I do find it funny how people think that 666 is the number of the devil when the book of Revelation actually says:
Revelation 13:18
Here is wisdom: let him who has intelligence calculate the beast’s number; for it is a man’s number. And its number is six hundred and sixty-six.
The beasts in Revelation all refer to political powers and so anyone worshipping this beast is actually worshipping governments not Satan.
😀😉🤔
makes sense to me!
Normally it is thought to mean Emperor Nero as the numbers more or less fit (the number in different in some translations as I remember). Obviously some clever secret society handshake code.
Actually it couldn't be. The book of Revelation is a book of prophecy not history. Revelations was completed around 96CE. Nero was emperor in 54-68CE. As such nothing in Revelation could be tied to him. Many of the prophecies have been fulfilled but there are still some to be completed. For example Babylon is currently riding the wild beast (religion alienated from God is riding the political system) but the beast hasn’t yet turned on her.
As I read it the early Christians was expecting Gods rule on earth to be something to happen in the close future, so reference to Nero could make sense even if it had already happened. But who knows. The text is cryptic enough for many interpretations.
I just looked it up on wikipedia and interestingly some think that it might refer to Muhammad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast Never heard that theory before.
The thing with the book of Revelation is that the book of Revelation explains itself.
Revelation 17 is key to the understanding of who the wild beast is. Verses 9-14 actually tells us who the wild beast is and it says it is kings. In fact the heads of the beast represent 7 powerful governments that have affected God’s people.
At the time of writing John wrote that 5 heads had fallen. These were Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece. He then said one head is which was Rome, then one will be but will last only a little while comparatively. Like Medo-Persia which was a dual world power this head will also be a dual power. Today that head rules with the Anglo-American world power of England and America since WWI (1914).
This is also inline with the vision of the immense image found in the book of Daniel only that vision was looking at kings from Babylon onwards hence why there is only 5 sections mentioned. Daniel 2:31-35
The problem with many of these people trying to pinpoint to one person is that they have cherry picked pieces of the Bible rather than looking at it as a whole. By using the Bible to interpret the Bible the whole book makes sense. Especially the book of Revelation.
Most religions are self referring, which is natural considering the system building effort of theology. But as they also insist to know everything about the real world some connections to history is necessary. The four testaments are after all bearing witness about Christ. But it is true that not only the revelation of John, but all of the new testament is referring backwards to the old prophets.
One thing in your analysis I do not agree with. The Brits were never Romans, neither politically nor culturally. The German-Austrian realms are the the heritage of Rome and their Emperors fell in 1918.