[chloeTG]

For those of you that are superstitious!!! There has been a lot of hype about 666 but this might give some insight!! It has been totally mis interpreted throughout history!!


So what gives rise to the beast and 666? We need to start in chapter 12 of Revelation, where a dragon battles the angel Michael. Chapter 13 then begins with a "beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, and ten crowns upon its horns and a blasphemous name upon its heads. And the beast was like a leopard, its paws were like a bear's, and its mouth was like lion's." (There's a similar description of a monster in Daniel 7:4-6.) The beast is empowered by and serves the dragon. Men worship the dragon and the beast, which holds power for 42 months and makes war on the saints. Then a second beast comes from the earth, to help the first beast. This one has two horns like a lamb but roars like a dragon, breathing fire and deceiving men, and killing people who don't worship the first beast. People are marked (or branded) on the right hand or forehead--it's illegal to "buy or sell" without having been "branded with the name of the beast or the number of its name." (This suggests a licensing system of sorts, possibly a reference to an economic boycott against the early Christians by the Romans. I wait for the fundamentalists to use this to condemn social security numbers.)
The chapter ends with verse 18, the key line: "This calls for wisdom: let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, its number is six hundred and sixty-six."
What's this all about? The simple answer is that the number 666 is tied to the beast, which is tied to the dragon, and the dragon is (obviously) Satan. Hence, 666 is the mark of Satan.
But, as with any compelling story or symbol, there have been many ways of interpreting this over the centuries, depending on where and when you're reading it.
The most common interpretation is that the dragon is Satan, and the beast from the sea is the Roman emperor and empire, incited by the dragon to persecute the early Christians. By the time of the writing of Revelation, Satan was commonly depicted as a dragon.
The second beast is, well, God knows, but evidently a "false prophet," deceiving the people into worshipping the emperor (the first beast).
Why 666?

In the bible, six is traditionally a number of incompleteness, failure, imperfection. God creates the world in seven days, so seven is the number of fullness, completion, perfection; but six is short of perfection. The number six repeated three times (three is also a mystic number) therefore connotes failure, lack of completion, hence evil or wickedness.
A variant reading of the text, incidentally, says the number of the beast is 616, but 666 has more rhythm and is a better symbolic number.

If the dragon is Rome, the beast is most commonly understood to be the emperor Nero, who reigned from 54 to 68 AD.

The beast makes war upon the saints--Nero engaged in deadly persecution of the early Christians. The number 6 is associated with the beast, and Nero was the sixth emperor of Rome (Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero--yes, I know Julius Caesar technically wasn't an emperor, but he was a Caesar.)
And, finally, under gematria, in which numbers are assigned to letters, 666 is the sum of the numbers of the name Nero Caesar (NRWN QSR) in Hebrew. Presumably this would be why you have to be wise or "have understanding" to reckon the number--you need to know Hebrew gematria.
How about the rest of the imagery? The seven heads, for instance? Take your pick--the seven hills of Rome? The seven kingdoms absorbed into the Roman Empire? The "blasphemous names" on the heads? The Roman emperors were proclaimed as gods. Why is the number of the beast "a human number"? Well, according to Genesis, man was created on the sixth day. (Although note that the number of the beast is not three sixes, but six hundred and sixty six.)

So, the easiest and most common explanation is that the beast and its number 666 refer to the Roman Empire and specifically to Nero.
More fanciful explanations require a belief that the book is prophetic and thus needn't refer to events in the early Christian era. People at various times have interpreted the beast as paganism, the anti-Christ, or (more amusingly) the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, Islam (the name Allah has the numeric value 666), the British Empire, the United States, Nazism, the United Nations, the European Union, Ronald Wilson Reagan (note six letters in each of his three names), etc.
Bottom line: the number 666 has become associated with Satan in western culture, and appears that way in literature and film. Often this is explicit, in films like The Omen, but sometimes it's more subtle. According to Wikipedia:
In Clockwork Orange, two police officers are numbers 665 and 667.
In Pulp Fiction, the briefcase is opened by the code 666.
The opening of Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical Phantom of the Opera is an auction, where lot 666 is the famous chandelier.