Fun With the Bible Code
Homemade Biblical prophecies made easy
Over the past few centuries, numerous theories have arisen about “hidden messages” supposedly inscribed in the Bible (and other holy texts). These messages can only be revealed, for example, by reading every other letter of the text, or every seventh letter, and so on. Many believe that these messages have prophetic value, and even that the “true” word of God is somehow tangled within these codes.
The irony here is quite thick, since it is the Bible itself that is supposed to be the “word of God,” not some arbitrary partition of it. It’s as if the Bible Code enthusiasts have read the Bible and found nothing but absurdity, so they began to read not only between the lines, but between the letters!
We tried to read the Bible the “ordinary” way, but it made no sense. That must mean that we’re just not skipping the right number of letters!
In any case, the “messages” that are discovered are very brief — single words, or a perhaps a short phrase, for example, “JFK SHOT,” or “PAUL IS DEAD.” Obviously, these can easily be interpreted as “prophetic” statements. However, the irony grows even thicker because, like all Biblical prophecies, they are always discovered a little after the fact (vaticinium ex eventu).
In about an hour of programming time, I developed a small Windows application that performs this exact function — search for hidden codes in the text of the Bible. I then obtained the King James translation from Gutenberg, and eliminated all whitespace, punctuation, and verse numbers. Finally, I began my investigation. What I found was not necessarily surprising, but fascinating nonetheless. The following is just a short list of all the “revealing” statements I found in my search. Be prepared, and keep in mind that these are actual blocks of text from the Bible — you can even read through them to be sure.
Update!
At long last, I’ve recovered the source code for my Bible Code Finder application! The program takes a plain text file (preferably a large one), and allows you to scan it for occurrences of words with equidistant letter spacing. Download the program and, if you’d like, browse the source code repository. To download the full text of the Bible (or a great number of other texts), visit Project Gutenberg.
It works like this: start the program and open the text file that you want to search (the program automatically strips punctuation and whitespace). Then enter up to seven words to look for, and click the Start button! The program will find the first occurrence of all words within a certain range, unless you select “Find All” instead of “Find One.” The result(s) will be shown in the Results tab.
The “Frame Size” parameter is the range (in letters) within which all words must be found. “Min Delta” and “Max Delta” are the minimum and maximum letter spacing of words to search.
Obviously, longer words will take longer to search for. Generally it’s highly improbable to find combinations with words longer than 8 letters. On the other hand, don’t search for words shorter than three letters, since too many results will be found. As a rule, try to enter longer words first, then shorter words. This will result in a quicker search.
Genesis 1:1+
“We are the Borg”
Genesis 11:28+
“God ain’t real”
Genesis 46:27+
“Jesus, phony”
Exodus 6:20+
“WTC plane crash”
Ezra 4:15+
“Jesus saves none”
Jeremiah 13:16+
“Jesus sucks”
Leviticus 10:7+
“Hello Kitty”
Numbers 1:20+
“Shuttle lost”
Numbers 28:3+
“Bugs Bunny”
Hebrews 2:17+
“Kennedy shot”
2 Chronicles 1:17+
“Kilroy was here”
Luke 9:3+
“Dmitry Brant”
What Have We Learned?
Something, I hope. In fact, I ran the exact same program on a large Microsoft help file, and obtained quite similar results. I suppose that even the above “prophecies” cannot be valid because the King James Bible is only a translation of the original Hebrew and Greek. But we can safely hypothesize that, given a large enough source of text, no matter what language, any word or phrase can be found using similar methods.
August 13th, 2005 at 9:57 am
Too funny!
August 17th, 2005 at 11:41 am
Unraveling this phenomenon, the Bible itself never indicates there are hidden messages by skipping Hebrew letters in the written text. This is merely a man-made “discovery.” I have studied the Bible most of my life and have found it to be very revealing in itself, not of future, or post-prophetic events, but of the nature of humanity and the solution to our plight.
August 17th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
You are correct; indeed, the very purpose of this article was to show the pointlessness of searching for prophetic codes in the Bible, or other holy texts. We cannot, however, deny the fact that a great number of people actually believe that such messages exist and have divine origin.
August 30th, 2005 at 1:57 pm
Very funny stuff! You ought to share a bit of your methods so that others can have this sort of fun; at least, if it’s simple enough that others could replicate it.
