Christian worker who quit job over ‘666’ on W-2 form says God blessed him with higher paying new job
Walter Slonopas, a devout Christian man from Tennessee who made international headlines when he quit his job in 2013 over the number 666 being assigned to his W-2 tax form, says God blessed him with a higher paying job months later and his former employer went out of business.
While Slonopas, who is now 59, doesn’t believe the controversy over the number on his tax form was related to his former employer closing down, he told Religion News Service that he believes God blessed him for his faithfulness.
“Looks like I got my blessing,” he told RNS.
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The number 666 is popularly interpreted from the Bible as the number of the devil or “the mark of the beast” and Slonopas believes he would have betrayed God by accepting it.
In an interview with The Christian Post shortly after he quit his job in 2013, the Clarksville man said he went to his employer, Contech Casting LLC, as he had done on two previous occasions to explain his faith-based position on the number and why he couldn't accept it. His supervisors couldn't arrive at an agreeable solution so he resigned.
"I explained to them, I can't accept this number. I am a Christian. They said, we cannot change it because it is computer generated," Slonopas said.
"I asked them, are we working for the computer or is the computer working for us? I had nothing to complain about, I just asked them to change this number," he added.
While many people, even Christians at the time, thought he was an idiot for resisting the number, he said when he meets people today and they learn he's the person behind the 666 story, they no longer see him that way.
Shortly after he left Contech, Slonopas said he got a job offer and an eventual raise in pay from another local company of $12 more per hour.
He further explained that his decision to leave Contech was more about being faithful to his beliefs rather than the company being evil.
“If you believe in God,” he said, “you have to resist a devil.”
Slonopas previously told CP that his devotion to his Christian faith was strongly influenced by his mother and grandmother who became Christians while they were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps in Poland.
"When you come to a situation where nobody can help you, when the only choice you have is to believe in God and hope or get angry with God and have nothing," he said.
