Needing gasoline, James pulled into a gas station in Kingman, Arizona. When he went inside the pay for the gas, he realized that his remaining funds were quickly dwindling. As the man behind the register handed James his change, a dime slipped between his fingers, hit the floor, and rolled to a stop on another patron’s discarded hot dog wrapper. On the wrapper was an advertisement for Terry Fator’s puppetry show in Las Vegas. James quickly fixed on the sight as another potential sign from God. But this one was more intricate than some of the other signs he’d seen, more difficult to discern. But just as he knew that to hear God’s voice he had to listen very carefully, James rationalized that to see some of God’s signs a person might really have to look very closely at the things that were right in front of him.
The catalyst for the sign was a dime. James knew the number ten to be of great biblical significance. James had done extensive study in the numbers of the Bible, and he knew the following things to be true. He knew there were four biblical numbers that were indicative of perfection or completion: three, seven, ten, and twelve. While all these numbers represented perfection, each was linked to a different type.
Three was divine perfection. It appears 467 times in the Bible. It is the first of the four spiritually perfect numbers. The three righteous patriarchs before the flood were Abel, Enoch, and Noah, and after the flood the righteous fathers were Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—both groups of three. There were twenty-seven books in the New Testament, which is mathematically represented by the equation 3 x 3 x 3. This is completeness to the third power. Jesus prayed three times in the garden of Gethsemane before his first arrest. He was crucified at the third hour of the day at 9:00 A.M., which was three squared, and died at the ninth hour, or 3:00 P.M. Three hours of darkness covered the land while Jesus suffered on the cross. Three men were crucified on that day. Christ was dead for three full days and three full nights before resurrection. Only three people saw Jesus’s transfiguration on Mount Hermon: John, Peter, and James. Only three people were allowed to ask God anything: Solomon, Ahaz, and Jesus. God gave Israel three gifts: his law, the land, and their calling. The Bible mentions only three angels by name: Michael, Gabriel, and Lucifer. Another angel is charged to cry three woes to those on Earth, to warn them of more trials to come. And the most important reference to three was, of course, the Holy Trinity.
Seven was spiritual perfection. It appears 735 times in the Bible and was the foundation of God’s word. There were seven days of the week, all created by God, who claimed the seventh as the holy Sabbath. The Bible was originally divided into seven major divisions: the Law, the Prophets, the Writings, the Gospels, the General Epistles, the Epistles of Paul, and the Book of Revelation. The total number of originally inspired books was forty-nine, represented mathematically by the equation 7 x 7. In the book of Hebrews, Paul uses seven titles to refer to Jesus: Heir of all things, Captain of our salvation, Apostle, Author of salvation, Forerunner, High Priest, and the Author and finisher of our faith. In Matthew 13, Jesus gives seven parables. In the Book of Revelations there are seven churches, seven angels, seven seals, seven trumpet blasts, seven thunders, and seven plagues. And, of course, Jesus performed seven miracles on God’s holy Sabbath day.
Twelve was governmental perfection, symbolizing God’s power and authority. It appears in the Bible 187 times. Jacob had twelve sons, each of whom represented a tribe, and from each tribe twelve thousand were to receive salvation during the end times. God demanded that twelve unleavened cakes be placed in the temple every week. New Jerusalem contains twelve gates. The walls of New Jerusalem are 144 cubits high, mathematically represented by the equation 12 x 12. Solomon appointed twelve officers over Israel. The first scriptural recording of Jesus’s words occurred when he was twelve years old. And, of course, Christ chose twelve disciples with whom to surround himself.
Ten was the number of perfection of God’s divine order. It appears 242 times in the Bible. It was the number of physical creation represented in the design of the human body by God himself, who gave us ten fingers and ten toes. In Genesis 1 the word God is used ten times. A tithe was dictated to be one tenth of a man’s earnings, and it was said to be returned tenfold by God’s grace. A Passover lamb was selected on the tenth day of the first month. Ten generations of man lived on Earth before the great flood. And, of course, God gave us the Ten Commandments, by which all things are to be governed. There was no need for an eleventh, nor would nine have sufficed. Ten was the number of laws man required to honor God’s divine power in the way he saw fit. It was, to James, a perfect number.
