C HAPTER 14 Section
Title
CANDIDATES FOR THE OFFICE OF THE ANTICHRIST The beast and his mysterious number have led to all sorts of speculations throughout history about who the Antichrist might be. In retrospect, many of these identifications have seemed quite ridiculous—a fact that should cause us to hesitate before suggesting that someone might be the Antichrist today. A few of the many candidates have included: 1. Emperor Nero (He persecuted the church, and his name in Hebrew can add up to 666.) 2. Emperor Constantius (The fourth-century church father Athanasius made this connection when Constantius persecuted orthodox Christians and favored congregations that denied the deity of Jesus. Athanasius also seems to have expected a final, future Antichrist.) 3. Pope Leo X (Martin Luther wrote a note to Pope Leo X entitled “Against the Execrable Bull of the Antichrist.” Not surprisingly, the pope did not respond positively to this missive.) 4. Napoleon Bonaparte (In Leo Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace, Pierre turns “L’Empereur Napoleon” into a series of numbers that add up to 666.) 5. Adolf Hitler (If you assign the value of 100 to the letter A, then 101 to the letter B, and so on, “Hitler” adds up to 666.) 6. John F. Kennedy (He received 666 votes at the 1956 Democratic convention, and he later died of a head wound.) 7. Henry Kissinger (Kissinger was a Middle East peacemaker of Jewish ancestry; his name in Hebrew adds up to 111, 666 divided by six.) 8. Mikhail Gorbachev (He was a world leader with a mysterious birthmark on his head; maybe it looked like a six if you stared at it long enough.) 9. Pope John Paul II (He recovered from a serious gunshot wound after an assassination attempt.) 10. Ronald Wilson Reagan (He had six letters in each name, get it? Plus, he recovered from a wound that seemed fatal.) 11. Barney the Dinosaur (Write “cute purple dinosaur” in ancient Latin characters, and it becomes “CVTE PVRPLE DINOSAVR.” Extract the Roman numbers, add all the numerals together [C+V+V+L+D+I+V], and the result is 666.) 12. Barack Obama (The day after the 2008 election, the Illinois Pick 3 lottery numbers were 666.) 13. Bill Gates III (None of the twisted ways of turning his name into 666 is very convincing—but, let’s face it, haven’t we all wondered about this one when using Control/Alt/Delete to restart a frozen computer that’s running Microsoft Windows?) 14. The World Wide Web (Yes, some have claimed that the portion of Internet known as the World Wide Web is the Antichrist. The Hebrew equivalent of W is the letter vav, which does double-duty in Hebrew as the number six. It’s been suggested that vav-vav-vav would equal 666—but it really doesn’t. Hebrew gematria has no notion of “tens place” and “hundreds place.” So “WWW” results in the number eighteen (6+6+6), not 666.)
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