Number in Scripture, Its Supernatural Design And Spiritual Significance (1894)

Number in Scripture, Its Supernatural Design And Spiritual Significance (1894) Ethelbert W. Bullinger, D.D The works of the LORD are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. Psalm 111:2 “It is not for modern theories that we are going to give up these facts. It is not for conjectures that we are going to abandon truth. Man must offer us something better than his own thoughts if he wants us to give up the thoughts of God. In the Bible we have got something certain and something perfect. Every fact and truth which is discovered only helps to prove its truth and to exhibit its perfection. No monument that has ever been dug up—no manuscript that has ever been discovered, has ever been other than an evidence of Bible truth! ” We are not afraid of any phenomena which may be observed in the rocks, or of any monuments or tablets which may be dug up from beneath them. These are not, and never have been, contrary to the Word of God. It is only man’s interpretation of them which is against that Word, because it is only his thoughts which oppose it.” Except from p. 45 “The subject of this work is of supreme importance, and it has been handled with ability and discretion; for, while the book bears upon the face of it tokens of arduous labour and patient research, care has been taken to present the argument to the ordinary reader in an interesting manner, so as to display that beautiful variety which is one of the particular charms of the Divine arrangement of words and things; for, nothing that God does or says is ever wanting in that symmetry and harmony with which is necessarily bound up all sense of completeness, nor is ever anything begun by Him that He does not Himself continue and bring to a conclusion. Dr. Bullinger proves by this work that the Author of nature is in very truth the Author of the Bible; for, the style of our God is unique, inimitable. All the workings of nature are governed by an immutable law of number, the symmetry in which demonstrates design and the pre-existence of a designer—no matter whether the perfection of the original design have been interfered with or not; just as surely as a portrait in oils, whether smeared or not after its completion, argues the pre-existence of the painter. Our author, then, brings before us the regulation, by number, of the division of the heavens, of the movements of celestial bodies, of the divisions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, of the arrangements of leaves on trees, of the ages of man and of physiological changes in general, of the chemical elements having relation to the principles of specific gravity, of the vibrations in musical pitch, of musical tones in the scale, and finally of the prismatic colours—all orderly, beautiful, complete, invariable, demonstrating indeed that which all men of well-regulated minds may know of God, even His eternal power and Godhead, and for which every grateful heart should glorify a beneficent Creator. With such premises as these, the writer proceeds to give us inductive proof that the Bible, whether examined as a great organic whole, or in its minutest parts (such as phrases, words, and letters), is held together by the precise same hard and fast law of number which compels the physical forces of nature to work with such unerring constancy, an overwhelming proof of identity of authorship; for, it would require more than ordinary credulity to put forward a plea of accident, or one of conspiracy between human authors, to produce the mass of numerical harmonies which can be extracted from a patient examination of Scripture. ” Excerpts from a Review in Things to Come, Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 1, 1984