The Bible Sealed from Aleph to Tav

(Chapter 5 of the Bible Wheel Book)

Spoke 1 - Aleph: The Law, the Prophets, and the Epistles

Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

Romans 3:20ff (Spoke 1, Cycle 3)

The Divine clarity and supernatural perfection of the detailed design of the Bible Wheel is nowhere more evident than on the first Spoke, corresponding to Aleph. Early in the morning of May 14, 1999, exactly four years and two days after I drew the first Bible Wheel (pg 23), I was meditating on the first Spoke and noticed that it holds the first books of three primary divisions of Scripture:

The conjunction of "the law" and "the prophets" immediately evoked the frequent self-description of the Bible found in the Bible in passages such as Romans 3:21 quoted above. This prompted me to look at the rest of the canonical divisions which in turn led to the discovery of the Canon Wheel later that same day. It was an utterly astounding experience; I sat awe-struck for a week thereafter. I had been fruitfully studying the basic black and white Bible Wheel for years with no particular interest in the large-scale canonical divisions. My focus was on a much finer level of detail. For four full years I was constantly discovering endless correlations of highly specific content from the three books on each Spoke with each other and the meaning of the corresponding Hebrew letter. I had no idea that an entirely new level of Divine design – aptly described as sevenfold symmetric perfection – lay implicit in its structure. In a single day God opened my mind to see this glorious new aspect of the unlimited perfection of His Holy Word, the surface of which was barely touched in the 800+ pages on this website. Our task now is to review the first and last Spokes of this theological tapestry to see how God supernaturally sealed His entire Word from beginning to end, from Aleph to Tav.

Aleph: The Symbol God, Beginnings, and First Things

Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.

Isaiah 44:6 (Spoke 1, Cycle 2)

As the first of the letters, Aleph is a natural symbol of first things, beginnings, and origins. This is how the Lord Jesus Christ used the first Greek letter when He said "I am Alpha ... the beginning ... the first ..." (Rev 22:13, pg 39). God is the Creator of All and so all things find their origin in Him. He also is the Sovereign Lord of Creation, and this is expressed by the closely associated KeyWord alluph (see table) which denotes a sovereign ruler, master, chief, or leader of thousands. Alluph is nearly identical to Aleph; it differs only in pronunciation (vowel points, see pg 19). This is typical of how KeyWords closely associated with a letter's name reveal its symbolic meaning. In the KJV, alluph is translated as duke, which was the common word denoting a sovereign male ruler in the European social structure dominant at the time of its translation. Others translate it as leader, ruler, or chief. Its greatest density appears on Spoke 1 in Genesis 36 where it is used forty-three times in the lists of the Dukes of Edom. These ideas will be explored in more detail in the Synopsis (BW book pg 124).

In its ultimate sense, Aleph is a symbol of God, the Sovereign Ruler of All who should be first in every heart and who is literally First of All in that He existed before He created anything. The first verse of the Bible amplifies these ideas: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." The word translated as God is the Aleph KeyWord Elohim, displayed in the third entry in the table. It is based on the root El which denotes a mighty one, and so came to be applied to God as the Almighty. And since Elohim is an Aleph KeyWord (it starts with Aleph), the first letter is literally God's initial. This echoes His declaration that He is the "Alpha" and adds symbolic depth by linking it to the first Divine Name revealed in Scripture. Thus we see the symbolic meaning of Aleph is based on its position in the Alphabet, the meaning of its name and associated KeyWords, and God's use of it (in the form of Alpha) in the text of Scripture. This exemplifies a few of the primary methods we will use to discern the meaning of each of the twenty-two letters. The wonder of it all is that everything is so simple, plain, and clear. There is no mistaking the essential meaning of the first letter. Though a complete understanding of Aleph involves a full review of its use in the Alphabetic Verses, Hebrew grammar, and elsewhere, the ideas touched upon above should be sufficient to spark the requisite insight to perceive the Divine wonder that is the first Spoke of God's Wheel. Here now is a brief review of the three books it holds.

CYCLE 1, GENESIS: The Book of Origins

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Genesis 1:1 (Spoke 1, Cycle 1)

Little need be said to explain why the Bible begins in Genesis. It is saturated with primary themes relating to Aleph. Its very name signifies an origin, beginning, or birth. Obviously, there is no better place to begin the Bible than "In the beginning". All the fundamental doctrines of Scripture find their root in this book; the Sovereignty of God, the creation of man (1:26), the origin of sin and the consequent curse of death (3:19), God's promise of the virgin-born Redeemer (3:15), His election of Abraham (12:2), and the great doctrine of God's gift of righteousness through faith (15:6), the latter being the true Genesis of the Gospel proclaimed with perfect precision in Romans, the third book on Spoke 1. No author, human or Divine, could have begun in a more logical, intelligent, or skillful fashion. The great miracle of God is that these ideas, which are based on the symbolic meaning of Aleph, are also uniquely linked to the other two books on the first Spoke, as a brief review will quickly show.

CYCLE 2, ISAIAH: The Romans of the Old Testament

Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his under-standing.

Isaiah 40:28 (Spoke 1, Cycle 2)

The verse above exemplifies the profound link between Genesis and Isaiah based on the primary Aleph themes of Creation and the Sovereignty of God. It is one of the principal hallmarks of the twenty-third book, as seen in these representative verses:

• Isaiah 40:28 Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it:
• Isaiah 45:11 Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, …I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.
• Isaiah 45:18 For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.
• Isaiah 40:26 Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.

The revelation of God's Sovereignty in Isaiah and its relation to Genesis has been noted by many scholars, such as John D. W. Watts in his Word Biblical Themes: Isaiah:

Every student of Hebrew is aware the word 'create' in Genesis 1 is a rare word used only with God as subject. The highest concentration of uses of that word occurs in Isaiah 40 – 66. If there should be any fear that Isaiah's emphasis on God as the owner of Canaan represents a provincial and limited picture of God, this fact should dispel it. ... God is understood in Isaiah to be the sovereign ruler over all his creation and over Canaan particularly.

Watts' observation extends to include the Book of Romans which contains the highest frequency of the corresponding Greek word meaning "to create" in the New Testament. When we calculate the sum of all occurrences on each Spoke, we find that they occur on Spoke 1 nearly ten times above average. We have, therefore, an objective mathematical measure of this correlated theme. Graphs of this phenomenon are shown below in the Distribution of Creation Words on the Wheel (pg 103). Each Spoke shows similar peaks in the distribution of words relating to its primary themes based on the corresponding Hebrew Letter.

It is of utmost importance to remember that Watts, like all scholars cited in this book, provides a completely independent witness to the divine design of the Bible. He knew nothing of the Wheel. He did not write his words to support the geometric and alphabetic correlation revealed by the structure of the first Spoke. His comments are based entirely on the content of Genesis and Isaiah, yet he writes as if he were holding the Bible Wheel in his very hands! Hubbard's comments from his Forward to Watts' book, quoted earlier in the review of the seven canonical divisions (pg 28), are worth repeating here:

The Book of Isaiah is the Mount Rushmore of biblical prophecy. Sculpted on its massive slopes are the major themes of Scripture: who God is, what he has done for his people, and how he expects us to serve him. ... No other part of the Bible gives us so panoramic a view of God's handiwork in Israel's history nor such clear prophecies of his lordship over the nations. If Beethoven's nine symphonies loom as landmarks on the horizon of classical mu-sic, Isaiah's sixty-six chapters mark the apex of prophetic vision.

Like Watts, Hubbard emphasized the theme of Sovereignty (Lordship) in Isaiah that naturally links it with the meaning of Aleph as Leader. And just as the major themes of Scripture find their root in Genesis, so their branches spread forth into a full "panoramic" view in Isaiah which he called the very "apex of prophetic vision." Similar observations abound throughout the literature. Both Jews and Christians have recognized Isaiah as the first and greatest of the prophets since the earliest times. Here is how The New Bible Dictionary states it:

From ancient times Isaiah has been considered the greatest of OT prophets. He has been called 'the eagle among the prophets', 'the Evangelist of the Old Covenant', and the like. His book is not only lofty in style and conception, but rich in spiritual meaning. Likewise, The Teachers' Commentary has this to say: To the Jews, Isaiah was the greatest of the prophets. The commentator Karl Delitzsch called Isaiah the "universal prophet." Probably no other Old Testament document has been more deeply studied than the Book of Isaiah. Certainly none has had more books and articles written about it.

And here is how James Smith put it in his book on the Major Prophets in The Old Testament Survey Series where he quotes four other commentators:

He has been called "the Prince of the Old Testament Prophets" (Copass), "the Saint Paul of the Old Testament" (Robinson) and "the greatest prophet" (Eusebius). Isaiah son of Amoz was a theologian, reformer, statesman, historian, poet, orator, prince, and patriot. He was "prophet of the gospel before the Gospel" (Robinson), the fifth evangelist.

