Prophetic Distractions (2) - Bible Codes

The Bible codes is another prophetic distraction. It is a series of messages supposedly contained within the Bible text, that when decoded into words and phrases demonstrate demonstrating foreknowledge and prophecy. The primary method for extracting messages is the Equidistant Letter Sequence. A starting point (in principle, any letter) and a skip number are chosen. Beginning at the starting point, letters are selected form the text at equal spacing, according to skip number. For example, if the skip number is ten, then every tenth number is taken. Most people using this method work with the Hebrew text of the Torah.

This method has a couple of problems.

1. The most serious problem is that we do not have a completely accurate version of the Hebrew Bible. Even the Masoretic text, which is generally considered to be the most reliable, is fully of minor errors. In places words are missing, and in other places words appear to have been added. This is the natural consequence of copying by hand over many centuries. This does not matter for understanding the meaning, as most of these glosses do not affect the meaning at all. However, it becomes a serious problem for counting sequences of characters, as just one character missing, will change the rest of the sequence.

2. If we had the original Hebrew text, the equidistant letter sequence would give a totally different set of words and phrases. The fact that we do not have the original text, means that even if God had put words into the original Hebrew Text, we cannot get at them, because we do not have that text.

3. There are a huge number of starting characters and a huge number of skip numbers that can be chosen. What comes out of the process will determined by the original choices. I am suspicious of any method that relies on trawling many options to get something meaningful. You can only find what you already know.

4. I came across an article in a statistical journal that used the equidistant letter sequence method in Tolstoy’ War and Peace. The authors found a whole lot of predictive words and phrases. War and Peace is a wonderful novel, but I do no believe that Tolstoy was so inspired that God used him to hide a prophetic message.

The Bible Code is a bit of a distraction. Even if Hitler’s name is hidden somewhere in the Hebrew Torah, it does not help me to be a better Christian. I would prefer ten clear words spoken by the Holy Spirit to a thousand words from a Bible code.