The number 666 points us back to the sixth day, or man’s day, being the height of human power and rebellion. And, unfortunately, for those who have dedicated a formidable swath of study to gematria, it is nevertheless an interpolation, an eisegesis read into the text. John of Patmos isn’t inviting his readers to decode a secret name derived from numbers. The word “calculate” in Revelation 13:18 (psephisato), means discern, weigh, or interpret wisely, but is rendered “calculate” in most texts, which I think throws the reader off if they so choose not to dive deeper into its theological weighting. John is essentially saying, pay attention. See the pattern. Follow the map. It is important to note that Revelation leans on the Old Testament more than five hundred times (some scholars say more, but not by much), so we need to stay in that lane and let Scripture interpret itself. When we act on this hermeneutic, 666 becomes a marker, a theological signpost pointing us back to the same themes, which are, idolatry and empire resulting in transgressing the covenant wherein man is exalting himself above God.
Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image in Daniel 3 was sixty cubits high and six cubits wide. Babylon demanded worship under threat of death, and the people obeyed, except for Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Revelation deliberately echoes this scene with the beast and its image, a forced allegiance and counterfeit worship. At the heart of it, the question is centered around covenant, implying, who do you belong to? The beast demands a loyalty that belongs to God alone.
Then there is the Solomon reference, which is the most poignant I think, and perhaps could point to an end times tyrant, one who we call “the” Antichrist. In 1 Kings 10:14, we are told that “the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred sixty-six talents of gold.” That’s not a random detail; it’s a theological marker. The warning to the kings of Israel in Deuteronomy 17:14-20 stresses to not multiply wealth, wives, or military power. Solomon ignored every word. He turned covenant faithfulness into political alliances and economic excess. And, that is why 666 fits here as Solomon builds a system of compromise and Revelation picks up that same theme. In Revelation 18, the merchants of the earth mourn Babylon’s fall because their wealth, like Solomon’s, and it is tied to idolatry and corruption. The mark of the beast is directly connected to economics, but economics is pressing into a covenantal-worship, and in its place it is disguised as prosperity.
Ezra 2:13 gives us another layer, in which the descendants of Adonikam are numbered to the total of 666. “Adonikam” means “my Lord has risen” or “my Lord has risen up.” That’s deliberate irony in Revelation. Christ is the true risen Lord, but Babylon offers a counterfeit resurrection, a revival of imperial power cloaked in religion. And here Paul’s warning is noted in 2 Thessalonians 2:4, coming into focus, stating that the one “who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.” This is a counterfeit “resurrection” which anticipates a religious power exalting itself over and above God’s seated place.
Additionally, this connects directly to the Nero Redivivus myth that had been circulating in the first century. Many believed Nero, the persecutor of Christians, would return from the dead and reclaim power. John uses his contemporary context of that expectation and presses into it symbolically. In Revelation 13:3, one of the “heads” of the beast, pagan Rome, receives a mortal wound, but it “revives” into something far more deceptive. Rome is therefore resurrected in and through the rising ecclesiastical power in the papacy and the system it enables.
Moreover, Paul foresaw this in what he already saw was taking place in the early church. In 2 Thessalonians 2, he warns that “the mystery of lawlessness” was already at work in his day, noting the “son of perdition,” a term only applied to one other person in the biblical text, Judas Iscariot. Something, or someone, was restraining it. Several of the early church fathers understood the restrainer (ho katechon) to be Imperial Rome. As long as the Caesars ruled, apostasy couldn’t reach its full power. But, when Rome fell, the restrainer was “removed,” and the system of lawlessness revealed itself fully.
