BIBLE NUMERICS

The Number SEVEN

Now we come to the number Seven. There is no need for a great deal of

thought or research or study or consideration as Seven is so obviously

the number of completion that it doesn't need any justification. One

of the ways you mark dead scholarship or dead-orthodox foolishness,

where it crosses the word of God, is by the mania of scholarship to

count every number as a "round number" or a "complete number." If you

read very many commentaries on the Scriptures (which I hope you don't)

or read very many scholarly works on the Scripture by dead-orthodox

scholars (which would be a waste of your money and your time), you'll

find whenever a number is given the scholar simply dismisses it by

saying, "This is not an exact number, but a round number showing

completeness." This asinine procedure is followed by the greatest

conservative scholars in the world until it just gets to be down right

ridiculous. "The 1,000 years in Revelation is not a real period of

time but a round number of completeness"; "Gideon had more than 300

men but the scribe simply used 300 as a round or complete number," and

so forth and so on. Ad nauseum!

The number Seven is the number of completeness, and there is no other

number that is as complete as the number Seven. This can be proved

anywhere, as someone once said, "From Generation to Resolution."

Now to begin with we have the present earth and heaven, and I say

present (not the one in Genesis 1:1), the present earth and heaven is

made in six days and God ceasing from His work on the seventh day. As

a matter of fact, this is how the Bible begins, and it is interesting

to note that when the Bible ends, it ends with a book where the words,

"this Book," are found seven times, where there are seven bowls, seven

vials, seven trumpets, seven candlesticks, seven spirits, and seven

churches. The Book, being an infinite Book, goes in a circle (and

anybody who reads the book of Revelation knows that already), as the

Tree of Life found in Genesis shows up in Revelation. The paradise of

God in Genesis shows up in Revelation, and it takes you right back in

a circle. That's why the Bible is not a "drop in an ocean of truth"

(as we hear propounded by the leading infidels of the National Council

of Churches), but it is the whole cotton-pickin' ocean, including

several hundred billion square miles of water above the universe that

the National Council hasn't found yet.

Seven is plainly the number of completion. This is apparent at the

beginning of the Bible and at the end of the Bible. If it were not

apparent from here, one would see immediately from studying Leviticus

23 and 25 that God doesn't do anything without "sevening" it. As a

matter of fact, the word for seven in the Hebrew is the same word as

to swear or put yourself under an oath. When the Lord says, "I have

sworn by myself," He has sevened Himself, or as they say on the craps

table--"seven come eleven." Seven is the finish.

Seven, in Leviticus 23 and 25, is pictured as the number of days in a

week, the number of weeks before the Pentecostal celebration, the

number of months before the Feast of Tabernacles and the Day of

Atonement, the number of years before the land release, and the number

of seven's of years before the jubilee and the sounding of the

trumpet. As a matter of fact, God divides the ages into periods of

sevens and the dispensations into periods of sevens. There is not much

doubt about what the Lord does with the number Seven. Seven winds it

up.

We have the original earth in Genesis 1:1. We have the earth that was

destroyed, or became without form and void, and the one in Genesis

1:2-3. We have the present earth as it was before the flood in Genesis

4,5,6,7, and 8. We have the earth over-flooded. We have the present

earth after the flood left it from Genesis 10 on to the present time.

We will have the Millennial earth when Jesus Christ returns to this

earth as found in Romans 8, Isaiah 11, and Revelation 20. We will have

the burning or consummation of that in II Peter 3, Isaiah 66, and

Revelation 20. And we, according to His promise, look for new heavens

and a new earth.

Now if you'll go back through and count, there are seven earths. The

new heavens and the new earth is the eighth, and this is the law of

music and art. As a matter of fact it is the law of nature. Nature

does nothing by ten's. It does everything by seven's. If you are a

male or female you have seven members to your body, the body being the

trunk. The trunk of the body, the body proper, has seven members

protruding from it. Male or female, you have seven members.

That isn't all; there are only seven colors. If a man has red, yellow,

and blue, the primaries, orange, green, and purple, the secondaries,

and black, he can make or mix any color there is. You say, "What about

white?" White is absence of color. "White" people are called "white"

because of the absence of pigmentation in their skin. (They're not

really white; their skin is actually "pink" because of the blood

flowing underneath. If they were really white they'd be dead!) White

is an absence of color. That's the point. So, if a man has seven

colors, he can paint anything, because seven winds it up. There are no

more than seven colors.

I know men whose eyes can pick out all kinds of colors. I know other

men whose eyes have a spectrum range of about 360 shades; that is,

they can only see 360 different forms of color. In regular house paint

put out in the paint store there are well over 800 different shades.

But every one of those 800 plus shades are made of red, yellow, blue,

orange, green, purple, and black with mixtures of white; white being

the color of the paper itself, colorless. If you have seven colors you

can paint anything, if you can paint at all. There is nothing that

Michelangelo or DaVinci or Rembrandt or Monet or Trujillo or Goya or

Norman Rockwell ever painted in their lives that had any more colors

to it than seven colors. Seven colors is all there is--there ain't no

more!

Then you have seven notes on the musical scale. There is not a piece

of music that came from the pen of Beethoven, Brahms, Bach,

Tschaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Schumann, Schubert,

Mendelssohn, Handel, Rimski-Korsakov--not a one of them ever penned

anything that used any more than seven notes. You see the black notes

on a piano are not true notes; they're what you call half notes. The

notes are the white notes, and when you get on the eighth note, you're

playing the same one as the first one because an octave up from the

first one is eight. There are only seven notes on a piano. That's all

there is; there isn't any more. When you get to eight, you're up an

octave from the first.

So there is not much doubt about the number Seven. You don't have to

even begin to trace it in the word of God. Wherever you find seven it

is going to wind up, and whether it be seven seven's or seventy

seven's or seventy times seven, that's the end. It is very interesting

to note that in Dispensational Truth by Clarence Larkin, you'll find

the entire history of Israel divided off into periods of 490 years

each, which is plainly 7 times 70--490. You might check that on

dispensational dealing with Israel--God's plan of dividing things off

according to seven's. Seven is plainly and clearly beyond any

reputation the number of completion. And although Gentiles count by

ten's--and we'll see why later on--God counts by Seven's.

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Index of Preacher's Help and Notes

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