Lists Of Seven

In this blog I look at some new insights we have regarding how to reason about lists of 7 things in scripture. These are ultimately villain lists, even though they are 7 long.

Gridding Lists

A very important interpretive strategy for dealing with the text is to find lists of things of the same length and then line them up against each other.

Ryan began using this strategy years ago when looking for matches from stories in Isaiah to the books of the Bible.

After years of looking at different lists, certain lists have emerged as fundamental to the design of the text. Let me review the 2 best examples.

Lists of 25

There are 25 different symbols in the alphabet. 22 regular letters and then 3 punctuation marks. Each symbol has extensive meaning and maps into the 3d system of Ezekiel's Bones.

These 25 fundamental symbols also map to the 25 kings in the throne room. So lists of 25 map from the smallest interesting features of the text to the top of human experience. This is an amazing dynamic range that these lists can cover.

As an interpretive strategy, any other list of 25 will map to this fundamental list.

Note that within this list of 25, there are 24 that are paired. Outside of those 24 is an odd 25th item. In this case the Quad letter and King Joshua. Other lists have this pattern, were there is a root set and then an outlier of some sort.

Lists of 12

Lists of 12 items are also common in the text. These lists map against the folded nature of the alphabet, so lists of 12 are connected back into the lists of 25.

But lists of 12 tend to focus in a different domain. They start with the 12 sons of Jacob, the patriarchs. They expand out from there to the 12 tribes. The tribes are the spiritual heirs of the patriarchs so this makes sense.

Any list of 12 in the text will tend to be giving commentary into this family tree.

Note that lists of 12 are sometimes expressed as 13. We see this with the sons of Jacob. Joseph's sons are adopted by Jacob and these 2 sons replace Joseph. The complexity of this must be understood when dealing with tribal lists.

The list of 12 tribes in Revelation 12, for example, is missing Dan. This leaves a 12 element list, but it has intricacies that become clear when the family tree of Jacob is well understood.

Lists of 7

So the text has many places were there are lists of 7. For example, the book of Revelation is filled with various lists of 7. What is the fundamental grid for lists of 7?

We already have a similar length list, the 6 primary editors. Those editors are Solomon, Ahab/Jezebel, Nebuchadnezzar, Mordecai, Ezra and Ananias.

That list is bounded in the sense that it is complete. Each has an identifying written postal style letter, for example. There are only 6 such letters. There are also historical narratives for the eras in which these editors operated. So this list of 6 does not appear to be the same as lists of 7.

On the other hand, material in lists of 7 often feels like material in lists of 6, so there is some overlap.

One answer, which we have held for awhile, is that one of the editors, perhaps Ananias, was fond of the number 7. The synagogue system was setup by Ezra. So public houses holding meetings on the 7th day may have caused him to use grids of 7 as well.

So one way to think of lists of 7 is that they mark an editor, or they have been extended by an editor who added 1 more item.

On the other hand, the lists of 25 and lists of 12 both have an odd/even sort of matching. The lists of 25 have a set of 24 that fit in. Lists of 12 have a 13th that is there if a reader knows how to work the list.

Lists of 6 and lists of 7 want to work together in the same way.

Recent Insight

When we get together to read the text, as we do on Sabbaths, we are monitoring for hidden references to Tabernacle items. We are trying to see where they are being used to help structure the text.

This past Sabbath we saw how to think about lists of 7. It comes from the lamp. Let me explain.

The Lamp

The Lamp Tabernacle item has 7 flames that sit atop 7 branches. There is a color assigned to each flame. The left and right flames are both purple. This is a clue that the left and right sides are the same.

There are letters assigned to each bowl that holds the oil for the flames. Those letters are from the Paleo spelling of the name Abraham. But this is only for the middle 5 flames. The outside flames are the punctuation dot. The 1st and 7th flames are matched.

The size of the lamp is set to match the table. Each flame is lined up with the edge between the tiles on a 6 by 6 grid. That grid represents the repeating canvas on which letters are drawn. At this point you know enough to solve the riddle of lists of 7 mapping to lists of 6.

Edges

If you have ever thought about how measuring tapes work, you know the problem between counting edges or counting items. Integers, or whole numbers, are counting items. Measuring sticks count distance and measure any amount of anything. But when using a measuring tool to measure the length of a uniform set of things, only the edges will matter.

The arms of the Lamp are pointing at the leading edge of each square on the 6 by 6 canvas.

The 7th lamp arm points where?

To the leading edge of the first tile in the next table.

The 7th lamp arm points at the same place as the first lamp arm. This is in part why the colors and punctuation match on these flames too.

