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If you're familiar with the Bible Codes, do you believe that they
are a hoax, or do you believe that they are the inspired, full-fledged, out-of-God's-Divine-Mouth prophecies?

If you have never heard of the Bible Codes, or you have not been very well introduced to the topic, let me provide you
with a brief outline of it's importance and purpose.

The Bible Codes are enigmatic texts written beneath the text of the Pentateuch ( or commonly referred to as the Torah.)
These Bible Codes were first discovered by a Hebrew scientist
named Dr.Weissmandl a little while ago ( I don't remember the
precise date.) The Bible Codes have fulfilled the prophecies of
many events in the past century, from the assassination of
JFK by his assassin Ruby, to the assassination of Israeli president Yitzhak Rabin in 1994.

If you want to learn more about this topic, please refer to
the links I have provided if you so choose:




To get a better understanding and an extensive knowledge on
this particular topic, I recommend reading these books about
the Bible Codes:

"The Bible Codes"            By Michael Drosnin
"The Bible Codes II"         By Micahel Drosnin
*"The Signature of God"     By Grant R Jeffrey
*"The Handwriting of God"  By Grant R Jeffrey

*Note: Is not just based on the Bible Codes.

The Bible codes are a bunch of nonsense.  They are nothing more than numerology repackaged with Judeo/Christian wrapping.  As for all the "prophecies,"  note how they are all discovered after the fact.  Prophecies, by definition, should come before the actual event.  This means they are nothing more than a baseless searching for patterns in the Bible that are more the product of someones imagination than divine inspiration.

Rabbi Michael Weissmandl found these codes before WWI.
That was almost 90 years ago! And he actually found the codes in a book written by another Rabbi in the 14th century
named Rabbeynu Bachayah. So you can date back a good
700 years at least.

You mean he developed an algorithm 90 years ago.  That doesn't mean that he had prophesy 90 years ago, or what was to come would have been prophesied.  I have looked at some of these so-called prophesies and they are nothing of the sort.  Often times they are so vague they can mean any number of things or match multiple events, without ever relaying God' motivations or desires (as was done in the OT and Revelations).  Other times the "prophecy" came about after the fact, like with the twin towers.

Jews have often mixed mysticism with God's commands, as unfortunately have Christians.  That doesn't mean that it is correct to pursue such things.  God's desire for man is revealed by the commands of the text, not by assigning numerical values to writing and applying an algorithm.  Looking past the text for secret codes is the most wasteful thing you can do with the Bible.  You'd be better off burning it for heat in winter.

Looking for Bible codes is paganism, pure and simple.  You might as well read the zodiac or believe in crystals, as those were made by God too and might have meaning hidden in them (that's sarcasm, btw).

I found interest in the subject years ago and in my studies I saw the reasoning for their being very interesting. Beyond that I kinda- felt that with the works of unraveling the plainly written portions of scripture to understand Heavenly issues it did not serve me well to investigate earthly or carnal issues such as what might have already happened to man. The flaw in the codes is that they can not be projected into the future, only reviewed after the fact, where as scripture is about both yesterday and tomorrow all right now today.

Can't beat that!

John.

 ???

Ha,Ha,Ha...

I knew you would say that -  ???

Let me clarify!

I saw no useful purpose in the codes because the programn developed to test them and run them can only be used to enter events that have already happened in order to see if they are mentioned. While plain scripture gives reference to events that are even yet to happen.

How's That?

Peace.

Thanks for the clarification, Comforter. ;D

But if they were not true, why are there names encoded in
the Torah in the first place?

The Bible codes could only have been placed there by God. Therefore, it does serve a purpose in that, it shows the scriptures are truely inspired by God.

It would take virtually impossible to put code in like that, and still get the words of the Bible right. The probability of someone actually writing such is almost hilarious to see.

The Bible Codes are the enigmatic secret texts which have
prophesied future events from 3000 years ago! It has revealed
more than you think. There are dates and times and places.
And it was found by Rabbi Michael Weissmandl some 90 years
ago. So the Bible Codes did prophesy some future events.

That's BS Bronzesnake.  The algorithm was developed by a man, and could probably be developed for any number of books.  That is hardly evidence of messages being placed there by God.  If one was so inclined I'm sure you could find secret messages in the works of Tolkien, Lovecraft, or probably Playboy magazine.

