Why Isaiah Preached in the Nude for Three Years

Isaiah 20:1-4  “In the year that the commander came to Ashdod, when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him and he fought against Ashdod and captured it, at that time the LORD spoke through Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, "Go and loosen the sackcloth from your hips and take your shoes off your feet." And he did so, going naked and barefoot. And the LORD said, "Even as My servant Isaiah has gone naked and barefoot three years as a sign and token against Egypt and Cush, so the king of Assyria will lead away the captives of Egypt and the exiles of Cush, young and old, naked and barefoot with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.” (The year spoken of in verse one is 711 BC.)

The Israelites feared attack by the mighty Assyrian Empire led by King Sargon and allied themselves with Egypt and Ethiopia instead of depending on God for their protection. For three years* Isaiah preached in a completely naked state to show to the Israelites that the Egyptians and Ethiopians would be carried away naked and barefoot by the Assyrians. They would be utterly humiliated and unable to defend themselves or Israel. 

*The number three occurs 467 times in the Bible. This number is believed by many Christians to be a reference to the Trinity. Three is the number of perfection or completion. To  repeat a word or idea sequentially is to emphasize it. In Isaiah 6:3 the Lord God Almighty is praised as “Holy, Holy, Holy.”

"Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible®,
Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973,
1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation
Used by permission." (www.Lockman.org)

Does 12-13-14 Have Any Special Meaning?

I imagine that the numerologists are very busy today looking for arcane messages in today’s date, 13 December 2014. This date can be represented as 12-13-14.  This alignment of dates will not happen again for 100 years.  Surely it must have some cosmic significance! Personally, I think it is just a coincidental arrangement of numbers due to our current dating system.

When I noticed the 12-13-14 arrangement, I thought about the significance of numbers, especially in the Bible, which does use numbers as symbols. Think of the numbers 3, 7, 666, and 1000. Some people think that they see beyond the obvious symbolic use of numbers and that they can detect many numerological messages secretly embedded in the text by God. This is on the same order as belief in the controversial Torah Bible Codes.

The hidden messages which do undeniably exit in the Bible were of human origin. For instance, investigate ATBASH. An example occurs at Jeremiah 25:26. These messages were meant by the writers to obscure the true meaning from hostile governmental authorities who might read the texts. The idea is "to hide in plain sight." Also investigate the use of acrostics, an intentional literary form used by some of the Old Testament writers. Two examples of biblical acrostics occur at Proverbs 31:10-31 and Psalms 119.

I do not believe that the Bible is full of hidden supernatural messages. That is a pagan Gnostic idea. God inspired the writing of the various books of the Bible as a coherent whole and it is intended to be understood. It is a tool, a book of revelation about the nature of God, not a book of puzzles.

The Bible tells us that God is not a man and that His ways are not our ways. God is totally other, unknowable, and perfect.  He moves in the sub-atomic places and in the cosmic places. The Bible is part of God’s effort to make the utterly unknowable (Himself) understandable, at least partly, to our inadequate tiny little minds. Over and over we are told, “the Kingdom of God is like ….” I believe that God has used the entire Jewish religious and cultural system to explain what He is like. The entire Bible points toward Jesus, Who is the ultimate revelation of Who God is.

Magic Squares in Christian Occultism, Part 1

I had to remove today’s post because it became corrupted by some sort of commercial spam. I am instead posting on another subject entirely. Before you read this, let me absolutely declare that I am not an occultist of any sort.  I reject the practice of magic. I am not speaking about stage magic, which is a form of entertainment based on sleight of hand and visual deception.  That is clearly not real and does not claim to be real.

What I am talking about is Magic (or more properly Magick). Magick is based on the belief that there is an underlying basis to reality which is not apparent to the normal human senses. Magick  believes that with knowledge of the correct words, phrases, or actions, one may influence, or even force, the universe to produce particular intended results. In other words, spells and curses. The traditional Christian understanding is that we should have nothing to do with any of this. Of course, some Christians, even some very learned Christians, have not abided by this understanding. Knowing about Magick and understanding how it crept into Christian use is not a violation of the proscription against it. It is necessary so that we do not do it again. (Sadly, some still do.) [Deuteronomy 18:9-13; Exodus 22:18; Leviticus 19:26, 19:31, 20:6, 20:27; Galatians 5:19-21.]