This is what is going on in the text when there are lists of 7. The 7th item is wrapping back to the first item. Lists of 7 are actually lists of 6 in disguise. Inspired lists of 7 are simply villain lists of 6 where the first villain is covered again in the 7th item.

Because this is the villain list, the 7th item will wrap back to the start. It will generally point at the end of the work of the villains in the written documents that the public knows. In details, the 7th will often highlight Solomon, the first editor. It often marks a place where the list of 7 will repeat again.

7 Seals (Revelation 6, BRB)

The link here is to Revelation 6. This is an interesting example where we can apply some of what I just explained. Let me run the list.

1) A crown is given and he goes out conquering and to conquer. The crown was given by Samuel when the people asked for a king. This was the start of building an empire. Solomon is the editor in view here and his kingdom stretched to the Euphrates. See 2 Samuel 8:3 for details. The war in Ukraine shows this still going on. Still conquering east.

2) Power was given to take away peace, and we see people killing each other. Most importantly this is when Jezebel used secret channels to have members of the public killing each other internally through show trials. Think J6. Look up the term 'Arkancided.' It still goes on.

3) A pair of balances and expensive food. This is recorded in the time of Jeremiah when Nebuchadnezzar encircled the city. See Jeremiah 37:21. Kings setting the prices of food still goes on. Think the feds going after Amish farmers, or Gates buying farm land.

4) Power given over the land, and the power to kill. This is a reference to Mordecai, who was given power over the Babylonian kingdom and the power to create internal war as we saw at the first Purim. Think central banks, think Antifa.

5) Souls killed for their testimony. This is Ezra. His commissioning letter said he could kill to defend his false religion. It was under this authority that Lazarus was poisoned and Joshua was crucified. This is done for religious reasons. This also still very much goes on. Some think the continuation of a loosing war in Ukraine is to depopulate Christians in that country. I tend to agree. That line of thinking springs from this seal.

6) A great quake and blackness. This is Ananias. The passage is speaking to the events at the crucifixion. The quake that opened the temple and the 3 hours of darkness over the cross are both seen here. Falling from the sky, and fallen figs is likely a reference to the wrath on the city in 70 AD when that crucifixion was avenged.

7) This 7th seal, or 7th marking, is given at Revelation 8:1. It is short, without details. Use the trick, it must have returned us back to Solomon. What do we find? If 8 includes inspired material, then another list of 7. Why? Because the text is backing up to the start of the list and going to run the list again.

7 Bowls (Revelation 16, BRB)

The link here is to another chapter in Revelation where this pattern is going on again. This time 7 bowls are poured out. Let me run this example so you can see the pattern again.

1) Severe and malignant sore, to those who bowed to the image. This is of course Solomon and his 1000 wives, in the era before penicillin. The images are in the temple, where he takes great pains to bow.

2) Blood on the sea. This is Ahab/Jezebel. Jezebel is the daughter of the king of the Sidonians. See 1 Kings 16:31. The Sidonians lived in Lebanon and supplied trees via water for Solomon's temple. It points indirectly at trouble to her home kingdom for what she taught Ahab to do. Presumably anyone else involved in secret societies and killing will suffer the same fate.

3) Rivers and fountains as blood. This is a reference back to the plagues in Egypt, but it is pointing in editor series to Nebuchadnezzar. Presumably the same baby killing of Egypt happened in Babylon. It of course still goes on even today.

4) Power to scorch men with fire. In sequence this is pointing at Mordecai. Presumably the weapon used in the first Purim was to burn down buildings. The same tool has been used throughout history, just like Antifa does now. Antifa must be an arm of the government as the government does nothing to stop it.

5) Darkness on the throne and men gnawed their tongues in pain. Ezra is in view here. His authority as priest was from the throne. By commissioning Ezra, the king throws his kingdom into darkness. Men's actions in this passage might suggest Ezra introduced circumcision.

6) Euphrates dried up, prepared for the invasion of the kings of the east. This is Ananias. I suspect this is hinting at the false religion that Ananias created and planted in Rome after the close of the NT. This might in some way inform the story of the Magi.

7) It is done. This is looping back to Solomon. The temple references here are back to Solomon's temple. The quake reference likely the quake in Amos' day that destroyed Solomon's temple. The fall of the Bible is linking the end of this 7 to the work begun at Solomon. Note the details in this section should be considered against the great stone that ends Nebuchadnezzar's statue. See Daniel 2:35. His statue is also running the editors and it ends with a stone and collapse.

7s End 6s

So lists of 6, when embedded in lists of 7, are showing how the list of 6 comes to an end. So lists of 7 are always showing how the work of the editors comes to an end.