September 24th, 2005 at 1:01 am
Haha, this is hillarious! I dig your blog. Keep up the cool posts
October 4th, 2005 at 2:04 am
Too cool. Any chance of sharing your application so others can see what they can find?
October 4th, 2005 at 7:35 am
I would love to share it, but I can’t find the source code! I might have to write it fresh all over again.
November 15th, 2005 at 7:39 pm
What part of the Bible is “very revealing” Dr. Kempert? And what kind of doctor are you? Are all the mistakes, contradictions and inaccuracies in the Bible very revealing to you also?
December 7th, 2005 at 1:39 am
too bad you can’t see the truth in the Bible. those letter spaced out everywhere mean nothing. its unfortunate that you will only see the truth when Christ returns and by then it will be too late for you–why not put hope in something like the Bible–what else is there to live for in the world? even if the Bible is completely made up (which I obviously don’t believe), at least I still lived for something…and guess what, if it’s it true, i’ll be having beyond an amazing time in heaven with God for eternity.
December 13th, 2005 at 1:44 am
Of course the spaced-apart letters mean nothing. He already stated that the point of doing the conspiracy theory code was that there is no point in finding conspiracy theories in the code.
Now as for you condescending tone, I’m sure that’s the last thing Dmitry or anyone here wants to hear. Get off your high horse and realize that being the majority doesn’t mean being better.
December 13th, 2005 at 10:50 am
It seems that the main point of this page isn’t going across very well!
December 26th, 2005 at 11:55 pm
Your point about believing “just in case” is called Pascal’s Wager and has been thoroughly discussed at length and is fully illogical. Try again. http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/pascalswager.html
January 11th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Another possible interpretation is that the writers of the Microsoft Help File were also inspired by God. Perhaps we should call it the Book of Bill, or the Gospel of Gates. Did you know that if you press CTRL-ALT-G at just the right clock cycle that you will be elevated to the Rapture?
January 20th, 2006 at 11:55 am
Rereading this I just noticed you said “What else is there to live for?”
Are you really that shelter and deprived of wordly things and even an opinion… that you can’t find any other thing in your world worth living (and perhaps dying for) on your own? You need the help of a 2-millenia-year old book to tell you what to live for and anything else is futility? Oh don’t get me wrong, I embrace impermanece and realize that if I love something that will end my heart could get broken, but seriously… is there nothing in this world you would devote your life to? A lover, your family, a hobby you have a passion for (like art, music, or even stuff like doctors) or just living to help people? I think your comment speaks low about the level of complexity and personality in your head. Try finding meaning and devotion on your own. If you fail, you can try the whole being dead scene since you’ll be welcomed by your supposed maker that you so fervently deny other entities around you just to love and eventually meet him anyway.
April 6th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
This is a bunch of boloney. No matter what junk and rumors people conjure up, we Christians will continue to believe in Him, Christ Jesus, who died for us (a deed none of us could ever match or carry on to Him), and loves us deeply so. So, I would hope that no one who reads this article (which, in my opinion, no one should ever read it), would ever, in their wildest dreams, belive any of this, and instead pray for those who do.
April 29th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
I’m going to pray alright…pray that one day bible thumpers will go away and let those of us firmly rooted in reality live our lives. You people totally missed the point here.
July 12th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
I used the Hebrew bible and found goats, blows, falwell, ass, gere and hamster all in genesis. Given that these words are all predictive of events that happened in the twentieth century, I figured the bible code phenomenon must be correct. But, being scientifically minded, I decided to do one further test. I looked for JFK, assassinated, emperor, trajan, paris, eighteen-twenty two. Since these words didn’t all turn up in any one book of the bible, it proves that bible code doesn’t lie. After all, we all know that JFK wasn’t assassinated by emperor trajan in paris in 1822. So where’s your neat little theory now, Einstein?
July 20th, 2007 at 3:02 am
An authoritarian “god”, the nonsensical “bible”, the dubious “jesus”, the fabricated scapegoat “satan”, the ridiculous “hell”… its all a load of crap and lies. That is all this all means. Free yourself, humanity!
Read “The Mysterious Stranger”, by Mark Twain, at least.
There is only one hell and it is authoritarianism, endless war, and self-deception.
September 26th, 2007 at 10:35 am
“Marissa:
I’m going to pray alright-pray that one day bible thumpers will go away and let those of us firmly rooted in reality live our lives. You people totally missed the point here.”
amen to that sister!
