(Music annoying you? Sorry about that but it seems to perfectly capture the mood of this article! To switch off the player, scroll to the bottom of the screen to find the midi player. Sorry, but on 'Opera' 'Netscape' and 'Firefox' you will be lucky to hear any music!).
A few years ago a one-time Washington Post and Wall Street
Journal reporter (and confirmed agnostic) Michael Drosnin sent
shockwaves through the media world. Announcing his discovery of a
higher intelligence who/which encoded the Hebrew Bible-with
secret codes. He proposed that these codes are so complex, so
mathematically advanced, that no human mind could have authored
the code. The codes reveal the names and events of the
future.
His book, "The Bible Code" became an overnight best seller, for
13 weeks on the N.Y times bestseller list and in nine countries.
It is being translated into many different languages at the
moment. In his introduction of his book, he writes that he is
reporting on this phenomenon in exactly the same straight forward
fashion as he would if he were reporting on a police beating or
from a corporate boardroom. It has become a major attraction in
Israel, (Jerusalem Report, Sept. 4, 1997) and has taken Israel by
storm. The Orthodox Jews are supposedly using the book to convert
secular Jews to orthodox Judaism. On the other hand Many
mathematicians are supportive of ELS. Two members of the Israel
Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the US National Academy
of Sciences and a winner of the McArthur Award. Other supporters
are members of the Knesset (Israel's Parliament). Some even
compare this discovery to the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo,
Newton, Mendel and Pasteur (Bible Review).
The code is composed of words spelled out by skipping equal
numbers of letters through the original Hebrew text. This
phenomenon is called ELS-Equidistant Letter Sequences--words with
equal jumps of spaces between each letter. Drosnin took the
Hebrew text to Eliyahu Rips who then took the entire Hebrew
Bible, eliminated all spaces and punctuation between the words so
that there is only one continuous strand of letters throughout
the Torah. Drosnin claims he was restoring the Bible to its
original form (which was without punctuation). You take this long
line of 304,805 letters that make up the Torah and arrange them
in an infinite number of computer configurations. For example, we
could take the entire Torah and configure it into a long "scroll"
of 10 lines only--which would make each line 30,480.5 letters
long. On a computer, we can make our scroll with as many lines as
we want--100 lines would mean there would be 3048 letters on each
line (except, perhaps, the last). 285 lines would make each line
1069 letters long, etc.
Now one searches for a predetermined set of words These words--
--were found in proximity by activating the computer to hunt for
such ELS words--starting with sequences of skips of 1, 2, 3, 4,
up to 10, then 20-50 letters etc. Code words can be found with
number skips into the thousands. Its all in ratio to the set
formulae one determines.
All of this is nothing new to Judaism. In 1958 Rabbi Weismandel
noticed that if he selected sequences of equally spaced letters
in the Hebrew text he could find words or phrases such as hammer
or anvil. He called these "Equidistant letter sequences" (ELS for
short). Although he had no way at the time to determine if these
were just coincidences from an enormous amount of combinations of
words constructed by searching out mathematical progressions in
the text. Once the computer age came and mathematical
computations were able to be calculated by advanced computer
software, hidden codes are extracted. walaa! Praise
science!
Yet we can go even further back in history to what the Rabbis
call Kabala. According to Jewish tradition this is of unknown
origin, Rabbis have claimed for centuries that the Torah contains
all knowledge and there is a "hidden text" in the Torah (Five
Books of Moses) which they believe is as old as the Torah itself.
When it was written it was there. Specifically Gematria which has
to do with secrets hidden but found in the text by using
mathematic methods of counting letters by different spacing.
Secret meanings and phrases from the Scripture in Jewish
mysticism are derived from calculating their numerical values
thereby one can understand the secrets of God. It is also known
as ‘Remes’. In Zohar, Kabbalistic interpretations of
numbers is common practice but this can be traced back to the
occultic practice of numerology which is of a Pagan origin.