The beauty of the Bible is that the concepts within are made plain to all people, not that there are secret codes for the mystics and academic elites.  

Well Gangrene, you're right in a sense that the Bible is plain for
all people to understand. However, we must remember: The
Bible is the most interesting Library of books in the world, and
there is more to it than we see. Ever hear of reading between
the lines?

Why bring up Bible Codes if there wasn't any signifigance to it?

It would be a waste of time, money, and overall, pretty
outlandish.

You know, you really should read in some detail on the subject before you start throwing out the "BS" bomb.

 The following is from Signiture of God

Quote.
"A skeptical and scientifically minded generation in our lifetime has generally rejected the authority and inspiration of the Bible. There is a greater need for our generation to see evidence and proof that the Bible is the true Word of God. In the sovereign plan of God, it is only in this generation of sophisticated high-speed computers and new techniques of statistical analysis, that men could both discover and fully appreciate this devine message from the past that introduces our skeptical generation to the God of their future.

Dr. David Kazhdan, chairman of the mathematics department at Harvard University, warned those who would casually reject this evidence of Torah codes: "The phenomenon is real. What conclusion you reach from this is up to you."

 Israeli scientists wrote a follow-up paper for submission to Statistical Science, a scientific journal, that insisted that a group of oposing scholars review and challenge their data and examine their computor program before publication. Despite the fact that all of the reviewers held previous beliefs against the inspiration of the Scriptures, the overwhelming evidence and integrity of the data forced the editors to approve the study's scientific accuracy and reluctantly publish the article.
Robert Klass, the editor of Statistical Science , wrote the following comment about the study: "Our referees were baffled: 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 effects persisted. The paper is thus offered to Statistical Science readers as a challenging puzzle." ("Equadistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis," Statistical Science, August 1994)

The study concluded that the peculiar sequences of Hebrew letters at equal spaces from each other that formed significant words could not possibly have occured by simple coincidence."

There is tons more corroborating evidence from scientist from Harvard, Yale, and Hebrew University.. I will post it if you want to see it for yourself.

These are not just meaningless, random equal distant words in the Bible, they are detailed, relavent and complicated beyond imagination and mathematical probabillity.

I will also take the time to post some detailed examples if you would like to see them.

Yeah, I read that book too.

Did you ever read "The Handwriting of God" by the same author?

Did you ever read "The bible Codes" by Michael Drosnin? That
goes into a lot of detail, and I recommend you read it if you
haven't read it before. He also has another book called "The
Bible Codes II." I haven't read The Bible Codes II, but I hear
it has some great reviews.

Hi seven.
Yes, I've read The Handwriting of God and several other Jeffrey books.
I havn't read those other books yet.

Do you have any other Bible Code books you can recommend
to me? ;D

The Bible is important because of what's on the lines, not what's between them.  While there might be more to it than is seen, since this is God's word of instruction to man the obvious conclusion is that what is not seen is not important.  God's plan for humans has always been one of redemption, not to have us wasting our time trying to look for hints of future events by assigning numbers to text.  Maybe if He wanted us to look for secret codes He would have packaged the Bible with a decoder ring.


Gee, maybe to make modern soothsayers a bit of money and earn them the awe of people who apparently never learned what the definition of divination is.

This algorithm is man-made, and not that complex from what I've seen.  The Nazis had a far more complicated method of ciphering in their enigma machine, yet you guys are ready to bend over backwards to call this two-bit method of divination a work of God.  Deuteronomy 18:10-11 shows exactly what God's opinion of this sort of nonsense is.

Gangrene, another good point.

I applaud you for that! ;D

I know plenty of the subject, and also plenty on what God commands for our lives.  It is BS.


You write like someone who has no concept of mathematics.  They are not "complicated beyond imagination and mathematical probability," they are the product of imagination combined with mathematics.  I've done my fair share of Fourier transforms and statistical data analysis, and I have seen what people can do when they try to apply mathematics to meet their own end.  They are less awe inspiring when you see that this is nothing more than people trying to assign meaning to patterns that may or may not exist.

Gangreen you sound exactly like an evolutionist when you use the "BS" bomb and arguments such as this...

