Indeed bible codes hold no interest for me as well! Sadly even with basing so many theories on extrapolated manipulation of days and calendars, biblical numerology, and even astronomical circuits of the stars I find very unfruitful! Many are simply grasping at straws! Yet I am chastised and regarded as foolish when I say I wait to hear from the Lord directly! This is my understanding of Bible code. Years ago before computers the rabbis searched the Torah for codes, some of it I think was based on Kabbala (a Jewish form of mysticism which is no better than astrology or horoscopes) but others it seemed were looking for patterns out of a pure heart looking for the wonder and complexities of God. In this case I can see no problem with it. “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.” ““The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” Up until the advent of the computer age the secret things pertaining to Bible code remained largely secret. But there were enough men who had been searching the Torah for patterns to know something was there, and therefore computer programs were designed to search in a way that no man could. In doing so it was revealed that there are codes in the Torah and the rest of the Bible that cannot be repeated in normal mortal works of literature. They have run this same software on literary works like War and Peace and Moby Dick and so forth and it just does not work. So in this sense I am OK with Bible codes as I view them as God’s “signature” just providing further evidence that no human could have authored the Word of God, there is even one Torah code that says “Yeshua Shmi” meaning Yeshua (Jesus) is my Name. So in this sense I am OK with Bible codes. Now - let’s look at the other side of the coin. Since men discovered that there is indeed “something there” they have been plugging terms into the codes to try to predict future events. Hey, can’t blame a guy for trying right? But these attempts always seem to fail miserably and are far from reliable. I think that in this sense, people are using Bible codes like astrology or horoscopes and the failure of such predictions is God’s stamp of disapproval and saying not a good idea. I think its ok to use the codes as supplemental evidence to point to the Divine and unique authorship of the Word of God - but to try to predict the future? Some things God reserves to Himself to remain secret and this enters the realm of “divination” I think and probably should be discouraged. Oh, also as an addendum as to what I wrote above - the ancient rabbis had a belief that God was brilliant enough to encode in the Torah the name of all persons to ever be born and all of history from beginning to end. This is why some think they can search for future events, because the ancient belief of the rabbis is that they are in there. They very well may be, God IS that brilliant that He could do that if He wanted to - but that doesn’t mean He will give us access to that information, He is just as brilliant that he can reveal what He wants to to be revealed and conceal what He wants to continue to conceal. We (including computer software programs) are just not as brilliant as we think of ourselves sometimes…… Well said brother! TR Good post, Derrick. Thanks! In the case of using these codes to show that no man could have written the Scriptures without God’s influence upon him is good. Of course, as is human nature, men will try to use it for their own gain. Funny, as TR pointed out, how things haven’t changed since the Garden.
Proverbs 25:2
Deuteronomy 29:29
