As said in the previous post on ‘seeing’ the Lord’s numbers, the reason for republishing a few older posts on numbers is to provide a background briefing on the spiritual as well as intellectual rationale for the Bible’s use of and significance of numbers. Also, it will help when I address objections arising from recent references by a few prophets to numbers.

For the sake of clarity therefore, this version of Unlocking the Sign Miracles of John – Update posted 15 Nov 2018, repeats only the grounds for using numbers contained in the Bible:

That first part of the original mini-series on the prophetic word about 2018 being when the Lord imparts to His prophets the ability to see and understand ‘My Numbers’, also refers to these earlier blogs on that topic:

• Astonishing Mathematics, a conjunction between Creation, Gospel & Science?
• Amazing Geometrical Symmetry of Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1 (cont’d)
• Number 153, Signs and Symbols
• A Post-Resurrection miracle as a ‘Mystery’ now revealed – part 2

‘Look inside’ (Amazon) by clicking title’s hyperlink

With the kind permission of author Jonathan Hill, I draw my readers’ attention to the book’s Preface telling of his discovering how prophecy and numbers work together.:

‘The Bible speaks of several upcoming global events which occur at the end of the Christian Age including the ‘catching-up’ or rapture of the believing church, a period of terrible tribulation for the nation of Israel followed by the second coming of Messiah. This book presents a unique chronological framework for these events, unveiled within the eight sign miracles of John’s Gospel. Each sign miracle targets a facet of God’s concluding work in the consummation of this age, for either the Body of Christ or the nation of Israel. Underpinning this framework is an elegant, figurative and radix [1] independent mathematical transformation or pattern, derived from the numerical values of key words and phrases in the autographic Hebrew and Greek text of scripture.

‘As a professional computer programmer, I’ve been involved in patterns, methodologies and code throughout my entire career of 33 years to date. Observing and capturing patterns, whether business, scientific or financial, and then logically implementing them into modern software, is what I do.

‘For many years I have been observing another pattern of typological and numeric design within scripture. The content of this pattern is spiritually intense because God has self-authenticated His authorship of the Bible in a unique and deterministic way. Moreover, this biblical pattern, which comes into focus through the sign miracles recorded by John, holds a vital message for the Body of Christ and the nation of Israel. Christians and believing Israel must prepare for meeting the Bridegroom and Messiah respectively.

‘I have worked hard at making the types and the maths as intelligible and as simple as possible. The book is a progression of revelation building chapter upon chapter. As part of the authorship process, custom software has been written, to capture and validate the Greek and Hebrew numerical values from the autographic text. The Appendix lists every Greek and Hebrew numerical value quoted and breaks down the calculation into its constituent parts, giving the reader full transparency of the process.’

[1] ‘Radix or ‘base’ is the number of unique digits, including zero, used to represent a number counting system. Base 10 (decimal) is the most common radix and uses ten digits from 0 through to 9. Another well-known radix is base 2 (binary) which uses two digits, 0 and 1.’

From the outset Jonathan stresses,

‘Throughout the text of this book, Greek and Hebrew numbers and typology are introduced and it is, therefore, important to clarify their scriptural authority. Essentially, fundamental doctrine is never to be derived from types or numbers, rather they should be used only to illustrate and illuminate the existing meaning of the surface text.’

Then he proceeds to elucidate some profound points:

‘But God does not stop with types, as each letter of the two original languages of the Bible, Hebrew for the Old Testament and Greek for the New Testament, encapsulates a numerical value. Words and collections of sequential words have a mathematical identity which, therefore, extends the surface narrative. Any agreement between this underlying numerical pattern and the surface meaning or doctrine, affixes considerable authenticity to the text…(All emphases mine).

‘Only a personable supernatural God could inject such intrinsic connectivity within a book written in two languages with different alphabets, by multiple authors and across two millennia.

‘The only reference in the (NT) to individual letters is actually in John’s Gospel – ‘And the Jews marveled, saying, “How does this man know letters, having never studied?” John 7:15 NKJV.

‘The existence of a relationship between the surface meaning of the text, the type and the underlying mathematical value has long been known in Jewish Rabbinic tradition’ – see Wiki Pardes (Jewish Exegesis) (page 160).

For more details be sure to read the above linked posts.

LETTERS = NUMBERS : SENTENCES = SUMS & TOTALS = SHAPES & PATTERNS.

In the next post we’ll read Jonathan’s claim as to how this numerical understanding may be applied to a couple of globally significant ‘escape’ events in recent years…