The Hebrew Bible has a three-fold division just like the English Bible but the same 39 books they share are grouped together into 24 books in the Hebrew Bible.
Twenty-four is two times 12. Whose book is the Hebrew Bible? God committed it to the nation Israel. Twenty-four is 3x8. Three is the number of divine completion; eight is the number of a new beginning. So you have a message to Israel about God's intention to provide a new beginning for them.
Twenty-four is 4x6. Four in the Bible is the number of the earth. Six is the number of man. What's God's purpose for man in the earth?
In our Bible, the Old Testament has 39 books and 3x9=27, which is how many books there are in the New Testament. 39 when you divide it is 3x13. Thirteen is the number of rebellion.
You and I as Gentiles, aliens and rebels against God, that was the Old Testament for us. The books in the Hebrew Bible are arranged differently. Their last book is II Chronicles and the last chapter is 36.
At the end of II Chronicles what is Israel doing? They're off in captivity, in Babylon, and now they're invited to come back to the land. What's the hope of Israel? To go back into their land.
You know what our Old Testament ends in? In Malachi 4, the last word is 'curse.' Israel's Old Testament ends with a blessing and ours ends with a curse. I wonder why. Well, you and I are aliens and strangers and what does the law do? It curses.
There's all kind of things like that in the arrangement of the Bible that, as you study your Bible, you can't help but see these things. What happens is you begin to understand there's an underlying structure to the Word of God that demonstrates its divine origin.
The Old Testament is divided into three sections in an English Bible and the first 17 books (Genesis- Esther) are what I call history. Then there's five that look at the heart of Israel (Job-Song of Solomon) and after that are 17 prophetic books looking at the hope of Israel set forth in their prophets (Isaiah-Malachi).
First there are five books of Moses, what's called the Pentateuch or the Torah, which leaves 12 books from Joshua to Esther. But in these 12 that No. 12 is divided. There's 9 of those 12 that are pre-exile and then there are 3 of them that are post-exile. So you keep breaking the thing down.
These other 17 books are divided into five and 12 too. You have the five major prophets, then you have 12 minor prophets which are divided into nine and three. Nine pre-exile before the Babylonian captivity and three post-exile prophets.
When you begin to see how they match up, there's a numerical structure in the way the books are arranged in your bible, that once you begin to see it, there's this balancing act going on in Scripture.
You can't miss the fact that when you look at the table of contents numbers are going to be important. By the way, when you come into the New Testament, you have the first five books (Matthew-Acts) then you have Romans-Philemon, which are Paul's 13 epistles and then you have the nine books of Hebrews-Revelation.
Matthews-John are the history books, the four presentations of the life of Christ, and then in the Book of Acts you have the renewed opportunity of Israel to repent. Acts is the 5th book in the New Testament. The Book of Deuteronomy is the 5th book in the Old Testament and it's is a regiving of the law to Israel after the 40 years in the wilderness. The Book of Acts is a renewed offer of an opportunity for Israel to repent after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.
There are nine epistles Paul writes to the local churches and then there are four of what we call pastoral epistles, or handbooks for the local church. There are nine epistles written to the Hebrew churches.
Romans is the first of Paul's epistles and it focuses on the Cross. The last epistle to the Thessalonians focuses on the coming of Christ. The first one of the Hebrew epistles is the Book of Hebrews and it focuses on explaining the crosswork for them. The last epistle for them is the Book of Revelation and it's all about Christ coming for these people.
You can break that down more and more and you see this symmetry; there is a mathematical, numerical structure even in the way the Word of God is put together, so numbers are important to God. They matter in Scripture.
There are so many verses about God using numbers and God doing numbers, like how He's numbered the stars and He's numbered the hairs on your head.
But when you begin to study numbers, the first 13 numbers, actually 40 numbers, each number has a significance attached to it in Scripture that you just can't ignore and that's beyond the ability to just say it's coincidence.
It doesn't mean that every time the number occurs its significance is there, but it will be probably about 70-80% of the time, where you can see in the text a specific significance with that number consistently through Scripture.
In Genesis 11 the whole earth was of one language. Verse 6: [6] And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
The people are one and have one language. I read that and I think, wow, that is so true. Man can accomplish and achieve anything he sets his mind on doing unless God intervenes, as he did here. They had one world with one language and in verse 4 they try to create a one-world religion. And here’s unity and globalism at its best. One is a number of unity.
If you want to learn about believing something, just go to Genesis 1 and your Bible will prove itself. The No. 1 is the number of God. It’s the number of unity. It’s the foundation of all other numbers because every other number is a multiple of one. It first occurs in the text of scripture in Genesis 1:9: [9] And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
The number is associated with unity. About the 10 Commandments, Deuteronomy 6 says: [4] Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: [5] And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
That’s the
great confession of
Two represents division and the number three represents divine completeness. It’s the number of resurrection in the Bible. John 1, for example, starts out, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” Both the term Word and the name God occur three times. There’s divine completeness.
By the way, No. 4 represents earth and if you go to John 1:14 you’ll see the fourth time the word Word occurs. It says, ‘The Word was made flesh.’ Here’s the Word come into creation!
I know (you think) it’s just happenstance, and it’s all by accident, and you shouldn’t put much stock in it, but isn’t it just fascinating that it’s the fourth time the word occurs there?! When you study through your Bible, you find strange occurrences like that.
The number 13 is the number of rebellion in the Bible and if you look at Mark 7, for example, where Jesus is listing man’s sins, they add up to 13: 'And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.
[21] For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts,
adulteries, fornications, murders,
[22] Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil
eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:
[23] All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.
A similar listing of 13 can be found in Romans 1 where Paul writes, 'And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
[29] Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness,
covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
[30] Backbiters, haters of God,
despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
[31] Without understanding,
covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
[32] Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things
are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do
them.'
You can do that over and over and over and over in Scripture and these numbers . . . now, there’s not a doctrine tagged to (numbers); that’s just sort of that below- the-surface kind of structure that’s there and confirms something over here, that if you’re not careful you won’t even notice. And if you don’t notice this, you won’t notice that.
(Editor's note: People who are authorities on this stuff will tell you gematria codes are being employed all the time. You never are told this by the media, the government, etc., even though, according to Wikipedia, it's common practice:
Gematria is a Hebrew alphanumeric code or cipher that was probably used in biblical times and was later adopted by other cultures. It is still widely used in Jewish culture. Similar systems have been used in other languages and cultures: the Greeks isopsephy, and later, derived from or inspired by Hebrew gematria, Arabic abjad numerals, and English gematria.
A type of gematria system ('Aru') was employed by the ancient Babylonian culture but, because their writing script was logographic, the numerical assignations they made were to whole words. The value of these words were assigned in an entirely arbitrary manner and correspondences were made through tables.)
(new article tomorrow)
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