Not Bible Codes

Certainly by now, you have already visually scanned or flipped through this website; and, you have glanced at the profusion of diagrams which seem to resemble Bible codes.  But, always remember ‘resemblances can be deceiving’. 

There are enormous differences between God’s true revelations and what is being offered to the public as Bible Codes. The differences are so great that when presenting the material in this website we are hesitant to even use the term ‘Bible code’.  Our fear is the reader might not pay attention to this disclaimer and assume we are involved with bible codes.

This site reveals a new way to study scripture. 

It is a non interactive method wherein God Himself is the ‘Revealer’ and the reader becomes nothing more than a passive observer.   Just look, see and observe. 

We will comment on the revelations and attempt to see if they fit into either Jewish or Messianic positions of faith.  If they do we will try to explain how they do and what are the implications of the ‘fit’.

Our study is about God and is not some fanciful attempt to predict the future. These are teachings about God Alone; His Nature, His Being and His Will as regarding His creation and our human understanding about Who He is and What He wants us to know about Him and His Messiah.   

 As we see it, the differences between this study, which examines several revelations of the Sovereign and Most High God, and the so called proofs of the ‘Bible codes’ are as follows:

1.  computers are not needed

2.  we make no attempt to predict the future i.e., practice
divination

3.  we require faithfulness to the Biblical context across all levels of traditional study, Pashat, Remez,
Drash and Sod.¹

We do not need computers
God's revelations have been there all along. Surprising to most code enthusiasts, Jewish Sages and Rabbis have been ‘mining these embedded and priceless gems’ from the text of the scripture for millennia – without computers! Their tool bags did not include fancy programs and logarithms but rather their tools included patience and a soul refining knowledge of the text which can only be had via a life lived in Love of the Father and absolute commitment to the study of His Word.

Two such contemporary ‘non-computerized miners’ are Yacov Rambsel and Joel Young. I owe a debt of gratitude to both these men for their outstanding work.  Following the traditional methods of Torah study bequeathed to them by their own teachers, each has painstakingly hand counted millions of Hebrew letters in the original texts looking for any patterns which emerge.  Their efforts have paid off as these faithful men have uncovered spiritual jewel after spiritual jewel ‘embedded’ in God’s Word.  Study, faithfulness and love driven efforts, these are the tools of their  trade. 

Throughout history other faithful ones, in every generation, have studied and been blessed to find other soul enlivening evidences which the Almighty One has so graciously placed into His Word, the Holy Bible.

By grace God lead me to realize He placed His teachings into the text in such a manner that any generation could have access to them.  Indeed Rambsel and Young found startling texts containing the Name of messiah by hand counting the skip patterns in the text.  Here is an example of a skip pattern text ( note that the phrase ‘Read the code’ is hidden in the text and is discovered by beginning with letter 1, the R, then taking every 4^th letter in this sentence (we’ve typeset each 4^th letter as bold type for easier reading)

Rips explained that each code is a case of adding every fifth or tenth or fiftieth letter to form a word.  (source unknown)

The above skip pattern is called equidistant letter sequencing, ELS.  Using this method suggests that Rambsel and Young started at Genesis 1, letter 1 and began by checking every 2^nd letter from that point forward looking to see if words or phrases emerge as they go through Torah or the entire Tanach.² They next would check for patterns using a skip of 3 numbers (still beginning at the fist letter of Genesis), then the 4^th letter, then the 5^th letter etc. 

Since numbers are infinite they technically would never stop looking for patterns flowing forth from the first letter in Genesis.  They never would get beyond this first letter.  Actually, I don’t know how they found the things they did, each crediting their findings to hand counting; but, it is safe to say they did not follow the method just described.

ELS is but one of many methods used to see things our God has placed into the text.  For example, here is a significant finding which did not employ ELS at all.  It is called an acrostic.³ Here is an example of a Biblical Acrostic which targets the first Hebrew letter of each of each name of the progeny in Adams line through Seth's lineage to Abram.

(Hebrew reads from right to left, including the names!)

 
The full and startling balance of this finding can be located here:

http://www.bible-codes.org/acrostic_names-code-print-version.htm

Certainly this acrostic is relevant to Adams genealogical tree and as we know from Sunday school, Adams lineage forms the ancestry of the nation Israel, God’s people (those of dust - cf. Gen 2:7) who were chosen by God Himself. 

