I've run into it from time to time, and usually I just nod my head indicating that I understand, but what I'm really saying is, "I don't get it and I don't really want to get it." What am I talking about? I'm talking about something that makes absolutely no sense to me and seems to be contrived and really stretching the Word of God - this whole thing about biblical numerology or biblical numerics. This is the magical, mystical, hocus-pocus, completely arbitrary practice of assigning spiritual meaning to certain numbers. For example, someone said to me a while back, "I went to the store the other day and the cashier gave me back 37 cents in change. Then not long after that, I got a new cell phone number and the last 4 digits were 3737. And I'm so excited!" I must have looked confused, you know the "I-don't-have-a-clue-what-you-are-talking-about" look. Surely someone other than me has had that look before! Anyway, I must have had it because this person followed up with, "I'm excited because YOU KNOW that 37 in the Bible stands for wealth. And the fact that I've just gotten three 37's means that the wealth that is coming to me is a sure thing!"I didn't respond - I couldn't respond - I was completely dumbfounded - I just grinned and walked away. How do people come up with this stuff? Who is putting this stuff out? Am I completely out of touch with what the Bible teaches? Is this really biblical? Or has this kind of thing just crept into the teaching of the Word of Truth and has become part of the tradition (like three wise men - the Bible doesn't teach there were 3 wise men - but our Christmas tradition says there were three, so we just automatically believe there were three - sorry, I got off on a rant) that we assume is biblical. I've looked at some of the web sites that talk about "gematria" and "numerology" and every one of them is a weird combination of beliefs - a kind of syncretism of Christian teaching with astrology and new age spiritism and who knows what else. So maybe I don't get it, but I feel better now having gotten it off my chest.
