PART II, ARTICLE VIII: NUMEROLOGY MADNESS, SECTION VI

Augustine of Hippo, the champion defender against the Pelagian heresy, wrote one of the most important books of all time, which book, The City of God, remains the most necessary theological tome by a Church Father. How much space is given to numerology in this momentous, massive work? Almost no space is given to the subject; I know this because I have just finished reading The City of God for the second time. So, for example, after saying almost nothing on the number seven, he begins to wrap up: “Much more might be said about the perfection of the number seven, but this book is already too long, and I fear lest I should seem to catch at an opportunity of airing my little smattering of science more childishly than profitably. I must speak, therefore, in moderation and with dignity, lest, in too keenly following ‘number,’ I be accused of forgetting ‘weight’ and ‘measure’” (Augustine, The City of God, 11.31.) He saw that it was his duty to focus on the weight and measure of doctrine. Some study of numbers is good; but the exposition of words is better. Gematria, however, is good for nothing except counting.

Gematria is an unchristian subculture of superstition, notwithstanding the fact that some Christians are taken up with it. It is no more Christian than Edgar Cayce, Nostradamus, the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and the miracles at Lourdes. Christians who are excited about numerology as a means to convince people that the Bible is the word of God are either misinformed or uninformed. If ignorance is the mother of superstition, credulity must be its father. If it is better to obey God than to perform a miracle, is it not also better to seek a word of God to obey than to divine its numerological value? It is what the word of God says, not the numerological value of its words, that Jesus recommends. Novel marvels and modern miracles, much less numbers, are of little value compared to what the Bible says. What did Jesus say about hardcore unbelievers that numerologists think one more wonder would convert? “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Luke 16.31.) We shouldn’t want to know the numerical value of any of the words in that sentence, or of what all of the words in the verse together amount to, or whether any of the words or their letters add up to a value that may be divided into a mysterious or positive number. We should want to know what the message in the verse can teach us. It teaches us that even the sight of a miracle will not persuade hardened sinners to turn from their sins and believe in the Lord in order to avoid the judgment to come and be admitted into God’s kingdom. If sinners will not believe on account of a miracle, will they believe on account of numerology? Might the people who believe that numerology will persuade sinners of something spiritual be as lost as the sinners they are attempting to persuade? Are they not like the adulterous generation in Jesus’ day? “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas” (Matthew 12.39.) To say the least, it is no mark of true religion to be seeking after a sign when this verse unreservedly directs the focus, through Jonah’s type of death, on the saving death of Jesus Christ instead. The number 666 is ‘the number of a man,’ says the Bible (Revelation 13.18.) If numerology is to be assigned a value, I submit the number 666 for consideration, for it is the work of man, not the revelation of God.

