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Some thought on recent unfortunate events at the church. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/commonschurch to track with all of our bonus content.
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Let's talk about six sixty six and the Antichrist. So you may have seen on my Facebook that the church was vandalized this fall. Somebody drew an upside down pentagram, which by the way is actually just a star, and wrote the number 6 six six on our signs and windows. And rather than getting too upset about this or playing the persecution card, let's just recognize that these are some pretty amateur satanists here, probably just some kids causing a little bit of mischief. But it did present an opportunity to talk about this number 666 in popular culture, where it comes from, and also point to a better understanding of the spirit of Antichrist and what the New Testament is warning us away from as followers of the Christ.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about this six sixty six or as I mentioned in the post six sixteen. See these are numbers that are associated in the book of Revelation with an image the beast from the sea. The beast from the sea is a really interesting one. It represents the politics of empire. Systems and structures around us that constrain our imagination and make us believe that what we see around us right now is all that we can ever hope for.
Speaker 1:What empire really wants us to do is to believe that there is nothing that can fundamentally change about our world. And so it pushes down, it squashes down our imagination, it keeps us from working for this new commonwealth and kingdom of God that Jesus invites us into. That's what the book of Revelation is warning us about, is empire systems and structures that elevate the powerful and squash down and oppress the weak. And it uses this image of this terrifying beast from the sea and it associates this number six sixty six with that beast or six sixteen depending on the manuscript you're looking at. Because in our earliest manuscripts of Revelation dating back to the second century, we have two different numbers that show up here.
Speaker 1:As I said in the post, both of those numbers tell us that what the writer was talking about here was the person Nero. And ironically, it's actually the variants in these manuscripts that help us understand exactly who the writer is speaking of here, that he's using Nero as part of this image. And we know that because the Greek spelling and pronunciation of the name Nero Neron adds up to six sixty six in Hebrew Gematria. The Latin spelling and pronunciation adds up to six sixteen. What this tells us is that likely scribes were adjusting the text of Revelation to suit their audience.
Speaker 1:If they felt like their audience was more familiar with the Greek pronunciation, they would use six sixty six. If they felt like their audience was more familiar with Latin, they would use six sixteen. They knew exactly who this was speaking of. They wanted to make sure that that message was not lost on their audiences. Now if you've heard of Hebrew Gematria before but never really understood it, here's what's going on.
Speaker 1:In the Hebrew script at the time of Jesus, they didn't have symbols for numbers. They didn't use the Arabic numerals the way that we do. What they did was they assigned certain numeric values to every letter in their alphabet or alphabet. And so when you wanted to write a number in Hebrew, it would be a string of letters. Now depending on the context as you read through a sentence, you would know whether that was meant to be a word or whether that was meant to be a number, but it was using the same symbols.
Speaker 1:And so every word in Hebrew actually has a numeric equivalent if you just add up the value of it, and this was used in different ways to communicate, particularly when you were assigning value to names and places and proper nouns. So that's what's going on here. It's a pretty common thing in Hebrew literature. You find it all throughout the Hebrew testament, And actually anytime you're reading the Hebrew scriptures and you come across a number, those numbers will just be a series of consonants that add up to a certain value. That's what we call Hebrew Gematria.
Speaker 1:Okay. So that out of the way, what does Nero have to do with this and what's the significance there? Well, idea of the beast from the sea is talking about the power of the politics of empire. The way that systems and structures around us constrain us and lead us down certain paths. They stop us from dreaming about things that are bigger.
