If it’s helpful, I take a different approach on this whole issue. Revelation 13.18 says this (following the NIV):
This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.
Now the starting point has to be understanding what John is actually saying here. And there are a couple of important ambiguities to consider.
The first is paragraph divisions. What does This calls for wisdom refer to? Most people assume we need wisdom to work out what 666 means. The NIV (and to be fair, many other translations) point in that direction by putting that sentence in the same paragraph as what follows.
But to me it makes more sense in context to read This calls for wisdom backwards, connecting it with what John has already said. Chapter 13 flows like this:
v1 - A dragon (=the Devil) on the shore, raising up two symbolic beasts in opposition to God and his people.
v1-10 - Beast #1, a picture of oppressive authority that persecutes the people of God. To which John says, This calls for patient endurance. That’s how God’s people must respond, and it clearly points back to the previous section.
v11-18 - Beast #2, a picture of false religion, which if possible will deceive the people of God. To which John says, This calls for wisdom. The parallelism and the natural thematic links make it clear (to me at least!) that this too is pointing backwards.
Now if all this is true, then the famous 666 verse turns out to be less important. we should read it as an afterthought, a sentence in brackets. It’s not the climax of the chapter.
Secondly, a translation issue. When John says The number of a man, we read this as referring to one particular human being. But Greek doesn’t have a word to distinguish between a man and man (without the article). The NIV footnote offers the alternative translation humanity’s number. So we have to interpret this. And my interpretation goes like this:
Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is a human number… That number is 666.
In other words, John is inviting us to come up with a representative number as a label for the beast. It is a human number; in other words it is a human term to describe a spiritual reality. And then John offers his own numerical suggestion: 666.
John never asks us to apply the number to some future individual. He’s already made the application. The number applies to the beast!. 666 is simply the name of the beast, just as 007 is simply the name of “Bond. James Bond.”
One last note. This is not a one off example. John does this elsewhere. See for example Revelation 21.17, where an angel is taking John on a tour of the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city. The angel has a gold rod and gives John the measurements of the city. The narrative clearly says the angel was using human measurements (literally the measurement of [a] man). The point here is that the human language is describing a spiritual reality beyond and greater than all human language. So it is with the beast and his number.
