by John Holbrook Jr.
A Biblical View, Blog #100 posted August 5, 2019, edited March 10, 2021.
Prelude
Most people can tell the difference between (a) dead things like rocks and (b) live things like flowers, kittens, or boys and girls. Thus, the difference between death and life is usually pretty obvious. Moreover, they know that there is a hierarchy to living things: plants are inferior to animals in complexity and abilities, and animals are inferior to humans in complexity and abilities, but just what is the quality or phenomenon which they share, which we call life. Who can explain it? I can’t, and I have not found anyone that can. It is one of the mysteries of Universe. Nonetheless, God has given us some clues concerning where to look.
This essay is divided into three sections: (1) the Kingdoms of Nature, (2) the Bible is Full of Numbers, and (3) the Source of Life.,
1 – The Kingdoms of Nature
There are four categories into which the natural world can be divided.: the three classical kingdoms (1) the Mineral Kingdom, (2) the Vegetable Kingdom, and (3) the Animal Kingdom and (4) the Human Kingdom which I separate out from the Animal Kingdom for reasons that will become evident.
1a – The Mineral Kingdom
The mineral kingdom consists of physical material – all compounds of the 118 known chemical elements. These compounds exhibit energy when in the form of the four classical elements or temperaments:
• air, from which we obtain oxygen, in which birds can fly, but which often blows things hither and yon, often to their destruction,
• earth, on which we can stand, from which we grow our food, but which often erodes and buries things,
• fire, from which we derive warmth for our bodies and heat for our cooking, but which often melts and consumes things, and
• water, which we can drink, on which we can float, in which we and fish can swim, but which often drowns and destroys things.
But these elements are inert in the sense that they cannot extract energy from their environment to live, grow, and reproduce. They can only release energy when (a) they are broken down into their component parts, as in a nuclear reaction, or (b) they pass on the energy of the forces that act on them. They are dead. They are lifeless.
1b – The Vegetable Kingdom
The vegetable kingdom consists of flora (or plants). They live by absorbing (a) radiant energy from sunlight or (b) nutrients from the ground. They grow, reproduce their own kinds, and die. They are immobile in the sense that their roots are fixed in place. They are unconscious and therefore unable to sense pleasure and pain, and they are unable to communicate with one another.[1] They are what Alfred Korzybski calls the energy-binding class of life.[2]
1c – The Animal Kingdom
The animal kingdom consists of all creatures excepting humans – i.e. animals, birds, fish, insects, and creeping things. They move around; they live by foraging for nutritious plants and hunting for other creatures, both of which they eat and convert to energy. They grow, reproduce their own kinds, and die. They are conscious and therefore able to sense pleasure and pain, and they are able to communicate with one another to a limited extent. They are unable, however, to receive information from previous generations and to pass on information to subsequent generations, so they are unable to learn as a species and develop any kind of civilization over time. They are what Korzybski calls the space-binding class of life.
1d -The Human Kingdom
The human kingdom consists of only one creature – humans. Like other creatures, they move around; they live by foraging for and raising nutritious plants and hunting for and raising other creatures, both of which they eat and convert to energy. They grow, reproduce their own kind, and die. They are conscious and therefore able to sense pleasure and pain. They are able to communicate with one another to an almost unlimited extent. They are also able to receive information from previous generations and to pass information down to subsequent generations, so they are able to learn as a species and develop civilizations over time. They are what Korzybski calls the time-binding class of life. Humans are more than time-binders, however, because individually they possess a spiritual component which, when quickened by the Holy Spirit, enables a person to perceive spiritual reality – something which Korzybski and many others fail to understand.
2 – Numbers in the Bible
2a – The Numerical Values in Verbal Texts
The Bible is written almost entirely in Hebrew and Greek.[3] Both languages lack separate symbols for numerals. Thus their letters serve as building blocks for both words and numbers. Aleph & alpha = 1; beth & beta = 2; gimel & gamma = 3. daleth & delta = 4; he & epsilon = 5; etc. As a result, every Hebrew or Greek word in the Bible carries a numerical value (hereafter NV), as does every phrase, sentence, paragraph, and book in it. These NVs have been the subject of study for centuries, first by rabbis using the tools of Gematria and now by Christian pastors and laymen using the tools of Gematria, Numerics, and Theomatics.[4]
At this point I must call your attention to Bonnie Gaunt’s book, Genesis One.[5] All her books are about the numeric fingerprints that God has imbedded in his creation, which become obvious when you decipher what the Bible says with the tools of Gematria, but this one concentrates on the creation of Universe and life. I can’t recommend it too highly.
