The Primacy of Seven (The Genesis Series, Part 9)

How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?  Hebrews 2:3?

How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him;

This “so great salvation” is so much greater than all our knowing, so far beyond our comprehension.  I Corinthians 2:9:

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

But just as this great salvation to come will be so Holy Ghost stupendous, the great salvation that has already begun in us at the place Jesus Christ calls BORN AGAIN is surely awe-inspiring. John 3:3:

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

At BORN AGAIN, I become a brand-new creature—born of the Spirit, this time as a child of God.  This new birth even comes with a new Father, a new family, a new name, a new birth certificate recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life, and a new power and eternal purpose.  John 1:10-13:

10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Dear visitor, have you yet to be BORN AGAIN?  Your opportunity to participate in the greatest miracle man can know is staring you in the face.  A decision is required.  In just a few moments, I will invite you to follow me in a simple prompt.  If you follow from your heart, everything changes for you today—and this is truly a limited time offer.  Today, all your sin and its shame will be washed away by Christ’s cleansing blood.  Isaiah 1:18:

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.  

Today, all of Satan’s bondages in your life will be broken, no matter how seemingly insurmountable they appear.  You will be free.  Today, you will literally be BORN AGAIN. Here is the prompt I promised: Click onto Further with Jesus for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Genesis 2:1-3:

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

GOD SAID, Matthew 15:14:

Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

GOD SAID, Matthew 4:16:

The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.

MAN SAID: The Bible thumpers are so irrational and irritating.  Them, their Jesus, their Bible—it’s all ancient absurdities!  They need to come out of the dark ages!  Man made God; God didn’t make man! Everybody knows it’s all a construct of man’s imagination.

Now THE RECORD: Welcome to GodSaidManSaid feature 1229 that will once again contend for the faith.  All of these Word-centric features are archived here in text and streaming audio for your edification, and to be used by you in your efforts to win the lost to our glorious Saviour.  Every Thursday eve, God willing, they grow by one. 

Thank you for visiting.  II Peter 1:2:

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,  

They are blind, but the vanity and arrogance of the carnal mind has convinced them that they can see.  Worse, they have convinced their equally-blind followers that they can see, but alas:  they are still blind.  Jesus speaks of their ilk in Matthew 15:14: 

Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

Their blind dilemma is so obvious to the Holy Ghost sighted, for we once sat and marinated in the same deadly and vacuous thoughts but we were given eyes to see. Matthew 4:16:

The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.

Their “truth” of yesterday is debunked by their “truth” of today, and their “truth” of today will be debunked by their “truth” of tomorrow.  We can see them, but they can’t see us, for they are blind.

You have arrived at the GodSaidManSaid “Genesis Series;” this is Part 9.  Each of these features begins with the following information from the first feature:

According to a 2006 issue of Discover magazine concerning the deceased Carl Sagan: “Sagan approaches religion like any phenomenon.  He isn’t on a quest for life’s meaning, for a comforting philosophy, or even a guide to how we should treat the neighbors.  Sagan seeks truth of a demonstrable kind.  As a puckish example, he wonders why the book of Genesis didn’t include God-inspired truths…” [End of quote]

I recently reviewed an advertisement from a magazine called Free Inquiry that also has a problem with the God of Creation and the first book of the Bible, called Genesis.  Under the heading “Is God Big Enough for the Universe,” Free Inquiry writes:

The authors of Genesis proclaim that God made the heavens and earth in less than a week.  This feat must have amazed these Bronze Age authors, even though they thought the heavens extended only so far as the sky above them.  Of course, they did not know what stars, planets, or galaxies were.  We now know that the universe is so much bigger and so much more complex. [End of quote]

The BORN AGAIN scratch their heads in bewilderment.  Did these folks actually read the book of Genesis? I suppose they did, but God’s revelation is only revealed to the humbled hearts of the children of faith.  This GodSaidManSaid series will be called “The Genesis Series.”  It is our intention to travel through the entire book of Genesis and publish one major God-inspired truth after another.  We will be pulling from previous GodSaidManSaid features and adding the latest information as we go.

Genesis 2:1-3:

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

God blesses the seventh day and sanctifies it.  On the seventh day, He concludes all His labors, and rests and rejoices.  In Genesis Chapter Two, God establishes the primacy of the number seven.  The number seven will be the ultimate conclusion of the entire matter as this feature will demonstrate.  Seven is the conclusion of the whole matter, but absolutely unsurprisingly, Bible detractors take exception to the number seven and Genesis Chapter Two.  The following excerpts are from the GodSaidManSaid feature, “The Number Seven:”

The leaders of the communist revolution could not abide a seven-day week.  To them, it was simply an example of Sunday School foolishness.  I am reminded of a last-day prophecy in Daniel 7:25:

And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.   

