Six is the number of the apostasy. It is one day short of perfection. Nebuchadnezzar’s image was sixty cubits high and six cubits wide. [Dan. 3:1]
In Revelation 13, we are told the number of the beast is a human number a triune of sixes.

From H. GRATTAN GUINNESS’ “Approaching End of the Age” page 423

H. Grattan Guinness

In Rev 13, a mysterious number is attached to this power, as “the number of his name,” and special attention is called to it. “Here is wisdom, let him that hath understanding count the number of the Beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred, threescore, and six.” A trine of sixes, — 666.

Now in the Apocalypse especially, the number seven, is, as elsewhere throughout Scripture, prominent as the sacred number of perfection and completeness. The contents of the book which it represents as opened by the Lamb, is contained under seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven vials — a trine of sevens.

It is in this book that the number of the Beast is thus presented as a trine of sixes, and the contrast, as well as the intrinsic meaning of the numeral, intimates, that whatever else it may be, it is a perfect number of imperfection, or rather a number denoting perfect imperfection.

As this is the number of the Beast, we may expect to find it in various shapes in the chronology of the Beast, and in that of his most conspicuous Old Testament types. And it is there; a fact which has never before, we believe, been noted, but which is surely full of solemn importance. God has, — in secret cipher, — engraven this stigma, this mark of reprobation, on the very brow of the period of the self-exalting, blaspheming, saint-persecuting, power; and He has besides, in order that we may not fail to note the contrast, set it in the midst of a series of periods, whose septiform measures, bring out its peculiar and evil character.

There is nothing whatever sacred or septiform about this period, nothing sabbatic, nothing suggestive of rest, or worship, or liberty, as in the sevenfold sabbatic and jubilee series. Like some sounds in music, it is a discord, not a harmony; a symbol of what is imperfect and evil.

1. Twelve hundred and sixty years is, first, as we have seen, eighteen of the 70-years cycle. It is 6 + 6 + 6 such cycles.

2. And when we examine its lunar cycle measures we find that they similarly present a trine of sixes, for it is—

66 lunar cycles + 6 years.
(60 cycles + 6 cycles + 6 years).

Further; in the lunar cycles of this period, the sun’s gain is 66 weeks of months, and in the 6 years remainder it is 66 days. Sixfold throughout! a clear link of connection between the number of the Beast and his period.

3. The dominion of the typical ancient Babylon over the typical Israel, lasted, as Clinton shows in his Chronology, accurately 66 solar years, for the remaining years of the Captivity were under the Medo-Persian power. The dominion of the antitypical modern Babylon, over the antitypical Israel—over captive Christendom—endures for 66 lunar cycles, and 6 years.

Another link between the number and the period of the Beast dependent on great, and apparent utterly disconnected facts, in the realms of history and astronomy.

4.It has been well said, that “history is prophecy,” for all history has a tendency to repeat itself. But the saying is, peculiarly true of Old Testament history. As Paul says of various incidents in the experience of Israel, “All these things happened unto them for ensamples (tupoi, types), and are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come” (1Cor 10:2).

The literal Babylon was, as we have seen, a type of the spiritual Babylon — the Church of Rome; and the great king of Babylon, the destroyer of the holy city and temple, the captor of the children of Judah, who set up a golden image of himself 60 cubits high and 6 broad on the plains of Dura, and commanded all peoples nations and languages to fall down and worship it, and cast into a burning fiery furnace the faithful witnesses who refused — Nebuchadnezzar, who was a very incarnation of human pride, is a marvellous type of that Papal dynasty which is symbolised by the “little horn,” and by “the beast.” The Pope is the self-exalting monarch of the modern Babylon, who on a far wider scale commands all nations, and people, and languages, to bow down and adore him, and condemned to the flames the saints of the Most High, who refused compliance. The type – portrait is too like to be mistaken; it has had but one antitype, the man who sits in the temple of God, showing himself as a God on earth, and claiming the infallibility of Deity. We ask then what was the period of this remarkably typical monarch, Nebuchadnezzar?

Josephus tells us it was forty-three years, and the famous astronomical canon of Ptolemy confirms the statement; as Clinton says, “The reign of Nebuchadnezzar is forty-three years, in all the copies of the canon of Ptolemy, and that number of years is also assigned to his reign by Berosus.”

Applying the same standard as before, we look eagerly to see what are the soli-lunar measures of this singularly typical reign, and again the fatal trinity of sixes meets our view! The soli-lunar gain or epact in forty-three years is sixty-six weeks, and six days. 66 weeks + 6 days.

5. In considering the four hundred and ninety years’ period, we observed, that whether regarded as consisting of true solar, or calendar lunar years, it equally afforded septiform results, when measured by soli-lunar epact. The elements of the calculation being different, the results are of course different, but both are septiform.

Similarly, with the period now under consideration, we have this true testimony of two witnesses. The twelve hundred and sixty years, may be taken either as true solar, or as calendar lunar years, the epact measurement affords in either case, sixfold; not sevenfold, results. Treating them as true solar and lunar years, they are, as we have seen, 66 lunar cycles and 6 years. Treating them as prophetic, or calendar years, on the other hand, we find the gain of the true solar year in the whole period is 6606 days.81

There is a very noteworthy circumstance connected with this last measurement, to which we must direct attention. We have in a previous chapter spoken of the Reformation of the calendar effected by Pope Gregory XIII., A.D. 1582. But for the application to the period in question, of the more accurate measures of the solar year introduced by this Papal reformation of the calendar, the above results would have been hidden from view. The use of the old style Julian years throws them out completely and make the solar gain in the 1260 years 6615 days. This is because the Julian year of 365 days is slightly in excess of the true solar year, and the error accumulates in this period to about ten days.