Quotes like these could fill a book. Isaiah is truly the supreme Old Testament prophet. His work is unique in its genre and its preeminence makes its appearance on the first Spoke truly stunning. Just as a dominant wolf is called the "alpha male" so Isaiah could rightly be called the "Alpha Prophet" or, as we would say in Hebrew, the Aleph Prophet. Its placement on Spoke 1, like that of Genesis, is without question optimal. It is exactly where any informed person would have placed it if he or she were consciously designing the Wheel from whole cloth, especially in light of its conformation with the self-description of the Old Testament as the Law (beginning with Genesis) and the Prophets (beginning with Isaiah). This is quite a "coincidence" to emerge from simply "rolling up the Bible like a scroll."

Yet this is but the beginning of wonders. Numerous scholars have also recognized the intimate and profound theological resemblance between Isaiah and Romans and they base their observations on primary themes relating to the symbolic meaning of Aleph! Oh! The glory of God's Wisdom! Praise His name now and forever! Here is how Lewis Sperry Chafer explained it in an article in the journal of the Dallas Theological Seminary, Bibliotheca Sacra, written in 1936, fifty-nine years before the revelation of the Wheel:

For breadth of divine revelation covered, the Book of Isaiah reminds us of the Epistle to the Romans. Some have called Isaiah the Paul of the Old Testament. C. S. Robinson goes even further when he maintains that it "is, perhaps, not too much to say that, if the New Testament were lost, a helpful gospel for sinners' salvation, available and clear, might be easily compiled from the chapters Isaiah has written." Isaiah with Paul [in Romans] shows us in the beginning of his message the utter depravity, perversity, and helplessness of man, and then presents the effectual remedy of God-salvation in Himself. Both are prophets of God speaking for Him and both are pre-eminently theologians. … [Isaiah] has a most exalted idea of God in His majesty and sovereignty. It is not too much to say that no writer in the Bible has a more exalted or clear conception of the greatness of God than had Isaiah.

This quote is typical of the continuous outpouring of revelation that has been my daily bread since I first discovered the Wheel in 1995. There is really no end to it. Like Watts above, Chafer wrote as if he had the Bible Wheel right before his eyes. Not only did he note Isaiah's exceptional emphasis on the Aleph concept of God's Sovereignty, but he also commented on the united thematic river flowing through Isaiah and Romans that originates with the Fall in Genesis. The parallel of the opening passages of these two books is impossible to miss:

The thematic flow of Isaiah 1 parallels the first few chapters of Genesis with extreme precision. Its opening "Hear O heavens, and give ear O earth, for the Lord has spoken" hearkens back to Genesis 1 when "God created the heaven and the earth" by His Word, repeatedly speaking "Let there be..." It then echoes the creation of Adam and Eve of Genesis 2 saying, "I have nourished and brought up children." It sums up Genesis 3 in the words "and they have rebelled against me" adding that "Israel doth not know," thereby reflecting their original sin of eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The parallel passage in Romans 1-3 gives the universal application of these ideas that were typologically applied to Israel in Isaiah. And just as these two premier books begin "in the beginning" with the universal problem of sin, so they conclude with the most explicit and comprehensive proclamation of God's Way of Salvation to be found in their respective Testaments. Here is how Herbert Wolf put it in his book Interpreting Isaiah, the Suffering and Glory of the Messiah :

The Book of Isaiah, one of the most important and best-loved books in the Bible, is sometimes called the Gospel of Isaiah because of the good news that characterizes its message. Indeed, no other Old Testament book contains as many references to the Messiah as does the Book of Isaiah. Its sixty-six chapters contain crucial passages that allude to Christ's incarnation, earthly ministry and atoning death and glorious world-wide rule. ... Isaiah also has been called the Romans of the Old Testament because like the Book of Romans, it sets forth God's case against sinners, unveils the wretchedness of the human heart, and reveals the way of salvation for Israel and the world. Under the hammer blows of Isaiah's message, God calls sinners to repentance and graciously promises forgiveness. It is no accident that in Romans Paul quoted Isaiah seventeen times - more than any other New Testament author. And, like Romans, Isaiah is a profoundly theological book that deals with a number of vital doctrines.

To behold Isaiah as the "Romans of the Old Testament" appears, in light of God's Wheel, to be nothing less than the purest prophecy. To see it called the Gospel of Isaiah and its prophet the Evangelist of the Old Covenant elevates it to the highest level of Biblical significance, the Good News of Jesus Christ being the whole point of all Scripture. This is what the Bible Wheel is really all about. We are seeing into the Mind of God and perceiving the Divine Thoughts revealed in the fully integrated geometric, thematic, and alphabetic structure of His everlasting Word, established before the foundation of the world.

CYCLE 3: ROMANS: The Cathedral of the Christian Faith

Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith: To God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen.

Romans 16:25ff (Spoke 1, Cycle 3)

If the major themes of Scripture find their root in Genesis and their branch in Isaiah, so they flower in Romans. Few books, if any, have received accolades quite like this "cathedral of the Christian faith" as it was called by Frederick Godet. In the introduction to his Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans he lists but a few of the prominent Christian leaders who have recognized the unique significance of the Book of Romans:

Coleridge calls the Epistle to the Romans "the profoundest book in existence." Chrysostom had it read to him twice a week. Luther, in his famous preface, says "This Epistle is the chief book of the New Testament, the purest Gospel. It deserves not only to be known word for word by every Christian, but to be the subject of his meditation day by day, the daily bread of his soul." ... Melanchthon, in order to make it more perfectly his own, copied it twice with his own hand. It is the book which he expounded most frequently in his lectures. The Reformation was undoubtedly the work of the Epistle to the Romans, as well as the epistle to the Galatians; and the probability is that every great spiritual revival in the church will be associated as effect and cause with a deeper understanding of this book.

Reformer John Calvin wrote that "If a man understands Romans he has a sure road open to him to the understanding of the whole Scripture." Gleason Archer concurs, saying, "There is no more complete compendium of the Christian doctrine in the sixty-six books of the Bible than the Epistle to the Romans." Likewise, Dr. Lloyd-Jones called it "a colossal and incomparable statement of Christian truth." Chafer noted this "breadth of divine revelation" when he said "the Book of Isaiah reminds us of the Epistle to the Romans." Furthermore, Paul Achtemeier noted that the Book of Romans, like both Genesis and Isaiah, is marked by the primary Aleph themes of Creation and the Sovereignty of God:

Paul was on fire to preach the good news of the gracious lordship of God expressed in Jesus Christ, and nowhere more so than in Romans. Because God as creator is Lord over the whole of created reality, reflections on that lordship encompass the full range of human problems, and nowhere is that more the case than in Romans.

Just as Isaiah is the "Alpha Prophet" of the Old Testament, so Romans is the "Alpha Epistle" of the New. The great miracle of God is that He engraved the correlated preeminence of these two undisputed doctrinal masterpieces in the geometric Stone of His everlasting Word.

A Divine Theological Tapestry

And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Romans 10:15ff (Spoke 1, Cycle 3)

The thematic correlation amongst the three books on Spoke 1 is astounding to behold. A quick review of Romans reveals it to be an intricate theological tapestry woven primarily with threads drawn from Genesis and Isaiah. Barry G. Webb noted a few of the threads from Isaiah in his book The Message of Isaiah: On Eagles' Wings  where he also adds his voice to the great chorus of scholars who have recognized Isaiah as the "Romans" of the Old Testament:

In terms of theological significance, the book of Isaiah is the "Romans" of the Old Testament. It is here that the threads come together and the big picture of God's purposes for his people and for his world is most clearly set forth. ... The New Testament moves to its climax by echoing Isaiah's promise of death conquered, tears wiped away, and new heavens and a new earth. In fact it was Isaiah who, via the LXX, gave us the term "gospel" ...

Webb's assertion that Isaiah "gave us the term 'gospel'" is based on passages like Isaiah 52:15 that Paul quoted in Romans 10:15 above. He was speaking of the Greek word evangelidzo, translated as "preach the gospel." This is the root of the English word evangelize. In the Greek Septuagint version of Isaiah it first occurs immediately after the prophecy of John the Baptist, rendered as bringest good tidings in the KJV:

O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!

Isaiah 40:9 (Spoke 1, Cycle 2)

The Doctrine of the Trinity is evident here in this Old Testament passage. The proclamation "Behold your God!" refers to Jesus Christ, the Divine Shepherd mentioned two verses later (Isa 40:11, see John 10:11). Robinson spoke truly when he called Isaiah "the prophet of the gospel before the Gospel," and as Wolf noted above, "It is no accident that in Romans Paul quoted Isaiah seventeen times - more than any other New Testament author." These quotes are, in fact, only a hint of the truly profound integration of the books on the first Spoke. Of the sixty explicit citations of the Old Testament in Romans, exactly half come from the first two books on Spoke 1. Furthermore, Romans is the only book on Cycle 3 that mentions Isaiah by name, and he does so five times! (Rom 9:27, 9:29, 10:16, 10:20, 15:12). This is but one of the many unique links between Isaiah and Romans found in no other New Testament Epistle on Cycle 3.

