I suppose I am not very well informed. I only know what people have told me. I always thought that 666 represented the antichrist. And as far as the large numbers go, I was only playing devils advocate (an interesting choice of words in this thread). And ritalin demon slaying was just a role imposed upon me. I kinda like the sound of it.
Well, just to be technical on all this stuff:
Antichrist is a term that shows up in the epistles of John (and nowhere else) referring to anyone whose message is opposed to that of Jesus. There is no reference in Scripture to the antichrist.
The beast appears only in the book of Revelation. While it is clearly intended to indicate someone who is persecuting the Church, there is no clear reference to any particular person (or being).
Different people have linked “the beast” and “the antichrist” and “the devil” in popular literature or some preaching, but there is no specific passage in Scripture that links them together.
People who talk as if they are clearly the same are creating their own non-Scriptural theology.
Oh, Kalahari Khala of the 15 posts…
No, I’m not.
This is not a post party, I was merely using my post count as an intro to my General Question about this numerological oddity.
but thanks! 
Erm… the number 6 is not imperfect through being one short of the “divine” 7. In fact, mathematically (and this goes back to the Greeks), 6 is perfect, it being equal to the sum of its integral divisors (i.e. 1 + 2 + 3 = 6)
And the Beast refers to any member of a group of cyanoid-blooded, three-jointed aliens intent on causing havoc to human society (not to mention depriving the Burroughs family of a home universe)…
(For those who wonder, cf. R.A. Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast)
LL
Of course, the Jews weren’t Greek (and they spent the better part of 250 years opposing Greek domination and Greek culture). So, while it was true that Greek culture did impose itself on Jewish thoughts and that a good many Christians in the audience of Revelation would have been Greek, it remains true that Revelation was an Apocalyptic work and, thus, Jewish in nature. The apocalyptic genre as demonstrated in John’s Revelation was pretty much a Jewish invention and they got to set the rules for it. Thus it would follow the “rules” laid down by the other Jewish apocalypses and would more likely demonstrate Jewish rather than Greek numerology.