new article tomorrow--in meantime:
Old-time preachers used to say humans make the same seven excuses for sin: It's going to okay; everybody else is doing it; we've always done it; a little bit won't hurt; we know when to quit; you got to make a living; it all depends on how you look at it.
Throughout time, No. 7 has been significant in its relationship to humans' intellectual capacity and ability to process raw information.
"There seems to be some limitation built into us either by learning or by the design of our nervous systems; a limit that keeps our channel capacities in this general range,' explains famed psychologist George Miller in his essay The Magical Number 7. “This is the reason that telephone numbers have seven digits."
Bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell explains that the man who designed the telephone number "wanted a number as long as possible to have as large a capacity as possible but not so long people couldn't remember it. At eight or nine digits, the local phone number would exceed human channel capacity and there would be many more wrong phone numbers."
Examples of No. 7’s special designation include: The Seven Ancient Wonders of the World, The Seven Seas, seven visible planets and luminaries (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) marking the seven days of the week, the seven liberal arts and sciences and the seven orders of architecture.
Other commonplace examples are the seven notes in the musical scale, the seven primary colors, the seven members to a human body and the seven holes in the head.
The reality is life itself operates in a cycle of sevens and, as a whole, revolves around the number seven, which symbolizes "completeness."
Most births are multiples of sevens, for example. The hen, for instance, sits three weeks (21 days), and the pigeon two weeks (14 days). This is after having laid eggs for two weeks.
The majority of mammals have a period from conception to birth of an exact number of weeks, a multiple of seven, and children are born to mothers in a certain number of weeks (usually 280 days), a multiple of seven.
*****
As the most frequent number in the Bible outside of No. 1, seven can be found 735 times in the King James Bible—54 times in the Book of Revelation alone.
The Word of God is, in fact, founded upon the number seven and it is the symbol of divine perfection—the seven days of creation, God rested on the seventh day, the seven churches, the seven Spirits, the seven stars, the seven seals, the seven trumpets, on and on.
"There's a reason your Bible counts by seven. . . seven is a number creation counts by," says Richard Jordan. "Sometimes it's called a perfect number, but it's more than just the idea of perfection, there's a pattern being demonstrated here. . . Have you ever wondered why a week isn't 10 days? Or five days? I mean, who decided we're going to count a week a week and make it seven days? God did that. The whole world works on that basis and doesn't even know why. . .
"In God's calendar of redemption, No. 7 plays a tremendous part. You go to the last book of the Bible, seven is the key to that book. You go to the first chapter of the first book, seven is the key to that chapter.
"In Genesis 1, the issue of creation had to do with God dwelling in creation. He pitched the tent where he was going to dwell. He creates in six days and on the seventh He rests. And there was a pattern God set out in creation. There's a design, there's something He's teaching and something He's developing in those seven days of creation."
*****
Not only is the word finished found in connection with No. 7 in the Book of Revelation, so is the Bible expression, "It is done."
Revelation 10:7 reads, "In the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound the mystery of God should be finished." Revelation 16:17 reads, "And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne saying, it is done."
In preparation for mankind's destruction by the Flood, God instructed Noah in Genesis 7 to take the animals into the Ark by sevens: "Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth."
Then God said, "For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth."
As Peter tells us in I Peter 3:20, those seven days in the Ark before the Flood's arrival completed God's longsuffering and time of waiting. Genesis 6:9 confirms Noah, in what is the seventh mention of his name, was "a just man, and perfect in his generations."
*****
Similar pictures using No. 7 in relation to completeness, divine perfection, or consecration to God for service, are spread throughout the Bible.
There were seven feast days (Passover, Unleavened, First-fruits, Pentecost, Atonement, Trumpets and Tabernacle). King Solomon spent seven years building the Temple and kept the feast for seven days.
The seven branches on the candlestick in the Holy Place in the Tabernacle signify the complete light of God for the souls of men.
In Leviticus 16:14, the high priest, on the day of atonement, sprinkled the blood upon the mercy seat seven times, representing the completeness of the redemptive work of Christ.
When Job, in his afflictions, was paid a visit by his friends, they sat in silence seven days and seven nights, later being ordered by the Lord to offer seven bullocks and seven rams in a burnt offering.
In Matthew 18: 21-22, when Peter asked, "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?" Jesus Christ responded, "I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven."
In essence, Christ was exhorting, “Keep on forgiving until you are complete.”
*****
On Page 7 of the Scofield Reference Bible, the margin notes reveal even God's use of No. 7 to sum up His own name in connection with completion and divine perfection.
"In His redemptive relation to man, Jehovah has seven compound names which reveal Him as meeting every need of man from his lost state to the end," reads the notation.
The names are Jehovah-jireh ("the Lord will provide"); Jehovah-rapha ("the Lord that healeth"); Jehovah-nissi ("the Lord our banner"); Jehovah-Shalom ("the Lord our peace," or "the Lord send peace"); Jehovah-ra-ah ("the Lord my shepherd"); Jehovah-tsidkenu ("the Lord our righteousness") and Jehovah-shammah ("the Lord is present").