Moreover, the links between Genesis and Romans are just as profound and inextricable. It begins with the universal conviction of sin based on the natural revelation of God given in creation available to all people cited in parallel with Isaiah 1 above. Romans charges that every person who rejects God is guilty and "without excuse, because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God ... and changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature> more than the Creator." This theme culminates in Romans 3 with the declaration that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Having thus established the bad news of the universality of our sin and guilt before God, Romans lays the foundation of the Good News on Abraham's encounter with God in Genesis:

What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God. For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.

Romans 4:1ff (Spoke 1, Cycle 3)

The highlighted passage is truly the Genesis of the Gospel, revealed in the Book of Origins (Gen 15:6). Romans then continues to draw from Genesis, amplifying this idea and applying it to all who would come to God through faith:

Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all, (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.

Romans 4:16ff (Spoke 1, Cycle 3)

The verse cited in Romans 4:17 with "as it is written" comes from Genesis 17:4. No other book of the Bible quotes this verse. It is unique to Genesis and Romans. This is an example of a KeyLink, defined as a unique word or group of words found only in books on a single Spoke that exemplifies their common theme. In my decade of study, I have found many hundreds of such KeyLinks connecting the books on every Spoke of the Wheel. They are primary witnesses of its Divine design.

The truly stunning KeyLinks involve Alphabetic KeyWords based on the corresponding Hebrew Letter, as is the case with the KeyLink between Genesis and Romans under discussion. It is based on three fundamental Aleph KeyWords Av (Father), Avraham, and Emunah (Faith). The "v" in Av and Avraham represents the soft Bet () which is its proper pronunciation in these words (see the Alphabet Table, BW book pg 22). Christians are familiar with Av through its Aramaic cognate Abba which is both transliterated and translated in Romans 8:14:

For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

The KeyLink is based on the name God gave to Abraham as a sign that he would be the Father (Av) of the Faith (Emunah), the prototype of the great multitude who have been reconciled to God through the Faith of Jesus Christ (see Synopsis, BW book pg 128). We have a Spoke 1 KeyLink based on three principal Aleph KeyWords which exemplify the central Gospel message that unites the books of Genesis and Romans. Again, this reveals how God engraved the meaning of the text on multiple levels in its geometric structure and integrated it with the symbolic meaning of the corresponding Hebrew Letter! Has such a wonder ever been imagined, let alone seen?

Yet for all this there is, as always, an ever-deeper wonder being revealed here. The Bible was given that we might know the Triune God; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God revealed the character and role of each Divine Person in associated Alphabetic KeyWords. The First Person is denoted by the Aleph KeyWord Av (Father) and the Second Person by the Bet KeyWord Ben (Son). These ideas will be developed later in the appropriate chapters. The implications are overwhelming. We have a complete convergence of the meaning of the Hebrew Letters, the geometric structure of the Wheel and the specific content of the books with all of this descending from the Triune nature of the Eternal God! This is, of course, exactly what we would expect in a Divine revelation given by the Holy Trinity. We already saw a hint of it in the role the Number Three plays in the tri-radiant symmetry of the Canon Wheel (Sign of Deity) and the number of its Cycles. The more we learn of the structure of the Bible Wheel, the more we understand it as a blazing synergy of fiery symbols designed by God Himself to bear the glory of His Self-Revelation. Praise His Name, now and forever!

Yet there is still more to see just on this introductory level. The interweaving of threads from Genesis continues in Romans 5 which traces the origin of sin and death to "Adam's transgression" (Rom 5:14) saying "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" and then linking this to God's gift of salvation by grace through faith, "which is by one man, Jesus Christ" (Rom 5:15). Finally, Romans 9 contains a flourish of KeyLinks to Genesis (BW book pg 134) just before shifting to the great salvation passages of Isaiah. It is here that we find the ultimate joint proclamation of God's Sovereignty in the one of the most profound KeyLinks in the entire Bible:

This is a double KeyLink because the verse in Romans is linked to two verses in Isaiah (29:16, 45:9, see Synopsis, pg 127). Remember, this is a Spoke 1 KeyLink displaying the Aleph theme of God's Sovereignty that has been universally recognized as dominant in both Isaiah and Romans. This is the Divine integration of the content with the form of Scripture that utterly astonishes the mind that is able to see what is really going on here.

The passage from Romans concludes the argument that was developed over three chapters (9-11) in answer to the question "Is there unrighteousness with God?" (Rom 9:14). It is answered by argument in Romans and by declaration in the immediate context of the Key-Link in Isaiah 45:21 where God flatly states "there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour." The whole chapter of Isaiah 45 profoundly parallels the issues dealt with in Romans 9-11, where also we find the greatest density of quotes from Isaiah. The KeyLink phrase therefore reveals the common theme and thrust of these two books. Its appearance nowhere else in the entire Bible must be understood as the work of God who alone could have superintended its overall design.

This is the first Spoke of the Wheel – a pillar of fire that enlightens the whole body of Scripture and bears Eternal Witness of its Divine Design. Entire volumes could be written on the endless correlations amongst the elements of Spoke 1. In this one section alone we have seen the independent witness of over nineteen mutually corroborating Biblical scholars – Watts, Hubbard, Smith, Copass, Robinson, Delitzsch, Eusebius, Chafer, Wolf, Godet, Coleridge, Chrysostom, Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Archer, Lloyd-Jones, Achtemeier, Webb – spanning nearly the entire history of the Church. And this is but a small sampling of the great cloud of witnesses who could have been called forth to testify. It is not to their authority I appeal, but only to their witness that they themselves have seen the profound and inextricable links between these books that now are revealed to be geometrically integrated by God. Such witnesses abound for the entire structure of the Divine Word. This is the great miracle of the Wheel. It has been implicit in the Canon since the day it was sealed and the servants of God have been writing as if they were following it as a hermeneutical Star Chart in their travels through the glorious galaxy of God's Holy Scripture. What now should we expect since the inner workings of this Map of Heaven have been explicitly revealed?

Spoke 22 - Tav: Consummation of God's Plan of the Ages

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

Revelation 21:1ff (Spoke 22, Cycle 3)

With insuperable logic and in perfect harmony with the symbolic meaning of the final letter, the great themes of the whole Bible are consummated on the final Spoke. As noted in the section called Sealed with the Sign of the Cross (BW book pg 37), the last letter Tav ת = ) represents the ideas of Consummation, Completion, Covenant, and Sealing. Rabbinic tradition calls it the Seal of Creation and the Seal of Truth and the Franciscans say that it represents "the fulfillment of the entire revealed word of God." It is, therefore, an incomparable wonder to behold that just as three Books of Commencement align to form the first Spoke, so three Books of Consummation align to form the last:

This alignment brings another level of God's manifold Wisdom into clear focus. In the section called Aleph and Tav, First and Last (BW book pg 40) we saw that the Lord revealed Himself as "first and last" only on the first and last Spokes. Now we see that He followed exactly the same pattern in the themes of the books on those Spokes! Oh! The glory of God's Word! He designed the entire Bible on multiple levels to give a reiterative revelation of His own eternal character as the Lord of History and His Plan of the Ages from its inception in Genesis to its consummation in Revelation . Praise His name now and forever!

We are now gazing into the very heart of God's purpose for all creation, the Holy of Holies of the entire Biblical revelation where we can actually see the Lord's ultimate intent displayed in His Map of Heaven, telling us exactly where we are going and how to get there. God is love (1 John 4:8) and from the beginning He has been working to restore the communion He had with His people before sin entered the world in Genesis 3. This is what the Bible is all about. Each book on Spoke 22 shines as star in the Heaven of God's Word and their threefold union forms a brilliant constellation that has led many a Christian soul through this world's stormy seas with the guiding light of the blessed vision of the glorious consummation of the Divine Love Story known as the Holy Bible.

CYCLE 1 - SONG OF SONGS: Union of Christ and His Church

A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts. My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi. Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes. Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green.

Song of Songs 1:13ff (Spoke 22, Cycle 1)

Union with God is the great promise and culminating purpose of the whole Bible. But to what shall we liken this union? Scripture declares "our God is a consuming fire" (Heb 12:29). He appeared to Moses in a flame of fire in the burning bush and led Israel through the wilderness by a pillar of fire. He lit the souls of His people with tongues of fire on Pentecost (Acts 2:3) and appeared to the Apostle John with eyes as flames of fire (Rev 1:14). There is absolutely nothing dispassionate about the God of the Bible. There is no limit to the fiery love He has for our souls as He proved with utter finality in the passion and death of His Son upon the Cross. In natural terms, the Song of Songs is an unbridled and explicitly erotic romance between King Solomon and his bride, bursting with shouts of joy and sensual delight. It declares God's Love in a way few men or women could fail to appreciate because it touches, with visceral physical images, the most intense and universal of all our desires – to give and receive love. God chose this imagery to evoke the deepest passions that He Himself placed in us when He created us "in the image of God ... male and female" (Gen 1:27). In the Song of Songs, God reveals Himself as the Lover of our souls and leads us as our Beloved Shepherd to the "high places" of Scripture through analogy, allegory, metaphor, and typology, showing us the Royal Road to fulfillment of the first and greatest commandment, "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might" (Deut 6:5). This is what we were made for. It should be the consuming passion of our hearts because it is the consummating purpose of our creation.

