BIBLE NUMERICS
The Number ONE
The number One. The number One means unity. That is, one. Our words
unum, united, unitas, unity (uno in the Spanish), and so forth and so
on, show there's truth to the evidence. One is stability; it's fixed;
it's absolute. The number One, everywhere it's found in scripture or
outside of scripture, is connected with something that has unity to
it, and stability to it, and strength to it. It's the great word used
by the communists. Hence United Drive, United Fund, United Peace Corps
from unitas, unum, unos, one. One nation, indivisible, "under God";
scratch out "God" and you've gotten rid of the first commandment, and
you only have the second commandment--"one nation"--one people.
The word One occurs for the first time in the word of God in Genesis
1:9 where we read, "let the waters under the heaven be gathered
together unto one place." Thereafter it occurs so many times that it
would hardly do to list them--literally hundreds of times.
The great statement to Israel is, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is
one Lord" (Deut. 6:4). "The Lord our God is ONE Lord." The word one
here, as its fixed meaning, means a "plurality united," not a single
unit alone, but a "unity." "The Lord our God is one Lord." The word
there, in the Hebrew, is that word that refers to a oneness of a
multiplicity rather than a oneness all by itself with nothing
connected with it.
One, therefore, plainly stands for unity. That's what the world is
working toward; unity without the Bible, or unity with the Unitarian's
Bible, or unity with the United Nation's Bible, or a United Church's
Bible. What they want is oneness, and nothing brings this out any
clearer than the first great case of "one" in the Bible found again in
the book of Genesis. Although the first time the word One occurs is in
Genesis 1:9, the first time where we really see the word expounded on,
in all the glory of its meaning, is in Genesis 11 where it says that
the earth was of one language and of one speech and God said in
Genesis 11:6, "the people is one," and they all have one mind to do
this, and he said, "I'm gonna go down and break `em up." He scattered
them abroad upon the face of the earth. The word one, the number One,
as it stands, refers then to a strength of unity, and when Paul says
he wants to have the believers to be of one mind, and the same mind,
he's speaking of this. Where he says, "one body," "one Lord," "one
faith," "one Spirit," "one baptism," he is referring to the same
thing--a s ole thing that is correct and absolute into which
everything is united in accord, One. There is no problem with the word
One.
The Bible says a man "shall leave father and mother and cleave to his
wife, and they shall be one flesh." One, therefore, forever, stands
for unity. The unity may be a unity of two, or of three, or of five,
of of ten, or a hundred; but one is a single unit as it stands, and so
it stands anywhere in the word of God. There's no trouble with One.
Index of Preacher's Help and Notes
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