One of the most sinister figures in the Bible is the so-called "Beast" from the Book of Revelation. Portrayed as a frightening monster and identified with the ominous number 666, the Beast has been the subject of an enormous amount of discussion down through the centuries.
We read about him:
"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" (Rev. 13:18).
And:
"This calls for a mind with wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated;
they are also seven kings, five of whom have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he comes he must remain only a little while" (Rev. 17:9-10).
Countless individuals, both past and future, have been proposed as the true identity of the Beast, but what does the evidence from the Bible say?
In this video, I try to take a calm, balanced look at the evidence from the perspective of the original Christians reading the book of Revelation in the first century and suggest that the evidence points to an individual that many will find very surprising, especially if they view the book of Revelation as applying almost exclusively to the future.
Here's the video!
By the way, I'm preparing a Secret Information Club communique in which I "interview" Pope Benedict about the Book of Revelation.
If you'd like to know what Pope Benedict says about Revelation, you should sign up by Friday, May 25, and you'll get the special interview on Saturday morning.
To sign up, you should click here to go to www.SecretInfoClub.com.
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The identification of the Beast with Nero is by now quite traditional in Biblical studies, isn’t it?
“The moral of this story please attend to very well: // Exactly who the Devil is is often hard to tell. // He may be short and ugly or he may be fair and tall, // He may just be the man for whom you voted in the fall.”
—from “The Farmer on the Dole”, by P.D.Q. Bach
JMJ Hello ? I signed up for your Secretinfo, Nothing happens, I tried a few times. Also for your daily blog (whatever) Nothing, recieved no email reply. Thank you. Respectfully with Love, Joseph J. Pippet
Couldn’t. Nor could I sign up for the secret club. What’s going on?
JMJ Also while Im at I tried to watch the above Video, It plays for a couple seconds than stops starts playing after a minute or so stops playing.
Joseph and Russell: Sorry for the difficulty you’re having! If you email me at jimmy@secretinfoclub.com, I’ll add you on my end, and you’ll get a confirmation email back to confirm your membership.
The same goes for anyone else having difficulty.
Thank you for your interest!
@Hieronymus, there are still many groups that point at the catholic Chuirch and the Pope as antichrist.
I think an important discussion to have is what to do with this information; how does it inform us today. I look at Revelation like the OT prophetic writings in that it may represent a “type” of what to expect at the coming of Christ.
What should concern us more is, who or what is “babylon the great” or the “!@#$% of babylon?” She portends the beast.
After these things I heard a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, “Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honor and power belong to the Lord our God! For true and righteous are His judgments, because He has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication; and He has avenged on her the blood of His servants shed by her.” Again they said, “Alleluia! Her smoke rises up forever and ever!” And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sat on the throne, saying, “Amen! Alleluia!” Then a voice came from the throne, saying, “Praise our God, all you His servants and those who fear Him, both small and great!”
Dear Jimmy,
You are one of the best apologists - ever! I have learned so much from you & always look forward to hearing you on Catholic Answers Live…
Numbers, in the days of early Christians, had meanings known to Jews and Christians. For instance to repeat something three times was to say that something is really really really true. The number for fish is 5 because they were created on the 5th day. The number for man is 6 because Man was created on the 6th day. As stated earlier the number of the beast is a human number (6) as would have been common knowledge for jews and Christians in the early days but hidden from non believers (it is too simple) 666 is 6 repeated three times. Meaning that the beast will set the things of man over the will of God. I guess that would mean the push of homosexuality as normal. Abortion as a human right and the twisting of “Liberty” to mean self gratification and license to the extent that the children of darkness would accuse God of being less charitable then the beast.
just curious (and mild alarm bells ringing), why are you offering “1st Century Christian Writings That Aren’t in the New Testament” to those who sign up for your secret club? these sound oddly like gnostic writings which the Catholic church removed from the new testament for a good reason…
That Scripture was canonically closed, by God’s guidance, after the book of Revelation and the death of the last Apostle, doesn’t mean Christians stopped writing. The Fathers of the Church aren’t included in Scripture, but we read and honor their teaching. We just have to exercise discernment. Even from Scripture we know that others were writing who were false teachers (Judaizers, Gnostics), and that they, too, would continue to write.
