666

The pope has often been accused of being the antichrist. For one thing, it's obvious that the antichrist comes to us in disguise. And what better disguise than the pope himself! (Revelation 12:9 'Satan, which deceiveth the whole world')

Then again, the antichrist could be anybody who doesn't look like an antichrist.... Hmmm. Let's see what other 'proof' there is.

Ah yes, that upside-down cross (shown on the left) that the pope favours. This cross is commonly known as Satan's Cross, because it points downwards to Hell.

And then there's the bent cross (right) - all twisted and mis-shaped.

But actually the bent cross is to remind us that Jesus was crucified on a rough wooden structure. And the formal name for the upside-down cross is St. Peter's Cross, named after the first pope, Peter, who was crucified on a cross. At his own humble request, Peter was hung in the opposite orientation of Christ. I guess that rules out the Satan's Cross theory.

OK, one more shot to prove the pope is the antichrist:

Revelation 13:18 tells us that the mark of the Beast is 666. The pope is 'Vicar of the Son of God' and in Latin (the language of the Vatican) this is Vicarius Filli Dei. Now most of us don't know much Latin, but we recognize from a clock face that 'I' corresponds to '1', 'V' corresponds to '5', and 'X' corresponds to '10'. There are a few other Latin (and Greek and Hebrew) numbers represented by letters: 'L' is 50, 'C' (century) is 100, 'D' is '500', and 'M' is 1,000.

So with that code, we can calculate the value of Vicarius Filli Dei. Ignoring the letters that have no numeric value (a, r, s, F and e) and reading 'u' as 'v', since the Romans didn't have a 'u', we see that Vicarius is 112, Filli is 53, and Dei is 501. Add those three numbers together and we have (ta taaaa!) six hundred and sixty six; the Mark of the Beast.

The problem, however, is that Vicarius Filli Dei is not actually the pope's title; just a title made up by people who want to support their Catholic-bashing arguments. It would be fun (although pointless) to take names or titles of other famous people and see if their numeric value adds up to 666.

Some scholars believe that the 666 in Revelation points to Nero Caesar, since the Hebrew characters of that name add up to 666. Others contend that the number should really be transliterated to 665, or even 616.

1666, the year of the Great Fire of London.

But not such a tragedy. Although 90% of the city burnt down, a relatively small number of people are reported to have lost their lives. It gave a good opportunity to rebuild better quality housing and was credited with ending the plague.

Did the preceding '1' of '1666' nullify the evil?

Many have tried to explain why the number is 666, and some have gone on to associate any occurrence of 666 as being proof of evil.

For example, if you add the value of the six current Japanese coins (1, 5, 10, 50, 100 and 500 yen - which happen to coincide with all the Roman numeral values less than 1,000), you get 666 yen. This proves beyond all doubt that the Japanese monetary system is based on evil.

Well at least, it proves to those people who want to believe such things. Seems a bit shaky to conclude this based on just a subset of Japanese currency. If we also add the current Japanese notes of 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 and 10,000 yen, our total is 18,666 yen and our evil theory goes awry. Sure, 18=6+6+6, but the 2,000 yen note was introduced to celebrate the year 2000 and has practically disappeared from circulation now. And come to think of it, the 500 yen coin is relatively new.