Scripture: Topics: Numbers in the Bible
All right, here we are. Numbers in the Bible, Episode 4 tonight. I am Michael Pearl, and you are at The Door located in Lobelville, Tennessee.
The Bible says, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God," 2 Timothy 3:16 and that includes all the numbers in the Bible. We're looking at the numbers. "Every word of God is pure. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee and thou be found a liar." Proverbs 30:5
When a child reads the Bible or an adult reads the Bible, your mind becomes imprinted with a symbolic meaning of Bible numbers. When you read a number of times the word five, you pick up the flavor, the color, the taste of that use of five in the Bible. That's what we're going to be looking at tonight, the number five and then the number six as well.
I
We already covered number one, which is just one and no more, above all supremacy, unique, apart from all others in its class, used over 2,000 times.
II
Then the number two, a number of things divided 835 times it's found.
III
I've looked at every single one of those carefully many times, recorded them and shuffled them around, synthesized them, organized them to see exactly what the number three means every single time it's used. It means the number of divine control, elections, sovereignty, volition, ordering or perfection.
IV
Then the number four. The number four is wholeness in structure or nature. That is four winds, four corners of a building, four animals. Four in structure or nature found 328 times, 189 as cardinals. The others are first.
Now, we're going to cover number five tonight. Five is divine appointment. Some people say that five is the number of death. Other people say five is the number of grace. Well, which is it? Those are quite different, aren't they? Well, I did find that 20% of all uses of five are death, 20%, 20% only. That's not enough to say the number five means death because there are a number of times that it has to do with grace. But every single time that five is used, it has to do with divine appointment. Now what one definition applies to all fives in the Bible, especially those that emanate from God or His prophets are those that are an integral part of God's plan.
The majority of fives in the Bible do originate with God, like God gives 50 times the number five in the Ezekiel's temple. So those are originating with God. There's sometimes five originates with men. It seems to be incidental and may not carry the strength of meaning that those that are given by God carries, but yet we can find in it divine appointment.
The majority of fives. So divine appointment with death are divine appointment with grace as the woman at the well who had five husbands, are divine appointment with Jesus as the young man, left house with five loaves of bread, had an appointment with Jesus to feed how many? 5,000, who had a divine appointment to eat with Jesus that day. Then divine appointment with judgment. Paul said, "I received stripes, beaten five times."
So God had told him, "Paul, you're going to be beaten," told him how many times, how many times he'd be stoned, how many times he would be lashed, cut, struck in the face. Paul knew all that. He knew exactly what he was going to suffer, knew how he was going to die. Yet Paul went on and he could count him off. So he had a divine appointment with judgment.
Genesis 14:8 Gives us the first use of five. It names a list of kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, and Zoar and Siddim. And it says, "And the vale of Siddim was full of slime pits and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled and fell there, and they that remained fled into the mountains." So four kings with five fell into the slime pits and died. They had a divine appointment that day with slime pits where God killed them, five kings.
Genesis 18:28 "Peradventure, " this is what Abraham said to God, "there shall lack five of 50 righteous, will thou destroy all the city for lack of five?" Sodom had a divine appointment with death. God said he was going to kill everyone, everything inside of Sodom. And Abraham is negotiating with God, trying to negotiate Him down and eventually negotiates Him down to just 10.
Genesis 43:34 "And he took and sent messes unto them," this is Joseph, "from before him, but Benjamin's mess," that was his young brother, "was five times as much as any of theirs." Benjamin had an appointment there, left home, went to buy grain, had no idea, and ends up meeting his older brother whom he had never met.
Genesis 45:6"For these two years hath the famine been in the land, and yet there are five years," so God predicted seven years of famine after two years. He said, "There are five years in which there shall be neither earing nor harvest." That is the corn coming to an ear and it won't be harvest. So going to be a famine for seven years. And there was five left which was divinely appointed.
Can you see the divine appointment in those passages very clearly?