PART II, ARTICLE VIII: NUMEROLOGY MADNESS, SECTION V

It is easy to come up with something mysterious and exciting once we accept that each letter of the alphabet has a numerical value and that we may apply numerical values, with the concepts that they are chosen to represent, to ideas, events, or individuals in the Bible. So, for example, I could concoct something like this. ‘Belial,’ a synonym for the devil, is supposed to add up to 78. And Psalm 78 contains ‘dark sayings’? Could this not mean that Satan authored Psalm 78? According to the rules of numerology, which are as malleable as a rubber band, this is precisely what it could mean. By the use of numerology, a person can make whatever is in the Bible mean anything that he wants it to mean. Numerology draws its practitioners and dabblers away from the meanings of words, and gets them wonderfully lost in a world of numbers and connections that are disassociated from the real value of God’s Revelation. Indeed, my friend, the maker of the PowerPoint presentation that I have just commented on, is a good example of being a victim of this through princes of Gematria like Bullinger and Panin. Principes—plus exemplo quam peccato nocent. (Princes do more mischief by the example they set than by the crimes they commit, Cicero.) Obsession with this kind of thing erodes common sense and makes the mind vulnerable to nonsense. After over thirty years since converting to the Christian faith, this friend of mine is still hypnotized by what the apostle calls ‘old wives’ fables.’ Each one that he tells me about is as strange as the last one, and every single one is unverifiable. After many, many years, he still talks about the Ark of the Covenant that some people believe has been found underneath the earth where Jesus was crucified. So the theory is that the blood of Jesus dripped down the cross and then into the earth and onto the ark as if to fulfill, in a biological, scientific, physical, palpable way, the Old Testament sacrificial system. What if it’s true? What if the death of Christ happened just like that? Would the fact change anyone spiritually? Would his precious blood have magical powers? Would everyone hearing the news believe unto salvation? My friend must think something along those lines would happen. Or it may be that some people like sensational stories more than sound doctrines, and for no other reason than to speculate about what the stories could mean. It gives them something thrilling to talk about with other folktale enthusiasts. Adam Clarke, the commentator, defines old wives’ fables as ‘miracles without rhyme or reason.’ Matthew Poole, another commentator, calls them ‘impertinent discourses which tend nothing to promote either faith or holiness…discourses having no bottom in the word of God.’ They are to be ‘refused,’ says the apostle; that is to say, declined, deprecated, and shunned. “But refuse profane and old wives’ fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness” (1 Timothy 4.7.) Old wives’ fables like numerology and the story about the ark under the cross are too silly to entertain, even if it means that the teller of them is so insulted by our refusal that he shuns us in return. It takes just a little meditation to show how silly they are. Considering for a second the one about the blood of Jesus and the ark: Would the cross not soak up the blood before it could reach the earth? And the fact is that the earth soaks up blood even more than it soaks up water, blood being thicker than water, which makes it hard to imagine how blood could drip down through many feet of earth to reach the ark. Maybe the earthquake that happened when the Lord died opened up the earth at the right spot to receive his blood and just perfectly so that the cross did not sink? But no one saw the ark down below? No one wanted to go and get it? And why wasn’t the event recorded by one of the evangelists? The story of Jesus’ blood dripping down upon the ark raises almost as many questions as there are numbers for numerologists to play with. But it is the sort of unsubstantiated story that excites persons who are not satisfied with what the Bible tells us. Does it not border on blasphemy to speculate about the sacred blood in this way? Is Jesus’ blood not precious? Is it not what saves? If it is precious and saving, why countenance fabulous stories about it? Should we not balk at Jesus’ soul-saving blood being imagined outside the context of what the Bible tells us about it? Tales about sacred subjects, and numbers with secret powers—these are twin evils that may be summed up as old wives’ fables. What a disgrace that such things have taken the place of the simple, systematic reading of the Bible. And how disgraceful that to refute this kind of garbage in order to try to straighten a friend out that even something as holy as the blood of Christ has to be explained more scientifically than metaphysically! Sometimes I wonder if we sin by going more than the proverbial ‘extra mile’ with someone.

PART II, ARTICLE VIII: NUMEROLOGY MADNESS, SECTION VI

To complete the PowerPoint oeuvre, several names for Jesus are chosen to show up the number eight because this number is supposed to signify cheerful things, like resurrection and new beginning. The word ‘Messiah,’ for example, has a numerical value of 656, which is nicely divisible by eight. Only seven or eight names for Jesus are singled out. But there are many other names that Jesus is called. Take for example, ‘Son of God.’ Why is this august title not featured? Is it not because it won’t add up to a number that is divisible by eight? What about ‘Prince of Peace’ or ‘King of Kings’? I cannot find them featured anywhere, no matter where I look, not in the PowerPoint, and not on sites about either Panin or Bullinger. They must not add up to the desired value. If they did, they would have been brought forward for sure. 

I gladly concede that the Bible calls attention to patterns of numbers. It is what we should expect from a Book by God, for his General Revelation accentuates patterns too: elk, moose, caribou; mold, mildew, mushroom; snowstorm, blizzard, ice storm. But where in the Bible are letters of words assigned their numerical value? There is no biblical basis for this kind of dissection. When certain words and letters are selected for analysis because someone (outside the Bible) has assigned value to them, this is not enlightening. It is nothing but selections of words and letters for the purpose of arriving at preconceived conclusions. It is no more spiritual to do this than it is to play cards with a stacked deck. This practice of ‘discovery’ is radically different from the patterns of forties and twelves that may be discovered on the landscape of Scripture. Fabrication is not discovery. The selective crunching of numbers that Panin and Bullinger do, because it involves sacred subjects, is a bad strain of mysticism—mysticism by which the simple are deceived and because of which wise men scoff.

Looking outside the PowerPoint, now, several sources say that ‘sons of God’ adds up to 153. And John 21.11 mentions ‘153’ fishes that were caught on account of a miracle by the Lord. So there must be some connection between the number ‘153’ and the ‘sons of God,’ apparently. What could the connection mean? No one knows for sure. But that is the attraction. There is a mystery here that we don’t know the meaning of, and it must be more important than the meaning of Scripture. This is what’s implied. What about ‘sons of God’ not being perfectly divisible into eights or some other positive number? Isn’t this divisibility supposed to be the measure of goodness or greatness? If we divide ‘sons of God’ into eights, we have 19.125-8s. Well, that does not work toward anything positive or fascinating, does it? Therefore some other scheme is resorted to and the one about the number eight is not mentioned. I don’t see that this association between the ‘sons of God’ and the ‘153’ fishes is made by either Panin or Bullinger; but many triflers have done so, and crackpots like these two men have paved the way for this sort of madness. If people take this connection as a proof of something, they can be made to believe anything, and their belief will be worth nothing. In the PowerPoint, the impression is left that Ivan Panin won a Nobel Prize for his Bible coding. The truth of the matter is that he merely ‘submitted his findings.’

