Discovering Patterns in Chapter and Verse Designations
It has taken me more than ten years and 10,000 hours of Bible study to get to the point I'm at today in my understanding of Biblical numerics. This discovery did not occur to me as some overnight vision, but instead occurred a tiny step at a time starting back in 1999. To this day I'm not absolutely sure what I saw 10+ years ago that made me take notice of numbers, but this is one of the first curiosities that caught my imagination...Back in 1999, in an attempt to understand the gospels better, I began a deep and somewhat slow study of them. I would take and read a chapter many times over a 2-3 week period and would not move on to the next chapter before I felt I sufficiently understood as much as I was able from the current one. I probably read and went through each chapter 50 times thinking about every verse and even every word in them. I spent around 30-40 hours on each chapter. In this process, I one day ran across a curious discovery...
"The Eye is the Lamp of the Body"....what did that mean?
I've always questioned my
understanding of the eye being the Lamp of the Body. It was a verse I had read and had preached to me many times, but I was never quite sure I understood it well enough to teach it to others. In my study of Luke 12, I noticed (or God showed me) the relationship between
the verses of Luke 11:33-37 and 12:33-37. Five verses that lined
up on the same verse numbers in chapters next to each other. Each
of these five verses helped me understand the counterpart verse
in the other chapter. In my mind they match up perfectly and when examining
them together, they illuminate each other. At first I had simply noticed
the similarity in the text and did not notice their verse numbers--but
then I went to take notes about what I observed and I was very surprised to
see they shared the same verse numbers. Of
course, this could have been coincidence, but over a period of years, it turned out to be one of hundreds of little
clues that finally led me to want to study Biblical numbers more.
Luke 11:37 Now when He had spoken, a Pharisee asked Him to have lunch with him; and He went in, and reclined at the table.Verses in Luke 12 directly correspond and help explain corresponding verses in Luke 11. When you study each set in context of one another you can see the picture of Jesus being the Lamp of the Body and we are to have his lamp inside us (Holy Spirit?) when he comes for us. The strongest clues for these sets of verses intentionally lining up is verse 37 and 38. First, 37 contrasts how the Pharisees asked Jesus to recline vs how Jesus will come ask us to recline. Then in 38, the Pharisees were surprised when Jesus did not wash to be ready for the meal vs how when Jesus comes those who are ready will not be surprised. The following table compares these two sets of verses side by side... |
|
Luke 11:33 No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead he puts it on a stand, so that those who come in may see the light. |
May also correspond to Luke 12:33, but only shown here as a help to put it all in context. |
| Luke 11:34 Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are good, your whole body is also full of light. But when they are bad, your body is also full of darkness. | Luke 12:34 For where your treasure
is, there your heart will be also. (This helps explain what the lamp
of the body is. It’s our treasure, whatever we make it to be. It
should be God’s truth and Jesus) |
| Luke 11:35 See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness. (be actively seeking the darkness in your heart and doing the things necessary to grow and remove the darkness.) | Luke 12:35 "Be dressed
and ready for service and keep your lamps burning, “ (both verses
give orders to continue to work to keep God’s truth and light in
our lives. This is deep, heart truth, not just reading his word,
but to obey it.) |
| Luke 11:36 Therefore, if your whole body
is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be completely lighted,
as when the light of a lamp shines on you. (difficult
to comprehend the meaning until you read Luke 12:36 – Jesus comes
to shine on us--Amazing!) |
Luke 12:36 Like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks, they can immediately open the door for him. (his light comes and shines on us, that is, He does) |
| Luke 11:37 When Jesus has finished speaking
, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and
reclined at the table. (Jesus finished speaking – All
the talk was done, time for Jesus to come…, Pharisee was doing the
inviting to Recline – Wrong! The word “reclining” is not a coincidence
between these two parts of scripture. ) |
Luke 12:37 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. I tell you the truth, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come wait on them. (Jesus invites us to recline at the table. We are not the ones to do the inviting of him to come to us. We accept his invitation). |
| 11:38 But the Pharisee, noticing that Jesus did not wash before the meal was surprised. (The Pharisee who was judging Jesus’ acceptability to him, will be surprised). | Luke 12:38 It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night. (will be good, salvation…they will not be surprised) |
The discovery of The Bible's Redemption Pattern and Numeric map involved literally 1000's of small observations that all continually pointed to the existence of patterns between numbers and text. None of the examples by themselves could be considered proof, but the preponderance of so many of them demanded only one conclusion -- God had inspired book, chapter and verse numbers and lined up the text of scripture such that they may illuminate each other. Only a supernatural God could have developed the Bible with this incomprehendible perfection
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