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Moses, Jesus and Christ, counted together
“For the law was given by Moses,
but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”
John 1:17
Three names carry the whole Bible: the man who brought the law, and the Saviour who brought grace. Count all three of them, and then find the middle of that count. It falls on the one verse in all of Scripture where the law hands over to grace.
Pattern one
Moses is the Old Testament in one man: the lawgiver, the deliverer, the mediator. Jesus Christ is the New in one Person: the name and the office, the Saviour and the Anointed. Count all three words through the whole Bible.
Moses + Jesus + Christ
Every mention of Moses, of Jesus, and of Christ in the King James Bible
No exclusions. No judgement about who is meant. Search the plain text for the three names, in every form the Book prints them, and the total is 2,401, which is seven raised against itself four times: 7, then 49, then 343, then 2,401.
The law and the Lord who fulfilled it, counted together, come out to the number of completion multiplied to the fourth degree. Nothing left over.
7 × 7 × 7 × 7 = 2,401 mentions
| Search | Scope | Mentions |
|---|---|---|
| Moses | Verse text | 828 |
| Moses' | Verse text | 19 |
| Jesus | Verse text | 973 |
| Jesus' | Verse text | 10 |
| Christ | Verse text | 555 |
| Christ's | Verse text | 16 |
| Total · 7 × 7 × 7 × 7 | 2,401 | |
Scope here is the verse text of the Bible. The name Moses appears once more outside the verses, in the heading over Psalm 90, A Prayer of Moses the man of God. That heading is counted in the next pattern on this page and not in this one, and the reason is worth knowing rather than hiding: the two counts answer different questions, and this page says which is which every time.
Pattern two
Thirty one thousand one hundred and two verses. In exactly one of them, Moses, Jesus and Christ stand together.
Search the whole Bible for a verse containing all three names and you will find one. Not a handful. One. And it is not an incidental verse. It is the sentence that states the difference between the two covenants in fourteen words: what came by Moses, and what came by Jesus Christ.
Hold that thought, because the arithmetic is about to walk you back to this same verse from a completely different direction.
Pattern three · the hinge
Two thousand four hundred and one is an odd number, so it has an exact centre with the same quantity on either side. Lay every mention of the three names out in the order the Bible prints them, from Exodus to Revelation, and walk to the middle one.
Twelve hundred mentions come before it. Twelve hundred come after it. And standing at the exact centre of all of them is the word Moses, in the one verse of Scripture that names all three, saying that the law was given by him and grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
Consider what that means as a picture. The whole weight of the two covenants, counted by the names that carry them, balances on the precise point in the Book where one hands over to the other. The law is behind it. Grace is in front of it. The pivot is the word Moses, in the verse that hands him off.
And the total says the same thing the verse says. The law was complete: it lacked nothing, and that was the trouble with it, because a complete standard leaves a man nowhere to hide. The grace that came after it is complete. The Book that holds them both is complete. Seven, four times over, and not one mention left standing outside the sum.
Pattern four
Forget the other two names. Take the plain name Moses on its own, across the whole printed Bible, headings and all, and walk to the seven hundred and seventy seventh.
And it is the same word, in the same verse
Two different counts, made under two different rules, arriving at the same word in the same verse. One says: of all 2,401 mentions of the three names, this one is the middle. The other says: of all 829 mentions of Moses in Scripture, this one is the 777th.
That is what makes this verse worth the page. It is not carrying one number. It is the place where two independent counts of the same three names both come to rest, and it is the verse those names exist to explain.
| Search | Scope | Mentions |
|---|---|---|
| Moses | Whole printed Bible, headings included | 829 |
| Position of the Moses in John 1:17 | 777 | |
This count is the plain name only, without the possessive Moses', and it takes in the whole printed Bible including the heading over Psalm 90, A Prayer of Moses the man of God. That heading is Moses' own psalm and it stands in every printed King James Bible, so counting it is the natural reading of the question how many times is Moses named.
The pattern above it asks a different question, how many times do the three names appear in the verses of Scripture, and answers it from the verse text alone. Both rules are stated rather than assumed, because a count you cannot check is a count you should not believe. Change either rule and you get a different verse, which is exactly why the rule has to be printed.
And what the verse is doing there
Read the verb tenses, because the King James Bible keeps them and they are the doctrine. The law was given. It was handed down, delivered from outside, laid on a people who could not keep it. Grace and truth came. They arrived. They walked in. A Person came, and He was the grace and He was the truth.
Moses could bring the law to the door of the land and no further. He struck the rock twice and was buried on a mountain outside the promise. The law shows a man what he is and cannot make him anything else. For by the law is the knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20).
Then the second man comes, and He does not repeal the law but fulfils it, and what He hands over is not a tablet but Himself. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). Three verses later the two covenants are set side by side and named, once, in the only verse where all three names stand together.
And it is at that verse, and at that word, that the arithmetic of the whole Book balances.
Yea, hath God said?
Genesis 3:1 · the first words the serpent ever spoke
It is written
“And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.”
Luke 24:27
Every figure above was counted from the standard Cambridge text before it was published here, and both search rules are printed beside their numbers, including the scope difference between them. Repeat all of it with King James Pure Bible Search, which is free. The fuller documentation is at kjvcode.com.
The patterns on this page were found and documented by Brandon Peterson, whose book Sealed by the King is free to download. Used with permission. The counts here were reproduced independently before publication.
Before you go
“And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” Acts 16:31
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