Then Vilna Gaon, an 18th cent Rabbi in Luthuania, was considered
a child prodigy and one of the most brilliant men of Jewish
history wrote, "all that was, is, and will be unto the end of
time is included in the torah...not merely in a general sense,
but including every species and of each person individually, and
the most minute details of everything that happened to him from
his day of birth until his death. "
Ivan Panin, a Christian Mathematician from Russia worked out
recurrent patterns of the alpha numeric values of the numbers 6
and 7 from the Greek and Hebrew texts decades ago. Some
independent researchers in the early 1980’s at the
Technion, in Haifa, Israel, began doing computer assisted number
pattern recognition.
Twelve years ago, Doron Witztum, whose area of study is in modem
physics and general relativity, began looking for hidden word
patterns in the Torah. He enlisted the cooperation of world
renowned mathematician, Dr. Eliyahu Rips, Associate Professor of
Mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Rips developed
the mathematical system for measuring the statistical
significance of the results. (Both men are Orthodox Jews and
believe the Bible is of divine origin.)
Statistically Rips can, by mathematical formulas determine
whether the ELS words extracted from the Bible by computer are
only random coincidences or can be statistically proven to be
deliberately encoded by a Higher Power or intelligence.
Mathematically, the odds are so small for it to "just happen". He
states theoretically there is no limit to the amount of
information that could be encoded. At least 10 or 20 billion
combinations and permutations are possible. If you start from 1
and never stop day and night, it will take you 100 years to count
up to 3 billion. "And he claims that that is only the first and
crudest level, "We don’t have a powerful enough
mathematical model to reach it" It is probably less of a
crossword puzzle and more like a hologram."
Witztum and Rips enlisted the help of Yoav Rosenberg who created
the computer program that could search the letters of the Torah
for hidden codes. Together they began to make what seemed to be
astonishing discoveries of hidden information which could never
have been extracted until this generation--with the aid of a
computer. In their now famous experiment, they took a sample of
34 renowned Rabbis and wrote out their names, dates of birth or
death, taking the information from the Encyclopedia of Great Men
in Israel, for the sake of uniformity and objectivity.
What their computer turned out for them stunned them. It found
the names of all 34 Rabbis plus their date of birth and/or death
encoded in the letters of the Torah. They took a second list of
32 Rabbis, and performed the test again. Similar results. They
used a copy of War and Peace, which is of similar length, as a
control text and attempted to find the same Rabbis encoded there.
Negative results.
According to Drosnin, in the Rips-Witztum experiment the odds
for finding the information on the Rabbis by random chance was I
in 1,000,000. (Ibid. p22) Drosnin interviewed Israel's most
famous mathematician, Robert J. Aumann, who is a member of both
the Israeli and the U.S. National Academy of Science. Aumann
reported, "The science is impeccable. Rips' results are wildly
significant, beyond anything usually seen in science. I've read
his material thoroughly, and the results are straightforward and
clear. Statistically it is far beyond what is normally required.
"Rips' results are significant at least at the level of 1 in
100,000. You just don't see results like that in ordinary
scientific experiments. It's very important to treat this like
any other scientific experiment-very cold, very methodical. You
test it, and you look at the results." (Ibid., p. 43-44)
According to Drosnin, Aumann had been skeptical. "It goes
contrary to all my training as a mathematician, and even the
religious thinking I've come to be comfortable with," he said.
"It's so different from anything known to science. There has been
nothing like it in all the hundreds of years of modern science."
On March 19, 1996 Professor Aumann told the Israeli Academy of
Science, "The Bible code is an established fact." (Ibid.)