The form of the title "Song of Songs" expresses its superior excellence as the best of all songs. Similar constructs are used in such titles as "King of Kings and Lord of Lords" to denote Christ's supreme sovereignty (Rev 19:16) and "Holy of Holies" to denote the holiest part of the Temple. The latter appears frequently in descriptions of the Divine Song, the earliest being from the first century when Rabbi Akiva defended its inclusion in the Canon, saying:

The entire universe is unworthy of the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel. For all the Writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the holy of holies.

Eighteen centuries later, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the "prince of preachers" of nineteenth century England, used the same language in his sermon A Bundle of Myrrh  in which he explained that just as a veil blocked entrance to the Temple's Holy of Holies, so there is a veil over the eyes of all who would approach the Divine Song unprepared, whether through spiritual immaturity or rank unbelief:

Certain divines [theologians] have doubted the inspiration of Solomon's Song; others have conceived it to be nothing more than a specimen of ancient love-songs, and some have been afraid to preach from it because of its highly poetical character. The true reason for all this avoidance of one of the most heavenly portions of God's Word lies in the fact that the spirit of this Song is not easily attained. Its music belongs to the higher spiritual life, and has no charm in it for unspiritual ears. The Song occupies a sacred enclosure into which none may enter unprepared. "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground," is the warning voice from its secret tabernacles. The historical books I may compare to the outer courts of the Temple; the Gospels, the Epistles, and the Psalms, bring us into the holy place or the Court of the priests; but the Song of Solomon is the most holy place: the holy of holies, before which the veil still hangs to many an untaught believer. It is not all the saints who can enter here, for they have not yet attained unto the holy confidence of faith, and that exceeding familiarity of love which will permit them to commune in conjugal love with the great Bridegroom.

Since ancient times both Jews and Christians have understood the spiritual maturity required to properly interpret the Song of Songs, as explained by A. R. Fausset in his Introduction to the Song of Solomon  in the famous Commentary, Critical and Explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments:

Origen [185-254 AD] and Jerome [347-420 AD] tell us that the Jews forbade it to be read by any until he was thirty years old. It certainly needs a degree of spiritual maturity to enter aright into the holy mystery of love which it allegorically sets forth. To such as have attained this maturity, of whatever age they be, the Song of Songs is one of the most edifying of the sacred writings. ... The Song throughout consists of immediate addresses either of Christ to the soul, or of the soul to Christ. "The experimental knowledge of Christ's loveliness and the believer's love is the best commentary on the whole of this allegorical Song" [Leighton]. Like the curiously wrought Oriental lamps, which do not reveal the beauty of their transparent emblems until lighted up within, so the types and allegories of Scripture, "the lantern to our path" (Ps 119:105), need the inner light of the Holy Spirit of Jesus to reveal their significance.

The Spirit-led blend of allegorical, metaphorical, and typological interpretations of God's poetic Song is both obvious and correct. It is no accident that this view completely dominated Christian exegesis throughout most of the Church's history. Duane Garrett traced its origin to some of the earliest and most important Jewish and Christian writings in his entry in the New American Commentary:

From early times both Christians and Jews have proposed allegorical interpretations of the Song of Songs. Jews have taken it to be an allegory of the love between Yahweh and Israel, and Christians have regarded it as a song of the love between Christ and the church. ... Examples of allegorizing interpretations among the Jews are found in the Mishna, the Talmud, and the Targum on the book. ... The first manifestation of the Christian allegorizing tradition is in the commentary by Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235), now only partially extant. Jerome, Augustine, and above all Origen stand in the tradition of interpreting Song of Songs allegorically. Subsequent luminaries in this tradition include Gregory the Great and the Venerable Bede.

Garret said "above all Origen" because he wrote the first great commentary on it, influencing all who followed, such as Jerome who had this to say in his Preface to the Song of Songs:

Origen, whilst in his other books he has surpassed all others, has in the Song of Songs surpassed himself. He wrote ten volumes upon it, which amount to almost twenty thousand lines. ... [He writes] so grandly and so freely that it seems to me as if the words were fulfilled in him which say, "The king has brought me into his bedchamber." (Song 1:4) It would require a vast amount of time, of labour, and of money to translate a work so great and of so much merit into the Latin language. I therefore leave it unattempted ...

Ten volumes of twenty thousand lines to comment on the 117 verses of the Song of Songs? How could this be? Exactly what did Origen see in it? The answer is simple. Origen saw the full flowering and complete consummation of the essential message of all Scripture in the Song of God! In it, he heard the voice of the Bridegroom, the Living Christ, calling to him, and in this he was not alone. Hundreds of other Spirit-led commentators and preachers of the Word wrote from exactly the same point of view in the ensuing centuries. In her book The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity , E. Ann Matter noted that it is "the most frequently interpreted book of medieval Christianity" with "nearly one hundred extant commentaries and homilies on the Song of Songs written between the sixth and fifteenth centuries."

Unfortunately, modern students of the Bible rarely appreciate the preeminence of the Song of Songs in traditional Christian exegesis because the current intellectual fashion denies the very key to its interpretation, leaving it a sealed book utterly impenetrable to contemporary critical scholarship. "The demise of the allegorical interpretation," explained Garret, "appears to have left the Song of Songs a theologically impoverished book." Though naming the correct elements, Garret got them backwards; it is not the book, but its unenlightened interpreters that are left "theologically impoverished" by their inability to see the consummate glory of the greatest Song of all Songs. They can not hear the voice of Christ calling to them, "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away!" (Song 2:13) They are left to sit in the dust of this world without any metaphor, allegory, or poetry to carry them to the higher truths of Holy Scripture.

Fausset provided a fine (and typical) explanation of the traditional Christian understanding of the Canticle of Canticles as it is known from the Latin translations:

Canticles sets forth the fullness of the love which joins believers and the Saviour. The entire economy of salvation, says Harris, aims at restoring to the world the lost spirit of love. God is love, and Christ is the embodiment of the love of God. As the other books of Scripture present severally their own aspects of divine truth, so Canticles furnishes the believer with the language of holy love, wherewith his heart can commune with his Lord; and it portrays the intensity of Christ's love to him; the affection of love was created in man to be a transcript of the divine love, and the Song clothes the latter in words; were it not for this, we should be at a loss for language, having the divine warrant, wherewith to express, without presumption, the fervor of the love between Christ and us. The image of a bride, a bridegroom, and a marriage, to represent this spiritual union, has the sanction of Scripture throughout; nay, the spiritual union was the original fact in the mind of God, of which marriage is the transcript.

It is important to receive Fausset's insight. Our spiritual union with Christ was the original idea in the mind of God, the root and foundation of the Divine Institution of Marriage. In support of his assertions, he cited fourteen passages drawn from both Testaments where God presented marriage as a metaphor or analogy of our relationship with Him, including "For thy Maker is thine husband" (Isa 54:5), "Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you" (Jer 3:14), "I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ" (2 Cor 11:2), and this long passage from Ephesians:

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

Ephesians 5:25ff

The last highlighted words sum up the source of the difficulties modern critics have with the Song of Songs. Union with God through Christ is one of the deepest mysteries of the faith; no insight into it can be found outside a living relationship with Christ as Saviour and Lord. Immediately following his citation of Ephesians, Fausset reiterated his insight and capped it off by citing the three verses from Revelation shown in the box:

Paul does not go from the marriage relation to the union of Christ and the Church as if the former were the first; but comes down from the latter as the first and best recognized fact on which the relation of marriage is based (Rev 19:7; 21:2; 22:17).

This brings us to the great consummation of God's Plan of the Ages, and again we are able to see – with our own eyes – the overwhelming wonder of Divine Wisdom displayed so simply and so gracefully in the structure of the Holy Word. The first and last books on Spoke 22 mutually enlighten each other. While the individual threads of this Marriage Tapestry are woven throughout nearly every book of the Bible, they come together in complete perfection on the last Spoke to form an incomparable image of the consummation of God's whole plan of salvation. The alignment of these books on Spoke 22 is a perpetual miracle; the Consummation of All History in Revelation is couched in the primary metaphor of the Song of Songs! Their geometric alignment and alphabetic integration with Tav ignites a Divine synergy that compounds, compacts, and amplifies the meaning of each element associated with the last Spoke. We have here another complete convergence of multiple independent components that reiteratively tell the everlasting story of the glorious Love of God.