Carmen, from what I understand, the Catholic Church did NOT remove any books from the New Testament or the Bible as a whole. They only chose the books that went in. That is not to say no other documents had truth to them, just that the ones they did choose were impeccable. Other documents of the era point to the practices and beliefs at the time, even if they aren’t 100% correct.
Ann Marie: Thank you! You are most kind!
Carmen: As Dancingcrane and Alison point out, there were Christian writings from the early centuries that were orthodox but were not added to the New Testament, including the writings of the Church fathers. That’s the kind of material (orthodox writings, including those of the apostolic fathers) that I’m talking about.
Jimmy,
Excellent job unfolding this difficult passage for us. I was wondering though, does the beast also signify some entity to come in the last days, much like the destruction of the Temple foreshadows the end the world? Keep up the good work!
@David Spry
The problem with your argument is that the number of the Beast is not 666, it is DCLXVI in Roman numerals, 29A in hexadecimal, and 1010011010 in binary. That is, the Arabic numeral system was not in use in the Roman Empire at that time, and we should be careful to avoid peculiarities due to our present numeral system.
To me , 666 is identifiable as the evil one working though human beings. We all meet the description, from time to time, when. we dishonour God by disobedience, as did_Satan. Humans can be angelic or demonic by choice at any time. Jesus tells Peter, “Get behind me, Satan.” It is easy for us to fall into the same trap that caught. Peter, the spirit of the Beast (666). We need instead to honor God in all we do and desire.
Dear Jimmy, according to a much higher authority than you the beast is the European parliament. Please read this for yourself and get back to us . Let us know what you believe then. www.thewarningsecondcoming.com
thanks for the clarifications! i’ll check out that mailing list :)
Can you please respond to David Spry? I am confused…
This article and the video are godsend. The seventh day adventist church is distributing a book titled ’ antichrist” written some 90 years ago in which the Pope is depicted as the beast and with several pictures that are very hurting. They also use the numerical letters to show Pope as the figure 666. Thanks for the presenting the truth.
Forgot to add spotlight annotations at the end to enable people to subscribe. Just thought you’d like to know. Great content, by the way :)
Under the principle of Scripture interprets Scripture, I have found two interesting facts.
The only New Testament chapter/verse number 6:66 is in the Gospel of John. It is about the disciples who left Jesus because they could not accept eating his flesh and drinking his blood. So they gave up on him. So, 666 could refer to rejecting the Real Presence in the Eucharist and the necessity that Jesus sets up of eating and drinking his flesh and blood sacramentally present in the Eucharist.
The only other textual reference to this number refers to King Solomon doing heavy taxation and piling up wealth. He had a threefold violation that fulfilled the prophetic warning against numerous wives, piling up wealth, and horses (representing military power). It’s the power of empire—money, sex, and power—opposite of the three evangelical counsels. And it didn’t matter how wise King Solomon was, the exploitation of empire let to the rending of the kingdom in the next generation. So, no matter how faithful or wise we are, the more we love money, sex, and power, and our empire, the more we embrace the number 666.
There are a lot of Christians who should be shaking in their shoes on both of these points.
I’m just thinking about David’s comments on numbers. If the number for Man is 6, and one takes it as a generalization, are not all men a part of the anti-Christ? Something to think about. Perhaps more people need to stop worrying about the respect of men and turn to the mercy of Christ.
kentuckyliz: this assumes that the New Testament writers could have known that someone would compile their writings and number the verses, and that they would have numbered them precisely the same way. Am I right? Even if we are certain they intended all of their writing for posterity (some of it, I understand, more clearly responds to local issues at that time, for instance, heresies that shunned food or marriage), I don’t think they were sitting there numbering it up as they went. It was most likely someone else who did that.
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My own slightly-less-than-half-serious pet theory was that the Beast is the “Isaac” of Fair Isaac Corporation. 666 would seem to be a reasonable lower limit of what’s considered a decent credit score, without which you practically cannot buy or sell. (I know, I know, I’m stretching it.) :)
@ kentuckyliz
you might want to google & see when the ‘chapter & verse’ was introduced as a handy way of referencing sacred scriptures. You’ll find it happened a long, long time after Revelation was written!
Just so you know—I didn’t even look at the url and at first I thought this really was an anti-Catholic source..I just about deleted/unfriended you! You set that up quite well.
