Last summer, just before leaders of the industrialized world met at the G8 Summit in Scotland to discuss poverty, a historic series of concerts, called Live 8, was held that involved crowds of millions enjoying 10 separate gigs across four continents.

The concerts boasted performances from the music world’s heaviest hitters— U2, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Phil Collins, Madonna, Coldplay, REM, etc.—some of whom appeared on stage with official concert tee-shirts and/or baseball caps emblazoned with the number “46664.”

“46664” was the prison number of Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, Cape Town where he was held in captivity for 18 years. Nelson is said to have given the number to Dave Stewart of the rock band Eurythmics to use in helping fight HIV/AIDS in South Africa by raising money for the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

“The first thing that Dave did was to ask his good friend Joe Strummer, famous as the lead singer of the legendary band The Clash, to write lyrics for a song that included 46664,” explains the Foundation’s website www.46664.com. “Sadly this was the last song that Joe was to write. Following his death in December 2002, Dave completed the song with Bono and the two of them recorded it together as the first of a series of co-writes for the campaign. This song, 46664 (Long Walk to Freedom), soon became the anthem of 46664.”

As we know from all the black-and-white billboards plastered all around town, Tuesday is “06 + 06 + 06,” otherwise being promoted as the symbolic opening date for the latest Omen movie.

The number “666,” as well as variations of the numbers 6 and 9—such as 69, 66, 96, 99— have long been used as code by people who align themselves with “the god of this world,” i.e., Satan.

I guess people think it’s cool and clever, but it’s laughable how obvious it all is. Just start looking and you’ll see it everywhere. In fact, in pagan Eastern religions, the numbers 6 and 9 are considered lucky.

Consider, for one example, Aleister Crowley, the world-renowned Satanist who so inspired The Beatles they put his mug on the cover of their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club album that pictures all of their "heroes."

In the early 1900s, Crowley christened himself “The Beast 666,” and literally believed he was the Antichrist. In 1928, he was dubbed by a popular tabloid as, “The Wickedest Man in the World.”

"Before I touched my teens, I was already aware that I was THE BEAST whose number is 666," Crowley confesses in his infamous “Magick” book.

In his book, “The Confessions of Aleister Crowley,” he writes, “I have never lost sight of the fact that I was in some sense or other The Beast 666.” In another passage, he even admits, “I simply went over to Satan’s side; and to this hour I cannot tell why. But I found myself passionately eager to serve my new master. . . I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff."

Crowley’s influence has been widespread in rock music, witchcraft, Satanism, the New Age movement and the Occult, and it even shows up in “The Da Vinci Code” with author Dan Brown’s assessment of Neopaganism.

To the question, “Are ‘The Da Vinci Code’s’ claims about the ancient traditions of modern Neopaganism historically valid?” the website www.rbc.org (from the publishers of Our Daily Bread) answers, “Although a number of Neopagan groups claim that their rituals and traditions were passed down in an unbroken line from ancient times to the present, there is no realistic basis for believing an ancient tradition of Paganism survived. Historians of the modern Neopagan movement agree that a handful of 20th-century occultists invented the primary principles and rituals of modern Paganism. Well-known historian Jeffrey Burton Russell documents that the two primary ‘inventors’ of modern Neopaganism were occultists Gerald Gardner and Aleister Crowley.”

Amazingly, the use of 666 as satanic code can even be found in the emblem on the cover of the New King James Bible! It’s the same triple six, interlocking symbol you’ll find used to identify all sorts of New Age materials, including on the cover of the popular book, “The Aquarian Conspiracy.”

From the Book of Revelation, we know that six hundred and sixty-six is the number of the beast, meaning it’s the number of the Antichrist. It is not the mark of the beast, as many people are incorrectly told.

There are 18 major types of the Antichrist given in the Bible, and in at least some of these pictures of him, the number six hundred and sixty-six can be readily identified.

Goliath, for one, is a type of the Antichrist who is reported in I Samuel 17 as being six cubits tall. He had six pieces of armament and “his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron.”

In II Chronicles 9, King Solomon has built himself a house with six steps leading to a throne. On each side of the steps are six lions.

Also, in II Chron. 9:13, we read, “Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred and threescore and six talents of gold.”

Displayed in the passage is a change from a type of Jesus Christ (presented in the first half with the Queen of Sheba) to a type of the Antichrist. If you know anything about what happened to Solomon, he turned from good to evil during his 40-year career as Israel’s king.

Solomon’s Old Testament book, Song of Solomon, in fact, shows a type of the Antichrist trying to seduce the daughters of Israel into adultery.

Yet another appearance of 666 can be found in Ezra 8. If you look in the dictionary for the name Adonikam, mentioned in Ezra 8:13, it literally means “the lord of rebellion.”

As my pastor, Richard Jordan (Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill.), explains about the Bible’s intrinsic numeric codes, “One of the issues of prophecy is typology. Modern computer terminology would call it ‘macro-codes.’ These are pre-established patterns for future behavior so when the future behavior comes along, you can look back and see how somebody way back there laid a pattern, knowing about the reality that’s coming.”