This is of course important, because the question is how does all the work of the villains ultimately end? Lists of 7 show that. They point back to the problems begun when the people asked for a king in order to be like all the other peoples around.

Shop Work This Past Week

The big event this week in the shop was loosing a hard drive on the firewall. This hardware was last setup 3 years ago. Normally drives can be expected to last 5 years. This was the shortest life on a drive I have seen in a very long time.

This was not fun because of the work that goes into setting this up. My first reaction was there goes 2 work days, at least. I ordered a replacement drive and waited.

The firewall has been the place where we configure a corporate style network so we can host test versions of our public websites. This is more complex than a simple home style network because of the need to support development versions of all of our websites. For you geek readers, a private Domain Name System and private Certificate Authority are used to make all of this work. The firewall connects everything together.

Earlier this spring I had setup a very small ($35) computer on one of the Prusa 3d printers so I could calibrate a mechanical bed leveling mod. It was a one off, very small, Linux server running a tool called Octoprint.

That setup really wanted a residential style wifi hotspot, not the more secure form of network I have run around here for years.

2 weeks ago, I found the new Voron printer was the same. It included a very small computer that runs a full Linux server that hosts a website for the user interface for driving the Voron's controller board.

The instructions for setting up the Voron were also built around a standard residential wifi hotspot. In that setup, the printer announces itself to the network without any configuration at all. Anyone on the same network can just type in the name of the printer and see the control panel. All very nice. Everything is automatic except for setting the name of the printer.

So once the Voron was up and running, I wanted to change the network design to include a standard wifi hot spot.

To setup a firewall when you only do it once every 3 to 5 years means there is a bunch of google searches to remember the details. I started searching firewall questions, and stumbled on a way to create security certificates for in-house websites without using my own private Certificate Authority.

A private Certificate Authority is ultimately needed for testing in house websites. Until the past year or so there was no way around it. This also creates problems with every strange device that needs to test those sites. They need to be teased into trusting our self-signed certificates. There are very different, usually hidden, incantations needed for each tablet, laptop and phone, to let them trust our private Certificate Authority. This has never been easy.

This problem is still not well solved in the public Let's Encrypt docs. Nor is it solved with code supported in the Ubuntu repositories... But, there is code on Github where this is now a solved problem.

It is now possible to use Let's Encrypt to sign websites that are not on the public internet. There are 2 conditions. We need to have a public facing server, which we have with our public server. We also need to list the names of those private websites in the public Domain Name System. There are limited security issues doing that, but none are severe. This is mostly just an issue of the creep factor.

So the new setup does not want a private Domain Name Server, nor does it want a private Certificate Authority. Those were the 2 parts that previously required an elaborate network setup.

So I stopped doing a firewall configuration, and instead setup a regular wifi hub. I still need a web server for in-house websites, but I already was doing that. Setting up stock Linux servers are easy, they are a subset of setting up stock Linux laptops. Our test web server is basically a copy of the public web server that we already run.

This new network configuration is a page out of Musk's playbook. The best part is no part, the best process is no process.

It still took 2 work days, and the Let's Encrypt part is not yet setup. But going forward we will not need to set up firewalls again. When a part does fail in the future, it will not require special skills, nor days of work, to get everything setup again.

Website Updates

After working on the new network setup, I was able to turn back to the code needed to convert our Bibles over to the new format.

I have been working on this for several days. Ryan is also working on a radical rethink of the style system used to display everything. He has been just as busy as myself with a major refactor of the style sheet system. I have not touched the Voron this week because of this other work.

The tagging parts for the TT and SR apps were finished this week. The flow of the conversion from the BRB to TT text is very, very different than simply quoting the BRB. The goal of using 1 engine for html conversion turned out well. We (mostly Ryan) will soon start adding new tags and features to the text.

Then I turned my attention to the search functions in these apps. The BRB, which started life as a tab on Bible Time, had perhaps the biggest search mess. I do not remember the exact details, but it looks ported from php or python when it ran on the server and not in the browser. I was very new to Javascript and Javascript was not yet a settled language. Essentially none of the Javascript library calls I regularly use to solve this sort of problem were used in the old code.

After looking it over, I decided I needed to rewrite all of the search functions in modern idiomatic Javascript. It turned out less than half the code and about 10 times faster. On most devices the indexing is now nearly instant. The display formatting, the slow part, is usually under a couple seconds.

All is mostly looking good, but we need to shake this down. We keep finding minor bugs and things we need to tweak. We are not comfortable doing a public release of the scripture apps on Friday this week as normal.

We will not release until after the weekend so normal Sabbath routines can be done on stable apps.

Hopefully, life around here will soon return to normal.

More Later,

Phil