The meaning of the book or the Bible in general means…“Stay awake, You cannot know the day your Lord is coming.” Matt. 24:36, 42. “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” The only power and the only justice in the universe life in the risen Lord. Revelation insists that we resist world wide pagan and unchristian attitudes in our lives.
Jimmy, I have a topic for you to throw out into the websphere, for readers that THINK to answer: my nephew made his first Holy Communion on Sunday, and a friend of the family told us that he did not know how Pres. Obama would fare, with so many Catholics being at Mass this season for Communions/Confirmation, and with his news that he (and Joe Biden) support same sex marriage. Another friend said, “Well, I’m Catholic, and I support same sex marriage.” So maybe we can have a discussion (please, just among my fellow Catholics that can THINK for themselves) about how to reply to people like that. My nephew is 9 and he was intently listening. Argh.. I’m disgusted. And pro-traditional marriage.
I have a pretty clear idea who the beast is, and his name sounds like Barack Hussein Obama.
Hello Disgusted RC above. Your idea of discussing homosexuals pretending to be married is a ridiculous idea. A person is only Catholic if they surrender to God’s commands. Many many times in the Bible, and in His holy Catholic Church, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit explicitly covered the topic of sex, lust, masturbation, etc. outside of marriage (the union of three = one man, one woman, and God, for life = the only recognized marriage). There’s your discussion. Got it? (in other words know one cares what you think because only God’s commands matter.)
The whole Catholic ideal is a call to “repentance and commitment”, to resist all evil. Never compromising to sin or a sinful government.
I only ask to be included on your list-serve. Your video discussion would “drop” and I’m unable to access “http://www.secretinfoclub.com”.
Christopher Michael: I think you give him too much credit.
Wikipedia has a good article about the Beast of Revelation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_(Revelation)
“The conspiracy theory of “Vicarius Filii Dei” (Vicar of the Son of God), supposedly considered an expansion of the historic title “Vicarius Christi”, is a term used in the spurious “Donation of Constantine” to refer to Saint Peter. From the 19th century, because the interpretation of Uriah Smith, some groups of Seventh-day Adventists argue that the sentence is identified with the “number of the beast” (666), and would be used in the [papal tiara], calling the Pope would be the Antichrist.[14] But due to lack of images or any source of Use “Vicarius Filii Dei” the tiara or mitre, and the term was never used as an official title (as well as the fact that their founder Ellen Gould White’s name also adds up to 666 by the same system), the claim was abandoned by many Seventh-day Adventists.[16][17][18][19]” (Wikipedia, Vicarius Christi)
Some including catholics believe that they can choose the article of faith as they like. Why ? Because they are not aware of the teachings of the Church. That is why John Paul Ii wanted a re-evangelization in Europe and America. Only after such evangelization, people will come to know of the Church and Jesus Christ.
Jimmy, you are UTTERLY wrong. What do you think you are doing by presenting such a false interpretation? I Know you. How could you have fallen that much? With this video, are you saying that the beast WAS Nero, right? So, you imply that the revelation is for events ALREADY PAST! You are misleading and deceiving people with your WRONG interpretation: You have not taken into account all the events as explained in the sequence. For example, if Revelation is telling things already past 2 millenia, then what would you say about the events that are described before and after? Where is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ? Why don’t you mention about the Abomination of Desolation, the blasphemous Dome on the Rock, and that islam is the religion of the antichrist? Because YOU are also an instrument of satan, and you are blind.
Max, surely Islam is not the only disipline which teaches falsehoods.
The Beast could only be Nero in a very limited sense: that is, only if the Beast is in fact a *symbol* of antiChrist powers in human history—of which Nero was merely one manifestation. After all, the Beast is ultimately destroyed by the return of Jesus Christ—which Nero himself wasn’t. Therefore Nero cannot exhaust the meaning of the Beast.
666 Has Arrived
666 is of mouth shut and fingertips on both hands, as head has two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and a mouth, which add up to seven, since keyboard is used in communication, people don’t open mouth to talk, as mouth is closed, so there are only 6 open; hand is of arm, palm, and fingers, arm has two sections, palm has one section, and fingers have three sections, so fingertips are number six, on both sides. Keyboard is 666.
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