Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss the number 666: it's inclusion in the New Testament, why it's considered an evil number, and the various explanations of its meaning; this last through two of the four lenses of eschatology, the branch of theology that's focused on death, final judgment, and the afterlife: specifically, at Preterism and Idealism.

Let's get into it.

There isn't any explanation given in the Old or New Testament that delineates why the number 666 is an evil number or why it is associated with the Beast of the Book of Revelation. Naturally, the conspicuous absence of any canonical explanation makes for fertile ground for competing theories to emerge. The theories we'll be considering in this video are that of the preterist, which holds the number 666 to be a numerical code that alludes to Emperor Nero, and that of the idealist, which believes the number 6 to be an affront to the number seven, the number of completeness and perfection, as based on God creating the universe in six days, then taking the seventh to rest.

We're going to start things off with a passage from chapter 13, the chapter in which the number 666 is written, from the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament. Here it is:

"And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast ... And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name[, 666]."

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