"What Are the Odds?"

HERE are those who mistakenly believe that the Creator of heaven and earth would have prevented the bible from being corrupted with the names of false idols.   However, if He had, how would He test us to know if we are willing to follow the biggest idol of them all -- false religion -- rather than Him alone?

    In this "Christian" world of the west, the concepts of fame and "fortune" are the most sought after idols, as they are and have been in every other pagan society as well.   The old Babylonian idol g-d represented all who seek after such vain pursuits (see: Strong's Exhaustive Concordance Hebrew Dictionary listing #'s 1408, 1409).

    Popular in this culture of gamblers are the so called games "of chance," such as one of the oldest, called craps.   Let's look at what this choice recreation of gamblers teaches those who indulge in it, compared with the pure truth of our Creator Yahveh.

    The game craps, or "crabs" originally, is played with a pair of dice.   The name stands for the lowest denomination that can be represented by the top sides of two thrown die, the number two.

    A die is defined as an engraved device used for stamping a design on coins, metals, or for stamping cutting, or molding material into a particular shape, but originally it was the cubical part of a pedestal between the base and cornice, or decorative molding.   The word was synonymous with straight (or true); entirely honest and loyal, just as the term "no dice" now means no success or prospect of it.

    Perhaps thanks to the use of loaded dice (containing hidden weights, or misshaped) to force winning rolls, or those containing false markings for the same purpose, the word dicey has the meanings of risky, unreliable, dangerous, difficult, ticklish, unpredictable, uncertain, unsure, or doubtful.

    To our Creator, the numbers two, seven, ten and twelve have significant meanings, which we can learn by observing how these numbers are used throughout scripture.   The number two, for example, stands for the Father and Son, the first and second Adam, the difference between evil and good, or darkness and light.

    However the game of craps, on the other hand, teaches us that two is "snake eyes," and along with the numbers three and twelve (the last of which is otherwise known as "boxcars", are called "craps" and are considered "losing" numbers.

    The number three in scripture does not stand for the pagan counterfeit, known as the "trinity" (originally a three-headed, false pagan idol in India and Babylon), which pagan "Christianity" first adopted, then forged and interpolated into scriptures that were originally entirely devoid of any reference to this wicked concept.

    Three, half of the number six (which stands for humanity, that was created out of the dust on the sixth day of creation), represents the dirt that became dry land on the third day of creation.   It was the number of days and nights the Savior was dead and buried in the "midst of the earth," or the grave, before He was resurrected.   It will be at the end of the third millennium, following that event, that the general resurrection of the dead will take place, and the garden of Eden will be restored to earth (Hosea 6:2; a day being equivalent to a thousand years, the first resurrection takes place near the end of the second millennium since that historic event in 30 C.E., not since the Savior's birth in 5 B.C.E.)!

    Three is the number of people resurrected from the dead credited to the Messiah before His death, and it was three times that Peter denied Him before the next morning, after the Savior was arrested and put on trial.

    The temptations of the flesh, of the adversary, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, are three (I John 2:16; Matthew 4:3, 6, 9; Genesis 3:6).   And all the males of Yasrael were to assemble before Creator Yahveh during the three major feasts of the year; while the first Passover outside of Egypt was to be kept three days' journey into the wilderness, when the Yasraelites passed through the Red Sea (symbolic of death, burial and resurrection), and were thus saved from the Pharaoh's army, which was also destroyed on the third night (Exodus 5:3, 14:20-25).

    It was the third day of his journey to sacrifice his son Yatsaq ("Isaac") that Abraham spotted the place from a distance where he was to put his son to death (symbolically), and it was three angelic men who visited Abraham just before they left him to destroy Sodom, Gomorrah, and the other wicked cities of the plain bordering the Dead Sea region, burying them under a deluge of burning sulfur (Genesis 22:4, 18:2, 16, 20-21, 19:24-25)

    The number twelve, also considered a "losing" roll of the dice in craps, is the number of perfect rulership (the patriarchs and twelve tribes of Yasrael, twelve disciples, and twelve Apostles, which are the twelve foundations and twelve gates of the new, heavenly Yaravsalem (Revelation 21:12-14).

    The Savior was twelve years of age when he first taught in public (Luke 2:42), and there are twelve legions of angels at His disposal (Matthew 26:53), and twelve thousand of the end time elect, who will return to earth to rule it with the Messiah, are separated out of each of the twelve tribes (144,000 in all).