In 1792, the socialists of France, in rebellion against a 7-day week, instituted a new calendar with a ten day week.  It created national confusion and was discarded 14 years later.  In 1929, the Communist leadership of Russia, in an effort to destroy any attachment to the Bible, instituted a five-day week, which was in the trash can just three years later. The unbelievers have never been deep thinkers.

Jesus Christ is the center of everything because this pleases the Father, and the number seven is such an excellent example.  The seven-day week with a day of rest is established in God’s creation week. 

⬥ Genesis 2:1-3:

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

⬥ Exodus 20:11:

For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Seven is the number of rest and the number of completion.  Jesus Christ is both of these. Jesus promises rest for the soul in Matthew 11:28-30:

28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Hebrews 3:18-19 speaks of those who did not enter into His rest because of their unbelief:

18 And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?

19 So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

Seven is also the number of completion.  God finished His work and rested on the seventh day.  Jesus made this telling statement as He gave up the ghost on Calvary’s cross.  John 19:30:

When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.

“It is finished.” Satan’s stranglehold on the sons and daughters of Adam was broken, and salvation was purchased for all who would call upon the name of Jesus Christ when He said, “It is finished.”  Jesus Christ is imprinted on the number seven.  He is rest and completion.

The image of Jesus Christ is imprinted on all things because this pleases the Father.  Biblical numbers have their story to tell, with the number seven standing at the very top.

The following excerpts are from the GodSaidManSaid feature, “In the Beginning (Part Three):”

It’s surprising that anyone would reject the seven-day-week principle when one considers that a lunar month, which is a product of orbit in space and time, houses roughly four seven-day cycles. Those who suggest the seven-cycle comes primarily from a religious root should be advised that the number seven is not imposed on us from the outside, but from the inside. This becomes obvious when you note that plants, insects, and animals also have weekly cycles. The seven-day cycle is not a product of culture; to the contrary, culture is a product of seven.

God places enormous emphasis on the number seven from the very beginning of creation. It is interwoven throughout all of life, to which the following Scriptures will attest. The foundation of wisdom itself is the number seven. Proverbs 9:1 reads:

Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars:

The very beginning of creation was completed in seven days. Noah’s new beginning also found itself beholding to the number seven. All animals were taken aboard the ark two by two, the male and his female, except for the fowl of the air and clean beasts, which were taken by sevens. When the ark finally rested on dry ground, it was in the seventh month (Genesis 8:4).

The number seven played a significant role in saving the children of Israel from starvation. Remember, it is through this lineage that Jesus Christ enters the world. (Genesis 41:2-3).

When Joshua and the children of Israel began their lives in the Promised Land, the number seven played an integral part. The following verses in Joshua 6 are in regard to the first conquest in the promised land—the famed city of Jericho—the city where the walls came tumbling down.

1 Now Jericho was straitly shut up because of the children of Israel: none went out, and none came in.

2 And the LORD said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour.

3 And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days.

4 And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams’ horns: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets.

5 And it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him.

God commands Israel to free all Hebrew servants every seven years (Exodus 21:2). The land is required to have its Sabbath of rest: in the seventh year the land is not to be tilled or sown (Exodus 23:11). In Exodus 25:37, God gives instruction concerning the golden candlestick and its seven lamps that give light in the sanctuary. We see these again in Revelation 1:20 as the seven churches that minister life and light to a dark and dying world. Over and over again, the Bible emphasizes the dominant importance of the number seven.

There is a scientific discipline known as chronobiology, which is the research into how living things handle time. It has discovered, amongst a plethora of other things, that countless hormones crucial to human life processes are directed by an unseen conductor’s hand in predictable biological rhythms. Although secretions happen within ultradian and circadian time frames, they appear to occur in seven-day cycles. Perry and Dawson, authors of the book The Secrets Our Body Clocks Reveal, reported:

Weekly rhythms known in chronobiology as “circaseptan rhythms” are among the most puzzling and fascinating findings of chronobiology. At first glance, it might seem that weekly rhythms developed in response to the seven-day week imposed by human culture thousands of years ago. However, this theory doesn’t hold once you realize that plants, insects, and animals other than humans also have weekly cycles. Biology, therefore, not culture, is probably at the source of our seven-day week.

Jeremy Campbell, chronobiologist, refers to the father of chronobiology, Franz Halberg:

Franz Halberg proposes that body rhythms of about seven days, far from being passively driven by the social cycle of the calendar week, are innate, autonomous, and perhaps the reason why the calendar week arose in the first place.

