Faithful on Fridays Blog

Introduction

This book is actually a prophecy written by the Apostle John on the isle of Patmos, a place of isolation for criminals and political prisoners. It was about 60 years after Jesus ascended into heaven, sent His Spirit, and now His Church was birthed and growing. God never stops communicating with His Church, but now its unique from Jesus’ preaching and teaching; these visions are His words to the Church for all ages.

Revelation is brimming over with symbolism helping us understand the end times; the number seven is one of those mysterious, repeated ways holding great value to our understanding. Our brains are wired for detecting patterns, therefore, our goal is to find the patterns of seven to guide us in interpreting what God is saying to His Church in these latter days. As we look at passages with repeating patterns of seven we’ll find some repeating truths alongside them.

Those truths are for every believer, for all time, and reveal God’s character to help us know Him. It’s vital for the Spirit to show us spiritual truths (upper stories) from physical images (lower stories). Jesus said,

“If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” John 3:12 

And Paul echoes,

And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 1 Corinthians 2:13 

Hebrew thinking moves into the future by always looking back: they literally ‘back themselves into the future’. In the same way we look back into the Old Testament, the gospels, and other letters in the New Testament in order to gain more understanding of the vision of Revelation and its purpose. Since visions are upper stories, spiritual in nature, we’ll dig out some truths that point us in the right direction for this mysterious way of communicating with us. It’s said that the Old Testament conceals and the New Testament reveals; that’s clearly true in Revelation as we’ll see the number seven weaved throughout Scripture. Each case must be decided on its own, in light of its context, to take us deeper into spiritual truths. Mystical meanings are obscure and vague, not dependable for revelation in the Scriptures (that’s numerology or gematria), the only way upper story meaning can be confirmed is through other Scriptures confirming and pointing us to the same truth. 

That being said, Biblical Numerology is the direction I’m headed with numbers representing Biblical truths that are repeated and remain in the flow of meaning always helping us understand the last days portrayed in Revelation. 

The New Testament Church knew they were living in the last days, as we are, consequently, the encouragement of Revelation remains valid for us today. Jesus warned that times of tribulation and trouble were coming and He gave us a heads-up with the prophetic vision of these ‘last days’ (Matt. 24). Next week: The Holy Spirit as a seven.