Category Archives: Old Testament

666 is the Number of the Beast

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Dragons and beasts abound in the Apocalypse and always attack the Church in some way, whether by martyrdom or financial and economic constraints. The number 666–which is used to impinge on Christian economic activity—has been interpreted in a variety of ways.

Then I saw another beast rising out of the land; it had two horns like a lamb’s but spoke like a dragon…. This calls for wisdom. Let anyone who has intelligence figure out the number of the beast for it is the number of a human being; and it’s number is six hundred and sixty-six. (Apocalypse 13:11, 18)

“This calls for wisdom.” That’s probably one of the greatest understatements ever! The debate about the identity of the Beast and the meaning of the number 666 is ongoing and seemingly endlessly fascinating.

One beast arises from the sea. Another beast arises from the land. The sea monster Leviathan and the land-monster Behemoth are a team, symbolic of a nation-state or political system-regime intent on destroying the Church. Some preachers say that the first beast is the political system that wants to destroy the Church while the second, land-based monster is the religious opposition to the Church: it is a mockery of the Lamb as it attempts a masquerade, looking like the Lamb but speaking with the voice of the dragon who attacked the woman clothed with the sun.

The land-monster causes all the people under the dominion of the first beast to “have a mark put on the right hand or on the forehead and no one was allowed to buy or sell unless one had the mark, the name of the beast or the number of its name.” (Apoc. 13:16-17) In order to participate in economic and social life, people had to be marked with the number or the name of the beast–the beast commonly identified as Nero as the numeric value of the letters in his name add up to the infamous “666.” This mark is an official stamp. Perhaps a tattoo. Certainly a travesty of the sign of the cross marked with chrism on the hands and forehead of the newly baptized.

Some modern evangelicals say “the mark of the beast” is a certain credit card or identification card. In the ancient and medieval world, membership in business guilds was an important–sometimes necessary–aspect of economic life and in the Roman world such guilds often expected members to participate in pagan religious rites. Ancient commentaries say the mark of the beast were the coins issued by the emperor with his image on them. If the early Christians could not use coins in the market, they would be effectively marginalized and exiled to rural communes where they lived “off the grid” and supplied all their own goods. But that was just as highly unlikely to be a functional way to live in the first century AD as it is in the twenty-first century AD.

How to navigate the demands of mainstream culture is a constant question in the Church, even if that mainstream culture has been formed in large measure by the Church–the most superficial study reveals that Byzantium or Holy Russia or Christian Europe were societies that often opposed the most basic Christian teachings and practices. The most overtly Christian regimes were often the most oppressive, rigid, and cruel. How to avoid receiving the mark of the beast today?

Wormwood

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Monastic fresco on Mt. Athos illustrating chapter 8 of the Apocalypse: the angels at the heavenly altar cast judgement/ hail onto the earth and sea.

The first angel blew his trumpet; there came hail… cast upon the earth…. The third angel blew his trumpet and a great star fell from the sky…. The name of the star was Wormwood. (Apocalypse 8:7, 10-11)

The angels begin to blow their seven trumpets and unleash a series of destructive judgements: hail with fire, a flaming mountain thrown into the sea, a falling star. Repeatedly, a third of everything is destroyed: a third of the earth is burnt up, a third of the trees are burnt up, a third of the sea is turned to blood, a third of the sea creatures die, a third of the sun-moon-stars are wiped out, a third of the ships are destroyed (see illustration above). This repetition of the destruction of one-third of everything suggests to many Early Church readers that one-third of the angels rebelled against God and became the demons of hell.

The destructive plagues released by the trumpet blasts mimic the plagues that God sent to destroy Egypt in the book of Exodus. In both cases, creation is undone and refashioned. Many of the prophets in the Old Testament describe similar plague-judgements that God will unleash at the End of Days: the sun and moon and stars will go dark, the sea will be consumed by fire, darkness will envelop the earth. Jeremiah describes a mountain that will be reduced to a burning, smoldering ruin and 1 Enoch describes 7 stars that are like 7 fiery mountains. These are not the acts of a vindictive God; these are the descriptions of what happens when creation rises up in rebellion and goes-against-the-stream that is cooperation (synergy) with God.

One of the most interesting images of judgement-destruction is the star called Wormwood. This name, which in Slavonic is Chernobyl, was often mentioned by evangelical Christians when the Chernobyl nuclear accident happened. It was popular to muse in the United States if the nuclear accident was the great portent of the End described in the Apocalypse; timelines for the coming judgement were eagerly discussed.

Wormwood is a plant with a bitter taste and is a metaphor for divine judgement (Jeremiah, Lamentations, Amos, Proverbs). This plague is the reverse of the miracle at Mara in the desert: there, poison water was made fresh but the star Wormwood makes fresh water poison. “Wormwood” is the perversion of justice in Amos: the blazing star that falls from the sky in the Apocalypse can be viewed as the downfall of the Devil himself, the father of lies and deception (John 8:44).

The Seventh Seal

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Dionysiou Monastery on Mt. Athos was founded in 1374. In its refectory (dining hall) is a magnificent series of frescoes that illustrate the Apocalypse. In this illustration of chapter 8, we see the seven angels with trumpets, the censer with smoke, a mountain in the sea, the bloody sea water, destroyed ships, the fountain of water, the star Wormwood (in the rocks in the right corner), a darkened sun, etc.

When the Lamb broke the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. I saw the seven angels who stand before God and they were given seven trumpets. (Apoc. 8:1)

The silence in heaven is momentous. It grabs the attention. It is louder than the thunder and commotion that either precede or follow it. Silence is not simply the absence of noise or the lull between events, one thing having finished and the other not yet having started as sometimes happens when a reader or performer is not ready to begin. Silence is a living presence.

I read many years ago that the most brilliant moment in music is the silence before the Et incarnatus of Bach’s “B Minor Mass.” The silence in heaven is like that. It is the sudden silence that follows Dorothy’s house crashing into Munchkinland as it drops from the cyclone in which she has seen Miss Gulch become the Wicked Witch.

This silence in heaven is an echo of the silence in heaven that preceded God’s first utterance: “Let there be light.” (see 4 Ezra 7:30-33) The apocalyptic silence in heaven is liturgical silence, the moment when all creation holds its breath seeing the Word of God crucified. It is the silence of the Great Entrance on Holy Saturday: God the Word has died and descended into Hades. It is the moment before all creation is turned topsy-turvy by Life himself tearing Death to shreds from the inside out.

Before the angels blow their trumpets, another angel-deacon comes to offer incense at the heavenly altar. There is “much incense” offered. The smoke creates an impenetrable cloud, much like the cloud of incense that the prophet Isaiah also saw (Isaiah 6). It was said that when the High Priest offered incense in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur that there was not enough smoke if he could still see his hand in front of his face. The smoke creates a buffer that serves to protect the human from the brilliant glory of God that would annihilate anything or anyone that dared stand unprotected in the terrible light.

In the Our Father, we pray, “Thy kingdom come.” Before the kingdom comes, all creation holds its breath and peers through the smoky clouds of incense, waiting to see what will happen when God reveals himself.