In April 1997 during a season of extreme stress, I began what I called my “experiencing”… it was an intense period of spiritual awakening, accompanied by a degree of confusion that got worse until one day it was made clear to me that I was experiencing both holy and unholy spiritual influences. It seemed that God, who was very present with me, was teaching me discernment between the two. It was an education in “testing” spirits in the Word of God and in keeping with what it says about His character to determine the truth and the True Source.
During those weeks I kept feeling pressed by imposing thoughts about numbers and the knowledge that numbers represented states of being or other specific things. There came a particular point at which suddenly I was given a “key” in my mind and I wrote down the numbers’ meanings as they were shown to me…… I had a yellow piece of legal pad I wrote them on. Some time later I went to my pastor and asked him how it was that I would be shown the meaning of the numbers this way. What was God’s purpose? He said he didn’t know why I would have been given them and he had no knowledge of numbers’ meaning except some general references to numbers used in the Bible. He said there is an ancient Jewish tradition of numeric symbolism called gematria. I had no interest in researching it as what God had shown me didn’t seem to be part of a system for others to use, but more like a prayer language with God and me. As I prayed or meditated, at times certain numbers would come, in a Scripture verse or in a specific date or other source of a number that God would impress on my spirit and the meaning would simply be there, as if interpreted through the “key” I’d received. I tucked it away in my journal. Through the years it seemed to be refined and there were parallel meanings depending on whether the reference was to the Godhead or to me or another person….. like a positive or negative interpretation could be applied, being read based on context or other factors…. prayers prayed, circumstances witnessed, or understanding from prior experiences or education. It became like a means of personal instruction of guidance to understand something in the moment of my prayer with a confirming number that would be present in the situation.
i don’t really expect anyone else to necessarily care about or understand any of this since it is a function of God’s intimate knowledge of my mind, history with science, familiarity with qualitative and quantitative analysis, “pattern” recognition skill, my habit of connecting physical observations with correlating spiritual realities, etc. As I said, this is simply a tool, like Jesus’ parables, that God has used for directing me to or confirming my awareness and understanding of relationships among these factors relevant to situations in which I find myself as I seek direction through prayer and Scripture to gain God’s perspective.
This week as I was posting in a devotional group, I tried to explain a particular concept, so I looked up a description of what I was teaching for on the internet. Contained in the brief description was a reference to this particular kind of event occurring in 1 in 80,000 live births of humans…. It is what is called an “en caul” birth. It is a newborn delivered with the amniotic sac intact over its body, like a soft jelly-like bubble. Suddenly that number “80,000” seemed to leap off the page at me. I asked God what does this mean and images of “birth” and “new birth” and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came to mind. So I prayed and reflected a minute and saw in the 80000 two numeric features…. 8 being a vertical orientation of the horizontal infinity symbol. 8 has always also meant to me, in the God-prayer language, it also is interpreted as indefinite or uncertain or unknown. The 4 0’s immediately translated into 4 entities beginning a new relationship with one another, as in the beginning of “new life” . “0” is the starting point and the medical symbol for conception or beginning. So the 8 with 4 0s represented the beginning of a new eternal state. The parties to the beginning of this relationship are the Triune God, represented by the three 0’s after the comma, one for each Person of the Trinity. The other 0 adjacent to the 8 is for a human person being drawn into eternity with the whole of the Godhead. An en caul birth is historically seen as an indication of favor with God, a blessing upon the life of the child, a “good luck omen” in midwifery. The 1:80,000 indicates that a human, the “1″ here, transitions across a barrier and enters the eternity becoming adjoined to the Godhead. It was a sweet thought and lines up with other insights God has given me about my eternal life having begun when I was “born again” in the Spirit at age 38.
As I thought about these things suddenly the “144,000” number image came to mind from Revelation 14….144,000 people “who had the name of Jesus and the father on their foreheads.” And I felt the Spirit say, “Read it the same way.” So the “000” would be the Triune Godhead and the “144” represents the condition of a person or indicative of all such persons represented by the “1” who had experienced two “going forth” events, since 4 indicated going forward or moving to another time or place or transitioning to a new state of being. It suggests anyone who has been in the womb, (being the “1” entity) and has also been born of “water”, as in one’s physical birth going forth into a new state (“4” in the first position). Then the second “4” is that person being born again of the Spirit, as by profession of faith in Christ, as is made possible at baptism. The individual is then in a state of “144, having transitioned to the permanent whole, perfected state of being “in Christ.” So a 144-000-person has attained the full maturity of development for a being in spirit, soul, and body (though it occurs in the physical realm in the reverse order- as physical birth, process of maturing soul, and then activation of the spirit. …..Born of body and maturing into a self-aware soul.( like the state of “14” (attainment of a stage or state of being, though not defining a chronological age of personal responsibility). The additional “4” is becoming newly born again of the Spirit… “144” then defines a state of adult wholeness, knowing oneself as “spirit , soul, and body” as in 1Thessalonians 5:23, the order in which complete sanctification occurs. One moves from merely being part of the physical realm and embracing also the spiritual realm and abiding with the Triune God, represented by the “000”.The fullness of existence for an individual knowing herself as being in Christ…. “144,000”. One can think of it as a shorthand for assurance of salvation and sanctified living. All such persons achieving this new identity are already part of the eternal state. All such persons since the beginning of time are represented by the number 144,000.
