About identity of cities in Revelation 18

[Athanasius]

I did not immediately remember myself either that it was exactly you, who admitted misunderstanding me earlier in the thread.

That is a bizarre thing to remember given I've said no such thing. I'm assuming you have in mind response #10. The "Yep..." refers to your second sentence.

Kai sinulla on jo valmiina suomenkielinen selitys?

[tango]

    Actually, most people who die because of nuclear explosion die a slow and painful death. Some live minutes, some hours, some days, some live weeks or months. If they know that God of the Bible warned forehand, that increases the probability of turning to Jesus in their last minutes or hours or whatever time it takes.

If you're going to turn to Jesus why not do it now?

If you're convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, the only way to salvation, why risk hanging around to accept him in your final minutes? It would be most ironic to find that you were able to unfathom all mysteries, figure out the exact date and time of the nuclear strike, plan your repentance for a few moments beforehand, only to fall from a ladder and die of blunt force trauma before you got to your appointed time.

If you're not convinced that Jesus is the Messiah then why would you go through a symbolic "turning" to a useless figure just because you thought you were about to fry? Wouldn't you figure out the right source of your new allegiance and, once you'd figured it out, wouldn't you turn to them now rather than later?

I often say that we can spend endless time studying the Revelation in a futile attempt to figure when The End in an eschatological sense might be and even if we were able to figure it out (which seems unlikely, given what Jesus said about knowing the day or the hour) we still wouldn't know when The End in a personal sense would be.

As the good Rabbi said, there are so many other ways we could die. if you look at deaths on US soil since the beginning of the millennium you'll find all sorts of interesting things. Attacks like 9/11/2001 get a lot of media attention, and rightly so, but over time peanut allergies have killed more people than terrorists. We hear the high profile stories of abducted children and insist they be kept under close supervision "to keep them safe" but nobody bats an eyelid when those same children suffer with problems like heart disease and diabetes because they spend their lives indoors, sitting down, staring at a screen.

[IMINXTC]

And any such specific warning(s) would be clearly delineated - not hidden obscurely in an oblique, uncertain equation.


The severity of the assumed judgment or cataclysm would, in fact, be immaterial and not the point. One either hears and believes  the truth of the Gospel or doesn't. The rest is in GOD's hands.

[Athanasius]

No explanation in Finnish I guess I'll have to settle for https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s000390050003

[shepherdsword]

