Taken from chapter 4 of my book written in 2008...
I discovered the Redemption Pattern as I observed clues to numeric patterns in Scripture several years ago. I observed “coincidences” where numbers in Scripture seem to follow similar themes. It was not a study on numbers or patterns that began this adventure; it began simply as interesting things to note about the Bible. As I began to pile up more and more notes about such coincidences, and a full two years after my first observation, I began to notice it was a consistent pattern in the use of numbers that appeared throughout the Bible. I then began to come up with descriptions for the themes I saw related to different numbers and their themes.
It was months later when I observed the pattern of number themes being used in the same order in various lists within the Bible. The patterns I saw seemed related to observations other scholars had made about such things as the Lord’s Prayer being broken down into ten parts, about the generations from Adam to Noah seemingly revealing a redemption story, and about the correlation between the division of the Psalms and the five books of the Pentateuch. I even began to notice that the teachings in the first ten books of the Bible seemed to correspond to the same themes of numbers and patterns. Such observations went on for many months.
More than four years ago I was amazed when I realized for the first time these numbers and themes have a progressive nature. That is, they not only were always in the same order, but they were in a logical order that seems to explain the steps in the learning process. Then I observed that the first ten books of the Bible, from Genesis to Kings, each seemed to be related to the progressive ten steps. I should note that over the years I’ve come to understand that for the purpose of seeing the numbers relate to the themes, the books of the Bible are numbered in two different sequences. Of course we are all familiar with the sixty-six-book count, but there is also a second God-intended way of counting every full book that had, over time, been split into multiple parts as one single book. So books such as 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings are counted as single books, thus giving a second fifty-seven count of Bible books. Often it is the fifty-seven count that seems to consistently fit number themes more clearly, but I believe God intended both the sixty-six and fifty-seven counts—each reflects different aspects of number-related themes.
Once I saw that the overall themes of the ten books, Genesis through Kings, reflected the Redemption Pattern it became much clearer how God had structured His Word using the Redemption Pattern as a ten-part template, with each part being a step in a set of progressive themes outlining God’s plan of salvation. Having this better understanding, I began to observe the pattern in virtually every aspect of the Bible.
Since there’s no one place in Scripture that defines these ten steps of God’s Redemption Plan, I had to determine the definition of each of the ten themes by studying the pattern in thousands of examples to discern the common threads of theme related to each number. So, by looking at the themes for the first ten books and comparing them to the ten parts of the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the ten “I Am” statements from John’s gospel, and many other lists the themes, I saw the pattern.
All that to say that the idea of a Redemption Pattern is not the result of an epiphany that came upon me one day, or a theory based on random thoughts. Rather, it is the result of eight years of observing what I once thought were coincidences in the Scriptures. But after seeing so many of them I could no longer dismiss them as products of chance. After many months of struggling with them I finally concluded God had written His Word in a pattern that reveals His plan of salvation.
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