For the whole King James Bible, C.I. Scofield says its divided into seven dispensations, or "periods marked off in Scripture by some change in God's method of dealing with mankind, or a portion of mankind, in respect to the two questions: of sin, and of man's responsibility."
He explains, "Each of the dispensations may be regarded as a new test of the natural man, and each ends in judgment, marking his utter failure in every dispensation. Five of these dispensations, or periods of time, have been fulfilled; we are living in the sixth, probably toward its close, and have before us the seventh, and last: the millennium."
Toward the end of this current sixth dispensation we're still so incredibly blessed to be living in—
named by the Apostle Paul as the " dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to youward," (Ephesians 3:2)— and right after the Rapture of the Church, will come the tribulation and an intensified seven-year period of horrific suffering on earth called the Great Tribulation.
"It is evident that we are living in the terminal generation of the Church age. . . an epoch that immediately precedes a seven-year period known as 'Daniel's seventieth week,' " writes Bible researcher Noah Hutchings in his book, God Divided the Nations. "This 'week of years' is called elsewhere the 'Great Tribulation' and the 'time of Jacob's trouble' in Scripture. It is of vivid interest to Bible students how the basic seventy nations of Genesis 10-11 will finally align in these last days."
*****
In his book, The Signature of God, Grant R. Jeffrey outlines a phenomenal discovery of now-deceased mathematician Ivan Panin, who, in the 1930s, examined the Hebrew text of Genesis 1:1 and found 30 separate codes involving multiples of seven that couldn't be explained by chance, even by Harvard math professors.
In part, Panin found:
1. The number of Hebrew words = 7
2. The number of letters equals 28 (7 x 4 = 28)
3. The first three Hebrew words translated "In the beginning God created" contain 14 letters (7 x 2 = 14)
4. The last four Hebrew words "the heavens and the earth" have 14 letters (7 x 2 = 14)
5. The fourth and fifth words have 7 letters
6. The sixth and seventh words have 7 letters
7. The three key words: God, heaven and earth have 14 letters (7 x 2 = 14)
8. The number of letters in the four remaining words is also 14 (7 x 2 = 14)
9. The shortest word in the verse is the middle word with 7 letters
10. The Hebrew numeric value of the first, middle and last letters is 133 (7 x 19 = 133)
11. The Hebrew numeric value of the first and last letters of all seven words is 1393 (7 x 199 = 1393)
"When professors on the mathematics faculty at Harvard University were presented with this biblical phenomenon they naturally attempted to disprove its significance as a proof of divine authorship," writes Jeffrey. "However, after valiant efforts these professors were unable to duplicate this incredible mathematical phenomenon.
"The Harvard scientists used the English language and artificially assigned numeric values to the English alphabet. They had a potential vocabulary of over 400,000 available English words to choose from to construct a sentence about any topic they chose.
"Compare this to the limitations of word choices in the biblical Hebrew language which has only forty-five hundred available word choices that the writers of the Old Testament could use.
"Despite their advanced mathematical abilities and access to computers the mathematicians were unable to come close to incorporating 30 mathematical multiples of 7 as found in the Hebrew words of Genesis 1:1."
*****
As Jeffrey further explained, "The number seven permeates the totality of Scripture because the number speaks of God's divine perfection and perfect order. . . Panin and others have examined other Hebrew literature and have attempted to find such mathematical patterns, but they are not found anywhere outside the Bible."
Panin, whose own book, The Inspiration of the Scriptures Scientifically Demonstrated, details the "seven" phenomena examined and verified by numerous authorities, had accumulated over 40,000 pages of detailed calculations covering most of the Bible before his death, says Jeffrey.
"These incredible, mathematical patterns are not limited to the number seven," writes Jeffrey. "There are numerous other patterns. These amazing patterns appear in the vocabulary, grammatical forms, parts of speech, and particular forms of words. They occur throughout the whole text of the Bible containing 31,173 verses.
"When you consider the amazing details of this mathematical phenomenon you realize that the change of a single letter or word in the original languages of Hebrew or Greek would destroy the pattern. Now we can understand why Jesus Christ declared that the smallest letter and grammatical mark of the Scriptures was persevered by God's Hand: 'For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled' (Matthew 5:18)."
So what was Panin's own belief on divine origin of Scriptures? Jeffrey records this statement from an essay by Panin "warning of the limitations of wisdom found in secular philosophy":
"Not so, however, with The Book. For it tells of One who spake as men never spake, who was the true bread of life, that which cometh down from the heavens, of which if a man eat he shall never hunger."
In conclusion, Panin wrote, "My friend of the world, whose you are: Either Jesus Christ is mistaken or you are. The answer that neither might be is only evading the issue, not settling it. But the ages have decided that Jesus Christ was not mistaken. It is for you to decide whether you shall continue to be."
No comments:
Post a Comment