Monday, March 24, 2025

It is the 24th of March 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

A very happy Monday to you- and a thanks to those of you who wrote in to me about bunnies in the Bible- apparently Hares or Coneys are mentioned- the Coney could be a Hyrax (which is a real animal, not something from Dr. Seuss as it sounds). The Hare or Coney or Rabbit is/was unclean. So, the Easter Bunny is especially happy for the new covenant and all things being made clean.

Awhile back Jason in Sierra Madre wrote asking about different aspects of numerology and as I was doing the weekend edition I went down that rabbit- er, coney, er… hyrax trail and thought I’d go back to his question. I’m assuming Sierra Madre is the amazing little town in the foothills in Los Angeles, near Arcadia. But maybe the Mountain range in Santa Barbara. Or Mexico or the Philippines.

What to do with numerology- or the study of numbers and their significance. As I said on the weekend edition- I’ve seen some of the extremes, and that turned me a little sour on the whole field, but that’s not fair. Remember after Jesus feeds the 5,000 and 4,000, and he asks, “How much was left over?” And they say 12 and 7, and Jesus says, “Don’t you understand?” And I think it's ok for us moderns to say… “uh… no?”  

Let this be your regular reminder that the Bible is a collection of ancient books written by people with a very different view of the world- it’s ok if some of the stuff doesn’t make sense. And numerology has gotten a bad reputation. E.W. Bullinger- a 19th-century Englishman, comes to mind. Besides giving some standard explanations of numbers, he also used Gematria- that is, giving letters numeric values (a is one, or more often- used in Hebrew, Aleph is 1, Bet is 2, and so on). You might think, ‘That sounds like a weird way to read something,’ but then we should be reminded the book of Revelation (and apocalyptic literature in general) uses this, and in Revelation 13:18, we read: “This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666.”  

I mentioned on the weekend edition that at the turn of the century, people were going a little bit… well… it was a fun time; turns of the century always make people get a little crazy. Added to Gematria was “equidistant letter sequencing” or ELS, wherein words are “hidden” in the text and discovered by, say- starting in one passage and skipping every 4th letter. I’d say ELS is beyond the scope of traditional teachings and leans towards gnosticism- “secret knowledge,” “they” don’t want you to know.

I think a helpful key to reading Scripture is understanding that the main stuff is the plain stuff, and God isn’t trying to trick us or only bless those who are very clever. And numerology is neutral—it can be used wisely or unwisely. I like how the major verse in Scripture that has led to so many predictions, Revelation 13:18, starts with “this calls for wisdom.”

If you’re familiar with the Kaballah- the Jewish mystical tradition, I think we can see numbers running amok and a kind of “Gnosticism” that is paralleled throughout Christian history.

If the main things are the plain things- what numbers show up most? 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 12 and 40. From Augustine on, we have some pretty set ideas here- 1 and 3 are divine numbers (one God in three Persons and all that), and 4, 7, and 10 are “complete” numbers representing a whole. And 12 is the people of God- whether tribes or disciples. And Jesus himself will use these like in the earlier text about leftovers and when he talks about forgiveness- is 7 times enough? No! And depending on translation, it’s seventy-seven or seventy times 7.

A good word on this all takes us back to the 2nd century and the church father Irenaeus- he wrote, “For the Tradition does not spring out of numbers, but numbers from the Tradition.” That is, any numerology should support things already taught and should not form the basis for changing our ideas about those ‘main and plain” things. Now- as a guy who had to take a college math class called something like “math for people who aren’t going to use math later on” I’m ready to leave the numbers for awhile- but thanks Jason for the question.

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Romans 2:

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. 2 Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. 3 So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? 4 Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 24th of March 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man whose Gematria number from Hebrew is 713- the same number as “the Prophets Codes”… that’s got to mean something. He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man whose number is 1773, which corresponds to the phrase “You will be a CIA Agent” so… Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.