Six Hundred and Sixty Something

Well it's that time of the century. The one day a century where the sixes all line up just wrong. The number of course comes from Revelation 13:18, where it is said to be the number of the beast from the sea.

The most popular interpretation, the Left Behind approach, sees this Beast as a figure called the Antichrist (a word Revelation never uses). In this scenario, the Antichrist is an end time figure who will persecute the church and enslave the world to sin in the years around the time of Christ's return. Call it Left Behind, Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay in the 70's, John Darby in the 1800's (the originator of this line of interpretation), individuals are said to need a "mark" in their right arm or forehead with the number six hundred and sixty something (you know) for them to be able to buy or sell.

So there have always been speculations. Bar codes on our bodies, implanted chips, these are the stuff of the popular Christian mind. Then there are speculations on the name of the beast. The number here is the "number of his name." Ancient languages did not have separate symbols for numbers and letters--the same symbols served double duty. So you could pretend that the letters of a person's name were numbers and add up the number of someone's name. Matthew does this when it divides up the family tree of Jesus into groups of 14. David in Hebrew is D-V-D or 4-6-4. Add them up and you have 14.

So Christians for the last hundred years have added up everyone's name from Roosevelt to Gorbachov to Reagan. Usually you can do it in a way that comes out with the magic number of today's namesake.

What did Revelation mean originally? It seems hard not to come up with Nero's name after reading the imagery of these central chapters of Nero, although there is disagreement among original meaning scholars. If you take Neron Caesar, put the letters in Hebrew, you get 666. If you leave the n off, you get 616, which is one of the manuscript variations at this point of the text.

Nero was of course fatally wounded (cf. Rev. 13:3, 14)--he committed suicide. But there was a legend attested at this time that he was still alive and going to return from the east with the Parthians. A writing called Sibylline Oracles 5 records this common idea of the late first century.

This part of Revelation of course swims in imagery of Rome, which the early Christians referred to as Babylon because Revelation had destroyed Jerusalem like Babylon had so many years before (cf. 1 Pet. 5:13). The mark of the beast without which one might not buy or sell is enigmatic, but I've always been intrigued if it might refer to coinage of the emperor Domitian, which I believe said "Our Lord and God" on it. I can see Christians having a faith crisis over such money--am I ascribing deity to the emperor if I use this money? Of course most ancient Mediterraneans would have preferred to barter anyway, it being more of an agricultural economy than a monetary one.

But the clincer for thinking Nero and Domitian comes from Revelation 17. There is a woman drunk with the blood of the saints (the Roman empire; 17:6). She sits on a beast with seven heads (17:7). The seven heads are seven hills who are seven kings, five of which are dead, one of which is, a seventh of which will reign for a short period. The beast is the eighth.

I can't imagine that anyone at the churches to which Revelation was originally addressed would not have thought of Rome as a city with seven hills. And the first five emperors: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero. Nero thus is likely the fatally wounded beast prototype (although Caligula was assasinated). If we can ignore the year of three emperors (69), the sixth would be Vespasian, the seventh Titus, and the eighth Domitian.

Here we run into problems. Everyone says that Revelation was written during the reign of Domitian. Yet the timing of Revelation 17 would date things during Vespasian, the emperor when Jerusalem was destroyed. For this reason some suggest Revelation may have been written over some period of time, starting during the reign of Vespasian but not finished until the reign of Domitian.

This is all fun, fine, and dandy. It seems reasonable enough that Nero is the prototype of the beast, who is either Domitian or perhaps a symbol of the final conflict between the Roman Empire and Christendom. But what of our belief in inerrancy? The original meaning of the text doesn't really seem too hard to figure out here (at least I've tried), but what does it say inerrantly to today?

I don't know for sure, and I welcome the help of others. Here are just some starter thoughts. Prophecy seems to me by its very nature more polyvalent (capable of multiple interpretations/fulfillments) than other parts of Scripture. Is Mark 13 about the end times or the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70? Perhaps it's both mixed together. Is Ezekiel 40 about the rebuilt temple of 516BC (which wasn't nearly so grand) or about heaven in some way?

Perhaps this part of Revelation should be read against the continual struggle in all times between God's people and the secular world in which they find themselves. The world, with its material and ungodly values, will always tend to persecute those who do not play by the rules, who do not take the mark of its values. There will always be Neros and Domitians who will try to force Christians to succumb, who will shed the blood of the saints. The day is coming when God will vindicate His people, just as Rome itself finally was defeated. Meanwhile the church lived on stronger than ever (see Augustine's City of God).

Ironically, the best application of Revelation 13:18 today has to do with our economic practices. In a strange twist of irony, American Christians have come to associate Christian values straightforwardly with the values of capitalism. I think capitalism is the most beneficial system myself, but only because the world is a fallen world. Capitalism is based on the idea that everyone acts in their own self-interest and so sets up a system where buyers pay the least they can and sellers get the most they can. A best case scenario evolves where we all meet in the middle.

But this is not Christian in the sense of the ideal--it is based on selfishness and self-preservation. It is most appropriate to our world because of our human nature. Far more Christian in spirit would be to give to those who have need and to work as the servant of others (i.e., the unattainable ideal of communism). 6-6-06 bids us reflect a little today on our economic values and whether we have sold out to the world's values while at the same time convincing ourselves that they are God's. That's a bit like taking the mark of the beast.

I think John Wesley had a beautiful philosophy of money. "Earn all you can, Skimp all you can, Give all you can." The skimp part is my translation of Wesley. He said "save."