   We should look into both the goodness and the severity of God (Romans 11:22). God mourns for every soul that He has to condemn to hell. But he will indeed condemn countless souls to hell, and we cannot comprehend the seriousness of that. If God would just end the history right away, that would be easier for Him, since all sins of all generations were placed upon Jesus. But He bears us, despite that we all would deserve hell, and can only be saved through the blood of Jesus, if we repent and believe the gospel. That judgements in the world come in steps (and some of those gradually), is mercy to mankind. Many can see that judgements are indeed coming and can repent before dying. Some get the chance to repent when dying in the judgements. And God gives warnings ahead, which is proof to mankind of the reality of Him.
    Some persons look arrogantly at the judgements of God: “It is only for those liberals. But I, even if I were there, would go straight to the heaven.” Some of those who think so are denying their faith by their deeds, like for example living in fornication or adultery. Sin in believers life can mean crucifying Jesus again. It is worse in front of God than sin of those who never knew Jesus. And if you are truly in a good condition in bad spiritual  times, you cannot know how much of that is really because of your free-will choices and how much because you got the grace that God influenced you more than most people in your time, so that light would be preserved in some lamps.
   Revelation chapters 17 and 18 speak about a great harlot, Babylon. I believe the harlotry refers to apostasy. There is apostasy inside and outside the churches, in conservative and liberal sides. I believe there is no single one-to-one correspondence of the Babylon to some earthly entity. Babylon is a spiritual concept and spiritual entity in the invisible world. Babylon has church-manifestations, city manifestations and country manifestations on the earth. Not differentiating between these and not realizing that there are two phases in the destruction described in chapter 18 has led to errors like speaking about annihilation of United States in this context. Even though Babylon is not a single entity on Earth, this does not mean that God would not give specific detailed warnings related to it’s destruction -quite the opposite is true, as we shall see.
     Revelation chapter 18 speaks about a sudden destruction of a powerful, large and rich city in a fire whose smoke can be seen from the sea. I believe this refers to more than one city, and that it speaks about nuclear terrorist attacks, that David Wilkerson also spoke about. Verse 17:18 describes the city as an imperial capital, that will say, at some part of it’s history. The economical significance and power described in chapter 18 at the time of the destruction points to New York and London, if understood as a property of a singular city. New York was not an imperial capital, but it has UN Security Council which has “kingship over the kings of the earth” when it succeeds in making a decision. City of Rome can be recognized from chapter 17, which has references to both the city and the Roman Catholic Church.
   I believe that Revelation 18 has two phases, earlier and latter. Verses 4-19 (or 9-19) are about the earlier phase essentially and the rest are about the latter phase. The earlier phase is about a great destruction that among other things takes the riches of the city away, but does not completely end the normal human life in the city (see verse 14). Observe that Hiroshima is still a major city today. The latter phase happens very late in the end times and means complete end of the normal human life in the city. See verses 22 and 23. Before the latter phase of destructions there happen persecutions of Christians all over the world (notice verse 20), but not necessarily before the first phase.
    The well known Biblical expression “time, times and half” (moed, moedim wachetzi) is connected to several prophecies. It is also connected to Revelation chapter 18. Please take into account that a prophetic text can have several parallel correct meanings. One of the meanings of the word moed  is appointed signal. It turns out that moed, moedim wachetzi gives signals related to cities of Revelation chapter 18. I will outline how the Hebrew expression gives the signals.
