Numerological Theology vs. Biblical Christianity
- Michelle Hayman
- 1 day ago
- 14 min read
Revelation 18:23
“…for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.”
Symbolizing a corrupt spiritual-economic system that enriches itself while deceiving and enslaving the nations through its sorceries.
Occult Numerological Theology and Its Sources
W. Wynn Westcott’s Numbers: Their Occult Power and Mystic Virtues (1911) is a compendium of esoteric numerology that draws on a vast range of mystical traditions. Westcott – a co-founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and Supreme Magus of the Rosicrucian Society of England – believed that numbers carry hidden spiritual meanings across all religions. In this book, he compiles lore from Pythagorean philosophy, the Kabbalah, Hermetic and Rosicrucian writings, Theosophy, and even Eastern religions, treating each as part of an ancient occult wisdom. He acknowledges using Helena P. Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine for “valuable quotations,” and directs readers to authorities like Eliphas Lévi, Athanasius Kircher, Godfrey Higgins, Michael Maier, and John Heydon for deeper insight into the “analogies between numbers and ideas.” Westcott’s aim was not originality but aggregation – he collected from an immense number of sources so as to include the “utmost amount of ancient, quaint and occult learning,” intentionally minimizing his own commentary. This reveals his core worldview: that true spiritual knowledge is a syncretic occult science available only by piecing together secret wisdom from many ages and cultures.
Colossians 2:8 (KJV)
"Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ"
Influences from Esoteric and Mystical Traditions
Westcott draws heavily on Pythagoras and his followers, who taught that numbers were the fundamental reality underlying all things in the universe. He recounts the Pythagorean veneration of the monad (One) as the source of all, the tetrad (Four) embodied in the Tetractys, and the idea that numerical ratios form the harmony of creation. Much of his material came through Thomas Taylor’s Theoretic Arithmetic. This influence leads Westcott to treat numbers 1–10 as archetypes (Monad, Dyad, Triad, etc.), each with mystical virtues. For example, the decad (10) symbolizes completion and perfection, revered by Pythagoreans as the Tetractys, “the world.”
Westcott also delves into the Kabbalah, especially the Sepher Yetzirah, which he had translated. He emphasizes the 32 Paths of Wisdom – the ten sephiroth and 22 Hebrew letters – as the divine framework of creation. He frequently cites gematria (numerical values of Hebrew names) to find hidden meanings, noting for example that “Iesous” (Jesus in Greek) sums to 888, which he calls the special number of Christ as the opponent of 666. But he presents such insights side by side with Talmudic lore and occult Kabbalah. Even sacred elements like the name of God are treated as esoteric formulas rather than revelations of His person.
Westcott’s numerology is steeped in Hermeticism and Rosicrucianism. He draws correspondences between the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve apostles, and the twelve zodiac signs, even mentioning secret Rosicrucian attributions. He cites Hermetic texts like the Pymander of Hermes and Kabbalistic-alchemical works like Aesch Mezareph. He interprets symbols such as the hexagram (Seal of Solomon) as representing the union of divine and human natures in Christ, reframing doctrine in arcane symbolic terms.
Westcott borrows freely from Blavatsky’s Theosophy, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Chinese philosophy. He notes the seven planes of existence in Eastern thought, the seven Rishis of Hinduism, and the numerical symbolism of the I Ching. He also cites writings on Lamaism in Tibet and Hindu philosophy, treating them as parallel streams of hidden wisdom.
Most strikingly, Westcott reinterprets sacred history as cycles of “messengers” appearing every 600 years – Adam, Enoch, Zoroaster, Hermes, Moses, Lao-Tse, Jesus, Mohammed, and even Genghis Khan. Jesus is simply the ninth in the chain, rather than the unique Son of God. This reflects Theosophical ideas of recurring world teachers, reducing Christ to one among many avatars.
Westcott treats esoteric knowledge as the true key to spiritual understanding. Numbers are exalted as mystical forces or “Keys of Occult Science.” His theology is elitist, intended for initiates, and sees scriptures as cryptograms rather than revelations. It stands in sharp contrast to Biblical Christianity.
1 Timothy 6:20 (KJV):
“O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called.”
Proud men have always believed the serpent’s lie: ‘For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’”
From the beginning of Scripture, a careful distinction is made between the eternal Word of God and the created figure of Wisdom. The Gospel of John declares with unmistakable clarity: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word is uncreated, divine, the very One by whom all things were made, and the Word became flesh in Jesus Christ. Proverbs, on the other hand, speaks of Wisdom as something brought forth at the start of creation, not eternal but created. The Septuagint even uses the verb “created”:
“The Lord created me as the beginning of His ways.” Proverbs 8:22 (LXX)
Wisdom is described as God’s delight, rejoicing before Him from the beginning. She represents the ordered pattern through which creation was shaped, a created reflection of God’s delight, while the Word Himself is the eternal source of all things.