The point to this example is to demonstrate God has, as a matter of fact, embedded wonderful teachings into His scripture for people in every generation to find.  His embedded teachings take many forms; and,  the one statement which seems to hold true for each of these forms is, computers were never needed to discover the teachings, not in the past and not now.  Gods 'hidden' teachings can be found at any time, in any place by anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear having a true desire to study His Words with a loving spirit and contrite heart.

The method we employ has nothing to do with acrostics or computer based Bible Codes but rather our method is simply ‘letter wrapping the text’.  In answer to the question I am often asked, 'How did I come to do this letter wrapping thing'?  Here is some background information to this study which should answer the question.

Jewish tradition teaches, God dictated the Torah to Moses letter by letter so we know that the each and every letter was important enough to God for Him to do this.  Its reasonable to ask, 'why didn't He simply dictate the Torah word by word to Moses?'  Surely it would have been much easier for Him to do so.  But He didn't do this way.  Apparently, the  exact accuracy of the letters dictated and their arrangement is important to God.  For me this is enough to get me to say, 'it's important to me too'. There must be something about the letters arrangement which would be lost if meticulous care were not taken. In Judaism, there even is an entire theology built around the meanings of the letters and the manner in w in writing one letter, then the next and the next etc. Moreover, even throughout history, Jewish scribes were trained to write the Hebrew letters into the text of the Tanach and Torah in a meticulous fashion enveloping their work in ritual and committing it to prayer.  The Jews teach:

 “There is not a single letter in the Torah on which but a thousand secrets hang.”  Menashe Ben Israel

“Every letter has a soul.”  Moses Cordovero

“Every letter is a whole universe.”  The Maggid of Mezhirich

Indeed, for us, because all this is what is taught and believed, we came to accept the idea that every letter in the scripture is sacred; hence, words do not do justice to the high regard we now give to the very letters which comprise the Hebrew scriptures.  For me such was not always the case.  There was a time when I like so many other gentile believers thought a letter is a letter is a letter.  No big deal.  The idea that God dictated the Torah to Moses letter by letter was unknown to me and like many others I was fascinated by Bible codes. While I was involved is studying Bible codes, I became increasingly aware that the messages claimed were in fact there in the text.  But many of them, especially the prophetic messages were simply incorrect.  How could this be?  How could God embed a prophecy into the text and have it turn up false.  Indeed He would not do it.  So what makes 'Bible Codes' work?  And, more importantly why is it when Yacov Rambsel hand counts the Hebrew letters he, time after time, locates impressive, content rich, texts which reveal the Name of Messiah, His work and His ministry using ELS methods just like the computer coders use? I quickly came to realize there is a fundamental problem with the Bible Codes.  The coders findings only seem to work. The findings of Rambsel are first rate.  A conundrum, what's going on? 

After much prayer and study, God blessed me with the answer.  The text needs to be letter wrapped.  You see, when ELS is employed say, on a skip search on the tenth letter, the results returned would be some word which would be read in a linear fashion.  The apparent grid in which the ELS text shows up can contain entire chapters or even books of the Tanach.  If, however, one letter wraps the sentence on the tenth letter, the word which is returned would appear in a horizontal fashion in a grid matrix exactly like the ones you see elsewhere in this study.  No chapters are skipped and entire books of Tanach texts are not skipped over to return the embedded teaching.  Especially important is the idea that by letter wrapping the text stays in context and can still be read word by word and letter by letter. Also by virtue of this alignment of letters other teachings emerge which often times are astounding.

Letter wrapping produces far superior results as compared to ELS and it was well within the capability of ancient peoples and did not require computers.. 

We make no attempt to predict the future

The most important difference between this work and the Bible codes so-called ‘findings’ has to do with the very allure surrounding the employ of Bible Codes, namely, they promise the possibility of  predicting ALL future events by using computers to de-cipher the text of the Bible. 

To use the God breathed letters of Torah and the Tanach to predict the future is an abominable blasphemy!

 The Old Testament refers to ‘future telling’ as being the practice of ‘divination’; and, this practice is absolutely forbidden by God.

