This is a great subject, Quix. Thanks. I have found the study of the structure of scripture to be a lonely study. You would think that the proof of scripture would be popular, but that is not going to happen. God is allowing sin to take its course. Nevertheless this is part of scripture, and that makes it profitable, even if we do not know the benefits now.
The critics do not attack the works of Ivan Panin, because it is easy to confirm the veracity of what he claims. Rather they say that it is useless, or that we cannot trust whatever meaning someone might claim to have found in it. If something is in the Bible, it is there because God put it there, who are we to take it lightly?
I put the numerical structure in the category of concealed things referenced in Proverbs 25:2. I have not studied Panin’s work as much as F. W. Grant’s, but they are two systems that run together. An example in the natural world might be to look at the numbers on a molecular level and then the look at them on an atomic level. There are similarities and differences, but this is true of God’s work and his word also.
Few would argue that 7 is not significant in scripture. We can debate the meaning, but there are so many examples that we build a strong argument. 7 completes the week just as 8 begins the new week. Look at some 8’s in scripture and see if you see a pattern. The priest consecrated on the eighth day, the child circumcised on the eighth day, 8 souls entered the Ark, David, the eighth son, eight New Testament writers. Consider the subject matter of the Psalm 119, a psalm stamped with the number 8 , twenty- two times. The resurrection is on the first day of the new week, the eighth day.
I suspect that the Bible is the most complicated book ever written. Perhaps it is even more complicated than a DNA molecule. Perhaps it is the Genome of Christ. Christ said of the scriptures “they are they which testify of me.”
I wish I had more time to participate on this thread, but I have to go back to work. I thank you all for your comments, they are a blessing to me.
Seven
It makes for an interesting meditation that the Scriptures taken altogether may be another name for Jesus Christ in that, as He said, "they are they which testify of me".
You are an awe fully sweet encouragement!
Praise God! And thanks tons to you.
You described my own sense of it better than I have!
Wise words!
May you and yours have the best of God's tangible and intangible blessings this season and New Year.
Am soooooo blessed by your response that hits soooo many nails on the head.
It sadly seems sometimes, satan seduces similar souls serving serious scoundrally standards such as Golgatha yet stilllllll senturies since, shredding Savior's Shape, Skeleton, Substance, Structure, Significance soooooo stiffly, starkly, starchily, senselessly, savagely, severely, sharply, self-importantly, swelled-headedly, sterily, smugly, superiorly, snootily, self-confidently, snobbishly, silly-ly, shockingly, scandalously, sternly, shamefully, stinkingly, shady-ly,
though thankfully
someday, soon, subsequenty,
successive, succeeding, serial, subsequent,
sequitirs, settlements, sureties, solutions, sirings, sproutings,
shall surely, strongly, steadily,
slide, snowball, slip, speed-up
into
HIS WORKING ALL THINGS TOGETHER FOR GOOD.
Though I'm still working to remove
such seductive, silly, shredding
terrible tendencies
from amongst my tools.
I really want to remove myself from amongst such a group of souls. Calvary worked out wonderously. PRAISE GOD HE WAS WILLING TO PAY THE COST. It's been paid. I don't want to vainly join in the pattern any more. I don't even want to get so wound up when others do.
It greives me when earnest believers do--though I wonder if their number is less in such efforts than one might think.