Tragedy At Forza, Joshua, Ai, And Bible Numbers

Lately, I've been intrigued by the absolutely incredible depth of God's Word.

I may have mentioned this before, but even though I conceptually acknowledged that there are many 'layers' to the holy Scriptures, it's an entirely different experience to actually witness it all unfolding before my very eyes.

Take for instance the traditional 'word study' where you decide to see what God's Holy Bible reveals when you do a search for every instance of a certain word everywhere it shows up from cover-to-cover. Those types of detailed studies are so valuable because they do so much to not only prove the intricacies of His plan for humanity, but to also strengthen your faith.

For whatever reason, I've been doing that sort of thing a lot lately. However, rather than picking the words or topics to study I've let the words and topics pick me (if that makes any sense). I'll explain in a moment.

First, a brief reminder of a timeless truth and one of my absolute favorite verses in the Bible especially as it pertains to this forum:

Proverbs 25:2 (KJV) It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

Another favorite of mine is:

Ecclesiastes 1:9 (KJV) The thing that hath been, it [is that] which shall be; and that which is done [is] that which shall be done: and [there is] no new [thing] under the sun.

The marriage of those two verses gives us a unique perspective and I think it illustrates how we are to view the possible prophetic significance of events as they happen in this world and especially the seemingly mundane events that unfold on a daily basis all around us.

With that in mind, I want to record some of my initial thoughts and observations following a horrific story out of the state of Washington in recent days. Settle in and get comfortable and let's embark on this journey together.

This was the tragic headline that dominated the news this past Sunday: Four Police Officers Shot Dead In Coffee Shop Ambush.



First and foremost, may our prayers go out to the families and friends of those who lost their life quite unexpectedly in a vicious murder. With all due reverence for the grief and shock that these victim's families must be experiencing after the weekend's brutal murder, I find the whole thing potentially noteworthy to students of Bible prophecy for a handful of reasons.

Maybe it's more appropriate for me to say that nowadays, with the veil between the physical and spiritual realm thinning to the point where it's virtually non-existent, I always ponder the potentially prophetic symbolism and/or the potentially prophetic commentary contained within these real-world news stories. Again, in this case, within this real-world tragedy in the state of Washington.

As you'll see, there's a lot of, shall we say, 'suggestive messages' contained within the names of the people, places, events, and history of the site associated with this crime. That's what I want to take a quick look at for a moment.

First, describing this tragedy as an 'ambush' should not be lost on us. The word 'ambush' occurs only 7 times in just 7 verses in the entire King James Version. Never mind the profound significance of the number 7 in the Bible, but let's also look at those verses -- all of which come to us from the Book of Joshua:

Joshua 8:2 (KJV) And thou shalt do to Ai and her king as thou didst unto Jericho and her king: only the spoil thereof, and the cattle thereof, shall ye take for a prey unto yourselves: lay thee an ambush for the city behind it.

Joshua 8:7 (KJV) Then ye shall rise up from the ambush, and seize upon the city: for the LORD your God will deliver it into your hand.

Joshua 8:9 (KJV) Joshua therefore sent them forth: and they went to lie in ambush, and abode between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of Ai: but Joshua lodged that night among the people.

Joshua 8:12 (KJV) And he took about five thousand men, and set them to lie in ambush between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of the city.

Joshua 8:14 (KJV) And it came to pass, when the king of Ai saw [it], that they hasted and rose up early, and the men of the city went out against Israel to battle, he and all his people, at a time appointed, before the plain; but he wist not that [there were] liers in ambush against him behind the city.

Joshua 8:19 (KJV) And the ambush arose quickly out of their place, and they ran as soon as he had stretched out his hand: and they entered into the city, and took it, and hasted and set the city on fire.

Joshua 8:21 (KJV) And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and slew the men of Ai.

The general message of this Biblical account? How often God must engineer defeat before He can engineer victory. Sometimes success comes through the back door of failure. In this chapter, I am reminded of a couple verses in Psalm 119:

Psalm 119:67 (KJV) Before I was afflicted I went astray, But now I keep Your word
Psalm 119:72 (KJV) It is good for me that I was afflicted, That I may learn Your statutes

In Joshua 8, we again see the grace of God and the truth of restoration. Defeats never have to be the end. They may in fact be the beginning if we will just respond to the grace of God as a loving and caring heavenly Father who works to produce spiritual growth and Christ-like changes in us.

This doesn’t minimize the consequences of sin, however. In the Ai incident, God’s name had been dishonored, people lost their lives, and a family died the sin unto death.

Interestingly enough, isn't that precisely what we find in this Washington state tragedy? God's name was dishonored (just read about how the murderer thought he was Jesus), people lost their lives (4 Police Officers slain in cold blood), and there's a death the sin unto death (the assailant shot dead by police for his crimes).