The Judas dynamic is centered around one of the covenant-bearers (e.g. the disciples) who “fell away” from the group’s premise, heralding the arrived Messiah and His gospel, which Paul stresses in 2 Thess. 2:3, as a “falling away” which inevitably reveals the “man of lawlessness,” or “son of perdition.” This too mirrors Solomon’s “falling away” from covenant and the laws for the kings of Israel, and the markers in this regard appear to be theologically layered as well. Political Rome collapsed, but Rome didn’t die. It resurrected under a different face. Its power merged with religion, whereby papal authority was claiming to mediate between God and man, fulfilling Paul’s warning in 2 Thessalonians 2:4 about the one who “takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.” The “falling away” is a two-fold marker, Rome falls, the corrupt ecclesiastical system rises, but, “falls away” from the true faith. The Vicar of Christ, or the Pope’s seat, directly contradicts the 1 Timothy 2:5, which asserts that Christ alone is the mediator between God and man, essentially denying that “Christ came in the flesh” (1 John 4:3; 2 John 1:7). The reformers saw these fragments as well. Luther, Calvin, Tyndale, and Knox all recognized the corruption, the merchants of indulgences, and the harlotry of aligning spiritual authority with worldly wealth and kingship. They warned that the “man of lawlessness” was hiding under ecclesiastical robes. But they stopped short of connecting all the threads into a unified prophetic map.
This is why Proverbs 7 matters the most when it comes to the wilderness period as the in-between period, or the delay in Christ’s coming. Here, it is important to stress that the 42 months, time, times and a half time, 1260 days (e.g. half of seven, incomplete, unholy and unfaithful, wandering, etc.) are theological markers for the 42 encampments in Numbers 33 when the Israelites wandered aimlessly in the wilderness, eventually expiring the unfaithful generation who had first left Egypt with Moses, aside from Caleb and Joshua (cf. the two witnesses, Judah/Israel/Jew [Caleb] and Ephraim/ Gentiles [Joshua], see Paul’s lament in Romans 9-11). The naive man (pethî), an unformed and vulnerable character therefore mirrors the early church. Young, zealous, yet easily seduced. The harlot in Proverbs 7 lures him in with soft words and perfumed sheets, saying, “I have decked my bed with colored linens from Egypt; I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon” (Prov. 7:16–17). Revelation 17 paints the same picture in regard to the woman riding the beast (from the earth; cf. Satan’s dwelling place, or cosmic geography, Rev. 12:9), as Mystery Babylon (see, Jezebel, the apostatized church) clothed in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold and pearls, promising intimacy but offering slavery. It’s the same seduction, wealth, power, prestige, and a seat at the table with the kings and merchants of the earth.
Two markers identify the beast from the earth the harlot rode as Satan’s empire(s): 1) the 7th head in Rev. 17:10 continues a “short time/while [cf. Rev. 12:12), and 2) the 8th head [hypothetical] is of all the seven (en toto, not any specific kingdom except John’s contemporaneous reference to Rome in the mortal head wound (although many interpreters play the eisegesis dance trying to make certain ones fit), those which persecuted the saints/church), who comes from the bottomless pit, and goes into perdition (cf. Rev 9:1-2; 17:11;20:3). The beast is none other than Satan and his empires, or mountains (cf. cosmic mountains/geography), and his divine rulers/kings (cf. Prince of Persia, Dan.10:13, 20) overseeing those kingdoms/empires.
Revelation 18 shows the endgame, stating, “the merchants of the earth have grown rich from her luxury.” These aren’t just traders, they are the networks, alliances, and global systems which Mystery Babylon builds in order to sustain her power. And, here’s where Matthew 25 connects the wilderness period in between His first and second advent (cf. previous reference to the 42 encampments and the expiration of the unfaithful Israelites), in which the sifting of the wheat and the tares, or the chaff and wheat, all covenantal language implying that these are “followers” of the Kingdom, whether apostate (incl. deluded) or not, are then reorganized into the Bride and the Harlot imagery, two opposing cities called Mystery Babylon the Great and the New Jerusalem. The Wheat are of the Bride; the tares are of the harlot. The parable of the ten virgins shows us the tension between Christ’s promised coming and His apparent delay. Five virgins keep enough oil in their lamps with Holy Spirit-filled endurance (of the saints), and five do not. When the bridegroom finally arrives, the foolish virgins run to the merchants for oil, but unfortunately it is too late. The door is therefore shut. This correlates with Proverbs 7:19–20, where the harlot says, “My husband is away; he has gone on a long journey. He took his purse filled with money and will not be home till the appointed day.” Christ’s “delay” tests the hearts of His people. Some endure, keeping their lamps filled. Others, depend on Babylon’s merchants to sustain them, and when the hour comes, they are gravely unprepared.