The most dramatic point of Drosnin’s book: On September 1,
1994, he flew to Israel with a letter which was then
hand-delivered by a mutual friend to the Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin. The letter read: "An Israeli mathematician has discovered
a hidden code in the Bible that appears to reveal the details of
events that took place thousands of years after the Bible was
written. The reason I'm telling you about this is that the only
time your full name--Yitzhak Rabin--is encoded in the Bible, the
words 'assassin that will assassinate' cross your name." This was
in the text of Deut 4:42 (The Bible Code, Simon & Schuster
p.1) Rabin refused to see him, and on Nov.4,1995 Rabin was killed
by an Israeli student.
What convinced him all this was real ? The day Rabin was
assassinated, Journalist Drosnin became a believer-Not in God,
but-in the authenticity of a code hidden in the Torah which gives
future historical information. This can only be found in the
original Hebrew text spoken to Moses and not in any other
language version or any other book. This code is a series of
overlapping crossword puzzles. During his research the next few
years he discovered a growing number of related-subject words in
close proximity that he believed to speak of known historical
events which took place thousands of years after the Bible was
written.
For example, for 'President Kennedy', they found, 'to die' and
Dallas. The Oklahoma bombing was written, 'terrible frightening
death, there will be terror', even Timothy McVeigh is in there
with the hour of the bombing. Day 19/ on the 91 hour/ in the
morning/ Murray building. Even Bill Clinton and Netanyahu elected
in Israel and the Gulf War.
He reports that every major advance in modem technology appears
to be recorded in code by pairs -for example, Wright Brothers/
airplane; Edison/ electricity/ light bulb; Marconi/ radio. The
two scientists who defined the universe for the modern world are,
he says, found with the following descriptions: Newton/ gravity;
Einstein/ science/ he overturned present reality. Drosnin claims
that even musicians, artists and playwrights are found encoded:
Beethoven/ German composer; Rembrandt/ Dutch/ painter;
Shakespeare/ Macbeth/ Hamlet/ stage.
To make things far more intriguing, the computer must count from
right to left, (as Hebrew is written,) or from left to right, or
from up to down, or from down to up, or from upper left to lower
right, from upper right to lower left, from lower left to upper
right, or from lower right to upper left. Up down sideways at
angles maybe it will be backwards next. The Bible, then becomes a
giant crossword puzzle, something that God never intended to
write.
They then submitted a paper, "Equidistant Letter Sequences in
the Book of Genesis," to the prestigious quarterly, Statistical
Science. The journal then gave the paper, as is their standard
practice, to scholars and referees who checked the experiments
carefully. (A copy can be requested: Statistical Science [ISSN
0883-4237], Vol. 9, Num.. 3, Aug, 1994. 3401 Investment Boulevard
#7, Hayward, CA 94545).
Robert Kass, the editor at that time, wrote in the journal that
those referees were "baffled' by the Israelis' submission. Their
prior beliefs made them think the book of Genesis could not
possibly contain meaningful references to modern-day individuals,
yet when the authors carried out additional analyses and checks,
the effect persisted. In August 1994, Statistical Science
published the paper. In the three years since the Rips-Witztum
paper was published, no one has submitted a rebuttal to the math
journal. (TBC p.31).
Howard Gans, a senior cryptologic mathematician at the Pentagon
(code-breaker) with 28 years of experience from the U.S. national
security Administration heard about the Bible code, and decided
to investigate. He is an Orthodox Jew and knows Hebrew. He
figured he would prove it a hoax. He wrote his own computer
program, and checked out one list of the Rabbis and then the
other. His computer program found the same information, but he
could not believe it. The data was correctly matched which seemed
to rule out random chance.