     We know that the basic meaning of time, times and half is 1260 days, which corresponds to ‘time, 2 times and half’, with time being 360 days. This can be seen by comparing Revelation 12:6 and 12:14. The number 2 is not in the Hebrew or Greek expression; it can also mean ‘time, 3 times and half’, or ‘time, 4 times and half’ and so on. With the same value of “time” as in 1260 these interpretations correspond to 1620 days, 1980 days, 2340 days and so on. So, a single Hebrew expression gives actually a sequence of numbers, and it turns out that many of the early numbers of this infinite sequence have prophetic signals. The first one, 1260, contains 260, which is the number of District of Columbia in Hebrew  according to standard modern Hebrew spelling. Daniel chapter 12 that also has the expression “time, times and half” says that these things will be sealed until the time of the end (see verse 9). The signals that I talk about are intended for the last generation and for the proper time. Most of the signals use the binary base, instead of decimal base. For this generation that is ok. God knew all bases and units and everything in His sovereign foreknowledge. Here is a list of some of the signals in these numbers.
1260 District of Columbia (Washington)
1620 Mexico City, Jerusalem (Jerusalem is possibly here due to reasons other than Revelation 18), Miami
1980 Rome, Damascus
2340 London, Berlin
2700 Istanbul
3060 New York, Kiev
3420 Moscow
3780 Amsterdam
4140 Madrid
Except the first one all these signals are of the type that the binary representation of the number on the left contains the binary representation of the number of the city in standard modern Hebrew spelling. Excluding Jerusalem and Miami these cities can all be regarded as imperial capitals (with New York included because of the Security Council). Even Kiev was the capital of Kievan Rus, the largest country of Europe in it’s time of greatness, and a major military power. Mexico City was the capital of Spanish Latin America, and before that the capital of the Aztec empire.
    Later in the prophetic sequence there comes extensive references to Revelation 18:4. Together with that there are further references to specific cities. God has allowed confirmations that the numbers of cities are not all in the list coincidentally. For example, the number 1980 mentioned above, that contains the modern Hebrew number of Rome contains also the Greek number of Rome in binary.
    I have done computer tests related to appearance of the cities in the binary representations of the prophetic numbers. The European part is more easily tested. The beginning of the list when counting only European cities is
1260 -
1620 -
1980 Rome
2340 London, Berlin (both numbers appear twice overlapping in 2340)
2700 Istanbul
3060 Kiev
3420 Moscow
   This correlates with the list of cities ruling over greatest share of world population at the time of their peak power, which for Europe would begin: Rome, Istanbul, London, Berlin, Moscow, S. Petersburg, Paris. (Istanbul was for a time the capital of the whole Roman Empire). This is connected to Revelation 17:18. Computer test that took into account first 5 of the prophetic numbers and first 7 of the cities in their historical ranking gave probability less than 11000 for random coincidence. This is indeed small enough to take notice.
    God is providing information about where to leave to avoid judgement of the Babylon-cities. As promised in Revelation 18 (through verses 4 and following), the information about leaving will be available before the destruction. What is in this sequence of prophetic message numbers is part of that information. It is also part of the handwriting on the wall. God, in His faithfulness, gives handwriting on the wall that is for everyone to see, after it is discovered, handwriting that comes through the Bible itself. Bible is exactly where to anchor in the last times.
    The seriousness of the issue necessitates caution. God has nevertheless provided multiple confirmations to many details. Many numbers of cities contained in the sequence are accompanied by numbers of words closely connected to the city. For example in 2340 the number of Berlin (292) appears twice overlapping itself in binary. In the same number there is also the number the river Spree in the city. And the next number 2700 in the sequence has the number of Berlin in Greek.