Before proceeding, I need to mention two things:
• First, the definition of a prime number is a number which has only one and itself as divisors.
• Second, according to Gaunt, in Gematria the meaning of an NV is unchanged by the introduction or removal of zeros.
2b – The Numbers 3 and 7
In my mention of Ontological Orders above, I referred to the primordial realm, which the Ancients called materia prima and which I define elsewhere as “…a world of something, but the something is undifferentiated – i.e. without forms and substances.”[6] Its Hebrew equivalent is golem, which means “unformed matter.” Golem has a NV of 73. It is a prime number and is composed of two other prime numbers – i.e. 3 and 7, which turn out to be unusual.
First, all nine digits in mathematics can be expressed in terms of these two numbers: 1 = 7 – (3+3), 2 = 32 – 7, 3 = 3, 4 = 7 – 3, 5 = 7 + 7 – 32, 6 = 3+3, 7 = 7, 8 = (7+7) – (3+3), and 9 = 32.[7]
Second, Gaunt points out that all the Hebrew names for the fundamental ingredients of Universe – contain these numbers. Consider Einstein’s equation e = mc2”, where “e” = energy, “m” = mass, and “c” = “the speed of light through space.” [8] In this form, it is the formula for the destruction of matter, in the process of which a small amount of matter is converted into an enormous amount of energy, as in a nuclear explosion.[9] Now consider Einstein’s equation in another form, e/c2 = m. In this form, it is the formula for the creation of matter, in the process of which an enormous amount of energy is converted into a small amount of matter.
Now let’s look at this formula using Gematria. E = energy, the equivalent of which is “power” (or “might,” which I prefer and use hereafter). The Hebrew words for “might” are (a) ool, the NV of which is 37, (b) mashal, the NV of which is 370 or 37, and (c) echen, the NV of which is 37, and thus, 37 can be substituted for “e” in the equations. C2 = the speed of light through space, the equivalent of which is light itself. The Hebrew words for “light” (a) are owr, the NV of which is 207 or 27, and (b) nare, the NV of which is 270 or 27, and thus 27 can be substituted for “c2” in the equation. Thus, using the altered form of Einstein’s equation, “(ool, mashal, echen, or might) ÷ (owr, nare, or light) = matter” or “37 ÷ 27 = 1.37037037… ad infinitum,” which, if multiplied by 100, equals “137.037,037,037 ad infinitum.”
2c – The Mysterious 137
137.037037037 ad infinitum turns out to be a very interesting number. First, most people who have studied and written about numbers in the Bible agree that “1” represents God, “3” represents the Godhead or Trinity, and “7” represents spiritual perfection. All are present in the number 137. Second, Gaunt points out that it is a very close approximation of 137.0359997, which is the fine-structure constant in physics and denoted by alpha in mathematical equations. A website dedicated to the physicist Richard Feynman contains an article entitled The Mysterious 137, which notes the following about Feynman’s interest in it:
Richard Feynman…believed that there were still many things that experts, or in this case, physicists, did not know. One of these ‘unknowns’ that he pointed out often to all of his colleagues was the mysterious number 137. This number is the value of the fine-structure constant (the actual value is one over one-hundred and thirty seven), which is defined as the charge of the electron (q) squared over the product of Planck’s constant (h) times the speed of light (c). This number actually represents the probability that an electron will absorb a photon. However, this number has more significance in the fact that it relates three very important domains of physics: electromagnetism in the form of the charge of the electron, relativity in the form of the speed of light, and quantum mechanics in the form of Planck’s constant. Since the early 1900’s, physicists have thought that this number might be at the heart of a GUT, or Grand Unified Theory, which could relate the theories of electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, and most especially gravity. However, physicists have yet to find any link between the number 137 and any other physical law in the universe.[10]
The above comment was followed by a quote from one of Feynman’s books substantiating his anticipation of the general connection between the quantum coupling constant and “p.”