Yet this is but the beginning of wonders. The true miracle is that none of these observations, except those directly dependent on the Wheel, are new. For centuries, Christians have written about the inextricable interconnections between the Song of Songs and the Apocalypse (Book of Revelation). In his comment on the Song's first verse, Fausset wrote that it is a "foretaste on earth of the ‘new song' to be sung in glory," citing the three verses from Revelation quoted in the box. Ann Matter, the expert on medieval interpretations of the Song of Songs quoted above, wrote:

It is no historical accident that so many medieval exegetes commented on both the Apocalypse and the Song of Songs.

Her book is filled with observations about the "softening of boundaries between the Apocalypse and Song of Songs" in medieval interpretation, the "thematic convergence" of these two books, and "the connection between the Song of Songs and the Apocalypse as related allegories of the Church." She wrote that the "Song of Songs and the Apocalypse were thus increasingly read together, as two accounts of the same divine plan" and later explained how Haimo of Auxerre in the ninth century combined earlier commentaries on the Song of Songs from the Venerable Bede and Ambrosius Autpertus in his own commentary on the Apocalypse:

Haimo's text opened the way for ... a series of commentaries which especially stress the understanding of the Song of Songs as the love between Christ and the individual human soul. This idea became especially current in the twelfth century, but its roots can be seen several generations earlier, in the increasingly common perception of the relation between the Song of Songs and the Apocalypse. ... It is hardly surprising that Haimo, like Akuin, put together an Apocalypse commentary from the works of Bede and Ambrosius Autpertus; many medieval exegetes commented on both the Apocalypse and the Song of Songs.

Without a doubt, these two books are by far the most poetic, symbolic, metaphorical, allegorical, parabolic, typological, and mystical books in the Bible. Thus Garret wrote:

No other book of the Bible (except perhaps Revelation) suffers under so many radically different interpretations as the Song of Songs.

By Divine design, these are the two books with the broadest range of possible interpretations because such is the only way to teach the deepest truths of the faith. Like any great poem, painting, or song, all people will agree on the primary themes and outline but each will have his or her own rich set of interpretations and unique personal applications. This is how the Bible comes alive for each believer. For the Christian seeking communion with the Lord, their wealth of allusion opens the door to the limitless "treasures of wisdom and knowledge" that are hid in Christ Jesus (Col 2:3). Only when pressed into a limited one-dimensional "this means that and only that" type interpretation, are their wings clipped and they fall silent to the ground.

All these ideas, including the geometric structure of the Bible in the form of the Wheel, come together in this image from an eleventh century illuminated manuscript of the Latin Vulgate called the "Bible of Alard." This returns us again to the full integration of Art and Theology. It is a magnificent work in which the initial Letter of the first verse of each book is written large and brightly decorated with colorful images, hence the term illuminated. Scholars call these Letters "historiated initials." Many such initials are adorned only with flowers, animals, or abstract patterns that do not relate to the theme of its book. But in some instances, the shape of the initial Letter lends itself quite naturally to an artistic representation of the book's primary theme, as in the present case.

In the Bible of Alard, the initial Letter of the Song of Songs is the "O" of the Latin phrase OSCVLETVR ME (Let him kiss me). It is drawn much larger than most illuminated Letters, taking up almost the entire width of the text column. The scribe filled the remaining vertical space with the rest of the first two words. Though it is hard to see in the reproduction, the two figures are labeled with the abbreviations XRS (Christus = Christ) and ECCLA (Ecclesia = Church). Christ covers His Bride with His cloak and their cheeks are intimately pressed together at the exact center of the tri-radiant halo so they share the Sign of Deity, suggesting the full presence of Christ in His Church and the fulfillment of God's promise to make all believers "partakers in the Divine nature" (2 Pet 1:4). I have little doubt the scribe thought it providential the initial "O" naturally accommodated an optimal representation of the union of Christ with His Bride embracing within an unbroken circle like a wedding ring. This shows not only how illuminated manuscripts unite form with meaning, but also that such is an essential characteristic of the Wheel. The theme of the book that closes the circle of Cycle 1 is itself best represented by a closed circle, so that the historiated "O" – produced nine centuries before the revelation of the Wheel – enlightens its whole structure and reveals it to be nothing less than a God given illuminated manuscript, fully integrating its content with its form (BW book pgs 40, 178).

The table below lists a few of the primary thematic correlations between the Song of Songs and the Apocalypse. The paired verses in the third row form a KeyLink as discussed in the Synopsis (BW book pg 367). Almost every commentary on the Song of Songs ends by linking its last verse "Make haste, my beloved" (Song 8:14), with the penultimate verse of Revelation: "Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus!" (Rev 22:20). Could there be a more fitting correlated conclusion to these two books on the last Spoke of the Bible Wheel?

CYCLE 2 - ACTS: Birth of the Church and Consummation of the Jewish Age

The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen: To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God: And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.

When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.

Acts 1:1ff (Spoke 22, Cycle 3)

The Book of Acts is the last of the Five New Testament History Books. It is the premier book of historical consummation second only to the Apocalypse on the third Cycle of Spoke 22. Its dominant theme is the express fulfillment of everything declared by "all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after, as many as have spoken" (Acts 3:24) in the life, suffering, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, His exaltation to His Throne in Heaven, His outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the consequent birth and world-wide expansion of His Church, His Kingdom on earth that will never end. It is the penultimate historical climax of the whole drama of redemption that prefigures the final consummation at the end of time in the Apocalypse. It reveals the historical meaning and purpose of the Jewish Age and everything written in the Old Testament, all of which is summed up in the one and only "name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:12) – THE LORD JESUS CHRIST – the Name above all names, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and Omega, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who is revealed in all His glory in the final book (Rev 19:16).

As is typical of the supreme literary style of Scripture, the opening passage quoted above lays out the primary themes of the whole Book of Acts. It begins with the "promise of the Father" that came to fruition on the Day of Pentecost:

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Acts 2:1ff (Spoke 22, Cycle 2)

This event transformed common men – including fishermen, a political activist, and a tax collector who were called "ignorant and unlearned" (Acts 4:13) – into powerhouse witnesses of the Risen Lord of History (ΑΩ/את) who then "turned the world upside down" (Acts 17:6) with their proclamation of His victory over sin and death and enthronement in heaven "on the throne of his father David" (Luke 1:32). On the morning of Pentecost, empowered now by the Holy Spirit, Peter preached his first sermon and declared the glorious fulfillment of the multi-faceted Promise of the Father of which he had just received so abundantly:

Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him [David], that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne; He seeing this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he saith himself, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, Until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

Acts 2:30ff (Spoke 22, Cycle 2)

The manifold promise included a host of connected events, including the resurrection of Christ, His ascension to His Throne in Heaven, the forgiveness of sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Has there ever been such a day since? Could anything compare with Pentecost? It is the birthday of the Church, the Bride of Christ, the day God's Kingdom came to earth!

Peter's audience was a diverse crowd of Jews from all corners of the known world that had come for the Feast of Pentecost because it was one of the three feasts the Lord had commanded all Jews to attend in Jerusalem (Deut 16:16). The Holy Spirit gave them a sign only the willfully ignorant could deny when He put His Divine Words in the mouths of over one hundred of His disciples to proclaim the "wonderful works of God" in every language spoken by the Pentecostal pilgrims. This foreshadowed His guiding Work that fills the rest of the book, which has been called the "Acts of the Holy Spirit." Its chapters record the geographical progress of the Gospel, precisely following the sequence Christ revealed in its opening passage, quoted at the head of this section:

• In Jerusalem (Acts 1-7): All the action of the first seven chapters is set in this city.
• In all Judaea and in Samaria (Acts 8-12): The first verse of the eighth chapter marks the transition from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria: "And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles." This is a valuable lesson of how God uses the actions of evil people to accomplish His good ends. In effect, God used the persecution to kick the first believers "out of the nest" of Jerusalem to spread the Gospel world-wide.
• Unto the uttermost parts of the earth (Acts 13-28): These remaining chapters record the dispersion of the Gospel throughout the rest of the known world. The explicit transition to the Gentiles is recorded in Acts 13:46ff: "Then Paul and Barnabas waxed bold, and said, It was necessary that the word of God should first have been spoken to you: but seeing ye put it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. For so hath the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth."

David Brown explained the relation between the Gospels, Acts, and the Epistles in his entry on Acts  in A commentary, Critical and Explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments:

This book is to the Gospels what the fruit is to the tree that bears it. In the Gospels we see the corn of wheat falling into the ground and dying: in the Acts we see it bringing forth much fruit (John 12:24). There we see Christ purchasing the Church with His own blood: here we see the Church, so purchased, rising into actual existence; first among the Jews of Palestine, and next among the surrounding Gentiles, until it gains a footing in the great capital of the ancient world – sweeping majestically from Jerusalem to Rome. Nor is this book of less value as an Introduction to the Epistles which follow it, than as a Sequel to the Gospels which precede it. For without this history the Epistles of the New Testament – presupposing, as they do, the historical circumstances of the parties addressed, and deriving from these so much of their freshness, point, and force – would in no respect be what they now are, and would in a number of places be scarcely intelligible.

