There's a devilishly odd nexus of theology, mathematics and commercialism on
the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year. OK, it's just the sixth year
of this millennium, but insisting on calling it 2006 takes the devil-may-care
fun out of calendar-gazing.
Something about the number 666 brings out the worry, the hope and even the
humor in people, said the Rev. Felix Just, a professor of theology at the
University of San Francisco. A Jesuit priest, Just has taught both apocalyptic
theory and mathematics and maintains a "666-Numbers of the Beast" Web site that
contains history, theology, math and precisely 66 one-line jokes about 666.
You can even make sport of it, betting online whether the apocalypse will
happen on that date. The good news is that one online oddsmaker has made the
world a 100,000-to-1 favorite to survive Tuesday ! something that Just said is
supported by theology.
"Many people avoid the number; they're afraid of it almost and there's
absolutely no reason to be afraid of it," Just said. "It is not a prediction of
future events. It is not supposed to be taken as a timetable for when the world
is going to end."
It all started with Revelation 13:18 in the Bible: "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."
The beast is also known as the Antichrist, according to some apocalyptic
theories.
Many scholars, such as Just, say the beast is really a coded reference !
using Hebrew letters for numbers ! for the despotic Roman emperor Nero and 616
appears instead of 666 in some ancient manuscripts. The Book of Revelation isn't
prophesying a specific end of times but "is about the overall cosmic struggle of
good versus evil," Just said.
But for some more apocalyptic theologians, the end of times is coming, even
if not specifically on Tuesday. The evangelical Raptureready.com Web site puts
its "rapture index" at 156, calling that "fasten your seatbelts" time.
It's not the date June 6 that's worrisome, but the signs in our society of
the approach of the 666 antichrist, said the Rev. Tim LaHaye, founder of a
self-named ministry and co-author of the best-selling "Left Behind" series of
apocalyptic novels. And even though LaHaye said Tuesday isn't the date of the
apocalypse, his Left Behind Web site promotes his new book "The Rapture" with an
ominous "06.06.06 Will You Be Ready."
"I don't think that people understand that 666 is not a good time," LaHaye
said. He said he sees signs of an upcoming "tribulation period" that leads to
the Antichrist's arrival in a movement toward one-world government, a single
economic system and single religion.
Apocalyptic culture and theology, especially those surrounding 666, "is
especially appealing for people in an underdog situation," said Just (pronounced
Yoost).
So people have looked for ! and found ! 666 in all sorts of places. Believers
in the number's power have used biblical letter-numeric code to convert the
names of countless political leaders, including many popes, to come out 666,
marking them as that generation's Antichrist. That includes Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
It's a number that the Reagans didn't want as an address when they moved out
of the White House in 1989 to the Los Angeles neighborhood of Bel-Air. So they
changed their address from 666 St. Cloud Road to 668. In 1980, a TV host and
others rigged the number 666 to come up in a Pennsylvania lottery drawing. It's
a number that is part of every UPC barcode on groceries (a coincidence according
to the code's inventor). With biblical coding, 666 also is the number for the
WWW of the World Wide Web.
The math of 666 is also open to biblical interpretation and manipulation.
Just points out that 666 is the sum of all the numbers on a roulette wheel.
Other oddities include variations on pi and products of prime number
multiplication.
There's also something special about the number 6, which in the Bible stands
for man, said Brian C. Jones, a religion professor at Wartburg College in Iowa.
"People need to lighten up about this," Jones said, adding that it's hard to
take a Tuesday seriously as a day of reckoning. "Monday, we always hate Mondays.
Wednesday is hump day. Friday sometimes has the 13th attached to it. But
Tuesdays and Thursdays, they don't ring for me as days when bad things happen or
good things happen. They're filler days."
But it's a day to cash in on the number associated with the apocalypse.
Tuesday will mark the debut for a remake of the classic 1970s horror film "The
Omen," the publication of LaHaye's new "Left Behind" book, and an Ann Coulter
polemic called "Godless: The Church of Liberalism."
And for truly cashing in, there's the nonsectarian online sports book,
BetUS.com, which gives Earth a better than sporting chance. At 100,000-to-1
odds, if you bet the maximum $500 that the world will survive and it does, you
win half a penny. If you bet $100 that the apocalypse happens and it does, you
can earn a cool $10 million, but you might have a devil of a time collecting it.
People are betting both ways, company spokesman Mike Foreman said.
Commercialism based on numbers and fear bothers American University
astronomer Richard Berendzen.
"What it really does is use some coincidence of some numbers for commercial
gain," he said. "It's superstition and money when it comes down to it. And
that's about as satanic as you can get."
Still scared about the date 666? Jack Horkheimer of the Miami Space Transit
Planetarium has a piece of advice: "If it really spooks you, you can stand on
your head and it'll be 999."