Genesis 45:11 "And there will I nourish the for there are five years of famine." So divine appointment, God appointed the famine.
Genesis 45:22 "To all of them, He gave each man changes of raiment. But the Benjamin, he gave 300 pieces of silver and five changes of raiment."
Genesis 46:2"And he took some of his brethren, even five men and presented them unto Pharaoh." You see all of his brothers and his family and their servants even have a divine appointment to come down to Egypt and spend 400 years. And there God would mold them into a great nation where Moses would come and lead them out.
There are 23 fives found in the old tabernacle. There are
So the inside of the tabernacle was just full of fives. Now when you compare it to other numbers, you see their absolute lack.
Leviticus 26:8 "And five of you shall chase a hundred and to a hundred of you shall put 10,000 to flight." So this is a prophecy of their overcoming. Five of them will chase a hundred, that's divine appointment.
Numbers 3:47 "Thou shall even take five shekels apiece by the poll after the shekel of sanctuary shall thou take them to be redeemed unto Aaron and to his sons." So this is one that you could replace the number five with another number, and it wouldn't be out of context because it lacks a lot of context.
There are few times, 5%, sometimes as many as 10%, even up to in one case 15% of the use of a number that standing alone we couldn't surmise the meaning of it. Only in the context with the other 85%, 90% or 95% of the usages do we determine the meaning. This would be one of those places. “Thou shall even take five shekels apiece by the poll count after the shekel of sanctuary shall thou take them to be redeemed unto Aaron and to his sons." Again, you can see divine appointment in it if you look.
Numbers 7:17 "And for a sacrifice of peace offerings, two oxen, five rams, five he goats, five lambs of the first year." So they're divinely appointed to make these sacrifices in this fashion. There are 36 fives in 12 verses. This is one example of the 12 verses, 12 princes dedicating to the temple and each one of them brings five rams, five goats and five lambs of the first year. So they all had a divine appointment with God because the temple itself is the place where you meet God and it's through the blood sacrifices that one meets God. So they have a divine appointment to meet God through the sacrifices of these animals.
Numbers 31:8 "And they slew the kings of Midian and beside the rest of them that were slain, namely Evi, Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian." So five kings are slain with the sword. They had a divine appointment with death.
Joshua 10:5 "Five kings of the Amorites hid in a cave, but Joshua brought them out and killed them." Now you can see why some authors who just glanced through the Bible and read it extensively get impacted with the idea that five is the number of death because one out of five times, it is death. And you can see why they would come to that conclusion.
Joshua 10:16 "And these five kings fled and hid themselves in a cave at Makkedah. And it was told Joshua, saying, the five kings are found hid in a cave. And Joshua said, 'Roll great stones up on the mouth of cave.'" They died in the cave, they just starved them to death. Lack of water in a dark cave, they died. Five kings, five enemies, death.
Judges 3:1-4 "Now these are the nations which the Lord left, to prove Israel by them namely, five lords of the Philistines," And he names them. Now, God left the Philistines, he said to prove Israel. He left those nations that they were to destroy in order to try and prove Israel. So they were divinely appointed to have these enemies to test them throughout their history.
1 Samuel 17:40 "David selected five stones with which to slay Goliath." Now do you think Goliath had a divine appointment with that day? David did too when he left home with a little cheese to go see his brothers. Now how could a little boy like David slay a big giant like that with just a sling? He had the stones for it... Hey, what are you laughing at? I just saw that the other night when I was reading it.
Five in Solomon's temple, 1 Kings 6 and 7, there's two chapters, 12 times five is used in Solomon's temple and that's different from the tabernacle. And in 2 Chronicles, it's found 15 times, five inside the temple. Now you say, "But what about all the other numbers?" They do not appear in that number.
1 Kings 7:16 "And he made two chapiters of molten brass to set up on the tops of the pillars and the height of the one chapiter was five cubits and the heights of the other chapiter was five cubits." You see that repeatedly in the temple.