Systems that teach salvation through hidden numbers, esoteric symbols, or secret initiations repeat the old Gnostic error. They offer illumination by human striving, not by the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ.They mimic the feminine voice of Wisdom but twist her into an idol of autonomy. This is nothing more than a reworking of the serpent’s old lie in Eden: “Your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods.” Paul warned against this directly when he said, “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” The Septuagint captures it with biting clarity: through philosophy and empty deception. True salvation is not found in symbols, but by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
Just as Westcott gathered fragments of occult numerology to construct a counterfeit system of wisdom, the Roman Church has done something far more dangerous: it has tampered with the one number that God Himself sanctified in creation — the seventh day. In Scripture, the number seven does not simply mark sequence; it symbolizes divinity, completeness, and covenant perfection. God finished His creative work in six days, but He crowned creation with the seventh, blessing and sanctifying it as His own (Genesis 2:2–3). The cycle of sevens runs through all of Scripture: seven lamps before the throne (Revelation 4:5), seven feasts of Israel (Leviticus 23), seven times the priests marched around Jericho (Joshua 6:15), seventy weeks decreed in prophecy (Daniel 9:24). Seven is the divine signature — the number that signals God’s fullness and His claim over time itself. To alter the seventh day is not to adjust a calendar; it is to erase the mark of divinity and replace it with human authority.
From the very beginning, God blessed and sanctified the seventh day: “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it” (Genesis 2:3). He thundered it at Sinai: “But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God” (Exodus 20:10). He declared it a perpetual covenant sign: “Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD that sanctify them” (Ezekiel 20:12).
Christ Himself confirmed both the purpose of the Sabbath and His lordship over it: “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath: Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath” (Mark 2:27–28). The Sabbath was not a curse or a chain, but a blessing; a weekly gift of rest, joy, renewal, and covenant fellowship with the Creator. God hallowed the seventh day so that mankind might taste His goodness, remember His creation, and live in His sanctifying presence. To strip this away is to rob God’s people of the very blessing He designed for their good.
And the New Testament does not abolish this gift. On the contrary, it affirms it. The Greek text of Hebrews says: “There remaineth therefore a sabbatismos [sabbath-keeping] to the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9). Some manuscripts render it in chapter 4 verse 4 as well, where the LXX (Septuagint) wording recalls God’s rest on the seventh day. The point is unmistakable: even in the era of Christ’s fulfillment, the Sabbath remains for God’s people; not as bondage, but as covenant blessing.
So why, then, would the Roman Church dare to take these blessings away? Why replace God’s sanctified seventh day with the first day, the day of the sun, unless the goal was never godliness but power? Rome clothed the change in religious language, but its roots are clear: Constantine’s Sunday edict of 321 AD was explicitly dedicated to “the venerable day of the Sun.” By enforcing Sunday and abolishing Sabbath (the divine 7th day), the papacy placed its throne over God’s covenant sign, seizing control of worship and chaining the faithful to empire and to the cult of the sun.
What God ordained as blessing, Rome twisted into a badge of dominion. What Christ declared was made “for man,” Rome turned into a tool to rule man. To remove the Sabbath is not only to trample God’s covenant but to steal the blessing He intended for His people, so that obedience and salvation would no longer flow directly from Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath, but from Rome’s counterfeit throne.
The number seven is not just a symbol or mystical curiosity. It is a divine ordinance written into the fabric of time itself. To exchange the seventh day for the first is not simply a shift in scheduling — it is an occult inversion, a deliberate re-ordering of God’s creation. Scripture warns: “He shall think to change times and laws” (Daniel 7:25). That prophecy is fulfilled in Rome’s boast that it moved the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday by its own authority.
The papacy itself confesses this. The Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine admits: “Q. Which is the Sabbath day? A. Saturday is the Sabbath day. Q. Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday? A. We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday.” The Catholic Record (Sept. 1, 1923) declared: “Sunday is our mark of authority… The church is above the Bible, and this transference of Sabbath observance is proof of that fact.” These are not innocent words — they are a declaration of war against the authority of the God of the Old Testament, who is Christ.