All of this ran through his mind as he saw the dime lying on a piece of paper advertising Las Vegas. It was clear to him that whatever he was to do next would take place in Las Vegas, and a part of him knew that this is where God would help him gain enough money to complete his journey.
He picked up the dime and put it in his shirt pocket, knowing that it would be an instrumental tool in whatever was to happen next. He asked the man behind the counter how far away Las Vegas was, and the man told him it was only about an hour and forty minutes away. After a moment, James realized that that meant a hundred minutes, represented by the mathematical equation 10 x 10. It was perfection squared. He got in his car and headed to Las Vegas.
On the road, however, he started to worry that he was headed into the heart of sin. He knew Las Vegas was called Sin City, and he knew that it could tempt him in ways he had never thought imaginable. He took the dime out of his shirt pocket and held it tight in one of his hands. He was protected by God, and no matter how difficult his trip to Las Vegas would be, no matter how much Satan might try to pull him from his path, James knew that God would shield him.
As he got closer to the city, the traffic grew worse and worse. There were so many cars, and so many flashing lights, and the buildings were so big. He could almost feel the sin radiating from the city, pulling people in, destroying their lives and souls. He vowed that he would remain steadfast and uphold all his Christian principles for as long as God needed him to be in the city. He knew that if he could get through this, he could get through anything. He would be stronger for having lived through this, and as he parked his car in the parking lot of the Venetian, he thanked God for the opportunity to prove how devoted he was.
James walked from the parking lot into the hotel’s casino floor and immediately felt he was in a place designed by the Devil. The noises and lights were so overwhelming that he was slightly disoriented. The smell of smoke was everywhere, and he knew it had to be a conscious effort by Satan to make himself feel more at home. He surveyed the area looking for an indication of what God might intend for him to do, and he saw an LED display next to a table of people. The LED board was simply a series of numbers. The top number was a flashing seven, and the two immediately under it were also sevens. Seven, seven, seven was the holiest number. James immediately went to the table and asked the person running the game what it was. She explained the basic premise and rules of roulette to him, and he took the dime out of his pocket. He placed it on the black ten before the same woman explained to him that there was a ten-dollar minimum on any bet at the table. James took this as a further sign that he was doing what God wanted him to.
He had a little more than fifty dollars. He put ten of it on the black ten and watched as the woman working at the table spun a tiny white ball around the rim of the roulette wheel. He watched as the ball’s momentum slowed, and it finally fell into the spinning wheel where it was kicked around until coming to rest on black twenty. He watched as the woman swept everyone’s chips and his ten-dollar bill away from the table, before allowing any more bets to be placed. He quickly tried to interpret what it could have meant. Twenty was twice the number he bet on, and twice the value of his bet. Ten times two was twenty, times two again was forty. This was roughly everything he had left. God sometimes demanded a great show of faith when he was testing his followers, and James knew of no greater show of faith than to trust God with everything in a place of sin. So James took the remaining forty dollars out of his pocket and placed it on the number ten. Once again he watched the woman spin the ball around the edge of the wheel, and once again he watched the ball fall and bounce. And this time the number it came to land on was the number ten. It wasn’t surprising to James, and he openly thanked God at the roulette table for his victory. The woman running the table gave James several chips that totaled one thousand, four hundred dollars in value. He thought about cashing them in, but he started doing some math in his head.
Fourteen hundred divided in half was seven hundred, which was represented by the mathematical equation 7 x 10 x 10, or perfection times perfection times perfection, or perfection to the perfect power of three. This was clearly a sign to continue and place a bet on the number three. But then, just as James was about to put everything he had just won on the number three, he heard someone behind him yelling out the name Timothy, and he knew this to be a more certain sign from God. It couldn’t be anything other than a reference to Timothy 6:10: For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. He realized that God’s symbols in the numbers were a warning to stop, to leave this place with the gift God gave him before temptation swallowed his spirit whole.
James took his winnings to the cashier and left the casino with fourteen hundred dollars, which he knew would easily get him to Los Angeles and help him subsist while he awaited God’s further instruction. He pulled out of the casino garage and made his way toward the freeway, where he saw a giant entrance sign reading, “Los Angeles – 270 miles.” He looked at his GPS and saw that the final stretch of highway that would lead him into Los Angeles, where he would complete God’s mandate, was the 10.