PART II, ARTICLE VIII: NUMEROLOGY MADNESS, SECTION V

Further into his PowerPoint effort, my friend pivoted from Panin’s work to Bullinger’s. Several names for Satan are singled out as being mysteriously related to the number thirteen: Dragon, Tempter, Belial, Murderer, Serpent. For example, ‘Serpent’ has a numerical value of 780, which is perfectly divisible by thirteen; ‘Belial’ amounts to 78—again, a number that perfectly divides into thirteens. But what about names like Accuser, Adversary, Devil, Beelzebub, Liar, Prince of this World, God of this World, Prince of the Power of the Air? I am not a numerology expert, for the meaning, not the numerical value, of God’s word is what Christians are encouraged to know. But to show how erroneous this kind of numerology is, I went looking for Dr. Bullinger’s schemes to see what he has to say for Satan’s other names. It turns out that ‘Beelzebub’ adds up to a numerical value of 598. I don’t know if it really does, nor do I care. But if it does, it breaks down into 46-13s, just like he tells us. But note the interesting qualification, which he has in parentheses, just like so: ‘(with article.)’ The word ‘Beelzebub’ all by itself, then, does not do the trick that Mr. Bullinger wants it to do. So he adds an article. The article is the ace up the sleeve. Unlike the magician, he has to show us the ace because a lot of people are able to count. Next, for the ‘Prince of this World,’ he has to haul in as many words as are needed to make it into a numerical phenomenon. So, ‘because the prince of this world is judged’ amounts to a numerical value of 5,577, which amounts to 429-13s, or as Bullinger puts it: 13 squared x 33, or 13 x 13 x 33. Look at all those 13s. Too bad it can’t be 13 x 13 x 13. Regardless, what should we take away from this? Does it mean that Satan is so bad that he must be cursed with the number thirteen? Is the number 13 the origin of evil, maybe? The friend who put this PowerPoint together must have seen that some things are stretched a little far, and so only the names for Satan that are the most convincing of representing the number thirteen were chosen by him for his presentation.

PART II, ARTICLE VIII: NUMEROLOGY MADNESS, SECTION IV

After this we are told that the number thirteen signifies sin and rebellion. Why not grant that it does? Joktan is singled out for special consideration here because he is the thirteenth in the order of Shem’s descendents (Genesis 10) and the Gematria of his name amounts to a figure of 169, or 13 x 13. That he was the thirteenth in order after Shem is debatable. But for the sake of argument, why not grant the wish? According to the PowerPoint, Joktan is supposed to be ‘the ancestor of sinful and rebellious people.’ But how sinful and rebellious? What is the measure? Isn’t every sinner sinful and rebellious? Did the people from Joktan’s line become any more sinful and rebellious than the people from the line of Peleg, Joktan’s brother? Abraham is from the line of Peleg (1 Chronicles 1.) Why was Abraham called out of Ur to begin a new line of people if it wasn’t because the people from whom he came were sinful and rebellious? Joktan is no more deserving of the number thirteen epithet than anyone else in his day. If one were to look into it, a bona fide saint from the Bible would soon be found to have a Gematria that could be cleanly divided into thirteens. I was going to try to find one, whereupon I immediately discovered that there are several Gematria models to choose from: Jewish, English, and Simple, each one with its own way of calculating. So I never minded. These three models give Joktan’s Gematria as 801, 426, and 71, none of which divide crisply into thirteens. On another site, I found that there are four ways of computing letters: according to ‘absolute’ value, ‘ordinal’ value, ‘reduced’ value, and ‘integral reduced’ value. “Each letter represents a different creative force,” it says there, which sounds eerily magical, and which reminds me of what charismatic churchgoers believe: that words, especially when uttered, have a power of their own. It is no wonder, then, that my superstitious ‘full gospel’ friend would be roused by Gematria. Anyway, it appears as though it does not matter what model or value system a person chooses to use, or even if a person chooses to come up with his own. It’s all about causing enthusiasm and discussion through a discovery of something that even the prophets and apostles were too unspiritual to investigate. Not knowing which model and value formula Panin and Bullinger used, and thus, which one my friend used to build his project, I will pose a question instead. Why not single out Judas? Does he not, or should he not, signify sin and rebellion even more than Joktan? Maybe coming up with a figure that would show Judas to be associated with the number thirteen is not so easily done. Could that not be the reason why the obscure Joktan is singled out instead of the infamous Judas? Well, this seems entirely likely. What I found from Dr. Bullinger is that to make Judas into some sort of number thirteen wonder-boy, one has to take, not only his first name, last name, or even his two names together, but this whole phrase: ‘Judas Iscariot, he that should betray him.’ Then you get a numerical value of 4,511, which divides itself neatly into 347-13s. That is not part of the PowerPoint, though. Why not? Because my friend must have recognized that it was too much of a reach. No doubt, like what happened to me, he must have run into farfetched numbering like that during his research. (Not that this whole business is not farfetched.) Maybe he is smarter than his masters in numerology.

