The antichrist was Nero.
Apocalypse 13:16-18 is based on Ezekiel 8 and 9. The “mark” symbolized the spiritual condition of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The ones with the “mark” were in allegiance with God. However, in Apocalypse, the mark is reversed. That is to say, the mark was on those who were against God and had allegiance to the “beast.”
John wrote that the number “is the number of a man’s name; and his number is 666.” This tells us that those who received the “mark” were actually in allegiance with a “man,” an actually person of the first century. So, who was he? Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus! Better known as Nero Caesar.
John used a puzzle called gematria in which numbers are used to represent certain letters. John used this puzzle to reveal Nero without actually writing down his name. Remember, the early churches were being persecuted during this time—not only from the Jews, but also from the Romans. The numerical values of the Hebrew letters in Neron Kesar (Nero Caesar) are:
Nero’s Name
Nero Caesar fits the gematria code number “666.” Using this code, his name would be rendered as “NRWN QSR.” (NRWN QSR). The number values are:
N = 50
R = 200
W = 6
N = 50
Q = 100
S = 60
R = 200
which, when added together, equals 666. The fact that Nero fits the description of the “beast” is well documented. According to Suetonius, he murdered his parents, wife, brother, aunt, and many others close to him and of high station in Rome. He was a torturer, a homosexual rapist, and a sodomite. He even married two young boys and paraded them around as his wives. One of the boys, whose name was Sporus, was castrated by Nero. He was truly bestial in his character, depravity, and actions. He devised a kind of game: covered with the skin of some wild animal, he was let loose from a cage and attacked the private parts of men and women, who were bound at stakes. He also initiated the war against the Jews which led to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD..
The preterists are at it again, we see.
Which the apostle Peter warns us about in his 2nd epistle. The false prophets and scoffers of that epistle:
“There shall come in the last days scoffers...saying, where is the promise of his coming.” Peter repeating Jesus warning in Matt. 24, that those days will be “as it were” the days before the flood.
Enter the Preterists, who tell us instead, that Jesus’ warning - “as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man” - applies only to the days before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
No doctrine more precisely describes the false prophets Peter was warning about, than that of the Preterists.