The Book of Acts is the capstone of the continuous thematic flow from Genesis through the entire Old Testament and Gospels. It is a book of consummation twice told; once in its record of the actual historical fulfillment of God's Plan for the Jewish Age in the Work of Christ and subsequent birth of His Church at Pentecost, and again in its didactic recapitulation of the primary events in the entire Biblical history leading up to that consummation. The extended sermons of Peter (Acts 2-3), Stephen (Acts 7), and Paul (Acts 13) all follow a similar pattern of recapitulating the history of Israel and declaring its fulfillment in Christ. In his first sermon, Peter explained the outpouring of God's Spirit in terms of an apocalyptic passage from Joel that began with "it shall come to pass in the last days." He concluded with the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Christ's exaltation to the right hand of God from Psalm 110: "The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, Until I make thy foes thy foot-stool" (Acts 2:34Rev 3:21). His second sermon was no less apocalyptic, speaking directly of the restitution of all things at the end of the age (Acts 3:21Rev 21:5):

But those things, which God before had shewed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.

Acts 3:18ff (Spoke 22, Cycle 2)

In his two sermons in the second and third chapters of Acts, Peter cited or alluded to (in this order), Joel, Psalms, Samuel, Deuteronomy, and finally, just before closing with the covenant God made with Abraham that "in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed" (Gen12:3), he summed up the whole Old Testament in one sentence:

Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days.

Acts 3:24 (Spoke 22, Cycle 2)

Peter's recapitulation of history was, in keeping with his brash style, somewhat disordered compared with the sermons of Stephen in Acts 7 and Paul in Acts 13 where they systematically reviewed all history from its beginning in Genesis to its fulfillment in Christ. The table below lists the books of the Old Testament they quoted or alluded to in those two chapters. For the most part, both sermons follow the order of the books of the Bible since they simply retell its innate historical sequence, highlighting the prominent points relating to the consummation.

Taken together, these two sermons include citations from fourteen books of the First Covenant and give a panoramic view of the whole course and purpose of Jewish history, beginning with their progenitor Abraham. Stephen's sermon is the longest, spanning fifty-two verses of the seventh chapter of Acts. Paul's is about half as long, covering the same ground in twenty-four verses. Of the seventy-six verses in their combined historical review, only five are out of sequence with the canonical order of books. Those are marked with an asterisk in the table. The similarity of the two sermons is not surprising given that Paul (then Saul) was present at the stoning of Stephen (Acts 8:1) and so almost certainly was in the audience that heard his sermon leading up to his martyrdom. It may well have been what lit his fire to persecute the fledgling Church.

Once again we have come full circle, both thematically and geometrically (BW book pg 40). The Circle of Time and the Circle of the Bible simultaneously close in the Book of Acts with God coming to dwell in the hearts of His people. The Triune God directed all history to its fulfillment in that day. The Father gave the promise and the Son sent forth the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:33). Time and Eternity met in historical anticipation of the final consummation – the Marriage of the Lamb – revealed in the Apocalypse (Rev 19:7). As Gordon D. Fee explained, "Salvation is 'eschatological' in the sense that final salvation, which still awaits the believer, is already a present reality through Christ and the Spirit." The Church birthed by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is "a thoroughly eschatological people who live the life of the future in the present as they await the consummation" with the Spirit Himself being the "eschatological fulfillment" of God's promises "who both reconstitutes God's people anew and empowers us to live the life of the future in our between-the-times existence – between the times of Christ's first and second coming." Fee aptly described this as the "already/not yet" eschatological framework that defines the essential theological core of the apostolic Epistles which sprung from the fount of Pentecost. And the witness is this: The original disciples of Christ beheld the "ends of the world [age]" (1 Cor 10:11). They knew with certainty that "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son" (Heb 1:1f). This is why Peter opened his Pentecost sermon with the apocalyptic/eschatological passage from Joel "it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy" (Acts 2:17f). Yet the coming of Christ and the Spirit was only the beginning of the end. The Church continues to live "between-the-times" awaiting the final consummation. This "already/not yet" end-times tension evokes the cry of the Bride (the Body of all Believers) that jointly closes the first and last books on Spoke 22, "Make haste, my beloved!" – "Even so, come Lord Jesus!"

The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost was the final installment of the "promise of the Father" initiated in the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and His exaltation to "the right hand of God." This is the eschatological heart of the apostolic witness. And just as Scripture declares "Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets" (Amos 3:7), so it is that the whole connected sequence of events from the sacrifice of the Lamb of God on Passover (1 Cor 5:7) to His Resurrection on Firstfruits (1 Cor 15:20) and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost were all typologically foretold in the plainest possible language in the Seven Feasts of Israel (BW book pg 47, see below):

• The Promise of Forgiveness of Sins: Sealed by the Death of Christ (Passover)
• The Promise of Eternal Life: Sealed by the Resurrection of Christ (Firstfruits)
• The Promise of Eternal Fellowship with God: Sealed by the Holy Spirit (Pentecost)

The true miracle of these prophetic feasts is that God fulfilled them on the exact days they were being celebrated by the Jews. He ordained the Feast of Passover on Nisan 14 as a perpetual memorial (Exo 12:14) of Israel's deliverance from bondage in Egypt He wrought through the death of the Passover Lamb. This was the most significant day in the entire prophetic drama of redemption historically enacted with blood, sweat, and countless tears by the Jews. Jesus revealed its true significance the night before His Death when He instituted Bread and Wine as the perpetual memorial of His saving Work on the Cross (1 Cor 11:23ff):

For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come.

Passover initiated the seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread that began the next day (Nisan 15). It corresponds to the first full day that the sinless Lord Jesus – the Bread of Life – lay buried in the tomb. In general, leaven is a symbol of sin that corrupts, and unlike every other body ever buried, the unleavened body of the pure and holy Lord Jesus "saw no corruption" (Acts 13:37). The Feast of Firstfruits followed on the first Sunday after Passover, the day the Lord rose from the dead (Mat 28:1). God ordained for this day that the priest to wave a sheaf, a bundle including both stalk and head called an omer, from the first of the harvest (reshit haqatzir, Lev 23:10) as a representation of the promise of the anticipated harvest and its dedication to the Lord. The New Testament explicitly declares it to be a type, or pre-image, of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, saying "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept" (1 Cor 15:20).

Pentecost, also known as the Feast of Harvest (Hag HaQatzir, Exo 23:16), completed the cycle of Spring Feasts that began with Passover. It commemorates the fulfilled promise of harvest affirmed at Firstfruits. Its agricultural setting gave rise to one its primary typological overtones, the harvest of souls into the Kingdom of God. Jesus used this metaphor when He sent out the Seventy saying "The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest" (Luke 10:2), and again as a metaphor of the gathering of all souls belonging to God into His Kingdom at the end of time in His parable of the Harvest where He flatly states "the harvest is the end of the world" (Mat 13:39). This figure appears again in the Book of Consummation when the Angel is commanded to "reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe" (Rev 14:15). These images are fundamentally eschatological; just as the end of the Jewish age and the "already/not yet" fulfillment of the Father's promise came in the Book of Acts, so the final consummation comes in Revelation. The correspondence continues; the end of the Jewish age coincided with the beginning of the Church age, just as the end of this age will initiate entrance into God's Eternal Kingdom (Rev 21:1). In the Bible, an End (Tav) always leads to a new Beginning (Aleph). Death died in the resurrection of Jesus Christ (Rom 6:9). Hallelujah!

The five New Testament History Books span the fulfillment of these prophetic feasts and connect them as a unit. The first four books, the Gospels, record the fulfillment of the first three feasts in the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The fifth book, Acts, records the fulfillment of Pentecost. God connected it to the previous feasts by setting its date as the day after completion of seven sabbaths (a week of weeks) from the Day of Firstfruits. It was on the fiftieth day (50 = 7 x 7 + 1) and so in Greek was called Pentecost, meaning fiftieth. God used this Pentecostal pattern on a higher scale when He ordained every fiftieth year as the Year of Jubilee when a trumpet would sound and everyone would "proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof" (Lev 25:10). This adds to the fullness of the already super-saturated symbolism of Pentecost, for "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (2 Cor 3:17). Pentecost is the Jubilee of God's Spirit!

The whole structure of the Jewish religious calendar is based on interplay of the Numbers One and Seven. Two main events, the Spring Feast of Unleavened Bread in the first month (1) and the Fall Feast of Tabernacles in the seventh (7), start on the fifteenth day (7 + 7 + 1) and continue for seven days (7). They are exactly six months apart, to the day, and so are diametrically opposed on the circle of the year and again we behold the perfect symmetry of the Law of the Lord. The end of the whole cycle is marked by a "holy convocation" on the eighth day (7 + 1) after Tabernacles (Lev 23:36). This all follows the basic covenantal pat-tern of 7 + 1 seen in the law of circumcision (Gen 17:10) where entrance into God's Covenant occurs on the eighth (= 7 + 1) day. This returns us, of course, to the first day of the week (and of Creation) on a higher level. New beginnings! The Octave! The Number Eight therefore came to be a symbol of entrance into the New Covenant as seen, for example in the octagonal baptismal fonts common in Christian Churches since ancient times.