Now it will be remembered that Gregory XIII cut off ten days from the year 1582, and commanded Christendom by a special Papal brief to count the 5th of October of that year as the 15th. In this he legislated back for 1260 years, thus changing times and laws for “a time, times, and the dividing of time,” in remarkable agreement with the prophecy about the little horn.

This arose in the following way. The first general or Ecumenical Council, that of Nice, A.D. 325, had legislated with reference to the time of the observance of Easter. Gregory XIII. assumed this Council as a starting-point; and as the error of the old Julian year, had, in the interval which had elapsed since the Council, thrown the vernal equinox out, by about nine days and a half, he arbitrarily ordained the removal of ten days from the calendar, at the same time that he introduced regulations to avoid irregularities in future.

Gregory XIII. died in A.D. 1585, exactly 1260 years after the Council of Nice, and his reformation of the calendar only came into use three years before his death, and that only in the Catholic countries which accepted it as a matter of course; in Protestant Germany and Switzerland it did not take effect till A.D. 1700, and in England not till A.D. 1752.

It is a singular coincidence, to say the least of it, that this chronological legislation, emanating from the Pope who sanctioned and struck a triumphant medal, in memory of the bloody massacre of the Protestants of France, on St. Bartholomew’s day, should have removed from a period of 1260 years (dating from the first General Council following the rise of Imperial Christianity) the accumulated Julian error which concealed its true epact measures, and that he should thus have unintentionally uncovered, as attached to it, one more form of the triple six, so solemnly linking the period with the number of the Beast.

The downfall of the temporal power of the Papacy is the event marking the close of this period of 1260 years, just as the rise of the Papacy marked its beginning; and it is evident that neither of these events happened in a year, or indeed in a century. “Rome was not built in a day,” it is commonly said; and assuredly the Roman Catholic Church did not burst full-blown on the world. It rose into power gradually as the old Roman empire decayed and passed away; it had various marked crises of rise, and hence its great period of 1260 years, must have analogous successive termini, earlier and later, exactly as in the case of the Captivity era. The earliest possible conclusion of the period, is the epoch of the Reformation. Up to that time the saints had been delivered into the hand of this persecuting power without exception, and without appeal, or redress. Then, and thenceforward, a very considerable portion of Christendom was delivered from its spiritual and temporal oppression and tyranny. From the Council of Nice to the full end of the Reformation movement may therefore, perhaps, be regarded as an initiatory 1260 years.

The chronological legislation of Gregory XIII., took place at the close of this period, and corrected the error that had accumulated since its commencement. Sixtus V., who died five years after Gregory (A.D. 1590), was “the last pope who rendered himself formidable to European courts.” From his time, to the present, Papal power has been passing through its period of decline and fall just as from the fourth to the end of the sixth centuries, the system of the apostasy was gradually rising and developing into the Papacy.

A second and more evident and accurate measurement, is found by dating the 1260 years from the Edict of Justinian, which constituted the Bishop of Rome “the head of all the Churches,” A.D. 533. This date of the terminus a quo, gives as the terminus ad quem A.D. 1793, the time of the French Revolution, in the course of which, as we have seen, the Pope was carried captive from Rome, and the Papal power received a tremendous shock, from which it never fully rallied.

But the main reckoning of the period is unquestionably between the chronologic limits A.D. 606 and 1866-70, the former being the date at which the title of Pope, or universal bishop, was, by the Emperor Phocas, conferred upon Boniface III., and the latter, that of the overthrow of Austria and France, and the consequent loss of the last vestige of temporal power, by Pius IX., when Victor Emmanuel moved his court to the Quirinal, and became sole king of united Italy. Then, and never quite till then, the Papacy, as a temporal power — a horn — ceased to exist. As a religion, it is destined to continue till the second advent of Christ, when the Lord will destroy it “with the brightness of his coming.” The Beast is to be cast alive into the lake of fire, and therefore to be still in existence at the Epiphany.

To sum up: 1260 years, the foretold and fulfilled period of Papal domination in Christendom, and of the temporal political power of the Popes of Rome, has the following remarkable astronomic measures.

1260 years is 6 + 6 + 6 soli-lunar 70-year cycles;
1260 years is 66 lunar cycles + 6 years.
1260 years have 6606 days of epact.

The 43-years type of the period of the Beast—the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, whose image was 60 cubits high and 6 broad, — has

66 weeks + 6 days of epact.

This period is then bound by multiplied links to the number of the Beast, 666. And it is thus linked by hidden connections, not obvious ones; by great unobserved soli-lunar cycles, not by months and years of conspicuous recurrence; linked therefore by. the Hand that upholds the stars in their courses, by the Providence that orders all the events of history, and by the Mind that inspired the Apocalypse, and communicated to the man greatly beloved, the secrets of this “time of the end.” “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.”