MEANING OF NUMBERS IN WESTERN CULTURE: SUPERSTITION OF 666 OR FACT?
Posted by Vishva News Reporter on June 6, 2006

 

 

SUPERSTITION OR REALITY?
MEANING OF NUMBERS 666 IN CHRISTIANITY

  • Chapter 13 in Revelation of the Bible in Christianity, talks about 666 as the number of the beast has nothing to do with the devil.
  •  
  • According to Biblical scholarship 666 is the numerical equivalent or numerical value of the Hebrew letters for the Emperor Nero. Roman Emperor Nero Caesar, WAS a great oppressor of Christians, the Hitler or Stalin of his day, who killed the apostles Peter and Paul in AD 66 .
     

THE DATE: June 6, 2006 = 6/6/06:
WHAT DOES THIS DAY OF 666 MEANS TODAY

Peoples of western culutre believe that today, Tuesday, 6-06-2006 is going to be one hell of a day, literally. It's the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year of the new millennium. According to a widespread interpretation of the Book of Revelation in the Bible, 666 is the "number of the beast."

As you'd expect on what could be the eve of Armageddon, the Internet is rife with talk of Tuesday as "a day of Satanic power," and the apocalypse. Not the kind of day a pregnant mom would choose to bring a baby into the world. Why risk being the one to spawn the agent of the Antichrist? Right?

To enlighten yourself about this notion of 666 among the peoples of western culture please click on the next line outside the box....and this knowledge-spreading PVAF hopes that the knowledge will FREE YOU TO HAVE A HAPPIER DAY TODAY..... 

Also PVAF invites you to share your knowledge with all others about the subject by clicking on the POST A BUTTON and share as much as you like.....



 

June 6, 2006 = 6/6/06:
Date with the devil?
Not likely, say religious experts

The Edmonton Journal:Chris Zdeb,  Saturday, June 03, 2006

EDMONTON - Some people believe Tuesday is going to be one hell of a day, literally. It's the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year of the new millennium. According to a widespread interpretation of the Book of Revelation in the Bible, 666 is the "number of the beast."

As you'd expect on what could be the eve of Armageddon, the Internet is rife with talk of Tuesday as "a day of Satanic power," and the apocalypse. Not the kind of day a pregnant mom would choose to bring a baby into the world. Why risk being the one to spawn the agent of the Antichrist? Right?

Mom-to-be Francesca Renouf, was so fearful, she told other moms in a forum on the website of Mother & Baby, a British parenting magazine, that she had booked an appointment with her doctor to make sure she wouldn't give birth that day. Moms in Texas are reported to have done likewise.

Spokespeople at Edmonton hospitals, especially the Catholic ones that deliver babies, initially gasped when asked if any women had made similar requests to doctors here -- they hadn't thought about Tuesday being 6/6/06. All sounded somewhat relieved later to report that it's expected to be baby business as usual.

And so it should be, say Edmonton's Roman Catholic Archbishop Tom Collins and Pastor Max Solbrekken, an evangelical preacher. We're safe from Satan this Tuesday for several reasons.

First of all, it's not really the year 2006. We're four to six years past that. The date got mixed up around 1582 when the Gregorian calendar in use today replaced the Julian calendar, Solbrekken says.

Secondly, this allegedly beastly day comes up once every 100 years, and since nothing catastrophic happened on June 6, 1906, June 6, 1806, or June 6, 1706, it's reasonable to assume Tuesday, June 6, 2006 should be relatively uneventful, too.

Finally, Chapter 13 in Revelation, which talks about 666 as the number of the beast has nothing to do with the devil, says Collins, who spent two years as a scripture professor writing his doctorate on the Book of Revelation.

He explains "the beast," cited in the passage refers to the Roman empire, specifically Roman Emperor Nero Caesar, a great oppressor of Christians, the Hitler or Stalin of his day, who killed the apostles Peter and Paul in AD 66 .

Some languages or cultures in Biblical times used a system of letters which have numerical value called gematria. According to Biblical scholarship 666 is the numerical equivalent or numerical value of the Hebrew letters for the Emperor Nero, Collins explains.



 

The author of Revelation, John of Patmos, an exiled Christian writing from the island of Patmos and believed to be St. John the Apostle, was writing to other persecuted Christians in the Mediterranean area in a code that they would understand, adds Phil Stevens Jr., a PhD associate professor of anthropology at the University at Buffalo.

"He's not writing for us according to this interpretation. This is a contemporary document for Christians of the time, not a prophecy for the future," Stevens explains.

Collins says the purpose of Revelation is to strengthen Christians living around AD 95 who were faced with either being seduced by the Roman civilization or dying for their faith.

Stevens thinks that people have come to popularly believe that the "beast" is Satan because Christians as a rule don't read Revelation.

"They learn about it through hearsay, but it's rarely one of the books you study in Bible study courses because it's complicated, very difficult, confusing and very hard to make sense of," Stevens says.

Like many superstitions, avoidance of numbers like 13 and 666 because they're believed to be evil, is an example of what the professor calls magical thinking, believing things are associated with other things, something that is universal to all people.

Another example is the sports superstition that because you wore something the last time you played well during a baseball or hockey game, you'll wear the same thing during subsequent days you're going to compete in hopes of recreating the same network of cosmic interconnections of which you were a part of on that successful day, Stevens says.

"Concepts of coincidence, chance and randomness are difficult for people to accept," Stevens says. "The world is complicated and confusing and if we can engage in a little bit of this magical control it helps us, improves our confidence."

But just because Tuesday will probably be an ordinary day for most us, you can still have a hellish experience on June 6. Go and see the remake of the 1970s horror film The Omen which opens that day. Stevens says he's been told by a movie reviewer that the new version of a modern-day birth of an Antichrist figure in the form of an evil boy named Damien is "terrible. Don't waste your money."

czdeb@thejournal.canwest.com

© The Edmonton Journal 2006



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