So, I have never been a fan of watching and listening to the “numbers.”  Sadly some of this comes from all the testimonials that I have slugged through on people seeing 1111: 11:11; 666s; 234, etc.  Many of these “mini-prophecies”  have not come true. 

However, the number of 234 used in our Sunday’s message peaked my ears!   And not for the reason that you might think!  Bob King my minister was unpacking Josiah and his life and he was intrigued with how Josaih did a major repair of the temple.  He then went backwards through the kings and discovered that the last time the temple was repaired was 234 years!  WOW! 

Then Pastor Bob challenged our church…what year would it be if your subtract 234 for our year 2010?  And I wanted to stand up and scream 1776!  (Thanks to Five Doves, I already knew the answer)  WOW again.
 
That is of course, where my pastor stopped with the prophecy angle, because our church does not talk prophecy. Sad. 

But let me pick up the line.   Bob did proceed to challenged us to think how a building built by George Washington would find itself in HUGE disrepair if not consistently repaired over 234 years.  AGAIN WOW!  What a mess the temple must have been in!  Let’s scratch the picture of a physical building and think of the moral state of America.  Now tie that in with the current state of the church that this country is founded on and boom, you have that same image as the condition of the Temple back when Josiah found it.
 
Couple interesting thoughts that might be important:
 

                Joash was the previous king that did a major repair and was young when he became king.

                Josiah was also young when he became king.

                Both of these kings came after very wicked kings (Josiah’s dad lived a short two years, but it was his grandfather Manasseh that was extremely wicked)

 

OK, so, does it stop there?  Well, I am not learned enough in prophecy to make the jump, but it seems that the imminent rebuilding of the 3rd Temple being 234 (probably, but not certain) years from the founding of the USA could be an interesting story line.

 

Either way, this was an interesting use of “234.”  Maybe my story can be filled in by another Dove; one of the amazing things that can happen with this awesome forum.
 

Spoely
  

PS:  I connected with Pastor Bob after the service and quickly brought up the above to him.  He seemed mildly interested.  However, when I tried to also deliver the message that there were 44 kings of Israel and Judah, before they came to an end and we are on #44 of US Presidents, I lost him.  Then, I could see the “you are nuts” in his eyes…