In a nice twist on this, I can remember back in the eighties when there was a rumor going around that the antichrist would have six letters in each of his names. Guess who was supposed to be this antichrist? The conservative hero and saint Ronald Wilson Reagan. Don’t hear that story much anymore.
Here’s a Jehovah’s Witness spin on 666. Since 7 represents the perfection of God’s creation, (seven days creation and all that) 6 represents imperfection. The number 6 repeated three times is only for emphasis. So all the number really means is really bad imperfection. Not that scary at all.
Leave it to Witnesses to take all the drama out of fire and brimstone.
This happened a couple of times when I was working at a convenience store. The customer usually just grabbed an impulse item from the counter and had me add that to the sale to change the total.
A few years ago, Oklahoma put some question up for a state vote. The questions are given a number in order, and sure enough, this was State Question 666. The proponents tried to get the number changed to no avail, and the it lost resoundingly. I don’t remember what the proposal was, but it was innocuous.
When I was a lad we enjoyed driving on Route 666, The Devil’s Highway. Too good to last, they changed it to Route 491 after some deaths on the New Mexico portion (Not to mention constant sign theft).
Some texts have 616, the bulk have 666. The idea is that 616 is the Hebrew Gematria for NeRO KaeSaR but that 666 is for the alternate version NeRON KaeSaR. Btw, the 616 version has been known about for years & is often footnoted in modern translations. The breathlessly-reported news story a couple years ago about the radical new discovery of 616 wasn’t a surprise at all to anyone who even paid attention to such things.
Oh, you could do so much with that. Just think, put a proposal on a ballot to make gay marriage unconstitutional, and number it 666. The proposal is voted down and gay marriage is IN.
I assume most of you have heard about Westboro Baptist Church, of “God hates fags” fame? Its address is 3701 SW 12th St Topeka, KS 66604, USA. Somehow seems appropriate!