All of creation, including a whole society of approximately eight billion people, marches to the beat of a seven-day rhythm. This biological clock is the handiwork of God.

Life begins at seven. Why seven? Why seven in “primitive” single-celled organisms? Why seven in bacteria? Why seven in all forms of life? The answer is God’s common design and all things revolving around Jesus Christ, His singularity.

From the book Inner Time comes the following:

The best-investigated circaseptan rhythms concern our immunities. The common cold, for example, will last a week no matter how much we spend at the drug store. Patients with pneumonia or malaria face the greatest danger around the seventh day of their illnesses, and the symptoms of chicken pox usually appear around two weeks after exposure. The immune cells vital for our resistance to infections and cancer—T-cells and B-cells—fluctuate in number on a seven-day schedule.

This immune cycle can make a difference if we undergo surgery. After surgery, for example, the amount of swelling that patients experience varies on a seven-day cycle, worsening on the seventh, fourteenth, and twenty-first days. Doctors who perform kidney transplants know that the risk of rejection is highest one week after the procedure, and for a while danger zones continue to occur every seven days. Studies of animals have found similarly timed risks for heart and pancreas transplants.

In Leviticus 13:1-6, God gives instruction to His people concerning the dreaded, highly contagious disease of leprosy. When the disease is first suspected, the victim is quarantined for seven days, then viewed again for diagnosis, and so on. Leviticus 15:13 instructs concerning contagious illness and declares that after one is cleansed of his issue that he should perform a seven-day purification cycle. It reads:

And when he that hath an issue is cleansed of his issue; then he shall number to himself seven days for his cleansing, and wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in running water, and shall be clean.

In Numbers 31:19-24, commandments for cleansing and purifying are given concerning anyone who touches the dead. They are required to be quarantined for seven days before a final cleansing.

The plague that affects so many millions, commonly called yeast infection or Candida albicans, according to many in medical science, finds its remedy in a specially restricted seven-day fast. The pivotal power of seven is just becoming apparent to science. Of course, the creator understood the secret of seven as well as the life cycles of contagious contaminants all along.

Campbell expounds further on life’s rhythms:

Perhaps the most intriguing of these body rhythms are those that have a period of about seven days. These circaseptan (7-day) rhythms are one of the major surprises turned up by modern chronobiology. A central feature of biological time structure is the harmonic relationship that exists among the various component frequencies. A striking aspect of this relationship is that the components themselves appear to be harmonics or subharmonics, multiples or submultiples, of seven, a number that has played a disproportionately large role in human culture, myth, religion, magic and the calendar.

The heptadic (sevenfold) nature of life is demonstrated throughout the Bible.  In the book Hidden Treasures in the Biblical Text, Dr. Chuck Missler weighs in on the number seven:

The reoccurrence of seven—or an exact multiple of seven—is found throughout the Bible and is widely recognized.  The frequent occurrence of the number seven is conspicuous even to a casual reader.

We encounter the seven days of Creation in Genesis, the seven Feasts of Israel, seven days after God directs Noah to board the ark before it starts raining, seven days between the doves, Jacob serves seven years for each of his two wives, seven kine and ears of corn in Pharaoh’s dreams (seven good years and seven famine years), seven lamps of the Menorah, the seven elements of furniture in the Tabernacle, seven days of the feast of unleavened bread, the repeated use of seven in the Levitical priestly instructions, the seven weeks to the Feast of Weeks, the seven months between Nisan and Tishri, (and the seven years of the sabbatical year, and the seven times seven to the Jubilee Year); the seven priests with seven trumpets circling Jericho seven times in the Book of Joshua, seven nations of Canaan, Solomon was seven years building the Temple, Naaman washed seven times in the river, seven loaves fed the four thousand, etc.

In the Book of Revelation we encounter seven churches, seven lampshades, seven stars, seven seals, seven horns, seven spirits of God, seven angels, seven trumpets, seven thunders, seven crowns, seven last plagues, seven bowls, seven kings, and there are many more sevens, much more subtle in their presence.

The more one examines the text more closely, the more evident is the recurrence of seven, and sometimes in some very surprising ways.

A DESIGN CHALLENGE

Consider the following assignment: Try designing a genealogy—even from fiction—which meets the following criteria:

1. The number of words in it must be divisible by 7 evenly. (In each of these constraints, it is assumed that the resulting divisions are without any remainders.)

2. The number of letters must also be divisible by 7.  (Not too difficult so far?  Let’s include a few more constraints.)

3. The number of vowels and the number of consonants must also each be divisible by 7. (Getting more challenging?  Let’s add a few more.)

