The Number of the Beast

Duncan

There?s been a few posts about this lately, and it got me thinking?

Reflecting back on all the WT literature I studied over a 20 year period, there were among it all some ideas and stuff which you could charitably say were ?right?, plenty of things that were just flat-out wrong, and a fairly high count of ideas that were simply bonkers.

The thing that always struck me, though, about the Watchtower teaching to do with the Beast and its devilish number 666, was how utterly lame it all was. I mean it was just hopeless, embarrassing; lame - lacking in any imagination.

That particular piece of scripture (Revelation 13) has been, since it was written, a veritable playground for religious crackpots, prophets, and ?inspired? madmen through the ages. Everyone has had a go at interpreting the secret meaning of 666 ? the Bible practically invites you to. In Tolstoy?s ?War and Peace? written in 1869, but set sixty years earlier, there?s a character who spends huge amounts of time trying to discover the identity of the Beast using a complicated numbers-mean-letters formula; (in the end he can?t decide if it?s Napoleon or himself!)

And people are still at it, today, even here on JWD. And it?s such a rich field for speculation. There?s simply tons of interesting 666 stuff to play with.

Did you know, for example:

If you write all the characters (under 1,000) used in Roman numerals together in a single string, in order - DCLXVI - you get 666.

If you take the first 7 prime numbers (excluding 1), square them, and add them together (4+9+25+49+121+169+289) ? you get 666.

The numbers on a roulette table add up to 666

(which is another way of saying?) add all the numbers up from 1 to 36 and you?ll get 666; (and 36 is itself 6 x 6) .

666 can also be constructed from the first 3 numbers to the sixth power:
1 to the power 6, less 2 to the power 6, add 3 to the power 6 = 666

All pretty spooky, eh? There?s bound to be plenty more like this for the determined crackpot to find? and yet, what do we get from the Watchtower? Their utterly uninspired, flaccid thinking goes like this:

?Well, now - Seven, that?s a good number isn?t it? Seven days of Creation, seven days a week, seven this- and seven that- in scripture? so obviously seven is Good. Right. So far so good?

But six? What does six mean? Er? well, six is ? let?s see ? er.. six is ?.NOT SEVEN! That?s it! It?s not seven! Seven GOOD! SIX BAD!!

Oh, and er, they say it 3 times, just to make sure.?

Even as a 10 year old I could see how flimsy and threadbare this reasoning was. Like I said, just embarrassing. And that ?3 times for emphasis? thing? Way off the mark, surely. It?s clear that the Bible writer was referring to an actual numerical value: six hundred and sixty six, which is a wholly different concept to someone saying:

?Six! I repeat: Six! I repeat again: Six!?

I?m an accountant. In thirty years I have done enough account reconciliations, having lists of values called-out while I tick them off, to know the difference between ?666? and ?6, I repeat 6, I repeat 6?.

Anyway. Maybe, like so much other nonsense dreamt up by old Freddie, the current writing team is backing off a bit from the meaning of the number. Has it been mentioned lately, anyone know? Any new light on the horizon?

Let the reader use discernment! Let the crackpot use a calculator!

Duncan

p.s. Englishman, bad luck on Saturday, mate. They?re unstoppable at the moment. And did you notice how many goals got scored? Six! I repeat six! I repeat SIX!!!
Whoooooaaahhh!!!

Phantom Stranger

I like Heinlein's theory in Number of the Beast - it was 6 to the 6th power to the 6th power, describing the number of parallel universes accessible to a Burroughs time-travel device.

Englishman

Duncan,

Thank you kindly for your commiserations about Arsenal beating us 5 - 1.

Now the question is are Arsenal merely the best team in England or Europe or the whole bloody world?

Now back to 666. Did you realise that if you stand on your head in a telephone box and dial 666, a police car, ambulance and fire-engine will be on the scene in minutes?

Englishman.

Brownboy

What about MDCCLXXVI ??

Is the number 666 hidden in this?

SixofNine

Er? well, six is ? let?s see ? er.. six is ?.NOT SEVEN! That?s it! It?s not seven! Seven GOOD! SIX BAD!!

hillary_step

Brownboy,

What about MDCCLXXVI ?? Is the number 666 hidden in this?

Tell me, what kind of God is entertained by playing mysterious games of hide and seek with humanity for thousands of years while each day children die of hunger, cancer devours millions of people alive and Elton John gets rich? I am sure that he has much worthier things to think about than sticking some cosmic riddle into Roman Numerals. Hi Duncan. HS

SixofNine

btw Duncan, your post did bring back a sense of deja vu in me. I have the faintest memory of thinking, just for a second "that is lame" (or substance thereof, speaking as a 7 year old) in regards the WT explaination for 666, especially the "one less" part (it's "incomplete" you know). I think I must have just as quickly chalked my rebellious thought up to "the debil talkin' " however, because I haven't really thought about just how lame it is again till just now.

gumby

I think I must have just as quickly chalked my rebellious thought up to "the debil talkin' " however, because I haven't really thought about just how lame it is again till just now.

Yer just jealous of the witnesses!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gumby

The Number of the Beast

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