There is a most profound and beautiful question associated with the observed coupling constant, e, the amplitude for a real electron to emit or absorb a real photon. It is a simple number that has been experimentally determined to be close to -0.08542455. (My physicist friends won’t recognize this number, because they like to remember it as the inverse of its square: about 137.03597 with about an uncertainty of about 2 in the last decimal place. It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.) Immediately you would like to know where this number for a coupling comes from: is it related to p or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It’s one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the “hand of God” wrote that number, and “we don’t know how He pushed his pencil.” We know what kind of a dance to do experimentally to measure this number very accurately, but we don’t know what kind of dance to do on the computer to make this number come out, without putting it in secretly!
To summarize what is important in all of the above:
• In Hebrew, the NV of “light” 27 = 3 x 3 x 3.
• In Hebrew, the NV of “might” is 37.
• In Hebrew, the NV of “unformed matter” is 73.
• In Hebrew, the NV of “matter” is (the NV of might = 37) divided by (the NV of light = 27), which equals 1.37.037037037…ad infinitum and, if multiplied by 100, equals a very, very, very close approximation of 137.
• In Hebrew, (the NV of “light” = 27) + (the NV of “might” = 37) + (the NV of “unformed matter” = 73) = (the NV of “matter” = 137) – i.e. the Creator used his light and his might to compress “unformed matter” into matter, which he then used to construct Universe.
• In Hebrew, the NV of “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” is 2,701 = 37 x 73.
In addition to the above, it is worth mentioning that
• In Hebrew (Daniel 4:2), the NV of “God” is 37.
• In Hebrew (Genesis 3:9), the NV of “Jehovah God” is 111 = 3 x 37.
• In Greek, the NV of “God” is 555 = 5 x (111 = 3 x 37).
• In Greek, the NV of “Jesus” is 888 = 8 x (111 = 3 x 37).
• In Greek (Revelation 15:3), the NV of “Lord God” is 888 = 8 x (111 = 3 x 37).
• In Greek (John 1:41), the NV of “the Messiah” is 925 = 25 x (111 = 3 x 37).
• In Greek, the NV of “Christ” is 962 = 26 x 37.
• In Greek (Colossians 2:9), the NV of “Godhead” 962 = 26 x 37.
• In Greek, the NV of “Lord” is 999 = 9 x (111 = 3 x 37).
• In Greek (2 Corinthians 4:4), the NV of “Image of God” is 1,369 = 37 x 37.
• In Greek (Acts 5:40), the NV of “Name of Jesus” is 1,998 = 18 x (111 = 3 x 37).
• In Greek (1 Peter 4:14), the NV of “Name of Christ” is 2,220 = 20 x (111 = 3 x 37).
• In Greek (1 Corinthians 5:4), the NV of “Name of the Lord Jesus” is 3,330 = 30 x (111 = 3 x 37).
• In Greek (Colossians 3:24), the NV of “The Lord Christ” is 40 x (111 = 3 x 37).
• In Greek (1 Timothy 6:15), the NV of “King of kings and Lord of Lords” is 8,103 = 37 x 111.
3 – The Source of Life
At this point, let’s ask the question, where in humans, animals, and plants does life lie?
3a – What the Bible Says
Let’s start with what the Bible says. The Bible states that “…the life of the flesh is in the blood…” (KJV Leviticus 17:10-11). Clearly, by “flesh,” the Bible is referring to all members of the Human Kingdom and most members of the Animal Kingdom – i.e. mammalian animals, birds, fishes, reptiles, and amphibious creeping things – all of which possess blood-circulatory systems.
