I called into Argos this morning for a present for a friend, only to discover my order number was 666.  I had a smirk to myself and then joined the queue.  Obviously the good people at Argos were wary, they called everything up to 665 and then 667 to 670 before daring to hit the button for 666.

We Christians get ourselves in tangles over some daft things don't we?  Remember the 1980's and the 'back masking' thing - if you play records backwards they are satanic (so if you play The Eagles or Black Sabbath backwards do they become Christian?).  In the 1990's there were those who prayed over discarded spools of cassette tape - the way in which they alleged satanists marked their territory, not simply what someone had lobbed out of a car window.  Then in the early 2000's I was told that Wagner had Nazi links and that Harry Potter was evil, so I have only listened to the Ride of the Valkirie or read about Goblets of Fire under the bedclothes ever since!

The SU Bible notes I use recently ran an excellent series on Revelation written by an Australian Bible translator.  He clearly presented good, scholarly understandings of the book and spoke of the cultural relevance to people on Pacific islands.  Not sure he'd have got published by SU in the 1980's or 1990's - it is good to say how many of us have actually grown up since then.

Not quite sure how to get the gammatria to give 666 as the number of my name but I'm sure some of you will find a way!  Afterall, you always wondered, didn't you?!