 The Hebrew word for divination is  מקסם ‘miqcam’, meaning, to practice divination or divine the future.  This word shares the same root with witchcraft קסם ‘qecem’.  Future telling is at it’s very root connected to the practice of ‘witchcraft’.  Concerning witches God’s word is clear,

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Exd. 22:18.

also

“There shall not be found among you [any one]…..  …..  that useth divination, [or] an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch”. Deu. 18:10

 Shamefully, the coders also credit God with their false prophetic discoveries.  God forbids this as well,

”Have ye not seen a vain vision, and have ye not spoken a lying ‘divination’, whereas ye say, The LORD saith [it]; albeit I have not spoken”? Ezk. 13:7

 “But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak…,  even that prophet shall die”.  Deu. 18:20

Adding to these sins is the reality the coders are often wrong in their ‘predictions’.  Such is the mark of a false prophet and the penalty one risks to prophesy falsely, is – yep, that’s right, death.

Coders use His Holy Things, His Holy Letters and His Holy Words in the performance of these forbidden activities, the coders have committed a most abominable blasphemy.  

Our method is to 'see what God reveals about Himself and His works.  Hence, we enter into our search as observers of what is already there.   The scripture has always been understood to be focused upon revealing the activities of the most High God and we stay within this understanding as our guideline for our study.

Faithfulness to the Biblical context

Traditional biblical exegesis demands faithfulness to the text being studied in regard to contextual relevancy.  This is to say, for any and every scriptural passage studied, traditional biblical exegesis demands every comment, analogy and application the student develops, must, in some fashion, be directly relevant to the text read.  

It is true the commentary is not required to embody a high level of sophistication or for that matter , though desirable,  even correctness but the textual exposition must nevertheless relate to the passage in question. If it does not relate it fails the traditional, and modern, tests for proper exegesis.  So highly developed is this concept in Jewish scholasticism that they have, over time, developed and systematized four levels of exegesis each level deepening the students understanding of the passage being read. 

The coders , however, place zero importance upon ‘relevancy’.  For them the Bible is no more than a massive collection of letters – one letter next to another letter.  Their computers do not analyze content they simply look for ‘word spelling’ patterns in skipped letters.  The letters patterns can be as tightly packed as a two letter skip or as far apart as many thousands of letters between each ‘next letter’ found.  One letter can be found in Genesis the next in Job perhaps the next in Hosea.  Relevancy requirements are impossible when the text is handled like this.[4] 

¹The four levels of study:
The Pashat is the plain, simple meaning of the text; what you read is what you get’,  it’s understanding scripture in its natural, normal sense using the customary meanings of the words being used, in accordance with the primary exegetical rule in the Talmud that no passage loses its Pashat (b.Shab. 63a; b.Yeb. 24a).

Remez is the implied meaning of the text. Peculiarities in the text are regarded as hinting at a deeper truth than that conveyed by its Pashat.  An example of implied "Remez" meaning may be found in Ex. 21:26-26-27 where we are told of our liability regarding eyes and teeth. By the "Remez" understanding we know that this liability also applies to other body parts.

Drash meaning "search", is the allegorical, typological or application of the text. This process involves exegesis of the pashat text. We cannot have a drash without a prior pashat!

Sod meaning "hidden"  is the hidden, secret or mystic meaning drawn out of a text.  Source: www paulproblem . faithweb . com 

² Hebrew for  the old testament is Tanach

³An acrostic (from the late Greek akróstichon, from ákros, "top", and stíchos, "verse") is a poem or other form of writing in an alphabetic script, in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text spells out another message. A form of constrained writing, an acrostic can be used as a mnemonic device to aid memory retrieval. A famous acrostic was made on the Greek for the acclamation JESUS CHRIST, GOD'S SON, SAVIOUR which in Greek is: Iesous CHristos, THeou Uios, Soter (ch and th being each one letter in Greek and u is also y). The initials spell ICHTHUS same as ICHTHYS, Greek for fish; hence the frequent use of the fish by early Christians and up to now as a symbol for Jesus Christ.  Wiki. Keyword acrostic March 23,2009.

[4] What they do in their programs is to connect the first letter of the Bible to the last forming a large circle of letters.  In this example they look for the word Ike. Scanning the letters of the circle, they first look for letters spelling Ike by skipping, for example,  every other letter until the word is found along with anything else that shows up.  Lots of things will show up; but, if the results have nothing to do with Ike they are discarded.  Then they skip every third letter then every fourth letter etc.  Finally they find the phrase ‘big wind’.  Its easy to see, almost any word or phrase can be found when this type of Bible Code search is performed.