More arguing?

...

Gangrene has made two good points, which I applauded him
for. However, I do still think the Bible Codes are very much
real, and not a delusion.

ganggreen quote...

Why the hostility?

First of all, there is a huge difference between the Nazi's efforts to conceal instructions using unintelligible text which could only be understood using their enigma machine, and the Bible, which is a coherent, intelligible work on it's surface which contains relevant information and details intertwined within the text and at equidistant intervals.

Further more I don't see the relevance of your argument regarding Deuteronomy 18:10-11 in this instance. These codes can not be used to predict future events.

One of the most interesting of the experimants examined the text of Gen 38, which describes the history of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar, who gave birth to two sons, Pharez and Zerah. The Book of Ruth tells us that King David, the greatest king of Israel, was descended from Pharez in this manner:
 Pharez was the ancestor of Boaz, who married Ruth and gave birth to Obed, the father of Jesse, who was the father of King David.
Every one of the five Hebrew names of these ancestors of King David were found encoded at 49 letter intervals, hidden with-in the text of Genesis 38. Incredibly, these five names also appeared in the correct chronological order as recorded in the Bible. The statisticians calculated that the odds against these five names occuring in this passage in the exact, chronological order they lived, are more than eight hundred thousand to one against this happening by chance.

This is only one small example amongst hundreds.
Scientist who have studied these results have stated that no human could create such a Hebrew document containing hundreds of encoded, significant words hidden with-in it's texts. They concluded that it would be impossible to reproduce this phenomenon in a Hebrew text, even if they had the help of a group of brilliant language geniuses, or the assistance of the world's most sophisticated supercomputers. In addition, it is impossible to account for the prophetic knowledge of future events found in these codes.

Once again I will post this quote...

Dr. David Kazhdan, chairman of the mathematics department at Harvard University, warned those who would casually reject this evidence of Torah codes: "The phenomenon is real. What conclusion you reach from this is up to you."

Now lighten up my friend, we're on the same team here. :)

Do you really think you'll convince gangrene?

Don't know.

There is very strong proof that corroborates the authenticity of the Bible codes. I used to be a strong critic of them, however, after I did some in-depth research on the topic I had no choice but to admit they are real.

Do we need these to be real in order for us to be better Christians? possibly, but in most cases no.

If we can reach a skeptical person who may be more "technical" minded that there is a miraculous hand at work in the Bible, and just maybe such a person might give God a second or even a first look, then perhaps it is worthwhile studying and understanding it.

Here are some Bible verses which speak of the fact that God's wisdom can be mysterious.

Rom 16:25 Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began,

1Cr 2:7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, [even] the hidden [wisdom], which God ordained before the world unto our glory:

Here's one Bible Code found in "The Bible Codes" by Michael
Drosnin:

In the  Code, (found in Deutoronomy), The assassin of JFK
is found. His name is Oswalt.

Here it is in the Code:

Alef-Vav-Zayin-Vav-Vav-Lamed-Dalet, or in our alphabet,
AUZVVLD, or, in English, Oswald. The two V's in Hebrew make
it a "W".

In the same place, there shows the assassin of Oswalt, which
is Ruby.

Here it is in the code:

Yod-Bet-Vav-Resh, or in our alphabet, Y-B-U-R, and switch this around, and you get "RUBY".

"Oswalt" crosses the name "Ruby".

AUZVVLD, and 7 characters to the left, YBUR.
Oswald and Ruby. The Hidden text "He will kill the Assassin
crosses "Oswald".

I have more if you want to learn more...

In re-reading these threads I noticed that I didn't make clear the end result of what I learned from examining the Bible Codes theory and practice found by others.

In applying what I had seen, I found the process to be quite real and fruitful as far as it's validity and reasoning. I also found it to be applicable by anyone wishing to pursue it and try it for themselves. I came to see that it was possible to find hidden events within the text of scripture behind the scenes using selective equations such as every twenty first letter for example (only), and came to realize that there are pre-adventured events given ahead of there actual happening dates. I further found that on a deep level it was not only possible but very probable for events to be foretold of simply to reveal the power and wisdom of the Author and Finisher of the works.