He decided to look for entirely new information. "If this was
real," said Gans, "then I figured that the cities where these men
were born and died ought to be encoded as well." In his 440-hour
experiment Gans checked not only the names of the thirty-two
sages Rips used, but also thirty four others from an earlier
list, checking all sixty-six against the names of the cities. The
results made him a believer. "It sent a chill up my spine,"
recalled the Pentagon code-breaker. The cities also matched the
names of the sages in the Bible code. ( p.23)
Its been long known that a certain spacing in Isa.53 does spell
out the name Jesus and this one you don’t have to go into
the computer for. In the same manner one can take the first time
the Hebrew letter T appears in Genesis, count 49 more letters and
repeat this three times the result is you spell Torah ,Torh minus
the a vowel. This can be repeated in Exodus the same, do it in
Leviticus it doesn’t work. But if you take the first letter
of the name of God Jehovah when transliterated in English use the
consonants for the Hebrew name of God and the vowels of the
Hebrew word for Lord, count 7 letters, repeat this three times
and you have the Tetragrammaton.. If you go to the book of
Numbers and you count 49 letters you have the word Torah again
but backwards facing the Jehovah of Leviticus. Same for
Deuteronomy. What does this all mean? Too much of something
can prove absolutely nothing. In Lev.23:15 we are commanded
to count 49 days from Passover to celebrate Pentecost on the 50th
day. This commemorates the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai.. The
significance of 7 letters to spell God's name. The Sabbath is the
7th day it is a sign signifying God created the universe. Simple
isn’t it ! This is a pretext spiritualizing method for
literal words, this is what Gematria is about. While there are
certain numbers with significance in the Scriptures, this method
is not the secret to finding these out. One can with enough time
and calculations find almost anything applied to any number when
any type of possibility is accepted.
IS YESHUA IN THE CODE?
The question is: Is Yeshua's name, is it in the Bible code? Yes!
But that is the problem. The name Yeshua appears in ELS over 100,
000 times--on every single page and on every single passage.
(Jesus Codes: Uses and Abuses Part Two. Source:
(http//www.cybermail.net/-codes/yeshua2.htm)
According to Rabbi Daniel Mechanic-- who claims to be objective
when it comes to scientific statistics--one can find Yeshua in
ELS thousands of times in any Hebrew text anywhere. His name can
be found "encoded" in a Hebrew newspaper, or a Hebrew translation
of a Woody Allen book. Because they are recurring random letter
arrangements, they are not statistically significant.
'…Mechanic reveals they found "Yeshua" overlapping "false
prophet." "Navi shecker" twice in the book of Genesis, with both
"Yeshua" and "Navi shecker" at the same skip distance."( SCP
newsletter 2:3 p.13) If we are to take these codes as accurate
information it would destroy what is made plain in the Scripture.
What are we to make of all this? If it proves events and people
then are we to accept this proof of Jesus? In essence, these are
not codes. In languages there is consistent strict rules to
follow. There are no rules to follow to come to the conclusions
the code trackers have. They are finding accidental patterns that
appear everywhere in any Hebrew text. Rabbi Mechanic says that
since there are 304,805 letters in the Torah, there are a
possibility of 30 billion four-letter ELS in the Torah--if all
the possible skip sequences are used.
For one to devise a numeric pattern that can reveal cryptic
messages and prophecy is not all that hard in Hebrew. Since the
Hebrew alphabet has no vowels only consonants it becomes easier
to make words than from using other languages like Greek or Latin
or even English.
The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters in it. Therefore there are
234,246 possible different four-letter combinations
(22x22x22x22). It is calculated that, on average, each
four-letter Hebrew 'word' or combination of four Hebrew letters
will appear approximately 130,000 times in the text of the Five
Books of Moses.
However, the word "Yeshua", spelled yod- shin- vav- ayin, has
two of the most common letters in the alphabet--the yod and the
vav. Therefore the word Yeshua appears in ELS over 100,000 times
in the Torah alone--meaning that each of these ELS have no
statistical significance--that is the scientific
word--statistical significance when found by itself That is,
unless mathematically it can be proven that statistically
significant related words are arranged or encoded in close
proximity.