Moving the seventh day to the first is not a “pastoral adjustment.” It is revolt. In Scripture, only God sanctifies time. He alone blessed and hallowed the seventh day (Genesis 2:3). He engraved it into the moral law: “the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God” (Exodus 20:10–11). He named it His covenant sign with His people (Ezekiel 20:12). Christ confirmed both its purpose and His jurisdiction: “The sabbath was made for man… therefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the sabbath” (Mark 2:27–28). The New Testament does not cancel this gift; it seals it: “There remaineth therefore a sabbatismos (Sabbath-keeping) to the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9; cf. 4:4). If Christ is God incarnate, then He is the very One who created and sanctified the Sabbath; for Rome to abolish it and enthrone another day is not Christianity but open rebellion against Christ Himself.
No wonder they nailed Him to the cross without a pang of conscience, and later lit the pyres, burning alive any soul who dared to cling to His Word instead of their chains.
The sanctification of time is a divine prerogative. What God sanctifies, man has no authority to relocate. To “transfer” the Sabbath is to seize God’s act and claim it as our own. That is not reform; it is usurpation.
The seventh day is not a symbol that can be shuffled at will; it is a sign and a blessing. To treat it as though it were a movable piece on some mystical board is to fall into the very spirit of occult numerology, where God’s numbers and appointments are manipulated as if they were plastic ciphers.
Rome’s substitution is an inversion of God’s order. Scripture fixes the blessing upon the seventh day, yet Rome dares to enthrone the first. Scripture binds the conscience to the Creator’s rest, while Rome binds the conscience to its own decree. To exchange the seventh day for the first is to desecrate the covenant sign, to strip it of its divine meaning, and to enthrone human power over God’s ordinance. This is not mere error; it is sacrilege.
Just as the Caesars, who exalted themselves as gods, and crucified Christ, so too the papacy follows in their steps. A pope who claims divinity, sits on a throne, wears the "ring of Solomon" is not pointing men to the worship of God, but to the worship of a man who dares to see himself as God: “The Pope holds upon this earth the place of God Almighty” (Pope Leo XIII, The Reunion of Christendom, 1885).
Westcott reduces the sacred to numbers, treating them as hidden levers to be pulled. Rome does the same with time, reducing the Sabbath to a mere token and then replacing it as though sacred time were a political chip to be moved at will. Both follow the same blasphemous principle: man setting himself up as master over what God has consecrated. The occultist seeks to decode and control; the ecclesiastical ruler seeks to decree and control. In both cases, divine revelation is displaced by human invention, and man’s autonomy is exalted over obedience to God.
But the Sabbath was never given as a tool of control. It was given as a gift; a weekly blessing of rest, joy, justice, worship, and covenant fellowship with the Creator. Scripture calls it a delight, promising, “Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth” (Isaiah 58:13–14). To strip away the seventh day and impose the first is not only to trample God’s command but to rob His people of the blessings He attached to it. Hebrews testifies that “there remaineth therefore a sabbatismos [Sabbath-keeping] to the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9). Yet Rome denies this, choosing instead to preserve the old union of empire and sun, codified when Constantine exalted “the venerable day of the Sun.” Even the Vatican’s own square betrays its true allegiance. At its center rises the obelisk — a pagan phallic idol tied to the sun-serpent Osiris, to Zeus Ammon, to Jupiter, and to whatever name the deceiver wears in each age. It is the ancient emblem of sun-worship, planted like a spine of defiance in the heart of Christendom, a monument to the rule of a sun-ordered week over the Creator-ordered Sabbath of the Lord.
The contrast is therefore unmistakable. On one side stands the Creator’s seventh day: sanctified at creation, commanded at Sinai, confirmed by Christ, and still remaining for the people of God. On the other side stands a counterfeit first day: enthroned by human decree, enforced by dogma and paraded as a badge of ecclesiastical power. One is obedience; the other is domination. One carries blessing; the other steals it away. The question remains unavoidable: will you serve the Lord of the Sabbath, or submit to the lordship of men who “think to change times and law” (Daniel 7:25)?
Brood of Vipers: Power, Profit, and the Closed Door
My argument is the same as Christ’s. When He faced religious elites who traded revelation for control, He did not flatter them with mild rebukes. He called them what they were: a brood of vipers (Matthew 23:13; cf. 3:7; 12:34). This was not an offhand insult but a spiritual diagnosis. He unmasked them as serpents — priests of the solar-serpent cult that has slithered through every empire under different names: Osiris, Ammon, Jupiter, Baal. They hid behind robes and rituals, but their allegiance was not to the living God. They shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces because they had already given their own allegiance to the deceiver. Their tools were prestige, tradition, secret knowledge, and fear. Their product was exclusion. Their profit was power.