The story of Ai is a message of warning. It reminds us that sin cannot be tolerated in the Christian life. It hinders the blessing of God from the standpoint of productive Christian living. Sin grieves and quenches the Spirit. The story of Ai is also a proclamation of hope. It reminds us that blessing and productivity can come when sin is confessed and dealt with. If the past weekend's news was meant to remind us all of only those two truths, then aren't we all that much better off because of it? Let's take from that what we will.

When there was obedience to the Law of God, there was victory, but when there was disobedience, it resulted in defeat. It's a good lesson for us, but there is more here that we should think about since no one can fulfill the Law. We are also reminded in this object lesson of God’s grace and provision.

There are a few more interesting items of interest to note. 'Ai' means 'heap of ruins' in Hebrew. The Ai mentioned by the Book of Joshua is also mentioned by the Book of Genesis as having been a religious sanctuary founded by Abraham; Abraham's tent, i.e. the area he settled, is stated by the Bible to have been between Bethel and Ai.

We read about the Israelites' attempts to conquer Ai on two occasions, the first failing. The failure due to a prior sin of Achan; for which Achan, his children, wife, sheep, and other livestock, are stoned to death by the Israelites. On the second attempt, Joshua, who is identified by the narrative as the leader of the Israelites, plans and leads an ambush at the rear of the city on the western side. When the city is captured, it is set on fire and razed to the ground.

Does any of that resonate with the current tensions between Israel and her Arab enemies? Iran? What about Damascus, Syria too? I'd say that Ai -- the 'heap of ruins' -- calls to mind the following well known prophetic verse:

Isaiah 17:1 (KJV) The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from [being] a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.

Are we facing the imminent fulfillment of this ancient prophecy? That remains to be seen although we know that IAEA experts visited Syria's nuclear site just the other day. Plus, Turkey has forged a new friendly relationship with Syria this past year, and the two powers are scheduled to meet in late December.

I almost forgot! The strategy for the capture of Ai was ingenious (verses 3-9). It involved placing an ambush behind (west of) the city. God Himself told Joshua to do this (verses 2, 8). The outworking of this plan involved three detachments of soldiers. The first was a group of commando-type warriors who were sent by night to hide on the west side of the city. Their mission was to rush into Ai and burn it after its defenders had deserted it to pursue Joshua and his army as they had previously done.

This unit is said to have numbered 30,000, which is beyond bizarre since our nation just listened to President Obama give a speech in prime time last night to announce that he will be sending 34,000 troops to Afghanistan! No, not a perfect match, but pretty darn close for us to take notice and consider the parallels I'd say.

Oh my! That reminds me that this isn't the first time that President Obama has been associated with Joshua either! In fact, during his campign for President, Obama launched the 'Joshua Generation Project' to attract younger Evangelicals and Catholics to their cause, and the name is derived from how Joshua's generation led the Israelites into the Promised Land.

Obama actually spoke about the 'Joshua Generation' in a speech he gave in Selma, Alabama in March of 2007 -- or a year before the Presidential campaign. Read part of that speech below. It will give you an good idea of where the Obama administration is heading with this effort:


Obama: "I'm here because somebody marched. I'm here because you all sacrificed for me. I stand on the shoulders of giants. I thank the Moses generation; but we've got to remember, now, that Joshua still had a job to do. As great as Moses was, despite all that he did, leading a people out of bondage, he didn't cross over the river to see the Promised Land. God told him your job is done. You'll see it. You'll be at the mountain top and you can see what I've promised. What I've promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. You will see that I've fulfilled that promise but you won't go there. We're going to leave it to the Joshua generation to make sure it happens. There are still battles that need to be fought; some rivers that need to be crossed. Like Moses, the task was passed on to those who might not have been as deserving, might not have been as courageous, find themselves in front of the risks that their parents and grandparents and great grandparents had taken. That doesn't mean that they don't still have a burden to shoulder, that they don't have some responsibilities. The previous generation, the Moses generation, pointed the way. They took us 90% of the way there. We still got that 10% in order to cross over to the other side. So the question, I guess, that I have today is what's called of us in this Joshua generation? What do we do in order to fulfill that legacy; to fulfill the obligations and the debt that we owe to those who allowed us to be here today?"


The whole speech is here. I don't think I'm ready to suggest that I think that President Obama is 'a Joshua type' and that this is some kind of example of Ecclesiastes 1:9 in action in our time. He might believe that he is, but that doesn't make it true.

On the flip side, given his outspoken views on issues that contradict God's Word (and the fact that his stance on those issues firmly places him in opposition to God and His Word) we might want to at least ask ourselves if this is another mockery by Satan.