Blood chemistry is very complicated, and what I know about it merely scratches its surface. Blood consists of four main components:
• red cells, which transport oxygen from the lungs or gills, where it was extracted from the air or water, to all body-tissues, where it is converted into carbon-dioxide, and then carries carbon-dioxide from the body-tissues to the lungs or gills, where it is discharged into the air or water;
• white cells, which protect the body from infection and get rid of dead blood cells;
• platelets, which clot blood at the site of a cut to prevent excess blood-loss; and
• plasma, which carries red cells, white cells, platelets, and nutrients throughout the body via the blood-circulatory system.
3b – Hematin & Chlorophyll
Red blood cells contain hematin, which seems to regulate the ability of the plasma to carry oxygen (a) by stimulating the synthesis of globin and (b) by inhibiting the synthesis of porphyrin (I hope I’ve got that right). At any rate, what interests me most about hematin is (a) its presence in the blood and (b) its molecular structure. Here is a diagram of the hematin molecule:
Hematin Molecule [11]
As you can see, the hematin molecule possesses 6 rings, 12 branches, and a total of 137 atoms, at the center of which is an iron atom.
What about plants? Well, the life of plants depends on photosynthesis, which is the process that plants use to convert radiant energy from the sun into chemical energy. Photosynthesis depends on a substance in the plants’ leaves called “chlorophyll.” Here is a diagram of the chlorophyll molecule:
Chlorophyll Molecule [12]
As you can see, the chlorophyll molecule possesses 6 rings, 12 branches, and a total of 137 atoms, at the center of which is a magnesium atom. You will immediately notice that the hematin and chlorophyll molecules are nearly identical. The only difference between them lies in the atoms at their center.
The amazing, structural similarity between the hematin and chlorophyll molecules has led some scientists to refer to chlorophyll as “the blood of plants.” For my purposes here, however, their structural similarity is less important than what they share from the point of view of gematria. You have undoubtedly noticed already that they share the number 137, which is both Richard Feynman’s mysterious number and gematria’s numerical value for God’s might 37 divided by God’s light 27 multiplied by 100. Moreover, there is more.
Gaunt gives us a brief sampling of the appearance of 137 in scripture:
• 137 = “the God of Truth” in (Hebrew (Isaiah 65:16).
• 137 = “the God of gods” in Hebrew (Psalm 136:2).
• 1,370 = “Be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create” in Hebrew (Isaiah 65:18). [13]
Perfect numbers are unusual in that they are the sum of their positive divisors, excluding themselves. For example, the first perfect number is 6, which is the sum of its positive divisors: 1, 2, and 3 (6 is excluded). The second perfect number is 28, which is the sum of its positive divisors: 1, 2, 4, 7, and 14 (28 is excluded). The third perfect number is 496, which is the sum of its positive divisors: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 31, 62, 124, and 248, (496 is excluded). Perfect numbers are very rare, as you can see from the next two in the series: 33,550,336 and 8,589,869,056.
Gaunt points out that the number of protons in hematin is 496, which is the third perfect number, and she gives us a brief sampling of the appearance of 496 in the scriptures:
• 496 = “perfect” in Hebrew.
• 496 = “the blood is the life” in Hebrew (Deuteronomy 12:23).[14]
3c – God and His Creation
Gaunt then focuses on the name of God, Yahweh, which in Hebrew is spelled – right to left – yod, he, zayin, and he, the numerical values of which are 10, 5, 6, and 5 respectively.
The sum of 5, 6, 5, and 10 is 26, which is one of the numbers for God. Also, it is at the center of the hematin molecule – just so we don’t forget who created us!
The product of 5, 6, 5, and 10 is 1,500, which is the NV for both might and light in Greek.
Moreover, the sum of the squares of 5, 6, 5, and 10 equals 52 + 62 +52 + 102 = 25 + 36 + 25 + 100 = 186. If we add three zeros, we get 186,000, which is a close approximation of the speed of light in miles per second.
Plus, the first verse of the Bible is, “In the beginning, God created the earth and the heavens” (KJV Genesis 1:1). The NV of this verse in Hebrew is 2701, which equals 37 (God,s might) x 73 (unformed matter).
Lastly, put all of these concepts and numbers together: 27 (God’s light) + 37 (God’s might) + 73 (unformed matter) = 137 (matter) = 137 (God’s truth).
