Claim. The 360-homes target of Home Church is not an arbitrary numerical goal but a principled number whose factorization encodes the entire scope of providential history, geography, and time.
Elaboration. SMM unpacks the number’s symbolic loading: “Home Church is an altar of 360 homes. The significance of 360 homes is that they symbolize a numeric value. The number 360 is a principled number and contains within it all the numbers of numerical significance. The number 360 is an expansion of the number 36 … The number 36 is 12 added together 3 times, and 12 is the result of multiplying 4 and 3 together … The number 360 includes the concept of three dimensions. It signifies the four directions of north, south, east and west … It contains the four seasons of spring, summer, fall, and winter, and includes the 12 months of the year. It even includes the 120 nations” (CSG 13.2 §4.1, 105-158, 1979.10.14). The numeric structure recapitulates the Old/New/Completed-Testament 36 Couples and the global-nation count. Skipping the 360-home altar nullifies the principled significance: “If you do not decide on the 360 homes of the Home Church altar, the principled significance disappears, and it cannot become the conditional altar that would allow spirit world to return to earth.” The number is therefore a condition, not a metric.
See also. home-church, providence