Speaker 1:And what the writer does here is he constructs this image of a beast that has seven heads and seven horns and 10 crowns. And one of those heads has had a fatal wound but has come back to life. And that combined with the 616,666 piece is again a reference to Nero. In the time of the Roman Empire in the first century, Nero had been a Caesar who had died by suicide. But there was something called the Nero Redivis legend that had made its way throughout the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1:This was the legend that Nero actually hadn't died by suicide but had gone into hiding and would one day return to take the throne again. He had a reputation for being a little bit erratic, that's a bit of an understatement, and people were worried that he was going to return. In fact, during the first century, two different people showed up in Rome claiming to be Nero returned. Now, people didn't take them too seriously. They never got very close to being named Caesar, but this was a thing that was going around in the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1:The writer of Revelation grabs ahold of that, not because he believes that Nero can actually return from the dead, not that he believes Nero is actually in hiding, but to say actually this Nero Redevis legend that's making its way throughout the Empire speaks to something very true and very important. The idea that it doesn't matter if Nero is gone, there's always going to be another one there to rise up and take his place. It doesn't matter if one tyrant is overthrown, another will rise up. It doesn't matter if one head on the beast is slain, it will always come back to life in the face of another. That's what empire does.
Speaker 1:Empire uses even those in power interchangeably to keep us enslaved to the larger narrative of empire. So this is a really sophisticated usage of both Hebrew Gamaitre, Roman legend, and critique of the Roman Empire. But to take it even farther here is to understand that the writer of Revelation is not just talking about Rome. That's the whole point of these seven heads is that Nero may be gone and another may come to take his place just like Domitian who is probably Caesar when the book of Revelation is being written. But even if that head were to be fatally wounded and to be chopped off and go away, there would always be a new empire to rise up and take its place.
Speaker 1:The writer is using images drawn from the Roman Empire not just to critique Rome, but to critique the idea of empire. Whether this is Babylon, whether this is Persia, whether this is Rome, whether this is America, there will always be new empires that rise up and keep our imagination away from the expansiveness of the kingdom of God. That's what the image is about. As Rene Girard writes, he says, are talking here about social phenomenon, the systems of power Satan has engendered in a concrete form, material and simultaneously spiritual, religious in a very special sense, efficacious and illusory all at the same time. Although the system is grounded in an illusion, its action in the world is real to the extent that idolatry or false transcendence commands our obedience.
Speaker 1:This whole idea that empire isn't a real thing, but yet it commands our obedience, it keeps us in line. As Adela Yarbo Collins, another Revelation scholar writes, the intent of this image here lies between the historical events and the abstract truths they speak of. This is an image about Rome, but it's speaking about something bigger. It's using Nero, but it's speaking about a concept that's bigger than that. That's why Revelation is able to speak to all moments in history, not just the first century, not just our experience right now in the twenty first century, but it will continue to speak to us for the rest of the human story.
Speaker 1:Now if that's the case, what does that have to do with the Antichrist? Well, actually it has nothing to do with the Antichrist. The word Antichrist shows up nowhere in the book of Revelation. That comes from a conflation of the image of the beast from the sea with a line from Paul in second Thessalonians about the man of lawlessness who will come and some references in the epistles of John to Antichrist or Antichrist. Now some people will conflate this because they'll say, Okay, so the writer of Revelation is John.
Speaker 1:In the Epistles of John we have this reference to Antichrist. We should put these together. I think it's a bit of a mistake because it's unlikely that the writer of Revelation is the writer of the Epistles of John. Now we do think that there were different communities in the early Christian movement, one of those being the Johannine school. And so there were different communities that were influencing each other, sharing different ideas, and it is likely that the writer of Revelation comes from one of these Johannine communities.
Speaker 1:So language does get carried over between these documents, the Gospel of John, the Epistles of John, and the book of Revelation, but not sort of in a one to one way. They're transmuted as they're moved between these different authors within this shared community. However, even if we go to the books of John, the epistles of John, what we're gonna find is Antichrist there is used in a very different way than it has become used in the popular consciousness. There's two references here. In the first John two, we have this warning, Dear children, as you have heard, the Antichrist is coming, and even now many Antichrists have come.