We know that Satan likes to mock anything and everything having to do with God and His creation so I'm at least open to the possibility that President Obama is being used as a sort of 'counterfeit Joshua' leading this nation and the world to the wrong type of 'Promised Land' -- a New World Order.

There's so much more to chew on when it comes to Joshua 8 and it's possible relationship to the tragedy and it's possible prophetic significance to us, but there's also so much more I want to get to.

Now, let's shift to a narrower focus. For instance, I noticed the following:

LOCATION: Tacoma, Washington
'Tacoma' = 'City of Destiny'

Police Officers = Symbolize Law/Law Enforcement
Their tragic death = The Law brings death? / Death of the Law (in a spiritual sense)?
Romans 10:4 Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes…

LOCATION: Forza Coffee Shop
Forza = Italian word translates to 'strength, forcefulness, vim, nerve, spirit, force, brunt, puissance, potency, might, power, muscle, sinews, kick, or dint'

If -- and I stress IF -- we can somehow view this tragedy and dissect it in such a way that we can glean some kind of spiritual truth and prophetic meaning from it, then could we translate this as being a reminder to us that 'Christ is the end of the law...' and that only He can save us (not our mere obedience to the Law; even though that's still a good thing) as embodied in the statement 'Police At Forza Killed', or another way as 'Law of[at] Spirit Killed' maybe? Yes, that might very well be going too far and a bit of a stretch, but I just wanted to share what I'm thinking right now.

Prominence of the Number 4 (Number of Police Officers Killed)
E.W. Bullinger has a lot to say: "If four is the number of the world, then it represents man's weakness, and helplessness, and vanity. Now the number four is made up of three and one (3+1=4), and it denotes, therefore, and marks that which follows the revelation of God in the Trinity, namely, His creative works. He is known by the things that are seen. Hence the written revelation commences with the words, 'In-the-beginning God CREATED.' Creation is therefore the next thing -- the fourth thing, and the number four always has reference to all that is created. It is emphatically the number of Creation; of man in his relation to the world as created."

Interesting timing given the upcoming Copenhagen Summit where the so-called Global Warming proponents are expected to use the junk science to pave the way to a One World Government system. Is this a commentary that indicates that it will be the death of life as we know it (an end to the Church Age and the beginning of Daniel's 70th Week), or a commentary that confirms that the Green Movement has been killed by the recent discoveries following the release of those hacker-retrieved emails?

4 Great Prophetic World Powers
I thought about how there are 4, and these are divided into 3 + 1, where the 1 stands out in great and marked contrast to the other 3. The first 3 wild beasts are named (lion, bear, leopard); while the fourth is only described and not named. Where do we read about that? Daniel 7:7. Two sevens? Like how the word 'ambush' appears 7 times in 7 verses in the KJV!?!

Gematria: 'Ambush' / Prophecy of Damascus Connection
We highlighted this in detail above, but check this out! It is most significant that we get the number 4 in its concentrated form in connection with DAMASCUS, which is the oldest city in the world. The number of its name is 444! Thus --

d=4
m=40
#=300
q=100

Absolutely incredible to find not one, but two interpretations that connect to the ancient prophecy involving the destruction of Damascus, Syria all from this one tragic event in the Northwestern part of the state of Washington.

Other possibly noteworthy observations given where we are on God's prophetic timeline:

> Let's begin by looking at something that contributes significantly to the so-called 'Alien/UFO - Full Disclosure Meme' that we've been looking at a lot lately. On June 24, 1947 near Mount Ranier in Tacoma, WA The modern phenomena of 'UFOs' and 'flying saucers' began. Kenneth Arnold spotted nine mysterious, high-speed objects 'flying like a saucer would' along the crest of the Cascade Range near Mount Rainier. His report made international headlines and triggered hundreds of similar accounts of 'flying saucers' locally and across the nation. This is the single event that started it all!

> What came to be known as 'Tacoma Method' was used in November 1885 to expel several thousand Chinese peaceably living in the city. As described by the account prepared by the Chinese Reconciliation Project, on the morning of November 3, 1885, "several hundred men, led by the mayor and other city officials, evicted the Chinese from their homes, corralled them at 7th Street and Pacific Avenue, marched them to the railway station at Lakeview and forced them aboard the morning train to Portland, Oregon. The next day two Chinese settlements were burned to the ground." Burned to the ground, eh? Just like the city of Ai as described in Joshua 8!!! What are the chances of that?

> In 1935 Tacoma received national attention when George Weyerhaeuser, 9-year-old son of prominent lumber industry executive J.P. Weyerhaeuser, was kidnapped while walking home from school. FBI agents from Portland handled the case, in which payment of a ransom of $200,000 secured release of the victim. Four persons were apprehended and convicted. The last to be released was paroled from McNeil Island in 1963; George Weyerhaeuser went on to become chairman of the Board of the Weyerhaeuser Company.