1 Kings 7:39 "And he put five bases on the right side of the house and five on the left side of the house," and so forth.
1 Kings 7:39 "And the candlestick of pure gold, five on the right side, five on the left side."
So divine appointment in the temple, there are in Ezekiel 40 and 45, Ezekiel writes of a future temple. One that's going to be built for Messiah when Jesus comes back and is going to exist in the millennial reign of Christ upon the earth. Now, this temple has five found inside of it 50 times, 5-0. Isn't that interesting?
Now what about the other numbers? Well, it's fascinating that the number seven does not appear in the temple, that which God does for man. We'll see that next week, that which God does for man.
What you have though is seven steps that lead up to the temple. That which God does for man admitting him into the temple. And then you have seven wide is the doorway, seven cubit wide going into the temple. But the walkway from the top of the steps to the entrance is 13 cubits, which is the only time that's used, never found in the temple.
13 is a number of sin, death, and judgment. So if you put all that together, you climb seven steps of God's program to walk 13 cubits of sin and judgment through a door seven wide in the temple of fives for a divine appointment where death is the means to grace. There are lots of these verses where you have five or six numbers used in the same verse and a very clear distinction between the meanings of them.
So the lack of these numbers being in the temple being found just outside but five being prevalent shows God had something in mind.
2 Kings 6:25 "And there was a great famine in Samaria, and behold, they besieged it until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung and for five pieces of silver." So they had a divine appointment with a famine. And if you read the story you find out there was some lepers had a divine appointment that delivered them from their hunger.
Isaiah 19:18 "In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan." When you have the phrase in that day, it's divine appointment, can you see that? God has appointed this to take place at a point in the future. "In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan and swear to the Lord of hosts, one shall be called the city of destruction." That's probably Gaza.
Isaiah 30:17 "1,000 shall flee at the rebuke of one, at the rebuke of five, shall ye flee." Now this is God's judgment upon the nation of Israel that they're going to flee when just five people rebuke them, the whole nation's going to run. That's how scaredy-cat they're going to be after He gets through with them in judgment. So that's divine appointment for judgment and even death.
Matthew 14:17 "And they said it to Him, we have here but five loaves and two fishes and they that had eaten were about 5,000 men besides women and children." The little boy had a divine appointment.
Matthew 25:2 "Five of them were wise and five were foolish," speaking of the virgins. Now those virgins all had a divine appointment to come to the marriage of the king and they showed up with the oil in their lamps, but five did not have enough. They were turned away, five did. And they went in. That's divine appointment.
Now you see, if it said six, six of them were wise, six were foolish, that just wouldn't have fit. Six is the number of man.
Luke 1:24 "And after these days his wife Elisabeth conceived and hid herself five months saying, "Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein He looked on me to take away my reproach among men." So Elisabeth had a divine appointment to bear John the Baptist who'd be the forerunner of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. So she hid herself five months.
Luke 14:19 "And another said, 'I have bought five yoke of oxen and I go to prove them. I pray thee have me excused.'" This was his response when he was invited to come to the marriage. This is the response of a sinner invited to come and be saved. He has a divine appointment. But he said, "I'm going to miss that appointment because I have five yoke of oxen I must go and prove." So he bought them without knowing if they're any good apparently.
Luke 16:28 "For I five brethren that he may testify to them, lest they also come into this place of torment." So here is the rich man died and in hell, he lifted up his eyes being in torment and he saw Lazarus in Abraham's bosom and he prayed and he said, "Please, send someone back from the dead to warn my five brothers unless they come to this place of torment." So he had a divine appointment with death and they have a divine appointment with death. He wanted them to have a divine appointment with someone raised from the dead so they wouldn't come to the place where he was.
