It has been said, “There are three kinds of people in this world, those who can count, and those who can’t”. Which one are you?
The quiz
What is?
The number of states in the United States?
The number of days that it rained in Noah’s flood?
The number of disciples?
The number of books in the Bible?
The number of days in a leap year?
The number of the beast?
The number of tribes of Israel?
The number of days in January?
The number of people baptized in Jesus name on the day of Pentecost?
The number of God?
The answer
I’ll cut to the quick on this one. Here are your answers. I don’t know how to print them upside down to make it tricky. 1. 50 states, 2. 40 days and nights of rain, 3. 12 (if you count Judas. It’s 13 if you count Matthias in Acts 1:26 and 14 if you also count the Apostle Paul, who wrote nearly half the books in the New Testament). 4. 66 (unless you count the 11 books that were added to some versions of the Bible in 1546 at the Council of Trent and are included in some versions of the Bible. These books are not accepted by the Jewish people as scripture, nor were they quoted by Jesus in his teaching.), 5. 366 days in a leap year, 6. 666 (Revelation 13:18), 7. 12 tribes of Israel, 8. 31 days in January, 9. 3,000 (Acts 2:41) baptized in Jesus’ name.
Number ten
The answer to number ten is obviously… Wait a second. I thought it was obvious. When listening to a preacher on the radio, I heard him run through a list like the one I gave above. The last thing on his list was the number of God. I thought I knew the answer to it, but he gave the number of God as three.
I didn’t remember reading that anywhere in scripture, so I did a little scripture reading to see if I could find the number of God. Four hundred twenty six verses of scripture contain the number three in them. None of these verses in any way associate the Lord with the number three. The only verse that remotely does is I John 5:7 in the King James Version of the Bible. This verse was inserted in the 1500s by the writer Erasmus. It is not found in any ancient Bible manuscripts, and most modern translations omit the verse or remove the association of the number three with the Lord.
Let’s see what the book says
What is the number of God then, if it is not three? I’ll hang up here and let you decide what the answer to number 10 is.
Hear, O, Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. (Deuteronomy 6:4)
For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee. (Isaiah 43:3) Fifty other verses use the term “Holy One” to describe the Lord.
And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and his name one. (Zech. 14:9)
One Lord, one faith, one baptism. (Ephesians 4:5)
One God and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and in you all. (Ephesians 4:6)
Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. (James 2:19) The devils even know the answer to number ten.
… thou shalt know that I the Lord am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty One of Jacob. (Isaiah 60:16)
In case you skimmed through all the scriptures, the answer to number ten according to the Bible is one (01).
There is a popular doctrine which dates back to the 4th century which teaches that God is three. There is also a modern move calling the number of God “777”. Some sort of reaction to the number of the anti-christ I suppose. Both of these ideas were unheard of to the apostles, and neither can be found in scripture. The undeniable truth of scripture is that there is one God, and his name as revealed in the New Testament, is Jesus.
In case you have any doubts about it, let me give Jesus the last word on the subject:
One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. (Mark 12:28-29 NIV)
