nine represent 20–100, and the final three represent 200–400.

When we apply the same method to the English alphabet—or, more precisely, the Latin alphabet—the title Charles, Prince of Wales adds up to 666 when the numerical values of its letters are added together. When this title is translated into Hebrew, it can be written as מוילס צרלס נסיך. This combination of letters also adds up to 666 when calculated according to the numerical values of the Hebrew alphabet.

This spelling was based on the articles of Monte Judah, an American Messianic Jewish prophecy researcher who was the first to discover this numerical value in Charles’s title. About ten years ago, however, I noticed that this spelling did not correspond to the way Charles’s title appeared on many Hebrew-language websites or in his Hebrew Wikipedia article, where it was written as צ‘ארלס, נסיך ויילס.

I once contacted Monte Judah personally by email to ask him about this issue. When I received no reply, I later began investigating the matter myself. As I explained in a blog post a couple of years ago, I discovered that Monte Judah’s spelling was neither manipulated nor incorrect. Rather, it was based on Hebrew spelling conventions that predated the orthographic reforms introduced in the 1960s. Today, this can easily be verified even by asking an AI.

A completely valid question, of course, is whether the method of calculation remains legitimate if Hebrew orthography was reformed already in the 1960s and Charles is no longer even known by that title today.

My answer to these objections would be that Charles received the title in 1958, before those spelling reforms were introduced, and that the task of calculating the number of the Beast is clearly intended to be a prospective exercise—anticipatory and forward-looking—rather than a retrospective one in which the past is examined only after the events have already taken place.

This becomes clear from the way John presents the prophecy:

“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”

There is little point in speculating about this kind of esoteric numerology only after the Beast has already wiped out a third of the world’s population. The prophetic signs concerning the Antichrist are given beforehand to the “wise and understanding”—to those who are prophetically alert—precisely so that we might recognize him well in advance of his great deception.

For this reason, I have never considered it a major problem that Charles’s present title—most simply, Charles III—can no longer be calculated as 666 in the same way.

But interestingly enough, even the title Charles III contains the number of the Beast through another interpretative method.

The III following the name Charles naturally refers to Charles the Third, since the ordinal number is written using Roman numerals: 1 is I, 2 is II, and 3 is III. But the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Vav, whose numerical value is 6, can be written in sans-serif typography—the kind commonly used even on computer screens—as a simple vertical line resembling the Roman numeral I.

Thus, when a Hebrew reader sees the Roman numeral III, it can visually represent three consecutive sixes:

6–6–6.

In etymology, the study of the origins of names and words, the name Charles ultimately carries the meaning of “man” or “husband.” The meaning of the name Charles III could therefore be interpreted as:

“Man 666.”

For some reason, John explicitly connects the number 666 with man:

“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”

Whether this king is the Beast of Revelation or not, a growing number of British patriots and Christian leaders—including the late Queen’s former chaplain Gavin Ashenden—have begun calling for him to give up the Crown because he has turned against the faith of his fathers and betrayed his coronation oath by redefining the role of the monarch from defender of Christianity into the “defender of a multi-faith nation.”

Charles had already expressed his desire to reinterpret the British monarch’s Reformation-era title “Defender of the Faith” into the more pluralistic “Defender of Faith” in the 1994 television documentary Charles: The Private Man, the Public Role.

But now Charles’s role has, for the first time, been explicitly redefined as that of a defender of a multi-faith nation, despite his coronation oath in which, with his hand upon the Bible, he swore to uphold the Christian faith.

At the time of Charles’s coronation, I observed that the ceremony ultimately turned out to be more Christian than I had personally expected. At the same time, however, I reminded my readers that the outward piety of a ceremony does not make the monarch himself pious. Participating in an outwardly Christian ritual and taking a Christian oath does not mean that the person who swears that oath before God will actually keep it.

I wrote on my blog on May 7, 2023:

Hallelujah! What magnificently lofty and pious words, made even more heavenly by Handel’s Baroque music echoing through Westminster Abbey and all the splendour of gold and diamonds—as though offering a temporal foretaste of the future coronation of the King of Kings.

But as I watched this solemn and pious coronation oath, I was reminded of something very important that happened a little over forty years ago. Not in my own life, of course, since my personal memories reach back only about 33 years.

Charles married Princess Diana in 1981 before the eyes of the entire world, and during that church ceremony he likewise made a vow before Almighty God. The Archbishop of Canterbury emphasized its biblical foundations and explained how the sacrament of marriage serves as a reminder and reflection of the sacred covenant between Christ and His bride, the Church—and why marriage vows should therefore never be taken lightly.

But as we know very well today, Charles broke that sacred vow made before God, the Church, and his wife, and was unfaithful to Diana with Camilla from the beginning of their marriage, just as Camilla was unfaithful to her own husband.

Why, then, should we expect him to show any greater respect for the coronation oath he made yesterday?

Why should we expect him to fulfil the role of a righteous, God-fearing, and humble king if he could not even remain faithful to his own wife?

Should not Charles’s past serve as a warning to us about his future as well?

Yet at the time, many believers focused their attention on the outward framework of the coronation ceremony and praised this great “Christian king.”

I am almost tempted to say now, “I told you so.”

But I won’t.

Or, well…

I suppose I just did.