Gordon Brown: The Name And Number Of The Beast

Posted on February 14, 2008
Filed Under Politics |

Oh, dear. Who can now remember a time when Gordon Brown was not being held up to public ridicule?

He has just been labelled an intellectual featherweight by Oxford’s Professor Richard Pring in a report about the way the government is corrupting and debasing the provision of state education in New Britain, reducing it to no more than a set of narrow moneymaking criteria. Some people are beginning to wonder whether Gordon Brown could even get a McDonald’s McQualification in McBurger McFlipping.

Now comes some news from The BBC that Gordon Brown is being compared with a malevolent beast from the Biblical Book of Revelation:

Bishop Dow, speaking at Wednesday’s meeting of Church of England traditionalists, said the government had moved away from a “positive” biblical comparison, such as the evaluation of the Roman Empire in Romans 13 of the New Testament.

He said: “I happen to believe that our government is moving into the realm of imposing its morality and it is therefore becoming a Revelation 13 government rather than a Romans 13 government.”

A section of Revelation 13 says: “The beast forced all the people, small and great, rich and poor, slave and free, to have a mark placed on their right hands or on their foreheads.

“No one could buy or sell without having this mark, that is, the beast’s name or the number that stands for the name.”

As The Telegraph says:

Chapter 13 in the Book of Revelation begins: “As I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the names of blasphemy.

“And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat and great authority.”

It ends: “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.”

[…]

Its [Revelations] vivid imagery of disaster and suffering – the battle of Armageddon, the Four Housemen of the Apocalypse and the beast whose number is 666 – is seen as a vision of the end of the world.

Reports that there are plans to change the numbers of the buildings in Downing Street to make the Prime Minister’s traditional residence 666 Downing Street have been strenuously denied.

The problem for Gordon Brown is that now, not only is his mythically massive brain being called into question by people who are actually clever, but his wobbly moral compass is also seen as broken beyond redemption by people who do religion for a living.

A bit like the last days of Mrs Thatcher revisited, really.

Will Gordon Brown even make it to the next election?

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