Yet for all this we have only begun to fathom the endless wonder of God's glorious Plan of the Ages. The fulfillment of the feasts is the apex of a host of prophecies centered on the New Covenant, most notably Jeremiah 31:31ff:

Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they broke, although I was a husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

The covenant "they broke" was the covenant God made at Sinai when He gave the Ten Commandments in Exodus (Spoke 2, Cycle 1). As an aside, its alignment with the New Covenant promised in Jeremiah (Spoke 2, Cycle 2) forms a profound Spoke 2 thematic link (Exo 20:1ff <> Jer 31:31ff) based on the fundamental Bet KeyWord b'rit (covenant, pg 143). Paul explained the relation between these two Covenants in terms of the Work of the Holy Spirit who writes God's Law on the hearts of all His saints (2 Cor 3:2ff):

Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone [like the Ten Commandments], but in fleshy tables of the heart [as promised in Jeremiah]. And such trust have we through Christ toward God ... who also hath made us able ministers of the new covenant; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

This is the promise of the Father fulfilled at Pentecost. Jeremiah's marriage metaphor – "I was a husband unto them" – exemplifies the covenantal essence of marriage based entirely on promise and faith. God used similar language in Hosea's prophecy of the New Covenant (Hos 2:18ff):

And in that day will I make a covenant ... And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the LORD.

In both Jeremiah and Hosea God promised that we would "know the Lord," which Christ de-fined as the key to eternal life (John 17:3). This amplifies the marriage metaphor, for when a couple consummates their marriage they are said to "know" each other. This is its "Biblical sense," as when Adam knew Eve and she conceived (Gen 4:1). Thus Adam used the covenantal word cleave (davaq) when God presented him his wife Eve, saying a man shall "cleave to his wife" just as we are commanded to love the Lord and cleave unto him all the days of our lives (Deut 30:20). Unfortunately, space prohibits even a cursory glance, let alone an exegesis, of all the Scriptures touching on the Marriage Covenant as a symbol of God's relation with His People and how He wove these threads into a bridal tapestry of unparalleled beauty on the Twenty-Second Spoke. Such could easily fill a large book.

In sum, the Day of Pentecost, the defining event of Acts, was the birthday of the Church, the Bride of Christ. She is revealed allegorically in the Song of Songs (Cycle 1), seen rising to her place in history in Acts (Cycle 2) where she occupies herself with the Work of God while anxiously awaiting the consummation of her Eternal Marriage to her Bridegroom prophesied in the Book of Revelation (Cycle 3). This is the consummation of God's Plan of the Ages.

CYCLE 3 - REVELATION: Christ Receives His Bride, Consummation of All History

And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.

Revelation 21:5f (Spoke 22, Cycle 3)

Revelation is the ultimate Book of Consummation. It simultaneously closes the thematic and geometric circles of the Bible even as it seals the whole with a Sevenfold Seal of Perfection (see The Bible Sealed with Seven Seals, BW book pg 50). But as it closes, so it opens in the sense indicated by its name Apocalupsis denoting an unveiling, uncovering, or revelation. Opening and closing, beginning and ending are united in the Apocalypse where God declares "It is done" even as His previous proclamation "Behold, I make all things new" still rings in the Throne Room of heaven. Everything in the last book centers on its first words, THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST. He is the true purpose and central character of the all Scripture, and so it is with absolute perfection of design that all Scripture closes with the opening of heaven and the revelation of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Rev 19:16). Such is the Wisdom of God.

Revelation is the supreme Book of Signs and Symbols. Its 404 verses contain at least 400 allusions to elements drawn from the first sixty-five books of the Bible. W. Graham Scroggie, in his excellent synopsis of the whole Bible, The Unfolding Drama of Redemption , filled six pages of fine print listing 280 references to the events, persons, types, symbols, and metaphors found in just the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament. The table gives a tiny sample from Cycle 1, space prohibits listing them all. Revelation is truly a Divine symphony of Biblical symbols. Its melody is the Song of the Beloved, the Lord Jesus Christ. A thousand harmonics ring from its every note, evoking memories of all that God has taught us along the long, long road of the history of the world. It is a true Paradise for all who love to meditate in the Holy Word, unifying everything revealed in the sixty-six books. It is the ultimate demonstration of the multifaceted Wisdom of God; an inexhaustible treasure house that unlocks the true vision of the whole Bible as the revelation of the Lord of History . By Divine design, it suggests worlds within worlds of manifold interpretations, which is how God evokes a response from the highest faculties of our souls. Nothing less would suffice for the Vision from Eternity held within its finite pages.

The true wonder of the Bible Wheel is that almost all of its elements have been both recognized and commented on by countless scholars over the span of centuries. For example, I could not have written a more precise description of the Apocalypse than this by Simon Kistemaker in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society :

The Revelation of John is the capstone of Scripture. It is a concise summary of the history of redemption that points to the consummation of time. In total it has some 278 allusions to the OT. The teachings of this book reveal a glorious unity, a progression of thought, and perfect agreement with the entire Bible. When the last book of the NT was composed, nothing could be added to God's written revelation. His written word has been completed in the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments.

Just as the Franciscan tradition sees the last letter Tav as representing the "fulfillment of the entire revealed Word of God" (BW book pg 38), so now we see the literal fulfillment of the entire revealed Word of God in the last book and its full thematic and geometric integration with the last Hebrew letter! Furthermore, scholars throughout the ages have noticed the profound thematic and theological integration of Revelation with the Song of Songs, an association that is amplified beyond all measure in the geometric alignment of these two books with each other and the final Hebrew Letter! This is the Work of God. This is the revelation of the Bible Wheel.

Aleph Tav: The Capstone Signature of God's Word

We began this journey into the unified geometric heart of God's Word with the surprisingly simple act of "rolling up the Bible like a scroll" on a spindle Wheel of twenty-two Spokes, corresponding to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet (pg 23). This led immediately to a host of "unanticipated correlations" such as the synergistic compounding and compacting of the four archetypal symbols – the Circle, the Cross, the Alphabet, and the Number Seven – in its large-scale structure, aptly described as sevenfold symmetric perfection (BW book, pg 52). Chapter 4 of the Bible Wheel book - For Glory and for Beauty - reviewed its relation to the prophetic theological art of traditional Christian iconography and its ultimate significance as the very Seal of God bearing the Sign of Deity in the form of the tri-radiant cruciform halo generated by the distribution of the seven canonical divisions on its three Cycles. The first part of this chapter reviewed the integration of the primary themes of the books on the first and last Spokes with the symbolic meanings of Aleph (Commencement) and Tav (Consummation). It is, therefore, an incomparable wonder, having come full circle after traversing such a vast domain, to find the first words of Christ in the last book returning us again to the alphabetic origin of the Wheel of God's Word:

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

Revelation 1:8 (Spoke 22, Cycle 3)

This title identifies Christ as the Living Word of God who created all things, as it is written later in the same Book, "his name is called the Word of God" (Rev 19:13, BW book pg 39, see Aleph and Tav, First and Last). It is a Divine Title, revealed by God Himself, and it seals the Bible on multiple reiterative levels; first as a natural symbol of wholeness and completeness, second as a symbol of Eternity, and third as a symbol of the Word, with all these overtones being combined, compacted, pressed down, and shaken together into the ultimate symbol of the Complete Perfection of the Eternal Word of God. It is revealed only in the Apocalypse, and so the Last Book seals the linear sequence of the Sixty-Six Books with the declaration "It is done. I am the Alpha and Omega." Its Hebrew form – Aleph Tav – likewise seals the circular matrix of Sixty-Six Books and combines with the bilateral symmetry of the Canon Wheel, thereby "rightly dividing the word of truth" (2 Tim 2:15, BW book pg 246) between the first and last Spokes (pg 33).

This Seal of God's Word – – is itself a Divine Title not dissimilar to His eternal memorial name I AM THAT I AM (Exo 3:14). But it is more than just a title, and the Letters Aleph and Tav are more than mere symbols – they combine to form a number of Hebrew words that reveal the true nature and origin of the Bible Wheel, chief amongst them being את (ot) which carries the meanings listed in the table. This word appears nearly a hundred times in the Old Testament, first in the fourfold description of the purpose of the heavenly lights made on the Fourth Day (Spoke 4, BW book pg 169):

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs (ot), and for seasons, and for days, and years:

Genesis 1:14

It next appears in Genesis 4 when God placed a mark (ot) on Cain to protect him from being slain. God used it a third time when He established His Covenant with Noah, symbolized by the rainbow:

And God said, This is the sign (ot) of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign (ot) of a covenant between me and the earth.

