Humboldt, who wrote five volumes of a work he entitled Cosmos, in which he never once mentioned the name of God, yet declared that "numbers are the powers of the Universe." If this be true, would it not be surprising that the Creator, who built the world on a frame of numbers, "who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance"(Is. 40:12)-would it not be surprising, I say, if the Creator who made such liberal use of numbers in the visible universe, should find no use for them in that other revelation of Himself-the Scriptures?
The dear brother, now gone to his reward, Mr. F. W. Grant, was the first, I believe, who called attention to this by his book, "The Numerical Structure of Scripture." It is a remarkable study, unfolding a great subject, which is a source of great delight to the reverent student who takes it up soberly and patiently.
It is a striking fact, which impressed me much, that the first word which challenges our attention in Scripture is GOD-a Being about whom agnostics tell us we can know nothing; that as to His existence or non-existence we can neither affirm or deny-that we know absolutely nothing about it! But Moses, taught of God, presents Him to us without any introduction or attempt at proofs. In all human systems we have, at the threshold, elaborate explanations to make known and endeavor to prove the truth of what is advanced. Not so in Scripture. It is taken for granted that we know who God is. Having been created in God's image and likeness, man, the world over, has some knowledge of God, which the beast has not. So, against all agnostics, I would say that God is the most knowable Being in the universe. We should not need to prove to man that God exists and that we are His creatures, any more than we have to prove to a child that he has a mother. It is intuitive in man, unless he has so stifled his conscience, and gone so far astray as to utterly lose his bearings. When we tell our child that God sees him in the dark, and knows his thoughts, he takes in the truth of it without question, as later he accepts from his teacher the axiom that "the whole is equal to the sum of all its parts," which can be illustrated by the parts of a divided apple, but cannot be proven.
Now Moses speaks to us of God as "Elohim"-a uni-plural noun, 1:e., a noun implying plurality, yet always used grammatically in singular construction-thus foreshadowing the Trinity, acting in unity, one God in three Persons, the triune God. This is more strongly intimated in verse 26 where God comes to His crowning work in man's creation. A council of the Holy Trinity is there spoken of:God (Elohim) said, "Let US make man in our image."
Now the fact I wish to present is that the Trinity is mystically imbedded in a numerical structure in this chapter, thus:
God said (the creative Word) 9 times – 3 x 3.
God (Elohim) is repeated 30 times – 3 x 10.
God created (the Spirit's active power) 3 times, in
(1) the creation of inanimate matter, ver. 1.
(2)the creation of animal life, ver. 21.
(3)the creation of a spiritual being, ver. 27.
This last, God's crowning work, is followed by the sabbatical rest, after which He had pronounced all His work, "very good." This indeed was soon broken in by man's fall, but it points us to another Rest-that Rest which remaineth for the people of God (Heb. 4:9).
Can any sober mind deny the truth and work of God in this first chapter of Genesis? G. Nash Morton