This is the main story of my account with 137 and how I eventually (26 years later) tied it back to a true biblical meaning that has now changed my life and hopefully for others as well.

In late October/early-November 1990, my grandfather was diagnosed with terminal cancer and passed away a few weeks after the diagnosis. The events relating to his death are amazing and in 2016, I confirmed that the sequence of events tied directly to God, without a doubt and beyond any reasonable or skeptical coincidence.

My grandfather and I shared the same birthday, May 26. He was born May 26, 1914, I was born May 26, 1970. We had an interesting bond through this. He was a very private and humble man, probably the most humble human that I’ve ever known. We were with him during the last week of his life and stood by his bedside in his home when he passed away. Several years before, I had given him an old wind-up bell alarm clock, likely for Christmas. Here is a picture of that clock.

I’ve always had a fascination for clocks, even as a child, still do today. My grandfather proudly displayed this clock on top of his console television. He didn’t have to keep it there as there was an electric clock that was plugged in and hung on the wall right above it.

A few days before he passed, this old wind-up clock had run down and stopped. I specifically remember picking it up to wind it and then consciously put it back on the television, purposely not winding it. It was a noisy little thing and I thought the ticking might drive us a bit nuts as we were trying to keep it quiet for my grandfather who was lying on a hospital bed in the living room as he was on hospice.

During the day that my grandfather passed away, I could measurably see his decline, in blood pressure as well as his breathing. After a terrible and painful night before, he never regained consciousness. As his time drew near, we all surrounded his bed and watched him take his last breath and I saw his last heartbeats through his gown. It was the first time that I had ever seen anyone die.

At the very moment of his passing, my dad shouted, “Look at the clocks!” We looked over and instantly saw that the stopped wind-up alarm clock and the running electric clock were precisely the same time, not a single minute different. My grandfather passed away on November 26, 1990, exactly 76 years, 6 months, 0 days at precisely 1:37 PM.

The skeptic would say that there’s a 1/720 chance of this happening (60 minutes x 12 hours) – however, that was completely blown away earlier this year by seeing something I totally missed while looking closely at a picture of the clock and I’m sure now that one could not calculate any form of reasonable amount of probability that this is just a coincidental event. The stopped clock that coordinated with the death of my grandfather is an event that has forever changed my life. I still get those little goosebumps and chills when I think of it.

I always thought of that event as “well, I know there’s more to life than this, I just don’t know what it is or what it means.” Unfortunately, I was only able to recently understand the deeper significance of it. From 1990 until 2016, 26 years, I would wake up at night, precisely at 1:37 AM, sometimes 4-5 times each week. The moment I finally understood the message, I stopped waking at that time, near instantaneously. I now call this “God’s Beacon”, once the message was finally understood, He turned the beacon off. I do see it once in a while now and I’m excited when I do. It’s a reminder that He’s still there. So, why 1:37 AM instead of 1:37 PM? In my opinion, it has a bigger and memorable impact and God was intent on me recognizing it and eventually understanding His message.

Listening to Pastor Troy Brewer on the radio in 2016 of how God can sometimes speak to us through numbers, gave me an idea to search biblical scripture. Pastor Brewer mentioned that perhaps the numbers you are seeing relate to a scripture in the bible. This is something that I never thought of. Truth is, while I believed that God existed, I didn’t really read the bible or even pretend to understand much that was in it. So, a little Google searching and I tied 1:37 back to the only scripture that this would make sense to, Luke 1:37 – “For with God nothing shall be impossible”. In my heart, I felt that I was on the right path. To me, this particular scripture tells me everything I really need to know. This scripture can stand alone and be taken out of context as it tells a story by itself in just a few words. The occurrence of my grandfather’s death at precisely 1:37, the same time of a clock that previously stopped, it all seemed “impossible” – of course, the scripture just answered it.

Here’s the really interesting part that blew away any amount of skepticism and doubt. This message was validated by what I saw in 2018, two years after I had made the connection. I was looking at a picture of the clock on my computer and noticed something peculiar.

If you look closely at the clock, you’ll notice the model name on the face, “Gabriel”.

Well, guess who said Luke 1:37, “For with God nothing shall be impossible”? Gabriel is only one of two (good) angels named in the bible. The other is Michael. Gabriel is also known as “God’s messenger angel”. When I saw this, I remember thinking to myself, “are you serious?” Did I really just see this? Wow!

There are other events happened during my grandfather’s passing that again go beyond coincidence. These series of events cover the birth and the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ, too long to explain here in this post and will be expanded on in other posts. There have been many other events within my life that I could now correlate to God’s communication and sometimes intervention.

Interestingly though, I haven’t exactly walked a good path of righteousness with God over the years and I definitely never felt deserving of worthy of God’s attention or forgiveness, but I’m forever grateful now for what I’ve experienced and I’ve made positive changes.

I haven’t been “religious”. I don’t really care for that term. I feel “religion” puts God in a man-made box with a set of man-made rules and rituals and sometimes has man’s motives and sometimes corruption in mind instead of God’s purpose – and unfortunately, those things pushed me away from God for a very long time.

There’s possibly more to this 137 than what I can understand too. There’s not just the Divine aspect to it that I personally experienced but also fits the scientific world too, which will be expanded upon in other posts too.