Number in the Apocalypse: An Introduction to Biblical Numerology - Paperback

by Karen Eileen Mills (Author), Alan Darrow Mills (Author)

An Introduction to NumerologyNumerical symbolism, in one form or another, lies at the heart of all ancient civilizations. In Western culture it goes back to Pythagoras, the Father of Greek philosophy, whose theory of number was considered to be the key to understanding the universe. Number was not considered to be an abstract quality, "but an intrinsic and living virtue of the supreme One, of God, the Source of universal harmony." This idea was not seriously challenged until the advent of modern philosophy, whose practitioners universally deny that numbers have any metaphysical meaning whatsoever. In our own time, although there are many various interpretive methods for the things we call numbers, there are still only two classes of interpreters. Mathematician Leslie A. White casts this division of opinion concerning number in the form of a question."Do mathematical truths reside in the external world, there to be discovered by man, or are they man made inventions? Does mathematical reality have an existence and a validity independent of the human species or is it merely a function of the human nervous system?" There are many numbers that have a peripheral connection to the Apocalypse that we will not consider in detail in this work. The numbers 30, 40, 70, 72, 490, and 7000, for instance, are all related to John's prophecy in some way. The 490 years mentioned in the Book of Daniel's vision are an extremely important part of Biblical prophecy, and are connected directly to the 31/2 years of Great Tribulation mentioned by the Seer. But because they are not mentioned directly in the Apocalypse, they are beyond the scope of a work that is already overlong. But there are a host of symbolic numbers that appear in the Apocalypse, which are interlaced throughout the prophecy. The number 4, for instance, appears 28 times in the work, and the number 12 appears 20 times. When all the numbers are viewed together we arrive at an interpretation that depicts the figure of Christ which goes far beyond anything found in the synoptics.