Speaker 1:And then later in two John seven, we get this passage that says, I say this because many deceivers who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ have coming in the flesh have gone out into the world. Any such person is a deceiver and an Antichrist. Some actually think this reference in Second John is a reference to a specific person, Sorenthus, who was sort of a Gnostic, who didn't believe that Jesus was an actual physical human being in the world, and the writer of John calls them an Antichrist. But the reference here is not to some kind of specific leader who rises up to take power over some kind of one world government and demand allegiance from the world. This is a reference to those who push back against the spirit of Christ.
Speaker 1:They are anti the teachings of Christ. They are anti the truth of Christ. They are anti the grace and peace of Christ. In that sense, all around us are spirits of Antichrist. Every time our governments oppress the poor, that's Antichrist.
Speaker 1:Every time our governments wage war in the pursuit of profit, that is Antichrist. Every time I push someone aside because they are different from me and I'm more comfortable with my in group away from others, that is anti Christ. Every time I lean into anger, frustration, violence, and bitterness, and I step away from the love that comes in and infiltrates me, the spirit of Christ that moves me toward my siblings around me in the world, that is anti the spirit of grace and peace that is Christ. So when we talk about Antichrist, when we talk about the beast from the sea, what the writer is really trying to get us to do here is to interrogate the systems around us and the spirit within us. Are the systems and structures I participate in Antichrist?
Speaker 1:Do they draw me away from the love of Christ? Do they draw me away from the peace of Christ? Do they draw me away from people who are different from me? Or do they move me out with compassion towards those in need? If it's the former, then it's antichrist.
Speaker 1:If it's the latter, then it is the spirit of Christ that is at work in the world, drawing all of us into the way of Jesus toward the Christ who saves us and welcomes us into the embrace of God. When we see a number like six sixty six or six sixteen then, when we hear language like the Antichrist them, the first thing that should pop into our mind is not the image of a person upon which we can cast all of our fears and all of the blame for everything that's wrong in the world, but instead this profound introspection that says, how do I vote? How do I participate in the systems around me? What is in me right now that challenges the way of Jesus? And what is it in me that leads me toward the Jesus I encounter in the Gospels?
Speaker 1:Have I given into an imagination just like six sixty six, where one will rise up and it doesn't matter what happens, someone else will just come to take their place? It's inevitable. The world can never change. The kingdom can never come on earth as it is in heaven. I might as well just give up and retreat from the world because Jesus' kingdom is nothing but a fantasy.
Speaker 1:If I've given into that, I've given into a spirit of Antichrist. If I believe that I can contribute to the commonwealth of those around me, if I believe that God is active in the world right now renewing and redeeming all things, and as I participate in that in my heart, in my actions, in my transactions, in my relationships, in the ways that I vote, the ways that I speak, in the ways that I welcome my neighbor to my table. Then I participate in the spirit of Christ which is at work redeeming, renewing, healing everything right now. So when you think of these words, don't immediately jump to fear. Immediately jump to the introspection that aligns you with the work that God is doing.
Speaker 1:That's the beauty of what Revelation is telling us. It's telling us that God wins. In the end, all things will be redeemed, all things will be healed. And we get to participate in that right now by expanding our imagination to believe that the kingdom of God is inevitable. The systems and structures, the empires of the world, they are already doomed to implode on themselves.
Speaker 1:That greed has a finite lifespan, that love endures forever. This is what these images are telling us. The empire may replicate itself, but the kingdom and the commonwealth of God is inevitable. So get ready for it and live into it right now. Now, by the way, if you're worried about the church, the beautiful thing is one of our neighbors who doesn't even attend the church, but is thankful for our presence in the neighborhood was out there, cleaned off our signs before we barely even noticed them.
Speaker 1:So we are so thankful for all of the neighbors, all of the people around us who continue to pitch in to love us as we love them, to make this a neighborhood that is inclusive and hospitable for everyone. So thanks to our neighbors and ironically, thanks to our amateur Satanists who gave us an opportunity to talk about some of these things in the world.