Dave Hunt and T.A. McMahon report "The fact that Yeshua Shemi
(Yeshua is may name) is found encoded in Isaiah 53 and Dam yeshua
("the blood of Jesus") appears in Leviticus has been hailed by
some evangelicals as the greatest discovery and most convincing
proof ever revealed. Unfortunately, researchers have subsequently
demonstrated that using the same methodology "The blood of
Mohammed" and even "the blood of David Koresh" are also found in
Leviticus and many additional times through the Torah.(Berean
Call newsletter Feb.1998)
Certain books promoting the "Yeshua Code" state that because
Yeshua appears so many times, it proves that God put them there
on purpose--in other words, they are not there as random
"accidentals" simply because of the vast number found. I am
willing to bet that if one took what is written here, one would
find code in it and this certainly does not prove that what is
written is from God!
Because there are hundreds of billions of ELS in the Torah,
virtually every conceivable word or phrase will and does appear
hundreds of thousands of times as an ELS. (The Hebrew language is
written without vowels and one can combine letters to create
random words more easily than in western languages.) For all this
to be true one must prove that the ' ELS was deliberately
inserted in the text and is not a coincidence. Their claim is
that this can be accomplished through statistical
probabilities.
Now before we run out and show all this to the skeptics and
atheists we need to consider some statements more seriously.
While the claim is no one can extract the information in advance
without knowing it first, obviously this is not the case.
Drosnin claims you can’t predict tomorrow, yet he did (or,
believed that he did) for Rabin's murder. When asked on the Oprah
Winfrey Show whether, since this is in the Bible and is
predictive, can it be changed or not, his response was that no
one knows for sure whether its predetermined or only a
possibility. He claims he found in the code the kobe earthquake
in Japan.. He finds a comet hitting Jupiter, and he willingly
admitted on p.140 of his book a big earthquake with fire in LA in
the year 2010. But this is only a possibility of the future. He
is a firm believer of man determining his own future. How is this
even possible if famous people and events are in print. This
means he could never have prevented Rabin's murder. But surely
all of this is just a confusion of approach?
Right now the new craze in Hollywood is Kabala which is Jewish
mysticism, last year it was the 'Course in Miracles'. Despite
Hollywood actors such as Kirk Douglas and Jason Alexander hosting
seminars on this, not everyone is so quick to jump on the
bandwagon as some Christians have been here in America. Rabbi
Shlomo Sternberg, a Harvard Mathematics professor, told Time
magazine that Drosnin's book is complete nonsense, likewise
computer Professor Dr. Brendon Mckay of the Australian National
University who said that Rabin's "prediction" in Deut.4:42 could
read 'Assassin who will be assassinated'. Even the discoverers of
ELS Rips and Witzum are critical of Drosnin's methodology and
findings. Doron Witzum writes "I myself as the original
researcher of the phenomenon of the Torah codes, investigated
thoroughly the question of predicting the future. I reached the
conclusion that it is impossible…. There are several
reasons why its impossible. The basic reason is that in general,
we always have difficulty understanding a text where we
don’t have any syntax or punctuation." In the plain Hebrew
text of the Torah, without punctuation, I could easily read 10
Commandments as telling me to steal and murder. There’s a
verse that describes Moses being commanded to bring incense. I
could easily read it as a commandment to use drugs.
But it is McKay who has been one of the Bible code's strongest
critics. "He has been notably successful in reproducing the
"code" phenomenon in other works than the Bible. As just one
example, McKay was the one who found the now infamous
assassination predictions in Moby Dick. The cornerstone of
Drosnin's book, The Bible Code, is his finding of the supposed
prediction of the assassination of Yitzak Rabin . In a Newsweek
interview, Drosnin made the claim that if anyone can find
assassination predictions in other works besides the Bible, he
would essentially, shut up about the Bible code. Mckay responded
by finding no less than 9 similar "predictions" in the text of
Moby Dick. (As reported in SCP newsletter 22:3 p.4 by John
Winston Moore)
If one looks hard enough, one can find key numbers in the
dimensions of the Empire State Building or the Egyptian pyramids;
Remember this was started by the founder of the J.W.’s. one
can find 'prophecies' embedded in the writings of Nostradamus. ..