It is what is not found that caused me to move on and not attempt to promote the finding. The events were major and being preset they leave the finder wondering if "all" events are preset. This is an untruth as most events are the result of each persons choice as they come upon things within their lives. The items found, being preset to serve the Author at a later date in showing the power of God, have no instructive nor explanation that pre-adventured events were set in motion rarely and are not the norm. For the Author to gamble and display a wisdom of knowing what men would choose in advance, and not to make them choose it, is a thin line to walk. But it is in wisdom that the events were foretold of and not command. In other words it is the act of knowing what would happen, and not making it happen no matter what, that best describes the Authors process. And that is too large and complex to try and explain. That is the reasons for laying it down and dealing with the plainly written and readable Word of God.

And while on the subject, I know of events plainly written that have been preset which are described within common scripture. Therefore it is no marvel to find them in an advanced and well hidden format.

I am sure the Author we are discussing is quite capable of underlying the obvious with the unbelievable because all things are possible with God.

Simple conclussion:

It is said that there will be a test on how well each knows the Word. The area that is dealt with in areas such as Bible Codes is not on the test. Therefore, it was filed with the other wonders that would be taken up at the Lords return. Faith is in hearing that Christ would come, and once He came, Faith is in knowing He will return at the time appointed. Every pre-adventured event within scripture including such big events as the Mark are there for the seekers and seers of the Word to reason and discuss. And to foretell that No man shall know the hour and the day yet giving a range of events in time to look for is exactly what scripture does. Checking to see if things that have already happened are listed by some code or means is taking one from looking ahead and causing them to look back.

Beware:

This is a stumbling block when the purpose is to see events unfold prior to the coming of the Lord so that you will be prepared. It stops you in your tracks finding you looking back. For this reason only I promote this kind of activity not.

But on the otherhand, for the person who is not looking, it serves to spark them into wondering what else is in the Books we call the Bible. And if the goal is that not one be lost who could have made it into the world to come, it serves Him well to place just such a snare. I will further add that in His wisdom, just in case man studied well and the Bible was revealed in it's entirity just a little early of His coming to reveal it, (you know, man not being sold short in their wisdom) would He not place grander things to occupy their wait?

Yes!

There are games hidden within scripture - believe it or not!

I can show you one if you actually read this far and would like to see. They are not real simple and for the advanced seeker, so be prepared to earn the wisdom found in the process...

In your service.

John.

No, I'm not going to change my opinion on something that is clearly wrong and out of line with both God's character and his moral commands.  References to God's mystery were meant to give us a glimpse of his greater being, just as Moses received a glimpse in Exodus 33.  They were never meant as a license to go looking for secret codes.


The difference is that the Nazi machine had a purpose, while Bible codes are nothing more than a means of soothsaying.


What part of Deuteronomy 18:10-11 didn't you understand?  The Bible codes are nothing more than an attempt to integrate mysticism and divination into Christianity.  The method is man-made and used to gather information, however shady, about events using supposedly spiritual means.  It is similar in form to divination using stars, other texts, or anything else.  The fact that the Bible is the source of the "codes" is irrelevant.


So what?  These kind of statistics can be conjured up for all kinds of circumstances.  What are the chances I'll visit such-and-such gas station tomorrow: gee, 8,000,000 to 1.  That doesn't mean that if I do it's a divinely inspired event.

The Bible Codes do not attempt to prophesy the return of
Our Lord Jesus Christ. Like you said, Comforter, no one knows
when Our Lord shall come. However, the Bible Codes have prophesied assassinations, the Holocaust, and some cataclysmic events. If it did have a date set for Jesus' return, I would disclaim it, and will not believe in it.

However, I don't believe there is a code for that, so now that
we have got that straight, I shall end on that note.

As you have said.

John.

That is a joke right?  Talk about streching things to make them what you want.  Let's not forget people that Oswald did NOT kill Kennedy.  Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool.

Just more proof it's just a bogus thing to make money.  No needs proof that God's Word is God's word if they believe in Jesus and have faith.

"For faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the WORD OF GOD"  Not by mystic "equidistant" code in the bible.  You wouldn't need much faith if it only takes a little algorythm to show God's signiture.  Think of how much more those rabbi's would have learned had they spent the time to study the Word rather than look for facitious proof of the bible.