What is the number of the beast about?

Answer 1

It's a mystery. In the 13th chapter of his Revelation, St. John cites the number 666 as "the number of a man" and says wise readers can figure it out. Almost certainly he was hinting at someone who would have been known to people in his own era. The leading candidate is Nero, the debauched emperor of Rome. However, the exact personage was never nailed down and through the ages people have contructed ingenious schemes to "prove" that someone in their own time is the Beast of Revelation.

A curious feature about the number 666 is that if you write it in Roman numerals, it uses each of the symbols once and in the correct value order: DCLXVI (that is, 500 + 100 + 50 + 10 + 5 +1). People try to use names and titles to generate that particular sequence of letters. In his very popular Left Behind books, LaHaye made a character with a "VIVIVI" sequence in her name, but that would be nonsensical as a Roman number.

Since something such as a number is so accessible, many, many people have adopted its use to suggest something mystical. It slips into Horror movies; Charles Manson wrote in on his forehead; bikers wear jewelry of it; kids scribble it in their notebooks. In one embarrassing case, the IRS used it as a place holder/recognition device on one of their forms.

Essentially, a "666" today means whatever the person who writes it seems to think it means.

ANSWER 2:

In the Semitic languages (ie., Hebrew and Arabic) letters and words are given

numerical values according to the Abjad system. Rev. 11-13 of The Bible prophecies

that events, including appearance of the man numbered 666, wouldn't occur until

the passing of 1260 years of non-Jewish rule over the Holy Land (see Rev.11:2).

In all likelihood the 666 would have stood for an Arabic (Muslim) name. Islam, which

ruled the Holy Land until 1918, is now into its 14th century.

Answer 3: (for entertainment/diversion only)

Just to show you how imaginative some of these interpretations/adaptations can get:

-- Answer #2 above mentioned that the Semitic languages, including Hebrew, have

a system of expressing numbers with letters of the alphabet.

-- The number '6' is represented simply by the 6th letter of the alphabet, called 'vav'.

-- Now, "six hundred sixty-six" would not be represented as three 'vav's, but a simple

string of three disconnected 6's would . . . vav vav vav .

-- A few late-20th-Century active minds looked at this, and noticed that there is

no equivalent for 'w' in the Hebrew alphabet, and if one were needed, the 'vav'

would be the closest thing to it.

-- So, where you see 'vav vav vav' in Hebrew prophecy, it could be talking about 'w w w' ...

and Presto ! It's the World-wide Web that's actually the beast !

'Active minds' indeed !