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.’