About prophetic message numbers in general

    Still, for the issue of getting messages from prophetic message numbers, as those above, caution is needed. When getting messages from prophetic message numbers I propose the following five conditions. First, the messages should be about details, not doctrines. That is, messages should be about times, places and other outer details, not doctrinal statements or claims about spiritual concepts. Second, the details should be about the prophecy where those prophetic message numbers appear. If that prophecy is connected to another prophecy, the message number can be about details of that other prophecy too. Third, the message number should appear in the prophetic text as a message number. For this, one should allow unconventional understandings of the text. Fourth, the message should fit into how that message number appears in the prophetic text. Fifth, the message number should be demonstrated to have truthful data as a message number. In case of a number related to a prophecy whose fulfillment is entirely in the future, the truthful data should relate to known details of the domain where it will presumably be fulfilled (according to a reasonable understanding of the text). Instead of “domain” one can have something specific of the real world related to the proposed fulfillment. Here one should require that the truthful data is not plausible as a coincidence. Without these 5 conditions or something similar one could claim that Bible says almost anything through prophetic message numbers.

Brief analysis of the prophetic word related to the prophetic message numbers

    In the case above these 5 conditions are satisfied, even though I have not yet proved it here. To this end, consider first Daniel 12, where it is written
   “5Then I, Daniel, looked, and two others were standing there, one on this bank of the river and one on the other. 6One of them said to the man dressed in linen, who was above the waters of the river, “How long until the end of these extraordinary things? ” 7Then I heard the man dressed in linen, who was above the waters of the river. He raised both his hands toward heaven and swore by Him who lives eternally that it would be for a time, times, and half a time. When the power of the holy people is shattered, all these things will be completed.”
     Time, times and half is connected to 2300 years through it’s basic meaning 1260 days. The numeric value of the expression “alpayim we-shelosh meot”, when written as in modern Hebrew with two yods in alpayim to distinguish it from alafim, is precisely 1260. It is known, that one fulfillment of 2300 ereb boqer is the time interval ending in 1967. At that time the last generation was already there. It is also known that the coming of Jesus cannot be known more accurately than the generation. In Daniel 12:7 the answer is actually that the end-times generation is there at the end of the 2300-year interval, what comes to time.
    After learning this, let us look into Revelation chapter 12. Revelation 12:5 refers to Jesus and His ascension to heaven. The next verse says: “And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.”. This is often understood as speaking about some specific difficult 3.5-years in the end times. But that is not the only meaning here (if it speaks about that at all). The being in the prepared place started after the ascension of Jesus. This speaks about God’s protection in general throughout new covenant history all the way to the last generation, including the last generation. Here as in Daniel 12 the number 1260 refers to 2300 years, which end at 1967, and mark the last generation. After the last generation, in the thousand year kingdom, there is no longer need for similar God’s protection, since Jesus rules on Earth and the devil is bound.
    Verse 14 says “And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.”. I skip the issue of the meaning of the great eagle here for brevity, but I believe, that in the general case the two wings are obedience and prayer, which can be confirmed by Bible verses as you know. So far this is about the general case of protection of God for His people. But there is also more specific information here related to God’s protection in some case or cases.
      In verse 14 we have a Greek version of moed, moedim wachetzi, καιρόν, καὶ καιρούς, καὶ ἥμισυ καιροῦ (in accusative). Since this is a specific spiritual concept or phrase, that appears both in Greek and Hebrew, I consider it legitimate to look into it’s meanings’ nuances in both languages when considering it in the Greek text. Consider the Hebrew meaning “appointed signal, appointed signals and part [of appointed signal]” in the Greek sentence. It is in the accusative case and it specifies verb τρέφεται (she is nourished, she is supported). Accusative specifies basicly the extent of the action of the verb, that is, where the action reaches, where it happens. In some rare cases it specifies according to what the action of the verb happens. Here essentially she is supported according to appointed signals. The signals give information about the limits and extent of the support, for example, from what cities you have to leave to avoid death in Revelation 18.
     How about the appointedness issue of these appointed signals? Appointed how? The destruction of Babylon in Revelation 18 is a major issue what comes to the security, and the request to leave Babylon-cities before destruction is a major issue related to God’s protection. As such it is a big single part of the protection that Revelation 12 speaks about. In Revelation 18 we see, that information about leaving comes before the destruction. In this sense the issue is appointed to be signaled at appropriate time. God’s choice to call it “Babylon” in the context of it’s destruction places the destruction of historical Babylon as it’s type. There we have the well known issue of the handwriting on the wall. It is reasonable therefore to consider the appearance of a handwriting on the wall as something to watch for. The handwriting on the wall is the appointed signal.

Therefore, a reason for anguish for other souls:

    In Jeremiah 9 there is
“20Hear, O women, the word of the LORD,
and let your ear receive the word of his mouth;
teach to your daughters a lament,
and each to her neighbor a dirge.
21For death has come up into our windows;
it has entered our palaces,
cutting off the children from the streets
and the young men from the squares.
22Speak: “Thus declares the LORD,
‘The dead bodies of men shall fall
like dung upon the open field,
like sheaves after the reaper,
and none shall gather them.’” ”     Each body is someone’s daughter or son. Could be someone’s husband or wife, father or mother. Even the family members don’t grasp the full tragedy, since most of those who die instantly go to eternal hell. For family members this is something that people don’t even bare to look at. But there is still hope since there is still time to leave. There is still time to show to nonbelievers, that The Living God is real after all, and knew our time and it’s geography thousands of years ago. His judgements are real, too.

     What cities should receive the warning:     
 
Europe:

Rome (confirmed)
London (confirmed)
Berlin (confirmed)
Istanbul (at least partly confirmed)
Moscow
Petersburg
Madrid (confirmed)
Amsterdam (confirmed)
Brussels (confirmed)
Vienna
Lisbon (confirmed)
Paris (confirmed)
Kiev

Americas:

New York (confirmed)
Washington
Mexico city
  Current (unconfirmed) understanding that I have is that in the United States the nuclear terrorist attacks happen in the greatest urban areas up to Miami and in the greatest metropolitan statistical areas up to Washington. (Both lists begin with New York.) Some strategic targets are possible besides these.


Asia:

Damascus (confirmed)
Jerusalem (unclear, number of Jerusalem in the list is possibly connected to prophecies about the Old City, not Revelation 18. It is hardly the case that God is telling people to leave Jerusalem.)
Whole Elam is in danger of destruction -this can mean Iran or Pakistan or both. This happens probably/possibly after the nuclear terrorist attacks. I believe that the nuclear warheads (missiles are not involved here) are from the beast of the Revelation (see Revelation 17:16) or his future co-rulers, and I do not believe he is from Pakistan. He does his best to hide the true origin of the nuclear warheads, and he is “skilled in intrigue”.
   For Damascus there is the prophecy Isaiah 17:1-3. Also the general law of blessing or cursing Israel is relevant here, as is also true for Iran.