The real test to predict the future is to make it plain to
everyone - not have secret knowledge that is left up mostly to
the interpreter.
Statistics can be extremely subtle, and those fooled best are
those who desperately want to see something in the shadows
without considering the true light!
This is no different or even more accurate than trying to
understand the future and find the Gospel by the stars.
Questions that need to be answered;
(1) When the phrases were found in the text, were they all found
on the first attempt or were variants on vocabulary and spelling
tried? Were other alternatives pursued once they failed to come
up in exact names or spelling ? For example, if "Sarah/Abraham"
was not found, would this be considered a failure or would
"Sarai/Abram or Sarah/ Abram " have been searched for or other
similar combos ? If "stone/water" was a failure, would
"rock/water" have been pursued or Christ/rock ? How many word and
phrases were rejected by the seekers until satisfactory words
were made?
(2) When other texts were tested, was the process identical to
that used for Genesis texts? Why is this not consistently found
in the other books of the Bible if they are all inspired?
Especially the prophetic books since they are the words of the
future?
(3) Was the method used to calculate the astronomical odds
against finding so many word combinations flexible? We find a Yes
to this, we find Rabin's name could have had a different vowel
making it Robin and several other ways since their are no vowels
under the letters in Hebrew. This leaves it open to many
different interpretations and left to be manipulated by the
seeker.
Were words pairs found that were untruths such as "water/dry" or
"Yahweh/ liar", "sky/ below"? Are there contradictions found that
oppose the plain reading of the Bible? Are there accurate dates
of when and where they lived in the code that coincide with the
Biblical record or do they contradict?
A Rabbi who teaches on the codes in a Rabbinical school with the
aim of converting secular Jews to Orthodoxy, responds that
Reverend Moon's name (Heb. mem-vav-nun) is coded into the Torah
many more times than Yeshua--. Does this 'prove' the claims that
Rev. Moon's mission (the 'Moonies') to take over where Jesus
failed is true? The names Koresh, Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna, etc.
found in accidental ELS all through these Biblical books hundreds
of times.
"Mohammed was found 2,328 times, Krishna 104 times, and Koresh
2,729 times in the Torah, using skip sequences up to 1,000
letters." (Reported in the Berean Call Newsletter D.Hunt T.A.
McMahon )
What I see in all this is a revival of divination like tarot
or the Ouija board that is authenticating itself through high
technology that can in no way be of God. God communicates to man
by his Word. You may as well go look for pictures in the
clouds to receive information than to mathematize words and
letters to tell you something, while ignoring a plainly written
text!
Recently the movie, The Omega Code, has promoted the codes to
the public. Now there is "Unlocking the Bible Codes" on computer
CD by Compworks. So now everyone can get involved in looking for
"the secrets hidden from the foundation of the world". All of
this while people prefer to ignore the clearly written
text! Does this really make any sense??
Num. 12:8 has God referring to his relationship with Moses. "I
speak with him face to face, even plainly, and not in dark
sayings;...".
Isa. 45:19 "I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the
earth; I did not say to the seed of Jacob, `Seek Me in vain'; I,
the LORD, speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.
"
Isa 48:16"Come near to Me, hear this: I have not spoken in
secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, I was
there. And now the Lord GOD and His Spirit have sent Me." This
refutes any entertainment of new interpretations of Scripture,
what is being promoted in the code is decidedly Divination =
Deut.18:9-11, 2 Chron.33:6 Isa.2:6.
Do we go against the literal interpretation of what God has
already spoken to an alternative of reading what is hidden from
the eye of man, revealed by the mechanics of the computer? We are
"learning the future" by secret codes that God has never told us
to pursue. Then the Bible becomes a book of divination!
