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THE PROPHETIC ACHIEVEMENT
It is well for us to face the fact here that the story
of the right idea of God and its appearing to men did not start with the Bible,
as has been so generally believed. E. Griffith-Jones writes in Peake's
Commentary on the Bible:—
In the first place, we must once and for all set
aside the pre-critical view of the Bible as an isolated and complete book.
Before the dawn of criticism, scholars and commentators dealt with it as
though it were the pure result of an immediate and unrelated revelation. It was
like Melchizedek, "without father and without mother," owing nothing to any
previous literature, and having no affinity with the sacred books of other
nations. We now know that, however unique it may be in its contents and method,
it was the deposit of a complex series of religious movements, dating from very
ancient times. It is no longer possible to trace its indebtedness to all the
specific sources; but it is certain that the religious life and faith of which
it is the exponent was a stream that drew its waters from a vast watershed of
spiritual history and experience. We can follow some of its tributaries far
back into previous ages.
Is it not a matter of great moment that the Hebrew
prophets, recognizing the importance to past generations of these mathematical
symbols, wisely accepted them as pertinent symbols for all time, and then
lifted them above the realm of paganism and astrology on to the lane of
monotheism? Moreover, they accomplished something far more far-reaching than
this, for they used these mathematical symbols 1, 3, 4, 7, 10, and 12,—all
signifying great spiritual and scientific facts,—not only individually,
but also collectively, to symbolize a perfect system of idealism whereby the
ideas of reality and divinity could be made intelligently available to all men
in all ages.
Consider then the deep significance of such a perfect
and exact system of revelation, especially if it can be proved that it was
known and accepted by the prophets and also by Christ Jesus and his immediate
followers. In the Book of Revelation, which forms the climax of the Bible, John
certainly illustrates this divine system in the most prolific and definite
manner; indeed, without an understanding of its mathematical symbols, depicting
countless spiritual facts and their use in human experience, the Book of
Revelation could only be, for the most part, an enigma.
THE DIVINE SYSTEM IN THE BIBLE
Before we consider any further the question of whether
these specific numbers were combined by the prophets to form a complete system
whereby to symbolize the ideas of God, it would be well to determine exactly
what constitutes a system, and here is a dictionary definition:— A set or
assemblage of things connected, associated, or interdependent, so as to form a
complex unity; a whole composed of parts in orderly arrangement according to
some scheme or plan;... (Oxford)
From this definition it is evident that a system is
the ordered and exact arrangement of elements, and includes nothing that is
disconnected or fragmentary.
When Jesus declared, "ye shall know the truth," he was
surely aware of an infinite system of spiritual ideas forever operating in a
divine infinite calculus, through the understanding of which all men can avail
themselves of a scientific and spiritual process for knowing.
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