{"id":1477,"date":"2014-12-16T00:15:49","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T04:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/?p=1477"},"modified":"2014-12-16T13:41:20","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T17:41:20","slug":"the-number-of-the-beast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/archives\/1477","title":{"rendered":"The number of the Beast"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite Advent poems is Yeat’s “The Second Coming,<\/a>” with its line, “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,\/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Granted, not your typical Advent\/Christmas poem. <\/p>\n

I grew up among pietists, evangelicals and biblical literalists to one extent or another. I must confess that a lot of the cognition in those traditions of faith never really took hold with me. Perhaps I was too critical for my own spiritual benefit even as a child. Issues about biblical inerrancy never interested me. During junior high school I learned that there are no extant original biblical manuscripts, the basis upon which the claims for biblical inerrancy are built (\u201cThere are no errors in the original manuscripts.\u201d). That being the case it became apparent to me that it was a question of choice to believe in inerrant manuscripts\u2014a belief that made no contribution to the quality of one\u2019s Christian life or to one\u2019s obedience to the message of the Bible, from what I could observe.<\/p>\n

While I don\u2019t hold to a literalist reading of apocalyptic literature I do enjoy scary movies (apparently it\u2019s an enneagram 5 thing). I enjoyed the good scare I got watching the movie \u201cA Thief in the Night,\u201d in high school. I even find Hollywood apocalyptic good-vs evil movies fun to watch, even with their over-the-top populist misinterpretations of prophetic texts, angels, demons, heaven and hell, and end-times dystopia themes. <\/p>\n

Literalist interpretations about end-times never go out of style. They\u2019ve been around since before the middle ages. If anything, it preaches and sells books. And it doesn’t take long for someone to identify any new presidential American world leader as the Beast prophesied in Scripture and the harbinger of the end-of-days. It brought to mind an interpretive list of the number of the beast: 666. <\/p>\n

666: Number of the beast
\n668: Number of the next door neighbor of the beast
\n660: Approximate number of the Beast
\nDCLXVI: Roman numeral of the Beast
\n666.0000: Number of the High Precision Beast
\n0.666: Number of the Millibeast
\n1\/666: Common Denominator of the Beast
\n666[-\/(-1)]: Imaginary number of the Beast
\n1010011010: Binary of the Beast
\n29A: Hexidecimal of the Beast
\n-666: Negative number of the Beast
\n00666-6666: Zip code of the Beast
\n$665.95: Retail price of the Beast
\n$699.25: Price of the Beast plus 5% state sales tax
\n$769.95: Price of the Beast with all accessories and replacement soul
\n$656.66: Wal-Mart price of the Beast
\n$646.66: Next week’s Wal-Mart price of the Beast
\nPhillips 666: Gasoline of the Beast
\nRoute 666: Way of the Beast
\n665: Older brother of the Beast
\n667: Younger brother of the Beast
\n6-6-6: Fertilizer of the Beast
\n666lb cap: Weight limit of the Beast
\n666 F: Oven temperature for cooking roast “Beast”
\n666k: Retirement plan of the Beast
\n666 mg: Recommended Minimum Daily Requirement of Beast
\n6.66%: 5 year CD rate at First Beast of Hell, $666 minimum deposit.
\n1-800-666-6666: Toll free number of the Beast
\nLotus 6-6-6: Spreadsheet of the Beast
\nWord 6.66: Word Processor of the Beast
\ni66686: CPU of the Beast
\n666i: BMW of the Beast
\n666-66-6666: Social security number of the Beast
\n666.AC.com: URL of the Beast
\nIAM 666: License plate number of the Beast
\nFormula 666: All Purpose Cleaner of the Beast
\nWD-666: Spray Lubricant of the Beast
\n66.6 MHz: FM radio station of the Beast
\n666 KHz: AM Radio station of the Beast
\n1-900-666-0666: Live Beasts! One-on-one pacts! Call Now! Only $6.66\/minute. Over 18 only please.
\nDSM-666: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Beast
\n668: Next-door neighbor of the Beast
\na+rw: The file permissions of the Beast
\n666: Dewey call number of the beast
\nHL666: LC call number of the beast
\n666@hell.org: E-mail of the beast
\nhttp:\/\/666.hell.org\/~beast: Home page of the beast
\n666 666 666 6666: Visa Number of the Beast (It’s everywhere he wants to be). 6\/66 – Expiration date (the card, not him)
\n66.6 C: Temperature of the beast
\n\u201cHell” v.6 n.66, pp. 6-66: Citation of the beast
\nHell in A Major (op.66, no.6): Etude of the Beast
\n1666: The Beast “redecorates” London (The year of the great fire of London)
\nThickth, thickth, thickth: Cindy Brady (with lithp) referring to the Beast
\n666 6th AVE #666: Mailing address of the Beast
\n666: Exact number of licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll Center of the Beast
\n666: The number that all VCR clocks flash in HELL
\n6.66%: percentage of fat of “lean” Beast prior to cooking
\n6\/6\/66: The birthdate of the Beast
\n6666: The PIN of the Beast
\n25.806975: The square root of the Beast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite Advent poems is Yeat’s “The Second Coming,” with its line, “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,\/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Granted, not your typical Advent\/Christmas poem. I grew up among … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[241],"class_list":["post-1477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","tag-add-new-tag"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1477"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3089,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1477\/revisions\/3089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}