I have a severely beaten-up notebook (where only 10% of the ring is still attached and holding all the sheets together!) that I just can’t get rid of because of all the important numbers it contains.

Not only do I have written down dozens of addresses and phone numbers (collected from new acquaintances during my extensive travels last year, including to various Bible conferences across the country), but there are all the personal account numbers, verification numbers, code numbers, finances-related numbers, etc., that I’ve had to keep on my person since putting all my stuff in storage last May.

Even my 5 X10 rented Public Storage unit, which I thankfully just emptied last week, required I have at ready access my account number, my unit number and the 10-digit long gate access code number.

In a series of Sunday evening studies Jordan just finished on the numerology in the Bible, he summarized, “The world we live in has reached a point where everything you do is numbered and that’s a precursor to Revelation 13. If you go back 40 years, it wasn’t this way. The advent of computers has made numbering systems for identification ubiquitous.

Specifically, Revelation 13:18 says, “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”

Jordan explains, “My point to you is there’s going to be a time when it’s going to be extremely important to be able to identify numbers. The fact that everything in life today has come to a place where it’s numbered just demonstrates that these kinds of passages, well, we’re just kind of moving toward that.”

*****

Of course, anybody who knows anything about the Bible knows it’s a book of numbers. In fact, in the Old Testament is even the Book of Numbers.

Jordan recalls reading once from a Bible commentary that one in every five verses in the Bible, on average, has something to do with a number in it. He says, “I don’t know if that’s true or not—I’ve never run those kinds of figures—but somebody thought enough about that to write it down.

“The point is, when you study the Bible you can’t miss the fact that it is numeric in its structure and arrangement. So numbers are important to God and they matter in Scripture.

“There are lots of verses about God using numbers and doing numbers. He talks about how He numbered the stars, numbered the hairs on your head, all those kinds of things.

“But when you begin to study numbers—with the first 13 numbers in our numbering system, actually 40, each one has a significance attached to it that you just can’t ignore. It’s beyond the ability to say it’s just coincidence.

“Now, it doesn’t mean that every time the number occurs it’s there, but what it will be is probably 75-80% of the time the number occurs you can see in the text a specific significance connected with that number that is consistent throughout Scripture.”

*****

The number associated with Israel is 12, for example, and 12 in Scripture references governmental perfection. Jordan adds, “And when you think of governmental perfection, and having the perfect government, well, I’m sure you don’t think of our government, at least if you watch the news lately. The one thing you can be sure of is the inmates are running the asylum.”

The numbers 3, 7, 10 and 12 are identified as perfect numbers and 3 is a lucky number representing divine completeness. It’s the number of resurrection in the Bible.

John 1, for example, starts out, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” Both the term Word and the name God occur three times. There’s divine completeness.

Jordan says, “By the way, the No. 4 represents earth and if you let your eye run down to verse 14 (in John 1), you’ll see the fourth time the word Word occurs, it says, ‘The Word was made flesh.’ Here’s the Word come into creation!

“I know (you think) it’s just happenstance, and it’s all by accident, and you shouldn’t put much stock in it, but isn’t it just fascinating that it’s the fourth time the word occurs there?! When you study through your Bible, you find strange occurrences like that.

*****

The number 13 is the number of rebellion in the Bible and if you look at Mark 7, for example, where Jesus is listing man’s sins, they add up to 13. The passage reads, “And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.
[21] For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,
[22] Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:
[23] All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.”

A similar listing of 13 can be found in Romans 1 where Paul writes: “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
[29] Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
[30] Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
[31] Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
[32] Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”

Jordan says, “You can do that over and over and over and over in Scripture and these numbers . . . now, there’s not a doctrine tagged to (numbers); that’s just sort of that below- the-surface kind of structure that’s there and confirms something over here, that if you’re not careful you won’t even notice. And if you don’t notice this, you won’t notice that.”

(Editor’s Note: To be continued . . .)