Bible Codes and Prophecy
PROPHECY
Bible Codes
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By Your servant Dan L Baxley
Bible codes can they be trusted? This will be a brief look at this phenomenon, more of a curious look, not something we should hang our religious hat on.
Bible code research began in the middle of the 20th century. There may have been earlier attempts but the Codes are a relative modern invention. One scholar commented that it would have taken a million years to sort out “bible codes” that the modern computer is able to do in seconds. The original researchers went at it by hand and eye but the real Bible Code discoveries came about by a computer program written to match letters into words using what they call ELS , or Equal Distant Letter Sequencing. A word or phrase is entered into the program written for this and the PC begins searching for this word or phrase by matching letters at the determined distance apart until the word or the phrase are found, or not.
This search is through the Hebrew portion of the Bible known as the Torah, or the Book of Laws. In Hebrew there is no spaces between, or spacing, between words. Imagine this page you are reading without any spaces. It was left up to the reader to see the word correctly. The Bible Code software sorts through all of these continuous letters, at certain intervals predetermined by the researcher. So, say, you decided to look for the word “Savior” sorting, or looking, at every tenth letter, or twentieth letter.
Words and names, and phrases have been found that seem to defy logic and seem to be miraculous and point to an author of a divine nature. For some this proves there is a master intelligence, a God, and the book is His Book. The mathematical probability seems to go beyond all probability.
You can find the software on the internet to do you own “sequencing” if you want and you might find it of interest but I would not put too much trust in it. There may be something else going on here, for one thing, it seems really good at picking out things we already know or have experienced. As far as telling the future it is failing miserably.
Its that old thing about seeing how easy it is to pick winners at a sporting event once you have seen the game, but to tell in advance is much more difficult, and this seem to be true with the Bible Codes too. This phenomena seems is also seen in the Ouija boards and other such devices attempting to predict the future. Nearly all of the parlor games, developed by the occult, work on telling the past much more accurately than the future.
The writing of Nostradamus is no exception. It is easy to see how his writings fit with certain events, after they have happened, but before? Sorry, the percentages on future casting is too low to trust.
Once a word or name or phrase is found then you look for something to tie in on the same page.
Here are some examples of events found in the Bible Codes – after the fact:
1. Napoleon/France/Waterloo2. Shakespeare/presented on stage/Macbeth3. American/Revolution/17764. Wright Brothers/Airplane5. Einstein/Science6. Revolution/in Russia/19177. World War/United States/Germany/England/Russia/Japan8. The Twin/terror attack/murders/bin laden
What do all of these have in common? They are all after the fact. Sure, it seems nearly impossible for such predictions, right out of the pages of the Bible. But wait, these are not predictions; these are events that already have happened. There is one event that does seem pretty remarkable and everyone favoring the Bible Codes as the handy work of God point to. It seems a prediction concerning the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin was uncovered and the author of the book, Bible Codes, tried in vain to warn the Prime Minister of Israel about this Bible Code finding. What happened? If the story is true, it was ignored and the Prime Minister was assassinated on November, 1995. This demonstrates a flaw and a danger in this whole business surrounding the Bible Code. The vast majority of findings are pointing back to the past and the few things pointing to something in the future still needs to be interpreted and is subject to the bias of the interpreter. Also, the searcher looking into this will be looking for whatever fits what they have already believe or want to believe. Too many human elements enter into the use of this knowledge and is flawed because of this. The odds are not good, with just the few examples we can see the danger of staking our lives on something not proven. Sometimes we see what we want to see and we work to make the odds work in our favor. There is absolutely not advantage in the using the Bible Codes as our crystal ball. We must not forget our Savior's advice, "...it is an evil and adulterous generation that seeks after signs and wonders..." (Mat 12:39).
Not only the Bible
Professor Brendan McKay, out of the Australian Nation University, took up the challenge to find any other book that could be used like the Holy Torah and find similar predictions. The Bible Code supporters were so confident in their own wishful thinking they assumed this could not be done, after all, they reason, God had put the Codes in the Bible.
Professor McKay took the book Moby Dick and applied the rules of the Codes and came up with a similar assassination prediction, after the fact, however, but still, he says he found several. One such example was the assassination of the India Prime Minister, Dira Gandhi. Others McKay found included Leon Trotsky, Martin Luther King, and President Kennedy. Considering the book, Moby Dick, was written before all of these events it would seem this novel has the same power as the Bible does in using ELS Codes in predicting the future.
Certainly there must be some prophetic codes uncovered that have not happened yet? And there are, some of the future predictions have already come and gone and it is proving really hard for the predictive codes to be trusted.
Here are some more examples of future events predicted by the Bible Codes (researcher) before the fact – some of these times have come and gone, and what is left is Bible Codes in tatters, not reliable, a mere oddity.
1. Great Earthquake/L A Calif/ 5770 = 2010 -- (Opps! Time past – did not happen)2. Earth/Annihilated/5772 = 2012 – (still waiting – update, we are still here, 05-2013 – another missed event)3. The Next/terrorist/Atomic – (The “next”? – When was the first? – Oh, Japan – right, I get it.)
Here is a site you might want to visit for a fuller view of the failed Bible Codes. It is not necessary to provide websites supporting the Bible Codes as they are enumerable and easy to find. Sometimes it is really difficult to get the general population away from fanciful ideas. What is the purpose of the Bible Codes? They say to prove there is a God, and if that is the case then I suggest these researchers and followers are weak in faith, needing the crutch of proof. We will all receive the ultimate proof when our Savior returns.
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/torah.html
Nostradamus was wrong as many times as he was right, or, at least as many times as the researchers of his works could make things fit. The Bible codes are no more accurate than other occultist methods of blessing and cursing. Interesting? Yes, but that should be the extent of it. The prophetic word stands on its own, what is written is written and we really do not need any more. Check the Book of Daniel out and compare its prophetic words and symbolism and you will see it dovetails so exactly with history, up to a certain point, exactly, not partially but exactly. In fact, the prophecy of Daniel concerning the Kingdoms of the world, are so accurate many critics accuse the Book a fake, written after the facts. The problem, of course, is the prophetic vision and plain words of this one Book cover hundreds, even thousands of years. The last part, chapters, of Daniel we hear a message given to him to close the rest of the book up because the latter part is not to be understood until the end days. Of those things in Daniel having already happened, concerning the King of Greece and Persia and the division of his Kingdom into four parts and the details concerning other events are so precise there can be only one answer as to why?
Who needs the Bible Codes? We have Daniel, and when you begin to investigate the Book of Revelation, and some of the prophets, like Joel, and Zechariah, it is hard not to see they are dealing with a future that has not happened yet.
This is all very interesting when it seems like a proof the Word of God is really the Word of God containing all sorts of combinations concerning events that have no worldly influence or meaning. When we can see these finding, no matter how amazing, cannot be depended upon. When we move on into 2013 remember example number 2, above, calls for the “annihilation” of Earth, so from today’s day, July 3, 2012, we do not have much time, do we. We will witness this as another failed Bible Code prophecy.
There is enough, more than enough, Scripture written that we can understand and study to last anyone a life time. Maybe we should not spend too much time with this type of research. Once we see how this can lead into errors it is time to close the book on this kind of speculations and read the plain word, work, and seek to understand it as opposed to some hidden, mystery codes.