This will take several days to discuss, so bear with me and keep on reading. The subject of this series of posts is “Magic Squares” and how they have been used in Christian symbolism.

The simplest Magic Squares are, of themselves, merely mathematical constructs which consist of numbers arranged so that the addition of the numbers in a column in any direction (left to right, right to left, top to bottom, bottom to top, or diagonally from corner to corner) always add up to the same sum. Examples are:

                                    2 7 6                                    All the columns in any

                                    9 5 1                                    direction total to 15.

                                    4 3 8

                         8   58 59  5   4   62 63  1

                        49 15 14 52 53 11 10 56  

                        41 23 22 44 45 19 18 48            All the columns in any

                        32 34 35 29 28 38 39 25            direction total to 260.

                        40 26 27 37 36 30 31 33

                        17 47 46 20 21 43 42 24

                         9  55 54 12 13 51 50 16

                        64  2   3   61 60  6   7  57

These mathematical constructions were known in numerous cultures around the world from early in the history of mathematics.  

The mathematical process for producing the squares can be expressed in mathematical formulae. The earliest squares were based on addition, but later squares have been based on multiplication, complex numbers, shapes other than squares, hypercubes, primes, and even genetic algorithms.  The term “magic square” is also applied to word squares which read the same in any direction.   

The squares became associated with occultism through the practice of numerology. Numerology assigns number values to individual letters of alphabetic writing systems. Every word or name can be assigned a numerical value.

More in the next post: Magic Squares in Christian Occultism, Part 2

Circumcise Baby Boys on the Eighth Day

“And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed.” Genesis 17:12

There is a legitimate scientific reason why circumcision is safest for a male child on the eighth day after birth, but Moses could not possibly have known or understood this fact.   The science of Moses’ day was not sufficiently advanced to have discovered this fact.  Those who believe the Bible account know that God led Moses to give this instruction.

At birth, the infant’s immune system has just begun to work and the child could not yet successfully fight off infection.  Luckily, for the first week of life, the child carries antibodies in his blood which have been provided by the mother.  The mother’s antibodies begin to decline in number after one week,

The infant’s ability to form clots begins to develop about day five and reaches its peak at day eight.  If any surgery is to be performed, day eight would be the ideal day.  On day eight, the infant is best able to prevent infection and to close and seal a surgical wound.  Moses could have only known this in one of two ways: 1. Trial and error, with a large number of dead babies, or 2.  He was told.

The science behind this was not elucidated until the Twentieth Century.  In 1935, Dr. Carl Peter Henrik Dam (1895 - 1976), while doing research on cholesterol metabolism in baby chicks at the University of Copenhagen, discovered Vitamin K, a vital factor in the coagulation mechanism.  He initially called it the Koagulationsvitamin.  He received the 1943 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his work on the subject.

The American pediatrician, Luther Emmett Holt (1855 – 1924) discovered that infants were especially susceptible to bleeding on days two through five, but had nearly 100% clotting ability by day eight.

………………………………………….

The Jewish Kabbalists, in their numerology, say that the eighth day has a mystical meaning.  The number seven has the meaning of “nature,” or “finite.”   The number eight carries the meaning of “super-rational,” or “infinite.”

Gematria

     In several of the prior posts I have been discussing the interesting subject of divinely inserted hidden codes which some believe that God placed into the Talmud, the first five books of the Bible.  Much of this work (or garbage depending on your belief about the subject) depends on the Cabalistic Jewish numerology system known as gematria.  

     The Cabalists believe that the Old Testament is written in a highly coded mathematically based  language.  Gematria, which originated in eighth century BCE Babylonia, is a system of numerology which assigns numbers to each letter of an alphabet (in this case, Hebrew). The numbers are used to decipher the true, hidden meaning of the texts.  It has been used in divination, magic, dream interpretation, and Old Testament interpretation.