Do you think the numbers come from the lighthouse, or do you think they were put there after the numbers were associated with each candidate?

it is the lighthouse? at least that's how I see it.

jacks number in the cave is 23 and it was in the lighthouse so I'm gunna say the lighthouse dictated the candidates and jacob acted on that.

I would guess that Jacob put them there. I have a big long theory on the names and crap that I'm way too lazy to type because A) it probably makes no sense outside of my own head and B) it would be a 3 page essay

I guess maybe.

Eh, I dunno about that. If that were the case then when smokey tells Sawyer that Jacob has a thing for numbers it doesn't make as much sense. Makes more sense that Jacob simply assigned them the numbers after they were picked (perhaps they're possible solutions to the Valenzetti Equation) or that Jacob himself chose them and wrote down their names and then assigned them the numbers.

but wouldn't it make sense that over time the lighthouse showed 360 different people and as jacob brought them to the island or whatever caused them to fail as a candidate they were scratched off. So now that all the candidates are either on the island or have failed everything is coming to an end for jacob and he doesn't care about the mirrors anymore. And maybe "someone" is a higher power then both jacob and smokey and jacob needs to show the work he's done once the final candidate is found? I dunno

Well, the lighthouse is a 360 degree dial with one name attached to each degree which points towards that there are exactly 360 predetermined candidates that are going to come to the island in predetermined "clumps" or else the odds of just adding names overtime that *happen* to fit a 360 degree dial is waaaaaaaaay too coincidental for Lost.

Its possible that the dial gets filled up and once all the 360 names are scratched off another 360 are added and who knows what dial they're on. So I think its hard to say that just because the dial is almost all scratched off that things are indefinitely coming to an end.

I'm not sure if there will be a higher power than Jacob/Smokey, but I could see them going that direction. It will be interesting to see who exactly is coming to the island - so many possible directions they could take, but if I had to guess I'd say it will be someone we have never seen before or, a more far out guess, is it will be a boat of kids from the other timeline (Jack's son, samurai guy's kid, claire's baby, Sun's baby, Sawyer's kid)

EDIT: Something else I just thought of that is huge and hasn't been addressed is when Locke/Ben go to visit "jacob" in the cabin when Ben was just talking to no one and then stuff started flying around and later Ben confesses that he had no idea what was going on.

So you can see a bunch of names when Hurley is moving the dial and next to 108 is the name "Wallace" and is crossed off. So I guess it will be someone we've never seen before, or at least I can't remember anyone named Wallace. There's also a few other names on the dial that aren't crossed off yet and I have no idea who they belong to. It took a bit to pause it on the right frame, but it looks like number 60 is someone named Kysea and 61 is Davies (or Davzes or Davtes can't really tell) and also 56 looks like it isn't crossed out but can barely make out the name (haasea or haasid something).

And why is Jack's name written in something different from all the other ones?

Also, who is going to be David's father? Will it still be his same ex-wife from the original timeline or will it be someone like Juliet since they're still all connected in the new timeline.

Lostpedia seems to have a pretty comprehensive list of names:

http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Candidates