4. The number of words that begin with a vowel must be divisible by 7.

5. The number of words that begin with a consonant must be divisible by 7.  (Let’s add some fancy constraints.)

6. The number of words that occur more than once must be divisible by 7.

7. The number of words that occur in more than one form must be divisible by 7.

8. The number of words that occur in only one form must be divisible by 7.  (Now let’s add some constraints on the grammatical structure.)

9. The number of nouns shall be divisible by 7.

10. Only 7 words shall not be nouns.

11. The number of names in the genealogy shall be divisible by 7.

12. Only 7 other kinds of nouns are permitted.

13. The number of male names shall be divisible by 7.

14. The number of generations shall be 21, also divisible by 7.

A challenging assignment, indeed!  Could you do it?

If you encountered such a genealogy, would you attribute such characteristics as these to random chance?

These have all been met (in the Greek) in the genealogy of Jesus Christ in the first 11 verses of the Gospel of Matthew. 

The heptadic (sevenfold) structure of the Bible has been much studied and the subject of numerous volumes in the past, but none are more provocative than the works of Dr. Ivan Panin, to whom we are indebted for these observations.

The difficulties of matching a corpus of any text to fit the numerical rules are staggering.  For each feature listed there are six chances of failing and only one of success.  For two such features at the same time, there is only one in 7x7, or 49, chances of “winning.” In fact, for each additional feature required, the odds pile up against complete success rather quickly.

The discussion of the genealogy in Matthew detailed 14 features, several of which were interdependent.  The odds of a random text complying to only 9 heptadic constraints is over 40 million to one!  (If it took you 10 minutes per draft, and you worked 40 hours a week for 50 weeks per year, it would take over 3,000 years to accomplish this task by random trials!) [End of quotes]

Jesus Christ is God’s singularity, and it is truly demonstrated in seven.  One last quote from Dr. Missler’s book that you’ll find exciting is this statement concerning Mt. Moriah, which is today’s Jewish Temple Mount:

The peak of the Mount is a bit further north, at about 777 meters above sea level, at a place which would later become known as Golgotha—the exact spot where Jesus Christ would be crucified as the offering for sin 2,000 years later. [End of quotes] 

Consider this information from the amazing GodSaidManSaid feature, “Ship, Come Alive:”

Everything is words and everything responds to words.  The words we speak are prophetic for good or for evil. Your body is made up of amazing cells estimated to be 50 to 100 trillion strong and they were spoken into existence by God’s Words.  Every second of the day, old, worn-out cells are being replaced with brand-spanking new replacements.  Medical science tells us that in seven years—note seven—every cell in the human body is replaced, even the skeleton.  To quote Dr. Lipton from The Biology of Belief:

Every day, billions of cells in your body wear out and need to be replaced.  For example, the entire cellular lining of your gut is replaced every seventy-two hours.  In order to maintain this continuous turnover of cells, your body needs to expend a significant amount of energy daily. [End of quote]

Dr. Leaf had this to say on cell renewal in Switch on Your Brain:

That the brain is plastic and can be changed moment-by-moment by how we direct our thinking—in other words, the choices we make—is a top idea on the bestseller lists, and it actually is the key to switching on our brains.  Add to this the fact that every morning when you wake up, new baby nerve cells have been born while you were sleeping that are there at your disposal to be used in tearing down toxic thoughts and rebuilding healthy thoughts.  The birth of these new baby nerve cells is called neurogenesis, which brings to mind, “The Lord’s mercies … are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:23).  [End of quote]

Your brain and mind give direction to these new cells by the intent of your words.  These new cells will respond directly to the words you think and speak, and physical manifestations will result.  Imagine: In seven years’ time, every cell in your body is replaced with a new, healthy one.  I took the high number of cells—100 trillion cells—and divided it by seven years’ worth of days—2,554 days.  The average new cells coming aboard in a 24-hour period is 39,154,267,815.  These God-given word cells need a word greeting. [End of quotes]

Everywhere we look, it’s the primacy of God’s number seven.

Looking for God-inspired truths in Genesis?  Try on the primacy of seven. 

GOD SAID, Genesis 2:1-3:

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

GOD SAID, Matthew 15:14:

Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

GOD SAID, Matthew 4:16:

The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.

MAN SAID: The Bible thumpers are so irrational and irritating.  Them, their Jesus, their Bible—it’s all ancient absurdities!  They need to come out of the dark ages!  Man made God; God didn’t make man! Everybody knows it’s all a construct of man’s imagination.

 

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

Blumner, R., Free Inquiry

GodSaidManSaid, “Ship, Come Alive”

GodSaidManSaid, “The Number Seven”

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