Bible Codes

Remember making up codes with your childhood friends? Or did you ever eak-spay ig-Pay atin-Lay? Kid stuff. But if an adult claimed the discovery of a secret code, it’d be a sure way to make money, right? So of course, there are a number of claims/products regarding codes supposedly hidden within the Bible.

My “I Am Not I AM” post focused mainly on claims that certain Bible words/ideas can be used in a magical way; we just hadn’t realized. The final two books named in that post even use Code as part of the title.

Other Bible-related “codes” claim that the Lord is giving new revelation to certain people. Example:

• The Jeshua Code (Twyman, 2017) is about a supposed appearance of a being calling himself Jeshua (Jesus?). The claim is that Twyman had been floating in the Dead Sea when this being appeared. He revealed “secret teachings he shared with his closest friends 2,000 years ago.” Each lesson would contain a code that, apparently, the mind couldn’t comprehend but “the soul would fully receive.” The intro stated that this being asked Twyman to write down the messages. (That’s reminiscent of the spirit, calling itself Jesus, that supposedly dictated A Course in Miracles.) The Jeshua intro also confesses that the information is “not secrets at all”; it’s just that we “haven’t been able to understand them till now.” And Twyman was the chosen instrument through which we can—(for a few bucks)—also become enlightened.

Still other “Bible code” material involves using a mathematical/grid approach with Hebrew manuscripts, like taking every third letter diagonally or every fifth letter vertically.

The Got Questions site has several pieces on this topic (you can site-search). These give a simple overview of that whole idea and link to some other articles. It’s acknowledged that God can certainly do whatever he wants but that there’s not credible evidence that he’s inserted codes like those being promoted.

As relates to the “grid” type theory:

• God Code by Timothy Smith (2018; previously published as The Chamberlain Key, 2017). This got promotion on the History Channel, and there’s also a movie.
• The Bible Code (1998 by Michael Drosnin; and sequel in 2003). Online material changes rapidly, but here were two negative reviews I saw for this particular book:
  1. 1. A 1-star review said, “The final nail was hammered into the coffin of Drosnin’s credibility when he appeared on NPR saying that he didn’t even believe in God, but rather believed that extraterrestrial aliens put the encoded predictions and prophecies in the Hebrew Bible.” Hmm. If we’re trying to follow God, why would we follow someone who (or some THING that)
     2. One reviewer spilled the beans that similar “code” formulas have been used in completely non-Bible-related material. (And elsewhere, someone explained how you could manage to come up with almost anything if you tried assorted charting/grids.)
• A fascinating, bottom-line zinger to the whole idea of this type of Bible code came from a Muslim authority. He reminded us that no copies of the Bible’s original Hebrew manuscripts exist. Without those, it’s not possible even to have the original Bible code, if there was such a thing.

On the whole topic, I couldn’t help asking: Isn’t God cruel if he deliberately hides important info so the faithful aren’t likely to know what he means/wants until some later “revelation” occurs?

Friends, the Lord isn’t hiding anything from those who want to know and follow him. Just ead-ray ee-thay ible-Bay!