What does 666 mean and where does it come from?

Wow! That is an awesome question! The number “666” is only mentioned once in the Holy Bible and it is in the Book of Revelation in chapter 13, verses 16-18. It reads, “He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man’s number. His number is 666.”

So, this number represents both the name of the Beast (Satan) and the number of his name. However, the origin of that number or what it signifies isn’t really known.

Many Bible scholars believe that the number “6” is man’s number. It is one number short of God’s number, which is “7”. The number “7” represents perfection. We fall short of God’s perfection so mankind is given the number “6”. Because God presents Himself to us as three persons – God, the Father; God, the Son; and God, the Holy Spirit – the Beast tries to imitate God and so we have the number 6-6-6.

Then, there are all sorts of other theories involving that number, which include using some sort of mathematical formula to determine who the Anti-Christ will be based on a secret code involving the letters of a person’s name. In fact, one group of people who believe this (they’re called numerologists) thought that if you make the letter A = 101, B = 102, C = 103 and so on until you get to Z = 126, the name Hitler equaled 666! Weird, huh? 

Still other numerologists believed that if you used the Hebrew alphabet, as opposed to the American alphabet, the name Nero, who was an evil Roman leader who persecuted Christians, also equals 666. 

The truth is we don’t really know where “666” originated from; we just know that it is the name of the beast or the number of his name and it’s based on man’s number.