The Bible Code
A Christian's response

Preamble

The Bible Code is a book written by Michael Drosnin in which the author uses certain coding technique to "decode" the Bible. Similar technique has been used on the Jewish Torah. And according to the author, the Bible code has predicted the assassination of Isreali Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Some people even took a further step to suggest that Bill Gates is the anti-christ!!

Here's a response by one of our writer, Mr Jeffery Khaw, a Christian worker.

This is a simple book review of the 'The Bible Code' by Michael Drosnin. On the surface the book sounds impressive, with the rather complex technique or mathematical formula to unravel the hidden 'prophecies' of the Bible, that Old Testament passages contain events that could have been prevented. But as I thought further, I could only come to disagree even more with the whole idea.

Firstly, I believe the Old Testament was written to account the history of the Israelites and their faith to generations after them. If you read Hebrews 11, the heroes and heroines of faith were very much examples for us to emulate. Then in Jude 7, Sodom and Gomorrah are examples of God's divine judgment. And there are many more OT examples in the New Testament to remind us of God's dealings with His people, since God's character is immutable. So its hard to perceive that God actually had other intentions how His Scriptures are to be used, in that He coded events of the future into His words. It sounds as if God's Word has two layers - one to teach us about Himself and how to live life, the other to unravel the events that had already happened (but what's the use?). But what's the purpose of the latter?? As I read the book, there are no 'prophecies' regarding the future except for world war three, when the Bible already warned us not to be surprise when wars occur during the last days. So even this complex mathematical formula is not able to tell me what some of the concrete upcoming events are - just as concrete as the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Thus far the author is only able to tell me events that had already happened and are now unraveled from the biblical passages, due to this less powerful mathematical model. More powerful mathematical models to come, says the author. Hence, I dislike what the author says in page 25: "The Bible is not only a book - it is also a computer program ... Now it can be read as it was always intended to be read." Then the Bible is no longer a book for life but for laboratory research. I think we are demeaning the value of the Bible!

Secondly, after all these amazing discoveries, where is the person of Jesus Christ?? Whatever that does not glorify God definitely does not come from Him. Even the devil can perform miracles to deceive people. After reading the book, it does not help me to relate better to the Author of Life; instead it only stimulates my mind (and maybe more confused!) that the Bible can be torn apart and researched in this manner. "Not a bad book" - that's all I can say! No change of life, no sense of conviction of sin; life still goes on because I have to wait for a more powerful mathematical model to tell me what the Bible is saying about the future. But what about the now!!! What does the Bible say about me today??? Surely this can't be achieved by discovering more codes but encountering the Author Himself through His Word, in the way it should be read and understood.

Finally, I could not match the passages from the book with the passages from the Hebrew Scriptures. The author (or the mathematician), for whatever reason, did not annotate the starting verse and where the verses end. To me the passages in the book are merely a chunk of Hebrew characters where names of events and people can be derived with just a little work. This only raises more doubts at how the mathematician had arrived at his amazing model and finally his revelations.

I would like to suggest we read the Bible as it is and discover the Author as He seeks to reveal Himself (and not so much future events that we become distracted) to us. The Bible, as I see it, is not a series of hidden codes but life-giving instructions. If the Bible is full of hidden codes, this makes God rather a distant Person, someone who does not like to reveal Himself but does so when we have discovered more advance ways of doing so - something rather contrary to the love and character of God. Let's us continue to seek God through His Word instead of letting hidden codes distract us from the true Source of knowledge and wisdom.

Shalom
Jeff Khaw

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