The Name Above Every Name

The name appears 983 times in all. Three of those are other men: Joshua, called Jesus in Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8, and Jesus surnamed Justus in Colossians 4:11. Set those three aside and the total comes to 980.

980 is nothing. It is a number you would never look at twice. Until you write it the way the Lord Himself wrote it, when Peter came and asked how many times he was obliged to forgive his brother, and offered seven as a generous answer. I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.

Seventy times seven. Forgiveness with no floor under it and no ceiling over it. And 980 is that number, twice.

He came, the angel said, to save his people from their sins. The number He gave for the forgiving of sins is the number of times His saving name is written in the Book that says so.

Matthew begins his genealogy at Abraham and works down. Luke does the opposite: he starts at Jesus and walks back up the line, name by name, past David and Abraham and Noah and Adam, and does not stop until he reaches which was the son of God.

Turn it round and read it the way it happened. God is first. Then Adam, then Seth, and on down the generations. Jesus is the seventy seventh.

Seventy seven names, and no room to argue about where to start or stop, because Luke supplies both ends himself. The line begins at God because Luke says it does, and it ends at Jesus because that is whose genealogy it is.

One word in the New Testament refuses the two to one ratio and lands dead level: the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. 490 on the one side. 490 on the other. And 490 is seventy times seven, the same number He gave Peter, standing now on both sides of a scale that has no business balancing.

This is the pattern that is hardest to explain away, because it is not one number that happens to be tidy. It is two sevens held equal across an uneven divide, and the divide itself is decided by an ordering of books that no translator invented and no translator could adjust.

Count the name and the title together and the total is 1,554. Split it down the middle and you have 777, and 777. The name that saves and the office that anoints, each half carrying the perfect number three times over.

And here is a smaller thing worth noticing before the larger one. There are two honest ways to make this count, and they disagree about which mentions belong. Count it strictly, taking every occurrence of the two words as printed, with no judgement about who is meant: 983 and 571. Count it by sense, setting aside the three men who are not the Lord and the two false christs, and gathering in the three places the Book calls His people Christians: 980 and 574. The two methods disagree on six individual mentions. They arrive at the same total.

The name of Jesus alone falls 490 and 490 across the odd and even books of the New Testament. Now do the same walk with the name and the title together, one book, then the next, all the way through. It comes out 777 in one hand and 777 in the other.

The rule here is not quite the rule above, and that difference should be stated plainly rather than glossed. The Jesus count alternates by book number, straight through all twenty seven. This one alternates across the books that contain a mention, and there are twenty six of those. Third John is the exception: in its fourteen verses it names neither Jesus nor Christ anywhere, so it takes no turn in a walk that is counting mentions.

This one carries an extra degree of freedom, and it is only fair to say so. Choosing to alternate across the books that hold a mention, rather than across all twenty seven, is a choice. It is a defensible choice, since a book with nothing in it cannot take a turn in a walk that is counting mentions, and the walk itself is the same walk. But it is a second rule, not the first one applied twice, and anyone shown this deserves to know which.

What is not a choice is where it lands. Under the by-sense count the two halves come out at 777 and 777 exactly. Under the strict count the same walk gives 776 and 778, and the total is 1,554 either way. Both figures are printed here, because a pattern that needs its weaker number hidden is not worth showing.

The word rendered Verily is the same word rendered Amen, and Amen is a title He takes for Himself: These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness (Revelation 3:14). His signature phrase begins with His own name, and He signs it seventy seven times.

Capital God, small capitals GOD where the Hebrew has Jehovah, and lower case god where a false one is meant: four thousand four hundred and forty four in all. Four Gospels. Four corners of the earth. Four beasts before the throne.

Seven churches. Seven candlesticks. Seven stars, seven spirits, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven thunders, seven vials. And in that same book, the Father and the Son are named exactly seven times between them: four and three.

The King James Bible says Holy Ghost eighty nine times. It says Holy Spirit, with the capital, exactly once, in Luke 11:13.

Worth holding onto, because a modern version prints Holy Spirit everywhere and Holy Ghost nowhere. Whatever a reader thinks of that as a translation choice, it means a count that stands at one in the King James Bible stands at ninety in the others. The distinction the King James keeps is the distinction the arithmetic is built on, here and on every page in this section.

Both names capitalised, both singular, both meaning the Persons. Father comes to 259, which is seven times thirty seven, and which is also 777 divided by three. Son comes to 231, which is seven times thirty three, and which is also 77 taken three times. Together they make the number the Lord gave Peter.

Six mentions are set aside, and they are not a vague category. They are six verses, and here they are.

Every one of the five excluded Sons is a man being called son by somebody: a sick man, a labourer, a sulking brother, a rich man in hell. That is not a filter invented to make a number come out. It is the difference between the Son of God and a man addressed as son, and the King James Bible marks it with a capital letter.

Then look at how the 490 distributes itself.

Read it whole, because the whole of it is the proof. Three in heaven, three in earth, and the second three only make sense as an answer to the first. Take the three titles exactly as verse seven gives them and count each one through all sixty six books. 218, and 469, and 90. No exclusions. No judgement about who is meant. Nothing set aside but the possessive forms, which are a different word.

Now sit with which verse this is. 1 John 5:7 is the single most attacked verse in the King James Bible. Nearly every modern version brackets it, footnotes it, or removes the heavenly witnesses outright, on the ground that the earliest Greek manuscripts do not carry it. The three Persons it names, counted through the Book that contains it, come to three sevens.

And here is the sharper edge. The Father is italicised in the King James Bible three times, in Acts 7:16, Colossians 1:19 and 1 John 2:23, and Holy Ghost carries an italicised word in Matthew 12:31. Italics mark what the translators supplied for the sense rather than found in the underlying text, and they are the first thing a critic calls an addition. Take those four out and the total is not 777.

Four plain words this time, not phrases: God, Father, Word, and Holy Ghost. Count them through the even numbered books of the New Testament, the same alternation that holds the name of Jesus level, and the total is 777.

No exclusions at all in this one. Four words, counted exactly as they are printed, in thirteen named books. It is the plainest count on this page and it is the one hardest to wave away.