Part 1

Just as God refused to stay in a tomb (He was out in three days) He also refuses to be limited to a formula of any kind. Do not limit God by only casting lots, nor by NOT casting them. Remember, God is spelled A-W-E-S-O-M-E.

1st Samuel 4:3-11 makes some worthwhile points regarding the practice of the casting of the lot. I will paraphrase the story of one of Israel's early battles with the Philistines found in 1st Samuel 4:3-11:

The Philistines were an arch-enemy of Israel, often at war with them during this time period. Eli, the high priest, had two sons that were deplorable in their duty to revere the Ark of the Covenant as well as very greedy with the meat of the sacrifices the people were making at the temple. During one battle, Israel lost and 4000 of their soldiers died. The elders met and decided to bring in the Ark of the Covenant so that "it" could save them. The key word here is "it." God is not an "it." They were trying to use the Ark of the Covenant as a lucky charm. Their attitude was way off base. They should never have removed it from the Holy of Holies and brought it to their battlefield. They took a holy symbol and reduced it to a mascot.

Though the Philistines were terrified when they found out that the Israel God was brought into the battle, they fought bravely anyway—and won! Israel lost 30,000 men that day, plus the Ark of the Covenant was taken and the two sons of Eli were killed as well. Obviously, the Ark was NOT a lucky charm at all. The Ark was symbolic of our most high and revered God. It was not God. The sacred act of casting lots is NOT about lucky charms. We mustn't try to bypass the love and reverence we have for God when utilizing this method of communication. We must be humble when we deal directly with Our Heavenly Father. It could be likened to dealing with bare wires in an electric socket—for our safety, first we must "plug into" the high esteem we have for God, and the reverence we have for Him. Otherwise we may get the shock of our lives!

There is an attitude of reverence that must go with the use of this sacred practice of casting lots. It will not be effective unless there is prayer to the Lord, and perhaps even fasting before the lot is cast. I sincerely believe many people won't get this wonderful point, and they will flip coins as they ask poorly thought out questions, with an attitude almost mocking, lacking in reverence to God. The results of this kind of lot casting will be unreliable and possibly even harmful. My prayer is, just as the Lord developed my trust in Him and tempered my technique making sure I always had a contrite and humble spirit, He will do the same for you.

Part 2.

She decided to go ahead and check the two lists and compare what God had said earlier. Surprise of all surprises! In this particular case, God had said Yes to the same addresses He had said Yes to earlier, and No to the same addresses he had said No to earlier. We were amazed and wondered what the chances of that happening were. Eva's sister and brother-in-law were mathematical geniuses, so I emailed them and here are the results of that correspondence. Though we cannot say that there were any particularly positive results from the flyers that were sent to those addresses, we did enjoy a rather nice gift in this statistic, provided by Eva's sister and brother-in-law.

Victor Zarley wrote:

Dear Sue and Roger,
I didn't know how hard the following question might be. I believe it could be answered on a computer, but have no idea what program.

Here is the question regarding the odds of something occurring: I had 9 specific addresses. Tossing a coin for each one, I got heads for 7 of them and tails for 2 of them.

Later, I tossed again on these same specific addresses and got heads for the same 7 and tails for the same 2.

  This is not a general "9 tosses, 2 heads, 7 tails" question but a specific "9 tosses: SAME heads for all the previous addresses that were heads and same tails for the previous ones that were tails". I believe the odds are pretty high against that happening.

  Is this easily obtainable?

  Love, Victor

Actually the odds are 1 / ( 2 ^ 9 ) or 1 over 2 to the 9th power or 0.001953125 for getting any specific combination of heads and tails for 9 flips.

The total number of possible combinations of heads / tails for n coin flips is 2 ^ n.

 1 flip  = 2 ^ 1 = 2
 2 flips = 2 ^ 2 = 4
 3 flips = 2 ^ 3 = 8
 .
 .
 .
 9 flips = 2 ^ 9 = 512

The odds of any getting any 1 of the combinations are 1 over the total number of combinations.

If you want the odds of getting the same 9 flips twice in a row, that's the same as getting a specific 18 flips in a row. It doesn't matter to the odds that the first 9 flips are the same as the last 9 flips.

So 1 / ( 2 ^ 18 ) = 0.000003814697265625 or

1 out of 262,144.

I would like to begin to accumulate your stories of casting the lot before God. Please send them to my attention and we will publish the best stories on this site.

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