http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_code
Many today claim to have divine inspiration and the ability to predict the future. One such method of this is The Bible Code.
To interpret this so called code, the original Hebrew text of the Torah (the only books some consider to be given to man word for word) are arranged in a grid one character to a space. Then by the Equidistant Letter Sequence method (ELS) sequences of letters that are equidistantly space (clever name, right) are chosen and form a word.
I would like to go ahead and say that this "code," while interesting to think about, should have no impact on the lives of anyone. The statistical probabilities of finding meaningful word and phrases in a sea of random dribble is actually quite high in this instance, especially with all of the different starting points and different skip intervals.
Similar studies with the book Moby Dick have been shown to foretell the assassination of JFK. This code is simply a statistical byproduct which some are taking as prophecy. How do you feel about something so sacred as God's Word being use in such a manner? I see it as a fairly grotesque use of something so perfect in itself.
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I agree that this use of God's Word is awful. It seems that you could take any piece of literature and figure out some congruent thought, but that does not prove that the author truly put that there. In writing this paragraph, I am sure that someone could figure out a subliminal message that I apparently hid in here, but I will just come out and tell you that there I am not trying to put it there. This reminds me of the Beatles songs that apparently if you play them backwards have a very bad message. Maybe the Beatles meant to do this, but I don't think that we can assume that taking random patterns of letters equals hidden messages. I think that this Bible Code could be interesting simply because it takes talent to figure things like that out, but God did not hide messages in the letters. His deepest hiding of messages are in the parables, and those normally have an explanation.
ReplyDeletePersonally, the Bible is complex enough without trying to decipher some hidden code it contains, and I too am disgusted with how God's word is being treated. Jesus told us not to worry about tomorrow because today has enough trouble of its own (Matt. 6:34). If we are to take this teaching to heart I don't think we need to waste our time trying to use the Bible as some sort of crystal ball. The only thing the Bible says about the future that we really need to know is that Jesus will return to Earth one day and the faithful will spend eternity with Him. That's good enough for me and until then I'm going to trust that God has a plan for me and He will reveal it on His own time, not mine.
ReplyDeleteI think that the people trying to decipher these texts really have a lot of extra time on their hands. Maybe some of them just want to make sense of what they can't actually know. Some of them may just be trying to prove God wrong somehow, like telling people that God is hiding something from us in the text. Truthfully, I don't know what these ELS decoder experts are doing, I just know that God made the Bible to be easy for all to understand. No hidden messages. 1 John 5:20 "We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true—even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life."
ReplyDeleteI feel like it is sacrilegious and somewhat blasphemous for people to do this with God's word and believe in it. While some things in the Bible can be and are rather cryptic, it is not written with code integrated into the way the text is set up. I imagine that if you used this code on all of the different translations of the Bible that are around today, you would be able to find something interesting in all of them.
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