Sunday, July 08, 2007

it's not luck, but it's still good

if i had a dollar for every time i read or heard a news story yesterday about what a "lucky" day it was, i would have been able to afford another garage sale. lots of people appeared to be into 07-07-07, as babies were born and weddings were held.

but every time i hear somebody talk about what a "lucky" day it was, i cringe.

i wish our silly american culture, many of whom claim to be Christian, thought about God a little bit more. because really, any significance in the number seven comes from the Author of the Universe, who seems to favor this number. i'm not into "numerology" but the use of number seven in the Bible is astounding. and since our God is amazing and Holy, i am sure He has something in mind concerning the number seven.

i looked on the internet, and found a couple really cool things.

There are ten other words derived from the same word as seven, meaning fullness or completeness. Together they appear a total of 434 times in the Bible. 434 = 62 x 7.


The Hebrew word for seven occurs a total of 392 times in the Bible. This is not only a multiple of seven but of seven times seven, 392 = 8 x 7 x 7. 392 is also remarkable for being the sum of the square of seven and the cube of seven, ie. 392 = (7 x 7) + (7 x 7 x 7) or 392 = 72 + 73.

The word seven is often used more than once in a verse. So the number of verses in which it appears will be less than the total number of times it is used. It turns out that the word seven appears in 343 verses. 343 = 7 x 7 x 7 = 7
3. There is therefore 49 times seven is used more than the first time in a verse, or there are 49 repeat uses. 49 = 7 x 7 = 72.

and finally,

Seven represents Spiritual perfection and so adequately represents the Holy Spirit itself. But seven is also the seal of God, He stamped His aproval of the creation by resting on the seventh day. Seven occurs throughout the Word of God more often than any other number. Ivan Panin regarded a pattern of sevens in the gematria of scripture as the stamp or seal of Gods authentic Word upon it. In fact, rightly or wrongly he used this to determine whether scripture was part of the genuine Word of God or not. If we look at seven in this light, no wonder that the holy Spirit is associated with seven. The holy Spirit is the seal of God on the believer, the earnest of our inheritance. Thus seven is symbolically the seal of God in scripture and in the believer as well.

i am thinking that today is a good day to praise the One who made my "lucky" day happen yesterday, huh?

1 comment:

Karen said...

I just had this conversation with the boys at dinner tonight!! Thanks for doing the research, I can't wait to share this with them.