The Growing in Grace Cult Revisited

Since I first posted about Cre­ciendo en Gra­cia or “Grow­ing in Grace” I have had no post that it is more pop­u­lar. It leads, by far in hits, com­ments, and searches. In fact, if you search Google for “Grow­ing in Grace” my post shows up sec­ond right after his own site! I also added the arti­cle to his Wikipedia entry, and the hits have only gone up. Miranda has con­tin­ued to pro­mul­gate his hereti­cal the­ol­ogy lead­ing many astray, and a recent act he did prompted me to write against him again.

Miranda Claims to be the Antichrist

Miranda with 666Miranda came out recently with a tat­too of “666” upon him, and now his fol­low­ers are fol­low­ing suit and doing the same. He claims to be “the” antichrist; he says the fol­low­ing (see the video):

“666 antichrist means do not put your eyes on Jesus Christ of Nazareth put it on Jesus after the cross.”

He also claims that the trans­la­tion we have of “antichrist” is incor­rect as it should be the “new Christ.” This is beyond imag­i­na­tion. I am not going to re-hash con­tent that I have already writ­ten about the­o­log­i­cal out­lin­ing the doc­trine of the antichrist, because I have already done so in my “Man of Sin” series (part 1, 2). I do, how­ever, want to spend some time reflect­ing on what the num­ber 666 means in Bib­li­cal terminology.

The Mys­te­ri­ous 666

Here is the pas­sage in which this mys­te­ri­ous num­ber shows up.

“Here is wis­dom. Let him who has under­stand­ing cal­cu­late the num­ber of the beast, for the num­ber is that of a man; and his num­ber is six hun­dred and sixty-six.” (Rev 13:18)

A pop­u­lar opin­ion among ortho­dox Chris­tians is that the Greek form of Nero Cae­sar trans­lated into Hebrew is the math­e­mat­i­cal sum of 666. In some Latin texts the num­ber is trans­lated at 616 which is the numer­i­cal equiv­a­lent of Nero’s Latinized name in Hebrew. Kim Rid­dle­barger gives another impor­tant ratio­nale behind this spe­cific number.

“The mean­ing of the num­ber is at least as sig­nif­i­cant as iden­ti­fy­ing to who it applies. The num­ber of man, 666, is ‘per­fectly imper­fect’ in con­trast to the num­ber of perfection’seven. The thrice repeated num­ber ‘6’ implies end­less work with­out rest. The cre­ational pat­tern was for humans to work for six days and then rest on the sev­enth as did the Cre­ator. But in this case, those who take the mark of the beast work end­lessly and never do enter the hoped-for Sab­bath rest.“1

This is cer­tainly a plau­si­ble inter­pre­ta­tion as Nero was the epit­ome of every­thing ungodly in the first cen­tury, but we must keep in mind that John wrote his epis­tle after the death of Nero. He actu­ally wrote it dur­ing the reign of Domit­ian. Fur­ther, argu­ments against this inter­pre­ta­tion are raised, because this trans­la­tion is devoid of patris­tic writ­ings.2 Let us how­ever not miss the for­est for the trees on this issue.

Whether the num­ber used by John in his let­ter referred to Nero or not the point is that this mark is not a good thing to have! In fact, John describes in Rev 20:4 that only those who have not wor­shiped the beat or “had not received the mark on their fore­head” are the only ones who come to life with Christ dur­ing the inter-advental age.

Con­clu­sion

I want to stress that regard­less of whether the num­ber refers specif­i­cally to Nero or all peo­ple who oper­ate in the spirit of Nero the point is that embrac­ing the mark of the beast is not a pos­i­tive thing. Fur­ther, Miranda’s awful inter­pre­ta­tion of this pas­sage only fur­ther proves that he is a deceiver and cer­tainly not doing any­thing of God. We must con­tinue to pray that God will rid the earth of this impostor.

  1. Kim Rid­dle­barger, The Man of Sin: Uncov­er­ing the Truth About the Antichrist (pg. 113) [Back]
  2. Fracis Gumer­lock goes at length defend­ing this inter­pre­ta­tion show­ing up in fifth cen­tury writ­ings in his arti­cle in the WTJ: Gumer­lock, Fran­cis X. “Nero Antichrist: Patris­tic Evi­dence for the Use of Nero’s Name in Cal­cu­lat­ing the Num­ber of the Beast” (Rev 13:18).’ WTJ 68 #2 (2006): 347ff [Back]