    The number seven, in craps, can be either good or bad.   If a seven or eleven is rolled first (called a "nick" or "natural") it is considered a winning roll, but if a seven is rolled anytime after the first roll it is also considered a losing roll for the shooter.

    In scripture, seven was the number of creation days (the seventh, or day of rest, was set aside for us to learn spiritually and to be taught by our Creator), therefore the sabbath is commanded to be observed on the seventh day from any other commanded sabbath (including the yearly feast sabbaths).

    But seven is also the number of the world's false, pagan astronomical week, with each day dedicated to worshiping one of the stars or planets (the sun, moon, the planet Saturn; etc.), and also of the adversary's false sabbaths, every seventh day from one of these dedicated, pagan worship days (Deuteronomy 4:19).

    The spots on a die are so arranged that any two opposite sides will always add up to seven (for instance, one and six are on opposite sides, as are two and five, and three and four).

    The other so-called "natural" number, eleven, is one short of the number of perfect rulership (twelve), just as seven is one short of the Last Great Day (the eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles) and the total of days from one sabbath to the next inclusive; and eleven is also one more than the number for perfect law (ten); representing adding to or taking away from the perfection of the commandments.

    Seven and eleven, added together, totals eighteen, the product of adding together the individual numbers of 666.   Eighteen is the number of years the Yasraelites were oppressed by the Philistines and Ammonites (Judges 10:7-8), and it is the number of men killed when the tower of Salach fell (Luke 13:4), as well as the number of long years suffered by the woman with an unclean, bleeding infirmity (verses 11, 16).

    Adding the numbers together again results in the number nine, one short of righteous law, and thus the number of the adversary, which is a number therefore worshipped by all those who study and dabble in the so-called "occult sciences."

    Nine is how many of the ten beggars the Savior healed who forgot or neglected to return and thank him for their newfound lives (Luke 17:17), and nine is how many cubits long (13 feet) was the iron bed of Og, one of the last of the Rephaite giants (Deuteronomy 3:11).

    Nine and a half tribes of Yasrael separated themselves from the remaining two and a half tribes to live on the west side of the river Yarden (Joshua 13:7, 14:2-4).

    The length of time in the rule of the last King of the northern ten tribes, before they were defeated and carried away as captives by the Assyrians, never again to return (until the yet still future day of restoration has fully dawned) was also nine years (II Kings 17:1-2, 5-6).

    The numbers four, five, six, eight, nine and ten are the point numbers in craps, which the shooter strives to roll again in order to "win" all the bets made against him by the other players, who all hope and bet that he will not succeed in doing so before he "craps out" by rolling a two, three, seven, or twelve.   Side bets are made by those who are gambling that the dice thrower will "make his point" by rolling his point number again before he rolls a "craps" number.

    In Casinos, all bets for or against are made with (or against) the "house" or gambling casino, and not with or against the other players.   In either case, the object of the game is to "win" the bet by taking all of the losing player's money.   The one who ends the game with the most money being considered the "big winner."

    Dice, and the games of "chance" played with them, have been found in the ancient tombs of Egypt and the ruins of Babylon.   Playing with dice was popular in ancient Greece, and even more so in Rome.   In every case, gambling with dice has been a favorite pastime of pagan cultures bent on conquest and violence as a "way of life."

    This game teaches all the vices of the adversary's sinful nature: greed, avarice, selfishness, unreasonable anger, rejoicing over the harm done to others, and their downfall, so that you can "win" by or through their loss.   Those few who manage to "win," therefore, do so only by living off the misery, suffering and broken dreams of the losers.

    So it is no wonder that the numbers, as they are used in this game, teach us all the wrong concepts; and the fact that these concepts are the exact opposite of the pure truth should come as no great surprise.   Those who disbelieve in the spirit world, in which malevolent, non-material beings influence, affect, and guide humans into harmful, self-destructive activities, should open their eyes to admit the fact that none of these facts are the result of mere coincidence.

    Just as the odds against the shooter, or dice caster, making his point have been carefully figured at 251 to 244 (assuming both die are the same, and that one does not have its numbers reversed on two of the faces, which would tend to change the odds), so also should it be easy to see that the odds against the negative subliminal messages taught by this game are the result of something other than mere chance.

    As the wicked are prone to ask, as they wish each other "good luck," and other similar pagan platitudes: "What are the odds of that?"