There can be other cities besides these.
   

Jesus be with you and guide you to all truth

Tomi Laakso
Finland

Classic TL;DR

[Tomi Laakso]

        So, why is my work not numerology?

It is, though. You're just saying that when you do it, it is okay.

    The main issue is not whether my work should be called numerology or not. That depends on how broad definition of numerology one takes. The important issue is whether my work shares with numerology the reasons that make it trash.


Futility of traditional gematria ; comparison to my work


    There are more than 8000 Strong’s numbers for the Hebrew Bible. Typically the gematric number of a word is less than 1000. Several words are written exactly in the same way (not counting niqqud), and such words are often etymologically related. Such words would give trivial examples of gematric equality, so it is better to discount them. Taking only one from each such class, and discounting proper names leaves a significantly smaller number of different Hebrew words. The exact number of such words is not needed for the following reasoning.
    Suppose for simplicity that we have 1000 different Hebrew words such that each of them has gematric number less than or equal to 1000. Then there are at most 1000 possible gematric values for the words. Therefore we have thousand values that go into 1000 possible slots, some of which will get values from more than one words, and some of them getting values from no words at all. (The slot is the numeric value of the word, nothing more.) Suppose first for simplicity that the probability distribution of the values is uniform in (0,1000]. It is not, but that fact will make the case even more problematic for gematria.
    Probability that some slot gets no values at all is (1-1/1000)^1000 = 0,368 . (This is approximately 1 over the Euler’s number e, see the limit definition of e.) The expectation value is that among the 1000 slots there are 368 such slots. Probability that some slot gets exactly 1 value is 1000/1000 * (1-1/1000)^(1000-1) = 0,368, approximately the same value as before.  Again, the expectation value is that among the 1000 slots there are 368 such slots, each one getting the gematric value from exactly 1 word. This means that the expectation value is that all the remaining 632 words share gematric value with 1 or more words. It turns out that the expectation value is that there are about 500 different gematric equations, each of the form n(w_1)=n(w_2), that is, the number of the word w_1 equals the number of the word w_2. (The reverse order equation n(w_2) = n(w_1) is not counted as a different equation, but as the same equation.)
    So, 500 accidental equations with 1000 words. Not good at all.
    The fact that the probability distribution of gematric values is not uniform means that it is concentrated somewhere. This means that there will probably be even more gematric equations, since there will be more slots with more than one words and more slots with no words at all. So it will in all probability increase the number of accidental gematric equations. Combine this with all the possible conceptual theological connections between words. This is a huge number. It gets even huger if we count all minor insignificant connections. It gets even worse, if we count all potential conceivable connections, many of which only exist in some theologian’s imagination. It could be that any given words (or most of them, at least) would admit at least some seeming and remote connection. Of course, many many gematric equations are then combined with some claimed connection between the words whose numbers match. From those more than 500 equations one finds many where the connection appears significant. If one picks the very best, it can look like “surely this is the hand of God”, but there is no real reason to think so.
    Those who practice gematria traditionally reject those gematric equations for which there is no Biblical basis. This is wise, even necessary, but why do we need gematria then? If we know the connection of the concepts without gematria, why do we need gematria? There is the danger that a seeming connection becomes accepted as real because of gematria. There is another danger. Since gematria produces these equations randomly, it gives a misdirection of attention and emphasis even with real connections. Why should we pay attention to a connection that is brought forwards by gematria? We should not, because it is a random misdirection which does not bring us to the point in general, but besides the point. This is not disproved by taking the very best of the random examples and appealing to them.

