Monday, August 19, 2019
666 - Devil of a Time
Spirituality Column #666
August 20, 2019
Common Christianity /
Uncommon Commentary
Devil of a Time
By Bob Walters
“Run to Jesus …” – great advice from popular
contemporary Christian praise music.
“What to do with column number 666?”
I’ve wondered.
Maybe
skip the number – similar to a hotel superstitiously re-numbering the 13th
floor to “14” – and just call it column number “667”. Or maybe whistle past this Revelation 13:18 “666”
graveyard where John’s prophecy from God reveals it as the number of “the beast” and calls it a “human number” as well. Maybe … let’s don’t even mention it at all, this
awful number/symbol/sign “666” that smacks possibly (probably?) of Satan but
surely and traditionally stands as a frightening Christian show-stopper.
Nah, let’s not ignore it, be afraid
of it, or misunderstand it. Let’s talk
about it.
For my knottiest of Christian and
biblical questions, my long-time “go-to” guy is Dr. George Bebawi, with whom
many of us studied on Wednesday nights at East 91st Street Christian
Church from 2004 through 2017. George
now lives in Carmel but is Egyptian, knows all the original Bible languages,
knows the Bible better than anyone I’ve ever met, is an expert on the early
church, was a Coptic priest, lectured on the divinity faculty at the University
of Cambridge, England, and never disappoints.
“Does ‘666’ mean Satan?” I asked
George. As usual, George laughed at the
naïve simplicity of the inquiry. “What
it means is ‘tyranny,’” he responded.
“Since the beginning, Christians have tried to assign the name of a
person, or of Satan, to this number.
What this should mean to us is to beware of being enslaved, and never
surrendering our mind to another human being, only Jesus. When we surrender our mind to another human
being we lose freedom and are no longer a child of God.”
George noted that in history, “666”
has been assigned using number tricks to the greatest of Christian persecutors:
Nero Caesar, Muhammed, Stalin, Hitler, and others. He pointed out, “This ‘666’ is an enigmatic
sign for every tyrant that destroys human life and enslaves other people. I don’t believe there is a way to know
precisely who it is.”
On the one hand it makes sense to
avoid the number and its satanic implications altogether. Yet as Christians we must beware of Satan and
his wiles. Here are a couple of the
greatest pieces of advice on that subject I’ve ever received.
One was from Dr. David Faust, the
E91 minister who baptized me in 2001. In
one of the early sermons I heard him preach, he made the point about not
dabbling in the black arts, fortune telling, and dark spirits. Dave said, “The reason not to mess with those
things isn’t because there is nothing to it; it is because there is something to it.”
Staying away is great advice. Don’t try to win; simply refuse to play the
game.
A lesson I gleaned from George over
the years was that when confronted with evil, think of Jesus, pray to Jesus,
and trust in Jesus. Don’t let the devil
capture your mind. George’s great
personal antidote to spiritual danger is to recite Psalm 91.
In any case, always talk to Jesus,
not to Satan. And when one senses spiritual
danger – whether in a moment of impatience, a personal failure, an external
attack, or a moral weakness – don’t curse or try to bind Satan, go sit with
Jesus; hide behind Him if necessary. The
Orthodox Jesus Prayer – “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a
sinner.” – is a spiritual weapon one can un-holster quickly and constantly.
Don’t try to fight “the beast”
because you’ll have a devil of a time doing it.
Just
run to Jesus. Always.
Walters
(rlwcom@aol.com) is bad at math and so talks faith rather than numbers. And ... if you just have to know more about the
number superstitions surrounding “666,” here’s a Greek/Hebrew/math explanatory video
by some smart guys in Britain:
666 - Secret Meaning
1 comments:
Good article, Bob!
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