This is part of a write-it-when-it-happens series about when Christians go bonkers over stuff. Being a Christian myself, I find these things amusing at best, and detrimental to Christianity at worst. Today, we have one of the former ones, and while it’s a subject Christians have panicked over for centuries, it was brought to new life by a friend of mine.

I want to start by saying this guy is a great guy. He’s on fire for God, radical, but in a good way, wanting to love on the people most Christians don’t even talk about, much less reach out to. He went through Hell and back, coming from the murkiest waters and now he’s passionate for the God who brought him out and I seriously think he’s going to change the world.

But he has this one hilarious theory.

He explained to me how there is a 666 in the Disney logo. Yeah. Now the funny thing is, he actually did point them out. the “D” looks like a backwards 6, dot over the “i” looks like a scrunched 6, and the “y” looks like a sloppy 6, so 666 indeed!

 

Now I thought that was kind of funny. He thought it was subliminal messaging. No, literally. Subliminal messaging, trying to get the power of Satan into people from an early age.

It was one of those moments where you just nod along and smile like the Penguins in Madagascar.

What do you say to that? The Disney corporation is trying to weasel Satanism into children. Um…okay, look, I know there are a million arguments about how the magical kingdom isn’t so magical in real life. There are hilarious rumors and some edgier truths, and, hey, perhaps someone in the Disney corporation is a Satanist. Shoot, maybe Walt himself was, I have no idea!

And yes, I do see the 666 in the Disney logo. But here’s my question: so what? What’s the big deal? What’s the problem? Why are Christians so terrified of that number? 

Now I’ll take a second to sort of answer my own question. The whole thing about 666 being Satan’s number actually is Biblical to a degree. Revelation is the well-known book of the end times with dozens of confusion prophetic images. One of which is the image of the Beast, often dubbed the Antichrist. Chapter 13 says that the Beast will wage war with God and rule the earth with a blasphemous throne.

Then, it says that everyone in the world will have to wear a certain mark on their right hand or forehead, and if they don’t take it, they cannot buy or sell anything. No crops, no vehicles, no internet services, not even toilet paper. So you see the tricky situation; you accept the mark, or you basically die in the street. However, the Bible says the mark is the name of the beast or “the number of his name.” Then verse 18 says, “Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666.”

Thus, 666 is the number of the beast/antichrist, and by extension, Satan himself.

HOWEVER…

The number itself is NOT evil! It can’t be. It’s…a NUMBER!

Too many Christians put too much faith in signs, numbers, and rituals. They become obsessed and see patterns that aren’t there, words of God that aren’t being spoken by anybody, much less God, and they find significance in emptiness. This is because we try to put emphasis on the things we understand, things like numbers and symbols. But when we put too much faith in these things, we put too much faith in out own understanding, and that’s directly contrary to the Bible (Proverbs 3:5 among many others).

Number are merely a symbol. A symbol is NOTHING without a meaning. 

In the times of Revelation, the number 666 will somehow come to signify the Beast, and ACCEPTING this symbol on your right hand or forehead signifies allegiance with the Beast. Even in the proper context, it’s not the number itself, it’s allying yourself with a ruler who is 100% against God.

And yet, it’s a common Christian thing to have some sort of fear of this “magic” number. Some Christians have an almost paranoid fear of it! Y’all, it’s perfectly acceptable if you buy something and the change comes out to 6 dollars and 66 cents. No demons are going to come out and steal your baby or make you watch Barney reruns.

I can see the significance of it, I really can. But if someone paints a big 666 on my house in attempt to curse me…first of all, I can easily remedy the problem by painting it to look like a big 888, so that’d be hysterical, and second of all, no number is higher or more powerful than my God. My God CREATED numbers.

My brothers and sisters, I love you dearly. But we need to realize that three identical digits, while perhaps indeed mocking God’s frequent use of the number 7, have no spiritual bearing without something behind them. A number is a number. It’s nothing but a quantity.

Don’t put your faith in numbers, and don’t fear them, either.

After all, like I said, God’s frequent pattern is to do things in sevens, but if I get punched in the manlies seven times, I’m not going to call that a blessing. That hurts like crap, man.