Numbers In Scripture

Underneath the Hebrew and Chaldee of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament there is hidden an extraordinary disposition of numbers which cannot be explained away by human intelligence. In order to understand this we must remember that none of these languages had symbols for numbers such as we have (1,2,3,4, etc). Instead of numeric symbols they made use of the letters of their alphabet, for example; a = 1, b =2 etc. One can easily see then that a word could be looked at in two ways, either as a word or as a series of numbers which could be added up to a total. For instance, the Greek word for "word" is "logos". If looked at from a numerical standpoint its value would be l =30, o - 70, g = 3, o = 70, s = 200; total 373. The numerical value of "logos" is therefore 373.

If we were to look at the Greek text of the first eleven verses of the New Testament (Matt. 1:1-11), we would find an elaborate scheme of sevens underlying the words, which could not have been put there by chance, or even arranged by any human cleverness on Matthew's part. These verses contain 49 words (7x7). Of these 49 words, 28 (4x7) begin with a vowel, and 21 (3x7) begin with a consonant. These 49 words have 266 letters (7x2x19); this number is itself 38 sevens, and the sum of its factors is 28 (4x7). Of these 266 letters, 140 (20x7) are vowels, and 126 (18x7) are consonants. Of these 49 words 35 (5x7) occur more than once in the passage and 14 (2x7) occur only once. Seven occur in more than one form and 42 (6x7) occur only in one form. The 49 words are divided thus: 42 (7x6) are nouns (the name of something) and seven are not nouns.

Of these nouns, 35 (5x7) are names of people and seven are ordinary nouns. Of these names 28 (4x7) are male ancestors of Christ and seven are not. Thus, an elaborate system of sevens occurs in these few short verses of the Bible. If Matthew was not writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, what a headache he must have had trying to figure out how to arrange all those sevens.

There is also a system of elevens in the Greek and Hebrew texts of the Scriptures and so wonderful is this that the chance of these figures occurring by accident rather than design (this is by the inspiration of God) is 1 in a number followed by 30 zeros, a billion million taken a million times. No one in his right senses therefore could argue that all these happened by accident or by human cleverness. Mathematics says it could not do so. This marvelous system of numbers occurs right throughout Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. Attempts have been made to find the same thing in human authors, especially those who lived about the same time as the writers of the Bible but no such system has been discovered; it is only found in the Word of God.

If what we have written here sparks your mind to further investigate this wonderful part of the depth of God's Word then there is a book for you which you can download free from Believer.com. The book is entitled Number in Scripture and is available for download as a Windows compatable eBook so click on the title and save the free file.

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