Genesis 9:12-13

It appears a fourth time when God made His Covenant with Abraham (Gen 17:10f):

This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a sign (ot) of the covenant betwixt me and you.

Genesis 17:10-11

This word is deeply associated with God's covenants and His miraculous saving acts. The blood of the Passover Lamb was the sign that protected the Israel from death (Exo 12:13), God gave Moses miraculous proofs that He had sent him (Exo 4:5), and He freed them from Egypt with "great signs and wonders" (Deut 6:22). And of utmost significance, this is the word that God chose when He gave the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 of the miraculous birth of His Son who bears the Sign of Eternity :

Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign (ot); Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

Isaiah 7:14

Immanuel, God with us! This brings us to the heart of the Gospel which, like the Bible that declares it, is encompassed by the Letters Aleph (Beginnings/God) and Tav (Consummation/Cross). The very word for a miracle is itself a miracle that coherently derives its meaning from the symbolic power of its Letters: את (ot) = A Sign (ת) from God (ת)! The Lord engraved this symbol in the Capstone of His Holy Word. It governs its entire structure even as it proclaims a host of Divine Signs with distinct yet harmonious voices. It produces a symbolic symphony declaring the Eternal Nature of God, His Authorship of Scripture, its Perfection from Aleph to Tav, and its own self-reflective meaning as a Divine Sign. If you are not dizzy yet, it probably means you need to slow down and meditate on what has been said. How is it possible that human language could even express these ideas? They touch the highest heavens and yet remain as simple as ABC, 123. We are gazing into the absolute perfection of the Infinite Intelligence of Almighty God! Yet there is more; the Sign of God - את - also proclaims the essential core of the Gospel, the greatest miracle of all time:

For God [Aleph א KeyWord Elohim] so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son [on the Cross = = ת] that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

John 3:16

Jesus Himself used the word sign when He prophesied His death upon the Cross:

But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Matthew 12:39-40

Here sign is from the Greek semeion, whence Semiotics, the science of signs and symbols. It is used for את (ot) in Greek translations of the Old Testament. This returns us to the opening (and defining) passage of the Apocalypse where God used its related verb:

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified (semaino) it by his angel unto his servant John:

Revelation 1:1

This brings us full circle yet again. The last book on the last Spoke declares itself to be a Book of Signs, using the Greek word that specifically corresponds to את. It then reveals its Divine Author by the Greek title that also specifically corresponds to את. And all of this is exactly what we would expect in a Divine Book specifically designed upon את!

When God joined Aleph to Tav and sealed His Circle of Revelation, a kind of nuclear fusion occurred that unified the whole and ignited it into a blazing synergistic sun of fiery symbols. In a literal nuclear fusion, physical elements such as hydrogen, helium, and so forth are brought into close proximity by the sun's powerful gravitational field. This forces them to interact in ways otherwise impossible, fusing new elements from the originals even as it generates the Light of the World. In the same way, the Bible Wheel brings together three primary elements (Books) on each Spoke and catalyzes their interaction with the corresponding Hebrew Letter. This Divine Fire produces a ceaseless conflagration of new insights into the Holy Word. Indeed, from the moment of its ignition we saw the very Sign of Deity shining from its sevenfold symmetric perfection. New and wondrous insights continued to effortlessly burst forth, culminating in the discovery of God's Divine Title – – reiteratively engraved on multiple levels in its structure so that that Wheel declares from within itself, by its very nature, that it is a miraculous Sign from God את (ot)! The Divine Unity of this revelation makes it self-reflective, self-descriptive and self-authenticating. It bears its own proof (ot) in the structure of its body, and all of this, from beginning to end, is based on nothing less than the very Signature of God that He Himself revealed in the Final Book.

This one word – את (ot) – reveals the full Divine integration of the Hebrew Alphabet, the Hebrew Language, the Bible Wheel, and the Gospel message. It is all one! When God closed the circle of the Bible, He fused Aleph with Tav and brought forth its sevenfold symmetric perfection. And just as the Capstone Signature , signifying the alphabetic core of the Wheel, is explicitly revealed in the Last Book, so also is its sevenfold Seal of Perfection there revealed in the symbol of a book sealed with seven seals:

And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon. And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof. And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth. And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne.

Revelation 5:1-7

This passage played a central role in the design of the presentation in the Bible Wheel book. I had been struggling for some time to find an introduction to the Wheel that would make it intuitively obvious I had not "done anything" myself to produce the pattern. The solution came when my wife Rose was meditating on Revelation 5 and noticed a footnote that said the "book" was probably a scroll. The Lord quickened her imagination, and she saw the Bible "roll up like a scroll" in her mind's eye. This is the origin of the metaphor that has proven so fruitful (BW book pg 16). It also is a key to the Capstone Prophecies (pg 391).

We have yet to exhaust the manifold meaning of Aleph and Tav. As mentioned above, they combine to form other words that relate to the structure of the Wheel. The most common, et, is a derivative of ot that functions as a grammatical sign to mark the direct object of a verb. It first appears at the exact center of the seven words of Genesis 1:1 where it marks heaven as the direct object of God's first creative act:

As a grammatical marker, et is peculiar to Hebrew and so is not translated. It appears again as the sixth word to mark the earth as the other direct object of God's creative act. There it is prefixed with the Sixth Letter (Vav) which is how the conjunctive "and" is written in Hebrew (pg 197). A closely related meaning of et is to mark out words for special emphasis with the implication that the essence or totality of the thing is in view. This is common knowledge amongst both Christian and Jewish commentators, as noted by Adam Clarke in his commentary on Genesis 1:1  (1826 AD):

The word eth, which is generally considered as a particle is often understood by the rabbins in a much more extensive sense. "The particle," says Aben Ezra, "signifies the substance of the thing." The like definition is given by Kimchi in his Book of Roots. "This particle," says Mr. Ainsworth, "having the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet in it, is supposed to comprise the sum and substance of all things."

This rabbinic tradition interprets Genesis 1:1 as "In the beginning God created et – Aleph Tav, the Essence of Everything – that is, the heaven and the earth." This further coheres with its etymology, as Ernest Klein explained in his Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language where he traced it back to the ultimate root meaning of ot as "a noun in the sense of 'being, essence, existence'." This means that the Seal of God's Word carries the idea of essential existence. The closing passage of the story of creation exemplifies this meaning:

And God saw everything (et-kol) that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished (kalah), and all the host of them.

Genesis 1:31-2:1

The phrase et-kol is formed by combining et with (kol), the standard Hebrew word meaning the whole or all. It is spelt with the same consonants (vowel points were not added until the 10th century) as ot-kol, the sign of everything, which coheres, of course, with the precise topic of the passage. This then reveals the true essence of the alphabetic core of God's Word. Following the arrow from the center of the figure eight, we pass through the Letters Aleph Tav Kaph Lamed, and see that et-kol is formed by symmetrically interweaving these two diametrically opposed words on the Alphabetic Circle. This means that the Sign of Everything is symmetrically spelt out in the defining alphabetic core of the Bible Wheel, which amplifies yet again its power as a symbol of the all-encompassing Word of God. This is the never-ending wonder of the Theological Art that God has so skillfully engraved in His Capstone.

This then leads directly back to the primary Spoke 22 theme of the consummation of God's Plan of the Ages. In the verse above, God used the Kaph KeyWord kol in conjunction with its cognate kalah which means to complete, to finish, to bring to an end. Except for vowel points, this word is identical to kallah which denotes a bride or spouse. This is the Divine Mystery of the Hebrew language; God based the word for a bride on the idea of completion to prefigure the ultimate purpose of all creation, as it is written "and they two shall be one flesh, this is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church" (Eph 5:32f, pg 73). Note that Kaph is diametrically opposed to Tav on the Wheel (pg 277). And precisely as we would expect, the word kallah appears frequently in the Songs of Songs, specifically in the passages leading up to the point when the Beloved and His Bride consummate their marriage, which is marked by the phrase "I am come into my garden":

Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse (kallah), with me from Lebanon: look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards. Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse (kallah); thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck. How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse (kallah)! how much better is thy love than wine! and the smell of thine ointments than all spices! Thy lips, O my spouse (kallah), drop as the honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue; and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon. A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse (kallah); a spring shut up, a fountain sealed. Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard, Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices: A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon. Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits. I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse (kallah): I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.

Song of Songs 4:8ff (Spoke 22, Cycle 1)

Without knowledge of the Gospel, the phrase "my sister, my spouse" might seem a bit "off key" in this most Holy of all Songs. But in light of the Biblical typology of Christ as both our Brother (Heb 2:11) and our Husband (2 Cor 11:2), it sings in perfect harmony with the rest of the Scriptural symphony. This is the consummation of God's Plan for the Ages:

Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God.

Reveleation 19:7f (Spoke 22, Cycle 3)

Yes, let us rejoice! Let us sing praises unto our Father who "hid these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes" (Luke 10:21). Praise His Holy Name now and forever! Make haste, my beloved! Come Lord Jesus!

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