" Da Vinci Code" - FWIW
Are you thinking of “Givenchy” ?
As for
Vicarius Filii Dei (so spelt):
1. Vicarius Filii Dei is in Latin - Revelation 13.18 is in Greek
2. The numerical values of the Latin letters can be made to yield a value of 666 only with a lot of straining
3. The Revelation cannot have meant to refer to anyone living later than the generation living in St. John’s time,
because it is not a predictive book: it was written in the 1st century, for 1st-century churches, to meet 1st-century needs & difficulties. St. John was not talking about Pius IX, or Napoleon or Hitler, or Saddam Hussein or Communism or [insert name of current nuisance] - what use would a denunciation of Napoleon or Hitler have been to Christians living 1800 years earlier & thousands of miles from Paris or Berlin ?
The Papacy did not exist in the 1st century, so to write about it to Christians who could never have heard of it would be about as helpful as sending those Christians a biography of Ronald Reagan.
What relevance could a Polish Pope have to Christians in the first century ? Poland did not even exist - let alone the Polish Pope.
4. The trouble with many of the interpretations of Revelation, & with the “Bible Code”, is that the interpretation is not drawn out of the text, but read into it. If Bilbo Baggins the Hobbit were thought to be a world threat, he would be discovered in Rev. 13.18 & the “Bible Code” (not forgetting Nostradamus). Since it is widely admitted (for now, at least) that BB is a fictional character, that interpretation is not likely - yet. In 2000 years’ time, who knows ?
5. Revelation cannot refer to the Papacy because the usual texts in chapters 13,17 & 18 are selected from others. The Gettysburg Address is a whole speech - not a heap of unrelated fragments. The same applies to Revelation. The anti-Papal interpretation is possible only if a lot of the context is ignored - not that Protestants are alone in this abuse of the book.
6. the 1260 days of Rev.12 are often taken to be 1260 years - the SDAs (who seem to be the souce of the
VFD thing) reckon them from 538 to 1798. But this is possible only if one jumps around the Bible.
7. Suppose the Papacy
is all bad - what is to stop something far worse coming along later ? The early Protestants, & their descendants until 1945, could think of the Papacy as outstandingly evil because they had nothing to compare it with - so they could see it as
uniquely bloodthirsty (whether rightly or wrongly, is BTW). But no Pope ever killed the tens of millions slaughtered by various atheistic regimes. If the Papacy is supremely evil - where does that leave even more godless regimes ?
If the world is about to end, & the Papacy is so far the worst regime one knows of, one may have a point. But supposing there are centuries to go, & worse tyrannies to come. Luther did think in the 1520s that the world might end. He could not know, & Ellen White could not know, that Mao would kill 70 million people, & Stalin 60 million, not hundreds of years apart, but between 1924 & 1976. (Mrs. White died in 1915.) 130 million people in 52 years is a bit more than the Papacy has managed in 1700 years or so. If “the man of sin” is outdone by an even worse man of sin, or a whole crowd of men of sin, his right to be regarded as uniquely “the man of sin” ceases to look impressive. As for abortion, that has killed 100s of millions. And who objects ? The “man of sin” & his “satanic” Church. Isn’t that rather odd behaviour for a self-respecting “man of sin” ? The Papal “man of sin” should surely rejoice at such loss of life - but what does he, they, do ? They object to it. (BTW, how can one man of sin be 260+ ?)
IOW, the case against the Papacy depends on treating it as the last & supreme tyranny in history; it depends on the absence of any later ones. It depends on an error of perspective.
8. Why must the 666 be someone well-known ? Why can’t it be some girl in the back of beyond of whom no Protestant expositor has heard ? Or is the position closed to women ?