    In my work the situation is very different. Monte Carlo -simulations indicate that there is something very different from normal accidental coincidences there. The difference is of similar type to difference between pseudo-medicine and medicine tested on trial. For those who do not know, Monte Carlo -simulations are computational tests that estimate the probability that a certain kind of phenomenon happens coincidentally. Often it is too difficult to calculate, and one has to estimate it experimentally. One goes through a huge number of random cases and looks, how often the phenomenon happens.
    There are differences beyond the statistics. Gematria deals with connections of Biblical concepts, an issue that has bigger or smaller theological content, depending on the case. My work only deals with practical details of fulfillments of prophecies. In a subsequent message I discuss, if God grants, why it is better to accept the practical details instead of theological content from the numbers.

[Tomi Laakso]

Practical details versus doctrines



   For my work, no theological meanings of numbers are considered. Just down to the earth data. Only practical details of prophecies are inferred. Why is this? Why is it better to get practical details from the prophetic message numbers than doctrines or other theological content?

   2 John verse 9 says :”Anyone going on ahead, and not abiding in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. The one abiding in the teaching, this one has both the Father and the Son.”  (Berean Literal Bible). These are serious words, and seriously we should take them. Going further to new doctrines is a terrible thing, and should be carefully avoided.
   In the same (only) chapter of 2 John the verse 6 says: “And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.” (English Standard Version). This tells us that there cannot suddenly appear new moral principles. (But ignored commandments can be taken into account anew.) Moral teaching is part of theology. Moreover, there is no strict limit between teachings about the will of God and other doctrines. Christian morals includes many things: rebuking the transgressors, encouraging the downcast by word of God, refreshing the exhausted by word of God, etc… In the many situations that a servant of God encounters the various issues of acquaintance of God and details of His plan of salvation play a role, so that he/she knows how to encourage truthfully, refresh spiritually and warn as needed. Truth about God is not separate from will of God. Then, one concludes, there cannot be new doctrinal content, but only what has been there available since the Bible was written. Nothing new about acquaintance of God, nothing new about salvation, nothing new about spiritual concepts.

    Prophetic message numbers, on the other hand, are like data-packages in prophecies. Prophecies in the Bible are not written like: “So and so many years after this and that event, so and so many kilometers from Jerusalem to this and that direction in a city of such and such size there happens a sudden major destruction.” But God has His ways to point to the details, when He chooses so. But He cannot write things like in the above example; He chose not to tell people in 4th century that Jesus did not come before 21st century. If He had put all details in a plain and simple way, people would have known, say, in 16th century, that His coming is still far, far away, even if He had left direct time-references out. That was not God’s will. God points to the details in such a way, that the generation that will see the destruction in the Babylon-cities can understand it, when He lifts the veil.
    There is no need for data-packages for doctrines. There is no need to seal doctrines for later time, nor would such make sense. Such alternative is not even acceptable in the light of 2 John. There are no hidden doctrines. (Those answers that are not given to us will not be given to us in this life.) But some details related to end times were sealed in Daniel 12 up to the last generation (Dan 12:9). The sealing ment that one could not understand all of the prophecy and get all the information before the proper time.

    If God grants, I will show here in near future how God gives accurate fulfilled prophetic details through the prophetic message number 1335 in Daniel 12 together with the prophetic message number 1260 corresponding to time, times and half (that is also in Daniel 12). Others have found accurate fulfillment(s) of 1335 too. (A prophetic passage can have several fulfillments.). The point is that one can show that God uses 1335 as a prophetic message number, as a data package, with gematria, too -but nobody can show that God uses some prophetic message number to give new direct theological messages. Theology cannot be observed from the world in the same way as details of fulfilled prophecies can.
   

[Tomi Laakso]

Is everything where gematria plays some role trash?

   It is difficult to maintain both of the following positions simultaneously: A) Everything, where gematria plays some role (other than calculating the number of the beast), is numerology. B) All numerology is trash.
   Let us consider this.