PART II, ARTICLE VIII: NUMEROLOGY MADNESS, SECTION III

Soon after this, we are told that the first and last letters of each of the seven words, computed together, add up to the value of 1,393, or 199-7s. Why count the first and last letters of each word? Why not count all the letters except the first and last ones? Obviously, the first and last letters are counted in order to come up with all those sevens. 

Further on, we are shown that if we combine the particle ‘eth’ with the article ‘the’ used twice, we come up with a value of 406, or 58-7s. But why choose that particle and that article? And why double up on the article? Is doubling up on the article not the only way to make small parts of the sentence add up to a large number that is divisible by seven? This is an odd choice of things to add up from the word of God. And it is a deceptive way to do it.

Next, the last letters of the first and last words of the verse are said to amount to 490, which is divisible by many sevens. But why not choose to add up the first letters of the first and last words instead? Could it be that they would not amount to a large number that is divisible by seven? 

After this, fifteen features of Genesis 1.1, like the few that I have mentioned above, are said to issue forth such a manifestation of sevens that the odds of them manifesting like that by coincidence, are one chance in 33 trillion. The problem is that since the numerical wonders are the result of Ivan Panin’s cherry-picking, as I have pointed out, all this arithmetic proves is that manipulation by Panin, not the hand of God, has been the cause. And if Panin caused the wonder through manipulation, then the odds are no more than about one chance in one. When I was a boy, one of my uncles taught me a card trick that can make the trickster look like a genius simply by the selective questions that are posed. Panin’s numerology gimmick reminds me of that.

PART II, ARTICLE VIII: NUMEROLOGY MADNESS, SECTION II

Near the beginning of this PowerPoint, the number seven is said to have something to do with the idea of perfection. This claim is true; or at least the number seven is accorded special favor in the Bible. The number seven is clearly emphasized to manifest a pattern. There are seven days, seven seals, seven angels, seven trumpets, seven thunders, seven vials, seventy times seven, and so on. All of this is valuable because it is biblical. After mentioning that the number seven is prominent in Scripture, however, my friend did not draw attention to the sevens that are found in Revelation or something obvious like that. Here are some of the number patterns that he chose to focus on. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This verse contains seven Hebrew words, consisting of twenty-eight letters collectively. Twenty-eight divides itself into four sevens. The first three words have fourteen letters; and fourteen just happens to be seven times two. The three nouns add up to a value of 777, or 111-7s. That, in part, is the teaching. But what value is this information to us? People are supposed to believe that the Bible is the word of God because of this? What about the second verse? What about the third? Indeed, what about verse number seven? That one should be loaded with sevens, right? But what if the seventh verse contains more than seven Hebrew words? In fact, it contains seventeen words. I looked it up. Yes, seventeen has the number seven in it. But seventeen is not exactly the perfect number, is it? Nor is it divisible by seven. Does this mean that the Bible is imperfect? Does this mean that it is fallible? If we were to believe in Gematria numerology, and at the same time believe in consistency, is that not what might be suggested to our mind? How can verse number seven fail us like that?  

Not only do the first three words of his chosen verse have fourteen letters, which is double the amount of seven, but the other four have fourteen as well, which is double the amount of seven again. Fine, but does this not mean that the number fourteen should be special? Well, at least fourteen is twice as many as seven, I guess. But why not count the letters of the first four words together, and then the letters of the other three? Is it not because the values would not amount to fourteen that way? Then it says that the fourth and fifth words have seven letters, and that the fifth and sixth have seven letters too. Notice how selective this is. Why take the fourth and fifth and then the fifth and sixth? Why not the fourth and sixth? Or why not the first and third? Is it not because the number seven might not rear its magical head through those combinations?