John 4:18 Then the woman at the well, Jesus said, "Thou hast had five husbands." Do you remember Jesus saying to the disciples, "I must need to go through Samaria." Why in the world would you want to go through a place like that? A backward downtrodden off religious cult-like place like Samaria? He said, "I need to go there." And they got there. And the reason he needed to go there because he had an appointment with a woman at the well, a woman of ill repute who'd had five husbands. And that divine appointment was fulfilled that day.
John 5:2 "There is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. And these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool and troubled the water. Whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had."
So here's this guy down by the pool. He's maybe laid there for years hoping to get someone to help him get into the water when the angel stirs it because there was a divine appointment there to get your body healed. But unknowing to him, not out of the water but coming up behind him was the water of life. And Jesus healed him that day. He had a divine appointment with Jesus.
Acts 20:6 "We sailed away from Philippi after days of unleavened bread came unto them unto Troas in five days," he said it took us five days to get there. Paul was headed to Rome. And he said, "Therein we abode seven days." So they stayed just seven days, which was what God did on behalf and for man. But that divine appointment took them five days.
Acts 24:1 "And after five days, Ananias, the high priest, descended with the elders with a certain orator named Tertullus, who informed the governor against Paul." So this guy goes and tells what Paul has done and it was a divine appointment because God had appointed Paul to go to Rome. And so this was the means by which he would go there.
1 Corinthians 11:24 "Of the Jews five times received I 40 stripes save one," divine appointment.
Revelation 9:5-10 "And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months. And their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it. And show desire to die, and death shall flee from them. And they had tails like unto scorpions and there were stings in their tails and their power was to hurt men five months."
Notice that tormented five months, hurt men five months. This was God's appointment for them during the tribulation period.
Revelation 17:10 "And there are seven kings, five are fallen, and one is, the other has not yet come. And when he cometh, he must continue a short space." This is God telling what must come to pass. So we found the number five in here.
So five had 284 cardinals and if you count the 50 in the temple, which we didn't need to go through all of those, and then the 15 and the 20 and so forth in the different temples and tabernacles, you'll come up to over a hundred. And then we covered quite a few of them. So we didn't cover all of them, but we covered most of them in their fair sampling of the fives in the Bible. 56 of them had to do with death.
Now we come to number six, the number of man, more people are familiar with this number. They're 101 cardinals. That is number one, not first, not ... Excuse me, number six, not sixth. So we're dealing with six now.
Revelation 13:16-18 Six is not used a whole lot in Revelation. "And he causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark or the number of the beast or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred, threescore and six." That's 666.
Now he did not say that six is the number of man. He said the six is the number of a man, a particular man. But nonetheless, we do discover through looking at every time six is used, that it does represent man everywhere that it's found in the Bible. So 666 would represent a trinity of man, an unholy trinity.
God created man on the sixth day. First mention of six in the Bible is in Genesis 30:20 that's way down there. "And Leah said, 'God has endued with me a good dowry. Now will my husband dwell with me because I have born unto him six sons," the number of man, six sons.
Exodus 16:26 "Six days shall you gather it," this is the manna. "But on the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, in it shall be none." So six days were allotted to man to gather of manna. But on the seventh day, which is what God does for man, the manna lasted all through the seventh day what they gathered on the sixth. God did something for them on that day.
Genesis 31: 41"Thus have I been 20 years," now 20 is the number of maturity. 20 years in the house, that's how long Jacob served Laban, his father-in-law for the two girls. 20 years, number of maturity.He said, "And I served thee 14 years for thy two daughters." That's divine guidance and blessing, the number 14. And so he got his two wives for those 14 years. “For thy two daughters” There was a division between those two daughters, "And six years for thy cattle." Now the whole context is Jacob here and his service and what he got six years for man, "for thy cattle and thou has changed my wages 10 times." 10 represents the whole, the entire lot, the amount.So 10 years was the whole length of time. So you see there how 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 times ... No five different numbers found in that passage. Each one of them has its own unique meaning.