    As I said, I will show here in near future, if God grants, how God gives accurate fulfilled prophetic details through the prophetic message number 1335 in Daniel 12 together with the prophetic message number 1260 that corresponds to time, times and half (that is also in Daniel 12). Others have found accurate fulfillment(s) of 1335 too. (A prophetic passage can have several fulfillments.). The point is that one can show that God uses 1335 as a prophetic message number, as a data package, with gematria, too. So this is a counter-example to A) and B) being simultaneously true. But there is another reason to doubt it, a reason related to the warning to the cities that I am talking about.

    For the destruction of “Babylon” in Revelation 17-18 God decides to call it Babylon. That brings readers to consider that the destruction of historical Babylon is in some aspects a type of the destruction of the end times “Babylon” (and that Babylon itself is in some aspects a type of the end times “Babylon”). When the historical empire of Babylon fell, there was the handwriting on the wall. It is natural to expect or at least consider the possibility that this is also a type of what will happen in the end times. Daniel says when speaking about the handwriting on the wall: “ “And this is the inscription that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of each word. MENE: God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it;  ” (Daniel 5:25-26, NKJV). Notice that there is not the word “days” here that some translations add (saying, like, numbered the days of your kingdom). The “days” is not in the Hebrew text. The kingdom is numbered, or it’s number is counted. His (Belshazzars) kingdom was Babylon. In Revelation 18, which speaks about destructions of the Babylon the focus is largely on city-manifestations of Babylon. In the handwriting on the wall connected to Revelation 18:4 there will indeed be a role for counting of the number of each Babylon-city. Remember that a prophetic text can have more than one message. I am not saying that gematria played some role for the original handwriting on the wall in Belshazzar’s time. But the end times Babylon is a different matter.
    One can complain (correctly) that the text says that God has numbered, not man. Let him/her consider the following. It is indeed God, who has actually put the number for each city. God has arranged through providence that the names of the cities will be such that their numbers appear in the prophetic message numbers.
   For a human being it is impossible to write anything in numbers that are determined by a simple equation, since they cannot change these numbers to incorporate the message. There are no degrees of freedom available for a many-part message. But God can arrange the message, since He decides if He so wishes, what the names of the cities and their numbers will be, and can therefore force them to appear in the prophetic message numbers. So the message comes indeed through God putting numbers to these cities (and to related concepts for confirmation), not through putting something directly to the prophetic message numbers that are determined by an equation. (But God has possibly chosen the sequence that I have talked about because of some special mathematical properties that suit to His purposes.)
   It was of course impossible for people in Daniel’s time to know about these cities, many of which were not yet founded. But the prophecy was not from men, of course, but from God.

[RabbiKnife]

I long for clarity in this speculative interpretive scheme at least equal to the time when ‘twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and frolickin the wabe; all mimsy were the borogoves and the mine raths outgrabe

Still trying to convince folks to run from some undisclosed cities at some unknown and unknowable point in the future and for those future persons to then turn to Jesus then instead of just explaining the Gospel to them now?

I think scripture calls this vain speculations

[Fenris]

    The main issue is not whether my work should be called numerology or not. That depends on how broad definition of numerology one takes. The important issue is whether my work shares with numerology the reasons that make it trash.


Futility of traditional gematria ; comparison to my work


    There are more than 8000 Strong’s numbers for the Hebrew Bible. Typically the gematric number of a word is less than 1000.

This is a function of word length and alphabet distribution. It's very difficult for one to see how this relates to deep spiritual truths or hidden secrets in the bible. And honestly, I fail to see the point of it all. I'm going to keep repeating what I said: The bible contains so many explicit truths of importance, it's really difficult for me to see why God would hide "these very important things" in some cryptographical manner.

Even the Jewish sage and scholar Maimonides, who considered belief in the concept of the messiah to be fundamental to Judaism, said not to worry too much about the details of when or how. Just believe in the general idea. To do any more is a waste of time, and it does not bring one to either love or fear God. And I believe that he is correct. My son like to say that we all know how this story is going to end.