> Nearby is 'Point Defiance Park', which is another curious name given the themes, memes, and motifs explored here often and in relation to end times Bible prophecy. President Andrew Johnson originally set aside Point Defiance Park as a military reservation, although it never was home to military operations. A bill authorizing Tacoma to use the reserve as a public park was approved in 1888 by President Grover Cleveland.

> Tacoma hosts part of the annual four-part 'Daffodil Parade', which was established in 1926 as an annual, formal garden party. Not to be trite, by why does a lot seem to happen in fours there in Washington?

> Also, the Synchro-Pop connections are just as strange as the state of Washington (particularly the capitol of Olympia). The band Creedence Clearwater Revival got 'Clearwater' from the advertisement for 'Olympia Clear Water Beer', 'Clear Water' referring to the artesian well water that the old Olympia Brewery used for making Olympia Beer; The band Hole wrote and recorded a song called 'Olympia' (aka 'Rock Star') on their album Live Through This (1994); The band Rancid wrote and recorded a song called 'Olympia, WA' on their album ...And Out Come the Wolves (1995); Nirvana are considered an Olympia band; Kurt Cobain wrote most of the songs released on Nevermind while living in an apartment on Pear Street in Olympia.

> That's an appropriate place to end. Kurt Cobain is infamously known for the sudden end to his career when he took his own life. Thus, we've come full circle as his was another high profile, untimely death by suicide.


I must admit that this is the type of entry that recalls past conversations I've had with other Christians and bloggers who write about similar things. Rather than name names, I'll speak for myself and say that I always hesitate before putting up a piece like this. I often think I'm so far out in 'left field' that I'm not doing the Kingdom any good, but only entertaining myself when I see such patterns.

I don't know if any of you have ever felt this way, but I wonder where the line is between the kind of stuff that I look into, (and the kinds of real-life parables that a guy like Joseph Herrin sees let's say), and the stern prohibitions (i.e., Deuteronomy 18:10, Leviticus 19:26) against interpreting omens. I'd be interested in all of your thoughts on that perhaps in a separate email because I don't want to focus of this piece to be hijacked in the event that this is as significant as I think it could be for us.

Personally, I take comfort knowing that I'm following the Holy Spirit's lead. Most importantly, the purpose of all of these writings is to point readers to Jesus Christ and God's Word time and time again so maybe that's the key. I'm getting off topic. Sorry about that.

Assuming that this is a result of the application of Proverbs 25:2, then maybe this is some kind of 'special revelation' for us. If it is, let's not make the same mistake that the Israelites made.

How quickly their commitment to this special revelation of God faded from their minds, for in the very next book of the Bible, Judges, we read about that which characterized the nation during the time of the judges:

Judges 21:25 (KJV) In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

We are no different today in our country. Though our nation was founded on the precepts of Scripture as the moral Law of God, we have basically turned away from the Bible to do that which is right in our own eyes. Because we have rejected God’s Word and deny its relevance, we have turned to our futile imaginations (Ephesians 4:17). As a result, we have become like those Isaiah cried out against who are not only experiencing the perversions of our own depraved thinking, but also the judgment of God on our society as recorded in Isaiah 5:20-24.

To reiterate, there's a lot of, shall we say, 'suggestive messages' contained within the names of the people, places, events, and history of the site of this crime. That's what I wanted to take a quick look at for a moment. Sometimes it's just eerie how it all appears to connect sometimes. When that happens, I often wonder if God intended for it to be that way for those of us who are truly trying to put Proverbs 25:2 in action, and who are completely open to hearing what He might be trying to tell us about what's coming.

What does any of this mean? Who knows. Maybe I'm on to something significant and we're supposed to be thinking of these Biblical things right now. Then again, maybe not.

I'm not above admitting that this could be nothing more than the over-active imagination of this faithful follower of Jesus Christ, and someone who is always trying to watch for 'meaning' and 'signs' in current events so that I can warn others to accept Christ before it's too late. But when the Holy Spirit leads I try not to ask too many questions, preferring instead to simply follow Him in obedience and leave all the consequences to Him.

At the very least, it won't hurt for us to consider the importance of numbers in the Bible especially the number four. It won't hurt for us to consider the importance of what we read in Joshua 8 and consider its applications for us today. It also won't hurt to re-read some of the passages throughout the Bible dealing with these same themes.

Perhaps that's the whole point to this entire post. Either way, I pray for all those affected by this senseless act of violence.

RECOMMENDED READING:
Four Pillars Of Obama

Posted in: America In Prophecy,Bible Study,How Close Are We?,Numerology,Spiritual Growth,Synchro-Pop,Truth From The Fringe