Exodus 21:2 “Six days shall thou labor and do thy work." Six days God gave to man. "If you buy Hebrew servant, six years, he shall serve and in the seventh, he shall go out for nothing, free for nothing." So six years was how long the manservant could belong to the man. After six years, on the seventh year, God does something for man, he goes free. So you see the contrast in the two different numbers.
Exodus 23:10"And six years shalt thou sow thy land and shall gather in the fruits thereof. But the seventh year, thou shall let it rest and lie still." God promised that he would have such a crop on the sixth year, that they would be able to eat of it through the seventh year. So they expected an abundance of growth on the sixth year and then they didn't plow, they didn't plant. They just let the fields stay idle for the seventh year when God did something for them.
Exodus 26:9 "And thou shall couple five curtains by themselves." This is in the temple, "and six curtains." Now, this was in the tabernacle which had six in it. This was not in Solomon's temple and it's not in the millennial temple. "And six curtains by themselves and shall double sixth curtain in the forefront of the tabernacle."
So this sixth and six, the number of man is there where they come through the passageway entering into it.
Exodus 28:9- 10 "And thou shall take two onyx stones and grave on them the names the children of Israel. Six of their names on one stone and on the other six names of the rest on the other stone according to their birth." So the men's names are written, number of men.
Leviticus 25:3-4 "Six years shall thou sow thy field, six years shall thou prone that vineyard and gather in the fruit thereof. But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest under the land, a sabbath for the Lord. Thou shall neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard." Six, the number of man; seven, what God does for man.
Numbers 35:6 "And among the cities which you shall give unto the Levites, there shall be six cities for refuge which you shall appoint for the manslayer that he may flee thither, and to them you shall add forty and two cities.” Now these six cities were where you could go if you committed a crime like accidentally killing someone, then the family could kill you in revenge unless you fled to one of those six cities.
Now, if you ever left that city and were found outside of it and somebody from the family caught you, they could kill you 40 years later. So that became your permanent prison, but it also became your liberty. So that's the number of man, these six cities. Now 40 and 2 cities, that's terminal judgment. Add 40 and 2 cities. That's terminal judgment. Judgment unto death, in other words.
Joshua 6:3"And you shall compass the city, all the men of war and go roundabout the city once. Thus shall thou do six days." So they walked around the city six days.
Joshua 6:14 “And the second day, they compassed the city once and returned to the camp, so they did six days," number of man.
Judges 12:7 "And Jephthah judged Israel six years."
1 Kings 11:16 "For six months did Joab remain there with all Israel until he had cut off every male in Edom."
Proverbs 6:16 "These six things doth the Lord hate." And then he names a list of human sins.
Daniel 3:1 "Nebuchadnezzar, the king made an image of gold whose height was threescore cubits and the breadth thereof six cubits."
So Nebuchadnezzar created an image of himself, six cubits wide. Six, the number of man.
John 2:6 "And there were set there six water pots of stone, after the manner of the purifying the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece." This is when Jesus turned the water into wine. Now, water pots, stone pots represent humanity in the Bible. So six of them represented six men and he changed their water into wine.
John 12:1 "Then Jesus six days before the Passover came to Bethany where Lazarus was, which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead." So a man raised from the dead is the context and it's six days.
Acts 11:12 "Therefore, these six brethren accompanied me and we entered into the man's house." Six, the number of man, six brethren.
Now only use of six in the book of Revelation is right here.
Revelation 4:8 "And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him and they were full of eyes within and they rest not day and night, saying, 'Holy, holy, holy, Lord God, which was, and is, and is to come.'" Now, four beast, do you remember we said four has to do with nature or creation or animals? So there are four of them and they each had six wings, but they had a body like a man. It said their structure, they're human structure. So they had six wings about them.
So number seven is our next number, and we will deal with seven and probably eight the next time. And seven is very fascinating. Of all the numbers, it is the most absolute, structured, singular meaning from beginning to end. So we'll look at that next time and it has to do with the program of God for man, on behalf of man.
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