[sauron]

I always favored this one, myself. Remember, it was written by a citizen of the Roman Empire (Paul was privileged with citizenship rights), and Roman Numerals were all the rage back then. (Or so I've heard.) Try this on for size and ask yourself: What are the odds?!

The Pope doesn't exist...yet. There is no central Catholic (or Orthodox or Protestant) Christian Church. Yet.

One day, a man would claim he was acting in the place of the Son of God--vicariously. It was a warning. Just my $0.02. YMMV (Your mileage may vary.)

VICARIVS FILII DEI (Vicarious Son of God -- the Pope)

Now, class, recall your Roman Numerals: I,V,X,L,C,D,M

VICARIVS

V = 5, I = 1, C = 100, I = 1, V (u, the Romans didn't write "U," they always wrote "v") = 5. For those of you who want to argue this point...I give you...our own monuments in D.C., written in similar fashion.

...for a total of 112

FILII

I = 1, L = 50, I = 1, I = 1 ...for a total of 53

DEI

D = 500, I = 1 ...for a total of 501

112 + 53 + 554 = 666! ("6" represents man, created on the sixth day, etc; the Bible always represented man, and tripling it represents man making himself God.)

Add to this the fact that the way the warning verse in the Bible is phrased (from memory, here, bear with me) something like "behold a mystery: the name of the man is the number of the beast, let him who is wise figure this whole thing out" or suchlike. Apologies, don't have a Bible with me. But I find it somewhat disturbing that this fits so well.

Sauron

[Bladerunnuh]

Oh sure. A woman rides the beast, and plenty of people believe the woman si some incarnation fo the catholic Church. The pope is certainly meddling int he formation of the EU.

[theDentist]

Do you know that Bill gates' REAL name is William Henry Gates III? Nowadays, he is known as Bill Gates (III) where "III" means the order of third (3rd). So, what's so eerie about this name?

OK, if you take all the letters in Bill Gates III and then convert it in ASCII code (American standard code for information interchange) and then ADD up all the numbers...you will get 666, which is the number of the beast!!!

B = 66
I = 73
L = 76
L = 76
G = 71
A = 65
T = 84
E = 69
S = 83
I = 1
I = 1
I = 1 = 666 !!!! THE NUMBER OF THE DEVIL

Coincidence? Maybe, but take WINDOWS 95 and do the SAME procedure and you will get 666 too!!! And the same goes for MS-DOS 6.31!!! Are you sure this is not a coincidence? You decide....

MS-DOS 6.21 ** 77+83+45+68+79+83+32+54+46+50+49 = 666

WINDOWS 95 ** 87+73+78+68+79+87+83+57+53+1= 666