Interestingly, too, 144 is the product of 12×12, twelve tribes representing symbolically the totality of God’s chosen people and 12 also representing a type of “fullness of time” ….a totality of 12 months of a year, symbolizing a “whole” time period of one full circle around the sun and through the seasons, a long time by a man’s reckoning but a mere moment for God, a “day being like a thousand years” to God, who is timeless. 12 months in the 12×12 formula would translate into something like “all the years of humanity’s existence”… in another sense relating it like 365,000 years representing a “fullness of time image” , read in kairos, not chronos. 144,000 is not a numeric quantity, but the number representing the state of being of all those who will be with Christ in eternity, in the same manner that 666 represents the state of being of the anti-Christ…. 6 being the number of man and 666 being the Hebrew expression of the maximum or superlative state that represents the condition of God-less humanity or their spiritual prototype, the devil himself, the antithesis of Jesus Christ.
Below is the post I wrote in response to the day’s Seedbed Daily Text ( linked below, also), that included the explanation of God’s interpretation to me of the 1:8000 figure:
“lim·i·nal
1.relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process.
2.occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.
Is it that removing the veil of shame that one uses in a physical life to protect one’s self from being “seen” and known for what we fear will not be enough, is like having a caul over us at emergence from the womb life which, when removed by the loving hand of Our Father, is like a caul being removed from the head and body of a newborn, and initiates the awakened life for us? Emerging from the only world we’ve known into the new world prepared for us….. the new reality of our existence.
“An en caul birth is when the baby comes out still inside an intact amniotic sac (caul). This might make it look like the newborn is completely gift-wrapped in a soft, jello-like bubble. An en caul birth is also called a “veiled birth.” This rare thing of beauty happens in less than 1 in 80,000 births.”
We are born into a family “bubble” as a gift from the womb where we have been shaped and formed by God. The family is ordained to sustain us in an emotional and spiritual caul, even when a physical caul is removed from us as we enter the world until we are ready to understand and live into the liminal existence of the dual reality of spiritual and physical being.
For me, the significance of that number “8” is in its similarity to the symbol for eternity, the true beginning of our forever-life, the one prepared for us by God. The 4 “0”s following the eight indicates that an individual (one of the 0’s being a newly re-created human being in a spiritual birth sense) stepping into place alongside and with the fullness of God as Father,Son, and Spirit (the Triune complete, encircled, co-eternal, pre-existent Divine Being) into another new unveiled reality (since “0” is the symbol for conception or, in this case, a new beginning in the spiritual reality, beyond merely physical existence.) we live liminally in it until we shed our physical bodies and enter entirely into the third and final “home”…. heaven.
In the same way that the Divine pre-incarnate Christ stepped into the furnace with three faithful followers of God- Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego- demonstrating His protection of them in the physical realm, a single new believer steps out of the fire of the testing and refining furnace of this world and into the eternal spiritual security of existence with the Triune Godhead….. a parallelism of reverses contrasting a physical event and a spiritual event …..one mirroring the image of the other but each providing a reverse image of the two realities. God steps into the testing furnace with us so that we can grasp stepping into eternal love, joy and peace with Him.”
Then in comments I offered this:
“Would anyone want to hear how the Lord uses this personal (but not private or secret) numeric “spiritual language” of dual realities to know how I relate to the 144,000 in Revelation that refers to those who will be saved? It’s not supernatural or hidden, it’s just a function of God making use of my personal education in algebra, geometry, physics, chemistry, biology, analytical methods, and being put through a wind-blown, earthquaking, fiery transition, too, like Elijah, in which I had to learn to be still in prayer and listen to God and hear and discern the whisper of His Word in this present liminal life with the dual reality of spiritual and physical realms around me. As we learn to move and breathe in the spiritual realm in parallel with the physical over the course of our earthly life, moving out of the physical into the ultimate spiritual existence with God becomes like simply stepping through a doorway into the final glory of heaven.
In the meantime we can live in this awakened transition, at the threshold of the rest of eternity with joy and confident expectation of what is to come…. in other words, with fullness of faith that will carry us through.
The New Jerusalem is already descending and those who live in the liminal transition in the overlap of physical and spiritual may go in and out and experience intimacy with the Divine God, for we are unveiled and awakened. Those who are still bound to the desires of the physical cannot enter. Just as heavenly beings ascended and descended a ladder between earth and heaven in Jacob’s dream, God, through Christ, has made a way for heaven to descend, at least part of the way already so that we, too, may go in and out of the Holy of Holies to be present with the Lord without fear of being seen as unworthy and struck down.”
One friend on the social media site expressed a “like” of my post and perhaps indicates a curiosity in knowing my read on the meaning of 144,000. CBB 9/16/22