EDITORIAL – Apocalypse Now, later

So, we’re still here.

6-6-06 came and went without death, pestilence, famine, war and the… So, we’re still here.

6-6-06 came and went without death, pestilence, famine, war and the coming of the antichrist. But what was all the hoopla about? Well, actually, it’s all a big misunderstanding — but we’ll get back to that later.

Many people consider 666 the number of the Devil, a number signifying the end of mankind, the world and the onset of the apocalypse. Fearful of the impending doom of the day, many mothers rescheduled their cesarean sections for June 5 or 7.

“I don’t want them to have this birthday. There could be a stigma attached to it,” Denise Gordon, editor at Glamour Magazine and expectant mother of twins said.

Good thing for Gordon the world didn’t end yesterday.

Hollywood banked on 6-6-06 being profitable, and not the end of the world, as they released a remake of “The Omen,” a tale of the coming of the antichrist. Still others celebrate the day as a satanic holiday.

But what is 6-6-06? Scholars say it’s just another day.

The misunderstanding starts in the book of Revelation, a heavily coded book written by Christians facing persecution by the Romans. These guys used heavy numerology and symbolism to foretell the wrath of God that was going to be let loose on Rome for their crimes while disguising their criticism. The beast with seven backs? Rome has seven hills.

With all that crazy encoding even scholars debate some of the finer points of Revelation. The difficulty in interpretation leads to misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the messages. People assume that 666 is indicative of the end of the world. While six is an unholy number in the Bible, its not all that simple. The number seven is considered auspicious throughout the Bible. The world was created in seven days. Six is one less than seven making it imperfect and therefore unholy. Repeating the number six three times, 666, just emphasizes unholiness and imperfection.

Apocalypse does not mean the end of the world either. The apocalypse simply means a time of revealing. Misunderstandings have also caused people to think that the antichrist will come in the form of some Hitler-like madman. Read carefully enough and you’ll find that the antichrist will be something loveable and benign — like a Teletubby with an atom bomb.

We’re not trying to argue for or against Christian beliefs regarding the end of the world, we’re simply highlighting huge misunderstandings among believers of the faith. It seems as 6-6-06 came and went people picked and chose what they wanted to believe, rather than taking the text for what it said. Although the messages are confusing, people selectively interpret the readings and misunderstand the larger context of the work.

Since when have we taken what the Bible says literally? Moses and his entourage spent 40 days in the desert. Translation: They were rocking it in the sand for a long time.

Christians weren’t the only ones to predict the end of the world. The Mayans predicted that the world would end on Dec. 21, 2012. The Mayans developed an elaborately precise and complex calendar to govern time. Their calendar is so precise that there is no need for leap years, as with the Gregorian calendar that we use. If you think of these two calendars as math equations, the Gregorian calendar has no solution while the Mayan calendar has one, i.e. the end of the world.

This isn’t the first time humans have seen the date 6-6-06 roll around, and it probably won’t be the last. Mel Gibson won’t allow the world end before he releases “Apocalypto.”

But for our money, we’ll go with the Mayans.