His name was Joe

One of the joys of camping is the people you get to meet. Away from the stresses of every day life and among mostly strangers the best in people seems to come out. If you require help, perfect strangers step up. Of course, there are exceptions, but these seem to be rare. There's a sort of animinity available to those who seek it as well. One does not have to give out their real name to others if one choose not to.

While camping last week a gentleman pulled his rig into the site next to ours. It was immediately apparent he was a friendly type. He introduced himself as Joe and shook hands right away. Exchanging greetings is not an unusual occurrence at campgrounds. It's good to establish a relationship with those who will be camping on adjoining sites. Most of the time anyway.

Joe sat up his campsite and came over to visit as my wife and I enjoyed some wine by our campfire. He said he had something to show me. Joe held a small simple calculator and began the conversation by explaining he had something he'd like to share with us. Okay ... I was tired and just beginning to relax, but being a gracious host I agreed to listen.

Joe went on to explain he had prayed to God for an explanation of how the universe was made. I was thinking to myself, O' Lord, not a Bible thumper wanting to share how he came to accept Jesus as his Saviour. Look, I consider myself a Christian. I believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. I just wasn't wishing ti listen to someones come to Jesus story that evening.Well, it turns out Joe wasn't really interested in sharing his come to Jesus moment either.

Joe continued with how after asking God how the universe was made he had almost nightly dreams. In these dreams God made it known to Joe that the secret to the universe and life itself was to be found in numbers. Okay ... now I wasn't sure where this was going. As Joe explained it, God answered his question about making the universe over the course of six months via dreams. Once Joe gained an understanding of the importance of numbers and there ordering, the dreams suddenly stopped.

Now, I readily admit I cannot remember each and every detail shared with me that evening. It was a lot to take in. Some of the basics were that we read left to right but numbers in the heavenly realm are read right to left. Jesus sits at the right hand of the father meaning if we were to look at them God would be on the right and Jesus to his left. Hmm.

He further explained that when we read numbers left to right there is always a zero at the end. That is a decimal point followed by a zero. Joe proclaimed that when reading the numbers in heavenly there was also a zero at the end of every number.

The Joe began a series of calculations on his calculator. I'll share but a couple as a representative of the many he shared. 11+22+33= 66. Now, as Joe explained it, 66 was a very important number as it represented Jesus. 066? I am unclear about that. And I do not know why Joe believes 66 represents Jesus although he stated it was Bible based. Joe also stated he had looked on the Internet for references to what he was discovering and found none. He believed what the dreams revealed to him were revealed uniquely to him alone?

Joe then ran off some more calculations: 11+55+99 = 165 or as Joe pointed out, 66 again. That is take the middle number, 6, as a stand alone and add the two outside numbers 1 + 5 = 6 to produce 66. Again, hmm and ... okay. My interest is piqued, but I'm still not sure where this is going and freely admit to not giving my full attention to all this.

Next came a series of calculations where one could take any number double it(sometimes and again and again), add 10 (one for each dimension) and 1 the number for God. Whatever it was that Joe was doing he kept coming up with the number 1660 and he excitedly explained to me this number represented Jesus death on the cross which was a X shape and not the t shape so commonly used to represent the crucifixion. THIS, I already knew. So, 66 in the middle with 1 representing the person saved that day and the 0 representing the one who died and went to Hell. Why did Jesus go to Hell upon dying on the cross? According to Joe, Jesus went to retrieve the unsaved sheep, the man who did not confess his belief in Jesus while being crucified next to Jesus. This was also "proven" by a series of calculations that saw Joe arrive at the number 1661 demonstrating how things changed upon retrieving the lost sheep from Hell.

According to Joe, while there are 10 dimensions, the devil only exists in one dimension. Of course, there were calculations to prove this as well. And Joe showed how the number 666 represents the devil. 111+222+333 = 666 and so on. And how 777+555+333 = 1665 or 666.

99 represents angels. And there are similar calculations to prove this. Supposedly, an individuals place in the universe can be determined by the number that represents him or her. Birth, spouse, kids, death - all in the numbers. Now, how one was to determine their individual number was unclear to me and I believe to Joe as well. That was one he was still working on.

So, why share this with you? Well, I began to wonder if Joe were a modern day prophet. Or was he a false prophet as the Bible warns us about? Maybe he was a custodian of modern chemicals? I wonder why God brought Joe into my life? I wondered if perhaps Joe could be an angel or ... even Jesus himself. Maybe the devil or one of his demons? So many questions raised from a half hour spent with a stranger at a campground. I don't even know if his name is actually Joe although we do apparently have a mutual friend from here in Lima. I honestly do not know what to think and so, of course, my prayers to God have been for clarity regarding a man named Joe.