Well, for centuries, Biblical scholars(?) have attempted to unravel that mysterious number. Most think it stands for a name and most fundamentalists believe it stands for the name of the Antichrist. Early Christians found the number 666 in the names of many of their persecutors. Protestants devised all sorts of ways to extract the number in the names of the popes; Catholics retaliated by finding it in the names of Luther and Calvin. Mary Stewart Relfe in this 1981 book When Your Money Fails proclaimed that 666 was embedded in credit card numbers, computer programs, code numbers on supermarket items*, and in use by the IRS. She suggested that soon laser beams would be writing 666 on the foreheads of all those except the faithful. Martin Gardner showed how the digits 666 can be uncovered in almost any name depending on what code you use and how much interest you have in mischief making. For example if A=100, B=101, etc. Hitler adds up to 666. With a simpler code of A=I, B=2, etc. and multiplying each letter-value by six Sun Moon adds up to 666. The same technique works with Kissinger as well as the word computer. Swaggart(A=1, 9=2, etc.) adds to 96. Jimmy (A=101, 9=102, ••• ) adds to 570. The sum is 666. And then of course there is Ronald Wilson Reagan: count the number of letters in each name. Maybe there is something to it.