Christ’s diagnosis cuts deeper still: “You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do” (John 8:44). He exposed the serpent-lineage in plain words. Their authority structures, their numerologies, their manipulation of sacred things were all the venom of the viper. They presented themselves as mediators, but they were gatekeepers, locking doors that God Himself had opened. They used law not to lead to life but to control access. That is serpent-religion: hidden codes, shifting symbols, systems of power dressed up as holiness.
The same pattern appears again and again. How do you lock a door Christ has opened? By replacing revelation with decrees, councils, occult numbers, talismans, esoteric rites. The strategy is always the same: take what God made plain, bury it under layers of interpretation and authority, and then demand loyalty to the new system as the price of entry. Jesus said it clearly: “You have taken away the key of knowledge. You entered not in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered” (Luke 11:52). That is what the serpent’s brood does — shut out the light and sell back a counterfeit flame.
This is why Christ’s contrast is so stark: His door is open to all who repent and believe (John 10:9), but theirs is barred by tradition, numerology, and secrecy. His Kingdom is given freely by grace, but theirs is sold at the price of obedience to men. This is serpent logic: take God’s free gift, twist it, market it, weaponize it.
So when Christ called them vipers, He was naming the true power behind them. The viper is the solar-serpent — the same deceiver enthroned in obelisks, in sun-cult calendars, in systems that exalt man’s authority over God’s revelation.
This is why allegiance matters. The issue is not liturgical preference, but lordship. Who owns time? Who commands worship? Who defines truth? Is it the God who speaks plainly in Scripture, or the serpent who hides wisdom in codes and grants access only through his priests? Every empire built on serpent-logic must attack God’s covenant signs, because you cannot sell what God gives freely, and you cannot tax what God sanctifies.The serpent’s only strategy is to counterfeit, invert, and enslave. It is always a quid pro quo: the serpent receives worship, and the priests receive the kingdoms of the world with the power to rule them.
And this is why Christ’s language must be heard afresh today. “Brood of vipers” is not a metaphor for rudeness; It is Christ unmasking the hidden worship of the serpent under religious garb. When devotion is monetized, when tradition is weaponized, when the keys of the Kingdom are replaced with the keys of men — the serpent has coiled himself around the altar. And just as in Christ’s day, the result is the same: people excluded from life, bound by fear, controlled by those who drink from the venom of the viper and call it wisdom.
The call is to return. Return not to councils or codes, but to the Door Himself (John 10:9). Return to the ancient paths, where the good way is, and walk in it (Jeremiah 6:16). Return to the revelation God made plain — the gift given freely, the Kingdom opened by the blood of Jesus, not by the ciphers of men. Let the vipers keep their bridge. We will climb the ladder and walk through the Door that no man can shut. Because the Kingdom was never theirs to sell. It was always His to give.
If God has hidden the keys to the kingdom in secret codes, numerological formulas, or esoteric riddles in His word, then it would make perfect sense for Rome to forbid the Scriptures from the common people and demand that only her clergy interpret them. That is why for centuries the Roman Church chained the Bible to the pulpit, outlawed vernacular translations, and burned men alive for the “crime” of giving the Word of God to the people. If the kingdom of heaven could only be unlocked by clerical keys, then Rome’s monopoly would stand unchallenged. But Christ did not hide salvation in codes; He declared it openly: “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved” (John 10:9). Rome’s violence against translators and reformers reveals her true motive: to keep the people enslaved to Babylon, blind to the Word, and dependent on her decrees. For if men and women could hear Christ for themselves and walk in the wisdom He freely gives, the whole edifice of Roman control would collapse in an instant.
The keys to the Kingdom are in the Bible itself.
Sources
W. Wynn Westcott, Numbers: Their Occult Power and Mystic Virtues (1911).
Helena P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (1888).
Thomas Taylor, Theoretic Arithmetic (1816).
Sepher Yetzirah (Kabbalistic text).
Zohar (Kabbalistic commentary).
Eliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic (1855).
Athanasius Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652).
Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1617).
John Heydon, The Holy Guide (1662).
Rama Prasad, Nature’s Finer Forces (1890).
L. Austine Waddell, The Buddhism of Tibet or Lamaism (1895).
Ancient Chinese classic, I Ching (Yi-King).
Testimonies of former occultists (e.g., Doreen Virtue, Jenn Nizza).
Holy Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Matthew, Colossians, Revelation, etc.).
Christian commentaries and ministries on occultism and the Sabbath (Adventist Review, Women of Faith, Gary T. Davenport, John MacArthur).