Sara in Mobile, Alabama, listening on 1410 AM Archangel radio, you are on with
Jimmy Akin, what's your question? Hi, I teach at seventh grade Sunday
School class, and this past week one of my students asked about why 666 was
affiliated with the devil, and I wasn't sure of the best answer for him. Okay,
well, the Bible doesn't associate 666 directly with the devil. What it does
do, in the book of Revelation, is it depicts a number, specifically, three kind
of monstrous beings. The first one we meet in Revelation chapter 12, and it's a
great dragon that has seven heads and ten horns. And that dragon is later
identified as Satan. In chapter 13 of Revelation, we meet another monstrous
being that's described as a beast that emerges from the sea. And this beast also
has seven heads and ten horns, and looks a lot like the devil therefore, but he's
different than the devil and he emerges from the sea. Clearly, though, he's allied
with the devil, because the devil gives this beast power, and encourages people
to worship this beast, and so this beast is kind of the devil's agent on Earth.
And there are different interpretations about what this beast represents. In my
opinion, it represents the line of the Roman emperors, and specifically the
Emperor Nero. And the reason I say that is because--or it has a special
connection with the Emperor Nero--the reason I say that is because we're told
that the number of this beast is 666, and so by extension you could kind of say,
"Well, the number's associated with the devil," but really in the book of
Revelation it's actually the number of the Beast, and the Beast is not the same
as the devil, but they are allied with each other. That's the basic literal
relationship that's going on here. In terms of if you want to go a little
deeper into the meaning of the number, well, scholars have actually pointed out
quite a few different interesting things about this number.
The ancients made kind of a study of numbers, and were very interested in the
different properties they had, and one of the things about the number 666 is that
it's what's known as a triangular number. And I won't explain what that is because
you kind of need a diagram to understand what a triangular number is and I can't
do that on the radio, but Google "triangular number 666" and
you'll find out some interesting stuff. Also, in ancient languages like Greek and
Latin and Hebrew and Aramaic, they didn't have a separate set of numbers,
and so then the letters the alphabet doubled as numbers, and what that meant
is you could take a word, like a person's name or a phrase, and add up the
numerical value of the letters and get a number. And in fact, if you take "NERO
CAESAR" and add it up, you get 666. And so put that together with other evidence
that we have in Revelation about the Beast and his activities, which include
persecuting Christians and demanding worship just like the Roman emperors did,
there's a good case to be made that the Beast is to be identified with the line
of Roman emperors and has a special connection with the emperor Nero. And
that's one of the reasons that 666 is his number, because that's what you get
if you add up "NERO CAESAR" the way it would ordinarily be spelled at the time.
Sara? Very interesting, thank you. Sure thing. Very good, thank you, and Jimmy, just for
clarification, even if that 666 represents "NERO CAESAR," is it also the
case that, because this is a kind of a, not poetic, but a-- Symbolic. --symbolic
language, it can also mean other things in addition? Yes, in fact it does. We
know that because in Revelation 17 we're told that the seven heads of the Beast
represent both seven mountains, like the seven hills of Rome, AND seven kings
and that seems to be the first seven Roman emperors, which would be Augustus,
Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero--and we're
told five of them are fallen, so that would be those five--one of them IS--that
would be Nero's successor, Galba--and then it talks about a seventh who's gonna
come and reign for a short while, and that would be Galba's successor Otto, who
reigned for like three months. Oh okay, okay. So, but now what I was thinking
was, what about, could this refer also to things that have not yet happened? Like
in our future? Yeah. Yeah, sure, there can be echoes of these things in our future,
just like prophecies also have echoes in later times, but in terms of what the
literal primary fulfillment is, at least in my opinion, best money is on a
first century fulfillment. Well, thank you Jimmy Akin.