The numbers game (Symposium Research for Rich Brown)

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> assistance.  I need information about people's failed attempts, throughout
> history, to predict the time of the Second Coming; the identity of the
> Antichrist; or the identity of the "mark of the 
> Beast."  If anybody has anything available that you could make available to
> me, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Hey, make sure you mention the Korean guy who predicted the Lord's
coming in October about 3 years ago -- women in Korea actually had
abortions performed so they wouldn't be too heavy to make the rapture.
A newspaper search should find info about this.


Now, from the book _The New Age: Notes from a Fringe Watcher_ by
skeptic Martin Gardner in the chapter entitled "666 and All That" --

    ...The early Christians were finding 666 in the names of many
  persecutors of their young faith, including the Roman emperor
  Domitian (51-96), who tried to restore paganism....  Later they
  uncovered John's mystical number in the names of Muhammad and other
  leaders of rival religions.  And during the Reformation, Protestants
  devised all sorts of ways to extract 666 from the names of popes.
  Catholics retaliated by discovering 666 in the names of Luther,
  Calvin, and other leading reformers.  More recently, numerologists
  have easily obtained 666 from the names of the likes of Napoleon,
  Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.
	
    ...For many decades the Adventists made clear their feeling about
  the Roman Catholic church with their numerical analysis of the Latin
  phrase often used to describe a pope, _vicarius filii dei_....  By
  adding the letters that are Roman Numerals -- V and U = 5..., I=1,
  C=100, L=50, and D=500 -- they get 666. ...To their great
  embarrassment, the Adventists learned that the same method yields
  666 when it is applied to Ellen Gould White, the name of their
  church's ninetheenth-century prophetess (if W, or double U, is taken
  as two V's).

	[mention of 1981 book _When Your Money Fails_ by Mary Stewart
	Relfe, which argues 666 deeply embedded in big business practices,
	especially computerized operations]

    ...Many frightened fundamentalists fancied they could discern 666
  in the beard of the a face in the tiny logo of Proctor & Gamble,
  the gian soap-maker, and traced the dreaded number by joining the
  logo's 13 stars. [mentions lawsuits P&G filed for slander]

    ...In 1980 Tonya Turnbull, a Kansas City fundamentalist, went to
  court to get her licnese plate changed from CPG-666....  _The Omen_,
  an occult film, had the Antichrist born on the sixth day of the
  sixth month at six in the morning, with 666 as a birthmark on his
  scalp.

    ...Using the code A=100, B=101, and so on, Hitler adds up to 666.
  With a... code A=1, B=2 ,and multiplying each letter-value by six,
  Sun Moon [and Kissinger, and the word "computer"]  adds to 666.

    [Append six to each letter-value] instead of multiplying by six
  [to get] A=16, B=26, and so on.  This device was used in Allied
  countries during Word War I to get 666 from "Kaiser."  It also
  yields 666 when applied to the first name of Garner Ted Armstrong,
  Herber's excommunicated son....

     ...By adopting the so-called Devil's code (...Z=0, Y=1, X=2...) and
   multiplying each letter-value by 6, Moral Majority founder Jerry
   Falwell's last name adds up to 666.  Billy Graham requires more
   elaborate numerical treatment.  His initials are WFG (William
   Franklin Graham).  Using A=1 code, the letters add up to 36.  The
   sum of the counting numbers from 1 through 36 is 666, adn 36 = 6 x 6.

      ...Each of [former president] names, Ronald Wilson Reagan, has
    six letters....

    [goes on to outline ways to get 666 from Pat Robertson, Jimmy
    Swaggart, and even the author of the article, Marvin Gardner.
    Gives a pointer to article in _Scientific American Book of
    Mathematical Puzzles and Diversion_ about how to construct "magic
    matrices" to force any desire number -- thus you can get 666 from
    any name you want to.]


Richard Masoner