And "The Word became flesh." The word expresses the
personification of wisdom of God in the OT.. The word is called
truth, Christ is called the Word and is the truth. God
communicated to man in ancient times by his Word through the
prophets but now has communicated to us directly through his Son
who became a man. To try to find the future or facts of
historical and spiritual significance by mathematical codes is
like saying that God's revelation in his Son is not sufficient.
(Heb.1:1-2). God has always warned his people through his Word,
by his Spirit, not by numerical coding deciphered by an
unbeliever! If man needs to live by every word out of God's mouth
and there are hidden codes that we need to discover (or those we
have not yet discovered) then we are unable to live by them.
Would God play such tricks with His people, or would He speak
plainly? The Bible says that He speaks to us
plainly!
And what of the Scripture which says that God has hidden his
truth from the wise but revealed it unto babes?? Lk.10:21. And
what of Paul who writes in 1 Cor.1:20-25 that God made foolish
the wisdom of the world. Does one now have to be a mathematician
or endorse computer technology to understand God's Word when
Christians from all centuries have gotten along quite well
without any of this??
These are all pertinent questions to ask!
Going back to the quote of the Vilna Gaon, an 18th cent Rabbi
who wrote, "all that was, is, and will be unto the end of time is
included in the Torah." It was Jesus that said to the Pharisees,
'You search the Scriptures for in them you think you have eternal
life and these are they which testify of me." God points to His
Son if anyone comes up with a method to read the future or things
which are significant to mankind. If the Son is not honoured, we
can discount much as being 'from God'.
The Torah - the very book they are using - actually forbids
methods to foretell the future which go outside of the given
parameters. God has plainly written a revelation for us
all - not just for computer geniuses! Peter writes "No prophecy
is of any private interpretation." It is sin to look anywhere
else but from God's written Word for future events. No OT
prophet, nor the apostles or Jesus for that matter, suggested
this approach to interpreting Biblical prophecy. God speaks his
prophecy PLAINLY, it is of no private interpretation, which is
what it would be if one needs a code to decipher it. While the
Bible has always given some significance to numbers such as in
the biblical genealogies and numerical values and patterns to
reinforce a textual reading, Gematriya is not used for doctrine.
In Ps. 119, Biblical acrostics are used where the first letter of
the first word of the first passage is the Hebrew letter Aleph
and the first letter of the second paragraph is Beth etc. The
Talmedim (Hebrew disciples) of Rabbi Akiva were able to memorize
enormous portions of the torah using acrostics. So in this sense
they have validity.
Drosnin said, "I am not a rabbi or a priest, nor a Bible
scholar. I have no preconceived beliefs, and only one test--the
truth." He believed in an intelligence that has given us the code
"there is a code therefore there is an encoder" Yet Drosnin also
told TV host Oprah Winfrey :"I don’t believe in God," so
despite all this "proof" of a superior intelligence which even
scared him, it apparently did not lead to him reading the
plain message of the Bible. Is that not very odd? According
to Drosnin, God's 'revelation' was through clusters of hidden
related words which had laid dormant for centuries and were now
found only through the aid of a computer! So, God had been trying
to tell us things, but it had to wait! What kind of a "God" would
that be?? Well, in fairness, Drosnin did not believe in God
although believing in a 'higher intelligence' Which 'higher
intelligence' is that?? But Ps.19:2 says, "The heavens declare
the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork day by day
they utter speech and night to night reveal knowledge."
If they can’t find proof of a Creator from his handiwork
why would they believe in something hidden, for Jesus said "even
if one rises from the dead they won’t believe." As far as
scientific proof I would think its more scientific to read the
prophecies in plain literal language than look for hidden codes
by computer. Knowing the future can clearly be seen by literal
words and events, and if one is not convinced by the way the
Bible is written and read for thousands of years, one certainly
won’t be by high Tech modification or manipulation.
(Please be aware that this article is Copyright
of Let Us Reason
Ministries who have given us specific permission
to use it).
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