    Suppose for simplicity that we have 1000 different Hebrew words such that each of them has gematric number less than or equal to 1000. Then there are at most 1000 possible gematric values for the words. Therefore we have thousand values that go into 1000 possible slots, some of which will get values from more than one words, and some of them getting values from no words at all. (The slot is the numeric value of the word, nothing more.) Suppose first for simplicity that the probability distribution of the values is uniform in (0,1000]. It is not, but that fact will make the case even more problematic for gematria.

This is just a probability and statistics game. Any book of sufficient length could be used to generate codes, so the practice seems to me to be of dubious value.

    Probability that some slot gets no values at all is (1-1/1000)^1000 = 0,368 . (This is approximately 1 over the Euler’s number e, see the limit definition of e.) The expectation value is that among the 1000 slots there are 368 such slots.

I...have no idea what the inverse of e has to do with this particular problem or what you're trying to say here.

[Fenris]

When the historical empire of Babylon fell, there was the handwriting on the wall. It is natural to expect or at least consider the possibility that this is also a type of what will happen in the end times.

Why?

[Tomi Laakso]

    Suppose for simplicity that we have 1000 different Hebrew words such that each of them has gematric number less than or equal to 1000. Then there are at most 1000 possible gematric values for the words. Therefore we have thousand values that go into 1000 possible slots, some of which will get values from more than one words, and some of them getting values from no words at all. (The slot is the numeric value of the word, nothing more.) Suppose first for simplicity that the probability distribution of the values is uniform in (0,1000]. It is not, but that fact will make the case even more problematic for gematria.

This is just a probability and statistics game. Any book of sufficient length could be used to generate codes, so the practice seems to me to be of dubious value.

     The part you wrote that I emphasized is an important fact and related to my work in general. It is related to why it makes sense to require some of those 5 conditions that I propose for prophetic message numbers. I believe that we should not take arbitrary Biblical encodings as voice of God, even if they would be statistically significant. The concept of prophetic message numbers is different from arbitrary Biblical encodings. (It is correct to say, anyhow, that something is encoded in the prophetic message numbers themselves.) But without those 5 requirements the concept of prophetic message numbers could nevertheless become a trash-producing machine.
     For one thing, I required (in the simple form) that the numbers appear in the text as prophetic message numbers. This excludes cases like taking a number or few numbers near each other from Numeri or from genealogies, and treating them as prophetic message numbers. If one could do that, then, from that larger pool of arbitrary possibilities one would find accidentally some that seem to have some message in a statistically significant way. For another thing, I required that the messages that one reads from the prophetic message numbers are related to the content of the prophecy where they come from, or other prophecies connected to that prophecy. Without this one could go through the enormous set of all possible issues and find some issue, where coincidentally there would be a message together with apparent statistical significance. These I want to exclude. This is related to why my work is not trash even though numerology in general is and prophesying from encodings generally is trash.
 
    Who read this, please notice also the less important point that in the part of my message that Fenris cited, I was not talking about encodings in some book but gematric equations. They are determined by the language, the spelling system and word-number -correspondence. They are book-independent. Maybe his point was like “the whole consideration is futile because…”. But to this I can say what I said above.

[Fenris]

     The part you wrote that I emphasized is an important fact and related to my work in general. It is related to why it makes sense to require some of those 5 conditions that I propose for prophetic message numbers. I believe that we should not take arbitrary Biblical encodings as voice of God, even if they would be statistically significant.

No disrespect, but all you're saying is that you don't believe in "other bible codes". But you went looking for your codes for a topic that you believed in, and lo and behold, you found them! This is the definition of "confirmation bias".

[RabbiKnife]

     The part you wrote that I emphasized is an important fact and related to my work in general. It is related to why it makes sense to require some of those 5 conditions that I propose for prophetic message numbers. I believe that we should not take arbitrary Biblical encodings as voice of God, even if they would be statistically significant.

No disrespect, but all you're saying is that you don't believe in "other bible codes". But you went looking for your codes for a topic that you believed in, and lo and behold, you found them! This is the definition of "confirmation bias".

I confirm your confirmation of his confirmation bias.

For my conservative friends:  When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

For my not so conservative friends:  Never pass up an expensive and needless solution in search of a problem.