3d – A Curious Signal
Here I will interject a note concerning a curious phenomenon. Scientists have discovered that, at the moment of conception, when a sperm enters an egg, the calcium level inside the egg rises, causing the egg to emit a “zinc spark.” Wanting to observe this phenomenon, scientists put an egg in a solution containing a fluorescent tag (FluoZin). When they simulated the process of conception, at the instant of penetration by the sperm, the egg emitted a zinc particle, and the tag (a fluorphore) bonded to it. By illuminating the solution with light of one color, the tag emitted light of another color, which they could see with the help of a microscope.[15]
Initially several Christian publications reported that scientists had discovered that a flash of light is emitted by the egg at the instant of fertilization. That is not an accurate description of what happens. Nonetheless, something unusual does happen, which may be related in some way to the Holy Spirit’s contribution to life’s beginning.
3e – The Giver of Life
Even though we know that hematin and chlorophyll (a) are necessary ingredients in the chemistry of life and (b) bear God’s fingerprints all over them, we must understand that life ultimately requires the action of God himself, for the Bible tells us that “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing…” (KJ21 John 6:63) and “…the Spirit giveth life…” (KJ21 2 Corinthians 3:6), a doctrine which, since 325 AD, has been enshrined in the Nicene Creed, where the Holy Spirit is identified as “…the Lord, the Giver of Life” (line 26).
© 2019 John Holbrook Jr.
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[1] Two men who disagree with that assessment were Peter Thompkins and Christopher Bird, who wrote The Secret Life of Plants, Harper & Row, New York, 1973.
[2] See Alfred Korzybski’s Manhood of Humanity (1921, reprint 1950), International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Company, Lakeville CT. Korzybski divides life (the organic world) into three categories: (1) the energy-binding class of life, which consists of plants, (2) the space-binding class of life, which consists of animals, birds, fish, insects and other non-human creatures, and (3) the time-binding class of life, which contains only humans.
[3] Some passages were written in Aramaic – mostly in Daniel and Ezra. Since this section is mostly concerned with Genesis and Psalms in the OT and John in the NT. I will not spend time on this subject here.
[4] Any partial list of the latter should include Peter Bluer, E.W. Bullinger, John J. Davis, Bonnie Gaunt (Gematria), F.W. Grant, James Harrison, Robert D. Johnson, Don Kistler, Michael Leonard, Max Luna, Ivan Panin (Numerics), Ed F. Vallowe, and Del Washburn (Theomatics).
[5] Gaunt, Bonnie, Genesis One – 888 The Sacred Code of Creation 999, Adventures Unlimited Press, Kempton IL, 2003.
[6] See both Chapter 6 – The Cosmology of the Bible and Appendix 6B – Smith’s Ontological Orders in my book, A Biblical View of Nearly Everything – through the eyes of a curious architect.
[7] Gaunt, op. cit., page 14.
[8] Physicists have determined the speed of light through space to be 186,282 miles per second.
[9] A particle physicist, Adam Jacholkowski, once determined that one atom of uranium-235 generates 202.5 million electron volts, which “…is about 2.5 million times more than the energy released from burning coal” (Wikipedia, July 9, 2019, at https://www.quora.com/How-much-energy-does-1-uranium-atom-release-if-split). Now imagine this process running in reverse and the amount of energy which God used to compress primordial or unformed matter into all the atoms in Universe.
[10] See http://www.feynman.com/science/the-mysterious-137/, which I accessed on July 6, 2019.
[11] Gaunt, Bonnie, op. cit., p. 17.
[12] Grant, Bonnie, op. cit., p. 16.
[13] Grant, Bonnie, op. cit., p. 18.
[14] Grant, Bonnie, op. cit., p. 19.
[15] I found this information in an article by Stacy Trasancos entitled Contrary to Reports, There is No Flash of Light at Conception – see: file:///F:/Documents/RES%202-OTHER/PROSE/Science%20-%20Conception/2016-05-23%20Contrary%20to%20Reports,%20There%20is%20No%20Flash%20of %20Light%20at%20Conception%20by%20Stacey%20Trasancos.pdf