(from "The Signature of God" by Grant R. Jeffrey)
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1)
Ivan Panin carefully examined the Hebrew text of Genesis 1:1 and discovered an incredible phenomenon of multiples of 7 that could not be explained by chance. Genesis 1:1 was composed of seven Hebrew words containing a total of 28 letters. Throughout the Bible the number seven appears repeatedly as a symbol of divine perfection - the 7 days of creation, God rested on the 7th day, the 7 churches, the 7 seals, the 7 trumpets, etc. In total, Panin discovered 30 separate codes involving the number 7 in this first verse of the Bible.
| 1 | The number of Hebrew words = 7 |
|---|---|
| 2 | The number of letters equals 28 (7x4 = 28) |
| 3 | The first 3 Hebrew words translated "In the beginning God created" have14 letters (7x2 = 14) |
| 4 | The last four Hebrew words "the heavens and the earth" have 14 letters (7x2 = 14) |
| 5 | The fourth and fifth words have 7 letters |
| 6 | The sixth and seventh words have 7 letters |
| 7 | The three key words: God, heaven and earth have 14 letters (7x2 = 14) |
| 8 | The number of letters in the four remaining words is also 14 (7x2 = 14) |
| 9 | The shortest word in the verse is the middle word with 7 letters |
| 10 | The Hebrew numeric value of the first, middle and last letters is 133 (7x19 = 133) |
| 11 | The Hebrew numeric value of first and last letters of all seven words is 1393 (7x199 = 1393) |
When professors on the mathematics faculty at Harvard University were presented with this biblical phenomenon they naturally attempted to disprove its significance as a proof of divine authorship. However, after valiant efforts these professors were unable to duplicate this incredible mathematical phenomenon. The Harvard scientists used the English language and artificially assigned numeric values to the English alphabet. They had a potential vocabulary of over 400,000 available English words to choose from to construct a sentence about any topic they chose. Compare this to the limitations of word choices in the biblical Hebrew language which has only forty-five hundred available word choices that the writers of the Old Testament could use. Despite their advanced mathematical abilities and access to computers the mathematicians were unable to come close to incorporating 30 mathematical multiples of 7 as found in the Hebrew words of Genesis 1:1.
The number "seven" permeates the totality of Scripture because the number speaks of God's divine perfection and perfect order. The actual number 7 appears 287 times in the Old Testament (7 x 41 = 287) while the word "seventh" occurs 98 times (7 x 14 = 98). The word "seven-fold" appears seven times. In addition, the word "seventy" is used 56 times (7 x 8 = 56).
Ivan Panin discovered literally thousands of such mathematical patterns underlying all of the books of the Old Testament before his death in 1942. I refer the interested reader to Panin's book, The Inspiration of the Scriptures Scientifically Demonstrated, which discusses these phenomena extensively. Panin and others have examined other Hebrew literature and have attempted to find such mathematical patterns, but they are not found anywhere outside the Bible.
| 1 | The number of words in the seven word passage is 161 (7x23 = 161) |
|---|---|
| 2 | The number of Vocabulary words is 77 (7x11 = 77) |
| 3 | Six Greek words occur only in this passage and never again in Matthew. These six Greek words contain precisely 56 letters (7x8 = 56) |
| 4 | The number of distinct proper names in the passage is 7 |
| 5 | The number of Greek letters in these seven proper names is 42 (7x6 = 42) |
| 6 | The number of words spoken by the angel to Joseph is 28 (7x4 = 28) |
| 7 | The number of Greek forms of words used in this passage is 161 (7x23 = 161) |
| 8 | The number of Greek forms of words in the angel's speech is 35 (7x5 = 35) |
| 9 | The number of letters in the angel's 35 forms of words is 168 (7x24 = 168) |
This phenomenal discovery by Panin has been examined by numerous authorities and the figures have been verified. In total, Panin accumulated over forty thousand pages of detailed calculations covering most of the text of the Bible before his death. These incredible, mathematical patterns are not limited to the number seven. There are numerous other patterns. These amazing patterns appear in the vocabulary, grammatical forms, parts of speech, and particular forms of words. They occur throughout the whole text of the Bible containing 31,173 verses. When you consider the amazing details of this mathematical phenomenon you realize that the change of a single letter or word in the original languages of Hebrew or Greek would destroy the pattern. Now we can understand why Jesus Christ declared that the smallest letter and grammatical mark of the Scriptures was persevered by God's Hand: "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled" (Matthew 5:18).
What was Panin's own view of the Scriptures after a lifetime of diligent study? He wrote the following statement in one of his essays after warning of the limitations of wisdom found in secular philosophy. "Not so, however, with The Book. For it tells of One who spake as men never spake, who was the true bread of life, that which cometh down from the heavens, of which if a man eat he shall never hunger." Ivan Panin's conclusion of the matter was the following challenge. "My friend of the world, whose you are: Either Jesus Christ is mistaken or you are. The answer that neither might be is only evading the issue, not settling it. But the ages have decided that Jesus Christ was not mistaken. It is for you to decide whether you shall continue to be." panin3.htm