MALACHI -Eighth in a series

Malachi 1:13-14 Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it! and ye have snuffed at it, saith the LORD of hosts; and ye brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the sick; thus ye brought an offering: should I accept this of your hand? saith the LORD. (vs 13)
But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto the Lord a corrupt thing: for I am a great King, saith the LORD of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen. (vs 14)

There is an emphasis in the first chapter of Malachi on the name of the Lord. God makes clear that by their disobedience in offering blemished animals for sacrifice, the people and the priests are profaning his name.

Through Malachi God proclaims He is a great king, not feared nor honored among his own people, nevertheless, the heathen do consider his name to be dreadful. Over the centuries there were many occasions for the heathen to see that the God of the Jews was more powerful than any other god.

In the parlance of today's universal language, that of the computer, our God's name is 777. Translated to human language, God alone is sovereign.

When programmers or computer users are "behind the scenes" in the terminal or console of the computer, they can define how any file may be used, if they are the SUDO, the super user. So in this analogy, God is the SUDO in a closed system. A computer buff could present a better scenario than I am about to. I learned these things in free seminars in my city.

The SUDO grants permissions to operate files.

Each file has three possible actions: Read, Write and Execute. As an example, if you are reading this page, you have Read permissions; if you could login and write more on this post or delete it, you would have Write permissions, Execution is only for programs, which are special types of files. Those who have Execute permissions can run programs and define who may execute them.

Each file has three levels of entities who are granted permissions, or not. Each has a User, the person who invented the file; a primary Group, whose name matches the User name; and Other--everyone else.

Separate levels of permissions can be set for the entities. The User can Read, Write and Execute (rwx), or only Read and Write (rw-) etc. The Group, likewise, can do all three or only one, etc. Same for the Other.

With three possible actions on three entities, there are nine permissions on each file— rwx on each of the three entities, u, g and o:

If the User had all 3, the Group had 2 and the Other had 1, the diagram could be, for example: (The dash indicates no permission.)

These permissions are associated with numbers, as part of the operation of the computer system. The associated numbers are Octal, not Decimal. In the Octal system, only 8 numerals are used, 1-7. In Decimal, after 9 comes 1 again, but with a 0, for ten (10)--one 10 and zero 1s. In Octal, after the number 7, we have 1 again with a 0, but this equates to eight (8), so 10 (in Octal) means there is ONE 8 and ZERO 1's.

This relates to the eight possible combinations of permissions that can be ON or OFF:

This logic runs our computers and our world, or so it seems. Since r is 4, w is 2 and x is 1, by summing all together we get 7; or no permissions is 0, only reading is 4, or read and write is 6, etc.

It would be unwise to give full permissions for any file.

And now we consider this paradigm in relation to God's name as 777, the title of this post.

I'm sure I'm not the first to reflect upon these underlying operators, to consider that the meaning of 666 (Rev 13:18) may be that the Antichrist who serves the Man of Sin who will be revealed in the last days (2 Thess 2:3-4), will not be all-powerful. He will seem to be, but beware the delusion. God alone is all-powerful.

The Antichrist will perform great signs and wonders (Rev 13:13), but this is only Reading and Writing, in computer terms. To Execute belongs only to the Lord. This is not a perfect analogy, but helps to remind us of God’s omnipotence.

Do not worry about 666: Worry instead about 777. He is the One who has the power to cast both body and soul into hell. (Mat 10:28). 666 is only a way of saying that the Evil One does not hold all the cards, no matter how things may seem. Do not take his mark; he is only 666.

The name of the LORD is a strong tower; The righteous runneth into it, and is safe. Prov 18:10