153 Connections

1771 words long.

Published on 2024-03-30

Answering Habakkuk

Riddle me,

Riddle me ree,

And I will answer

Your puzzles three.

Three parables hit me within days of each other. I was delighted to find their connection. One is found in Habakkuk, one in John 21 (in the story of the miraculous catch of fish), and the third in Revelation 9 (when the fifth angel blows his trumpet). Only by solving all three could I comprehend any of them. They touch on the delicate balancing act between God’s justice and His mercy.

As I write, it is now November, 2023. I thought this book was finished. I worked on the advertising copy, the cover art, reformatted the book and was almost ready to publish. Then I noticed a fun question on a hermeneutics Q&A website. “What is the significance of 153 fish? The questioner was asking about the miraculous catch of fish in John 21. On the surface, it has nothing to do with the Pillars of Wisdom, the Ten Commandments, or any of the other topics covered in this or previous books. Only after I started researching an answer did I discover that this question has everything to do with these topics. Only because that particular question was posed to me could I discover the marvelous connections between Genesis, Habakkuk, Psalms 34 and 119, Jeremiah 32, Matthew 13, John 21 and Revelation.

The reason this chapter is shoved in here is the connection to Habakkuk, which includes the word “selah” three times. The Lord made me pause before publishing. I thought I was done with Selah, but I was not.

The reason I wrote this chapter now and not before is because I was not ready. I thought I understood Habakkuk well enough, but I didn’t. My understanding of that book was not so much wrong as incomplete. A couple years ago, I turned my attention to Habakkuk and was amazed at what I saw. Its structure was mathematically rich and precise. I had never before noticed the patterns that I now can see. With so many ideas in hand, I composed an outline for a complete book on Habakkuk before returning to the book I was writing at the time, namely Peace. Months later, my iPad locked up and I lost most of my notes on Habakkuk.

I was devastated. I did not think I could ever recover those ideas because I felt inspired when I wrote them. Eventually, I trusted that God had a plan. He did not want me to become distracted by another project until I finished the one I was writing. What I did not expect to learn was that the original inspiration had not carried me far enough. When I returned my focus to Habakkuk this month and tried to recover what I had lost, the new insights that I found were better than those that I had lost. It was premature of me to study Habakkuk then because I was not ready. I needed to master passages elsewhere in the Bible before I could tackle this prophet again. Surely God is wise. If anyone but God caused me to lose so much work on purpose, I would never forgive them!

Now to introduce the second riddle.

Not enough Queens for Revelation 9

I made a mistake. Peace, like Solomon Never Knew presented analysis of the events following the blowing of the fifth trumpet in Revelation 9. There I interpreted the locusts with women’s hair as symbols for the Christian queens of European colonial empires who reigned in the 18th and 19th centuries. Those locusts were to ravage the earth for five months. If the months are converted to days, an interpretation consistent with some Bible prophecies is to equate each prophetic day with a whole calendar year. As proof of this identity, I tallied how many years each queen reigned. Then I showed how the sum in years equaled (to within a fraction of a year) the mean number of days in five months. That mean is computed this way:

365 days x (5 months / 12 months) ≈ 152 days

The flaw was that I overlooked some queens! My list of queens was:

Catherine I of Russia
Anna of Russia
Elizabeth of Russia
Catherine II of Russia
Maria Theresa of Austria
Victoria of England

I overlooked these queens:

Maria I of Portugal
Maria II of Portugal
Isabella II of Spain
Wilhelmina of the Netherlands

There is a sound reason for including the first set of queens and rejecting the second. The second reigned over nations that maintained neutrality in World War I and that event factors into the prophecy. However, the additional caveat weakens the argument and exposes its flaw. The “five months” of Revelation 9:5 ought to match a single, consecutive set of years, not a sum of overlapping queen’s reigns. I do not recall such a way of measuring time as being employed in any other Bible prophecies. It felt like a stretch. Fortunately, there is a better way to arrive at “five months” which still supports the choice of queens for locusts. I only discovered that solution by accident, while studying another Bible event that lasted exactly five months: Noah’s Flood. Why was I looking into the flood? Because of Peter’s fishing trip.

Fishy Business in John 21

The first part of John 21 concerns the fishing trip.

After this Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and he revealed himself in this way. Simon Peter, Thomas (called the Twin), Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.

Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment, for he was stripped for work, and threw himself into the sea. The other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards off.

When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it, and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead. (John 21:1-14, ESV)

This story is as full of meaning as the disciples’ net was full of fish. Before we tackle the meaning of the number 153, let’s establish a few of the connections between these books.

Connection to Habakkuk. The prophets often speak of the wicked catching their innocent victims in a net, or God doing the same thing to the wicked. No chapter in the Bible speaks more about using nets, dragnets, and hooks to trap people than does Habakkuk 1. When Jesus turns the apostles' nets into tools of miraculous grace, we shall see that this is an answer to one of Habakkuk’s complaints. Somehow the meaning of 153 is tied up in nets, boats, fish and water.

Connection to Revelation. The book of Revelation is so named because it reveals the true power and divinity of Jesus Christ. This chapter of John speaks of Jesus revealing himself to his disciples in verses 1 and 14.

Connection to both. Habakkuk, Revelation and John 21 all speak of the shame of nakedness. In Habakkuk 2:15, it is the wicked who entice their unsuspecting neighbors via drunkenness into shameful behavior. In Revelation 3:17-18, it is the church of Laodicea that is chastised for thinking itself clothed in righteousness when instead it is naked. And in John 21, Peter had been stripped while fishing but makes sure to dress before approaching the Lord. Collectively we see the fool trapped into exposing his nakedness, the fool who thinks himself clothed when he is really naked, and the humble man who knows that he is naked and gets dressed. The possibility that is missing tells us everything.

We can complete the triangle by showing the connections between Habakkuk and Revelation, but first we need to find the meaning of the number 153.

Links to the other articles in this section:

Connections to other books The scope of inquiry is given. The riddle is connected to Genesis, Psalms 34 and 119, Jeremiah 32, Habakkuk, John 21, Matthew 13, and Revelation 9.
Defining 153 Noah's Flood is shown to have lasted precisely 153 days.
Fear 153 is connected to the Fear of the Lord through Psalms 24 and 119, Luke 12 and 2 Kings 17.
Hope Jeremiah connects a related victory number, seventeen (17), to hope. Then the themes of John 21 are connected to Habakkuk.
Habakkuk: Part 1 Analysis of Habakkuk 1:1-4. Habakkuk puts questions to God.
Habakkuk: Part 2 Analysis of Habakkuk 1:5-11. God doubles down: the bitter and hasty Chaldeans are coming.
Habakkuk: Part 3 Analysis of Habakkuk 1:12-2:1. Habakkuk complains with three threes about innocent people caught in a cruel net.
Habakkuk: Part 4 Analysis of Habakkuk 2:2-5. God offers a fourfold assurance to the faithful.
Habakkuk: Part 5 Analysis of Habakkuk 2:6-20. Five woes are pronounced against lawbreakers.
Habakkuk: Part 6 Analysis of Habakkuk 3:1-16. Prophecy of God's coming six-ply war against the wicked.
Habakkuk: Part 7 Analysis of Habakkuk 3:17-19. Six laments over a barren harvest and a seventh praise of God in faith.
The Fifth Trumpet of Revelation The Revelation 9 Plague of Locusts lasts 153 Years.
Habakkuk's War Revisits the sixth section of Habakkuk with a final insight into God's battle plan.