Number of the beast inspires movies

New York: The approach of June 6, 2006, the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year, has been causing a stir among the superstitious.

The number 666 in Christianity is regarded as the 'number of the beast' - the sign of the devil as interpreted from a passage in the Book of Revelations.

"If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is a man's number. His number is 666," reads Revelation 13:18.

Movie makers are cashing in on the association.

Horror flick The Omen, a remake of the 1976 film of the same name about a prominent politician and his wife raising the son of the devil, opens worldwide on Tuesday (June 6).

Advertising for the film has featured the 6/6/06 date heavily, taking full advantage of a unique marketing opportunity that only comes around once a millennium.

"The numbers are a phenomenon, you know, they're very much apart of the plot of the movie, so it would have been churlish to ignore such a great opportunity to make people aware of the numbers, that's why we chose the date," says director John Moore.

The concept of 666 is a prominent theme in the film, in which distraught father Robert Thorn (played by actor Liev Schrieber) tries to find out the mysterious truth of his son Damien's birth and is aided by expert of the unholy Carl Bugenhagen, played by Michael Gambon in the film.

Bugenhagen tells Thorn of the birthmark of a sequences of sixes that, if Damien has, signifies him as the son of the devil.

Christian interpretations of the number 666 in the Bible vary, but most agree June 6, 2006 has no special significance.

"The 6th of June has no particular significance," says Reverend Michael Lloyd of St Andrews Church in London. "Remember that the date is 06-06-2006 not 666, so it has nothing to do with the Book of Revelation.

For one thing the Book of Revelation is talking about a first century person, not about a 21st century event."

Many scholars say 'the beast' is really a coded reference, using Hebrew letters for numbers, for the despotic Roman emperor Nero.

Dr Lutz Doering, Professor of Theology at Kings College London University, says the numbers corresponding to the Hebrew spelling of emperor Nero, when added up, come to 666.

He says people at the time would have recognised the code, and that 666 is not literally the devil, but symbolism for the oppression of Nero at the time.

"The whole of Revelation is full of symbolism and people lived with this symbolism. They did not translate this in to reality and I think there is nothing to it to do so today; to translate it in to reality. This is about a code which stands for oppression of early Christians in the first century, not about any kind of apocalypse today," he says.

Magus Peter H Gilmore, the High Priest of the Church of Satan - a congregation of atheists that actually does not believe in the devil or God, but rather opposes all forms of organised religion - says 'satan' in Hebrew means adversary.

Gilmore says that the public's preoccupation with the number 666 is nothing more than an obsession of superstition.

"6/6/06 to us is a date like any other. We understand that Christians fear 666 as the number of the beast from their scriptures, which is related to the devil, but really is referring to Nero, most scholars think. And we feel that we like to embrace forbidden symbols like the number 13 and the number 666 and other things that cause fear for people, basically to mock superstition," he says.

The lack of superstition hasn't stopped the church from holding a massive gathering in Los Angeles on 6/6/06, complete with Satanic rituals and customs, which will be taped and released on DVD.