Seven is called the sacred number, and seems to express the idea of perfection or fullness to the highest degree and in the most unlimited sense. As seven days make a complete week, whole and entire, without redundancy or deficiency, so that to which the number seven is attached must be taken as perfect, fully developed, as a complete whole. The expressions “seven spirits,” “seven seals,” “seven trumpets,” etc., imply that what they represent must be taken as entire, with no possible capacities lying in them unexhausted.
Twelve, also, signifies completeness; but its use and application are more restricted. It is usually connected with the Church of God, and possibly has some special reference to it. Thus there are twelve patriarchs, twelve apostles, twelve foundations to the holy city. As the number is formed by the multiplication of three, representing the Trinity, and four, representing the world with its quarters, it conveys the thought of universality as the assured destiny of the Church.
Six is, also, as a symbol, connected with the Church; but, both because it is less than seven, and only the half of twelve, has a sinister significance. It represents the malign and baleful influences which corrupt and disintegrate the Church, shearing it of its power, limiting and obstructing its mission, and leaving it incomplete, defective, and corrupt.
Three and a half is a number having special signification and requiring particular investigation. A correct appreciation of its meaning will throw light upon some of the most obscure portions of the Apocalypse.
It occurs—and is, indeed, the only number of which this may be said—in various forms. Since three and a half years comprise forty-two months, and since forty-two months of thirty days each (the usual prophetical computation) equal twelve hundred and sixty days, we may take these three forms, three and a half, forty-two, and twelve hundred and sixty, as equivalent expressions. So, also, the expression, “a time, times, and the dividing of times” (1 + 2 + ½ = 3½), is probably but another form of this number. That some law governs the choice of these various forms is probable; but what, it is does not appear.
Since three and a half falls short of seven, it designates incompleteness. But, inasmuch as it is the exact half of seven (in this differing from six), it signifies an incompleteness which has, so to speak, a completeness of its own—that is, an incompleteness which is not anomalous and irregular, such as would be expressed by six, but one which is, by the appointment of God or as a result of its own nature, intended to be such. Any period of time or epoch in human history which has prescribed and well-marked limits or boundaries, any part of the plan of Providence which has a specified, but only temporary and partial purpose as related to the whole course and complete plan of the divine Being, is always designated by one or the other of the forms of this number.
Judaism, for instance, answered these conditions. It was a providentially ordered dispensation, but with a specific and limited object; fulfilling a definite, but not the complete purpose of Providence; a stage in the movement of humanity toward the kingdom of God, but not itself the realization of that kingdom; a type which needed an antitype to round it out, and throughout which ran the marks that proved it to be only temporary and preparatory to a higher dispensation into which it was to blossom. It was “a schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.” Its glory was something which was “to be done away,” and consequently falls short of “that which remaineth.” And it reached the “fullness” of its “time” when “God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” And it will be found that whenever Judaism is symbolized by a number in the Book of Revelation, it is designated by one of the allotropic forms of three and a half.[¹]
[¹] See Revelation xi, 3; xii, 6, 14.
So, likewise, Gentilism, to which a definite and distinct character or purpose is attributed, both by our Lord (Luke xxi, 24) and by Saint Paul (Romans xi, 25), but which, when severed from its Jewish antecedents, has the like features of incompleteness and deficiency, would be symbolically expressed by some form of the same number.[¹]
[¹] See Revelation xiii, 5.