All of this comes together like threads converging into one tapestry. 666 isn’t about cracking a code, it is about recognizing a panoramic, theological story for the then budding church who had been experiencing a religio-political struggle surrounding control. Nebuchadnezzar’s image, Solomon’s gold, Adonikam’s name, Rome’s fall, papal rise and falling away from the true faith, the merchants of the earth, the harlot’s seduction, and the bridegroom’s delay all point to one thing, which is covenantal allegiance. Babylon offers the world, wealth, power, security, prestige, but it’s a counterfeit kingdom. The Bride belongs to Christ alone. When He comes, the cry will go out at midnight, and only those who have endured in faith, with lamps filled and hearts steadfast, will be permitted to enter the wedding feast. The rest will find themselves standing outside the door, bound to a system they thought would save them but led them into destruction. This shift marks a pivotal transformation from pagan Rome’s collapse into papal Rome’s resurrection, fusing religion, politics, and economics, into what John prophesies regarding the foundations of Mystery Babylon.
How does this fit into the 4th century onward? This moment in history is not isolated, because it set into motion a cascading series of events surrounding fractures and reforms that inevitably carry us into the modern age. Once the imperial seat of Rome gave way to ecclesiastical authority, the church became entangled with the very powers it was meant to stand apart from. Political alliances, economic dependencies, and theological compromises were woven together into a tapestry of institutional religion clothed in spiritual authority, but driven by imperial ambition.
The Great Schism of 1054 was the first visible fracture where East and West were divided, Orthodox and Catholic, yet both remained tethered to imperial forms of power. Where papal Rome anchored itself to the rising Western monarchies, the Eastern church aligned itself with Byzantine sovereignty. Two harlots clothed differently, but both drawing from the same cup of worldly influence. This was not yet the Reformation, but the fissure revealed that the institutional church had long departed from the simplicity of Christ’s gospel, trading priesthood for politics, mediation for monarchy, and spiritual authority for imperial control.
Then came the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, a rupture, yes, but not a total return to the original faith. While Luther, Calvin, and others reclaimed essential truths like justification by faith, the priesthood of all believers, and the authority of Scripture, the Reformation also inherited patterns from the very system it resisted. Many Protestant traditions broke from Rome’s hierarchy but carried forward its structures of power, wealth, and nationalism. The reformers, like the kings of Revelation 17, “hated the harlot,” yet could not escape Babylon’s economy or its political entanglements.
As history moved forward, the splintering continued resulting in a plethora of denominations emerging, each insisting upon its authority, yet many still bowing subtly to the merchants and kings of the earth. Modern Christianity has now become a fragmented witness, often clothed in wealth and luxury, entangled in the very systems Revelation warns us about. The “mystery of lawlessness” that Paul spoke of in 2 Thessalonians 2 has matured over centuries, from imperial Rome to papal Rome, to divided Christendom, and now to a global religious marketplace where faith is packaged, traded, and politicized.
This arc is not accidental as it mirrors the prophetic warnings embedded throughout Scripture. The harlot imagery of Revelation 17 captures a spiritual reality and the institutionalization of faith, the wedding, or pseudo-mystery (cf. Eph.5:32, of Christ and the Church) of religion to political power, and the seduction of God’s people through wealth, compromise, and influence. From Babylon’s gold to Solomon’s 666 talents, from Nebuchadnezzar’s statue to the merchants of Revelation 18, the patterns are unmistakable, because when God’s people trade covenant fidelity for worldly security, they become entangled in systems doomed to fail, which inevitably leads to destruction as John notes in Revelation 18-19.
We now stand in the long shadow of this trajectory. What began with a fusion of throne and an unholy altar, has led to a church fractured yet still tethered to Babylon’s economy and power. Revelation’s warnings are not about one denomination or one institution but about a spiritual pattern repeated across time, which is when the church seeks to mirror the empires wherein it is called to witness to, but instead, regrettably forgetting her first love.
Ken G. Palmer 
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