October 9th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
This is great! My Bib Worldview homework was to make up a fake Bible code, and this program is the best!
October 25th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Forget the bible - go back and try again with the original Hebrew scrolls, using the original hebrew letters with their corresponding numbers - then you might have got something.
Failing this, go out and buy yourself a nice ‘wordsearch’ book to keep yourself amused
January 1st, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Vlad has it right. Really this is a pretty uneducated attempt at disproving biblical code, as anyone that has researched this on any level, very well understands that the basis is not in the English version, but rather in the original Hebrew text.
whoa, this is some study, real scientific and all. I could probably find Dmirty Brant in a Dr. Seuss book. Blown away man, what a great article. You poor thing…
Sure , probably just as easier to go with the whole evolution theory where a non-sterile mutation was produced after millions of years, and whoa, it just so happens that a non-sterile compatible sexual mate showed up on the scene within the life time of that first woopsie “mutation-man”, and happened to run into each other, and were willing and able to reproduce. Not to mention potential food supplies…
Then we still have to discuss the millions of other species on this planet. And then there is the transitional fossil record that seems to have gone missing. Ugh, you people, just admit it, God did create everything. Just be honest and admit that you don’t want to know him nor hear what he has to say.
Really, that’s all it is, isn’t it?
March 12th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Nice! I’ve been trying to do this. Its funny what you can find in a piece of text! Do you still got the source code? The link asks for a password.
March 21st, 2008 at 3:41 pm
i agree that the bible code is inaccurate. however the bible is the ultimate source of truth. God is real. if you dont believe in a god, research some of the book. it is by far the most accurate source of history, cultures such as the edomites, and the hittites were believed to not be real but their lost cultures were found.also many geological and archaeolical proof of the parting of the red sea and the great flood.
have you ever seen indiana jones and the last crusade? in “the valley of the cresent moon” when indiana and his dad whent to that stone temple lookin thing in the cliff wall remember? and you heard an owl shreik?
in the bible… i believe it was samuel who prophesized this, and i paraphrase, he says “God will smite the edomites land and whipe his peoples from the face of the earth. the edomites constantly fought with the israelites, the israelite descended from jacob, the edomites from esau, and if you dont know their story look it up, it either in genesis or exodus.
any, that temple thing was actually a city carved into rock. a magnificent city of the ancient edomites that occording to secular sourses didnt exist until it was discoverd in the late 1800s by a swiss explorer. and as the prophecy came true, that magnificent city was forgotten from histoy, along with its people, and it is only inhabited by owls.
my point being is, why would God hide prophecies into coding in the bible when he gives out his word already in a book? why would he make it impossible to decipher it until modern times.
the bible code is false, but as is, its just someones theory. it does not destroy the validity of the bible.
March 21st, 2008 at 3:50 pm
another thing for trueman
lets say you were just as “crazy” as all the disciples and as “crazy” as jesus believing he was a God.
lets say you are going to be painfully crusifide if you didnt recant your lies. wouldnt you just say “ok just kiddin… dont crucify me!”
jesus was crucifide, peter crucifide upside down, the apostle john was exiled and jailed in an island then slowly dipped into boiling oil. others were stoned, roasted alive, fed to wild animals etc.
wouldnt you think that out of all thoses people, if they were lying, at least one would say, “dont kill me i admit, it was a lie”.
but no, they didnt, so they died horribly painful deaths for a bunch of lies? to glorify a faker? its for you to think about, i know wat i think.
April 29th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Well, Roscoe, it would appear to me…hold on…let me copy paste…”the bible code is false, but as is, its just someones theory. it does not destroy the validity of the bible.” Take a look at that. Now take a look at the authors of the bible. God doesn’t write anything, does he? It’s all human work. And you should know that humans are VERY easily mistaken. So, wouldn’t the bible be just a bunch of theories? which means it wouldn’t destroy the validity of anyone elses theories here or anywhere in the world either. Maybe paying attention to your own words would make you half as wise as you think the bible does.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
One way of testing the bible codes to find if they are real is to put in the name of the lotter you want to win and the date it is coming up and just add abunch of numbers until you get all the numbers coming up in the hebrew scriptures
May 16th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
well russ i would have to agree with you in that stance. the bible cade is a theory, such as evolution, and hell aliens.
My point being, what separates this theory from biblical “theory” is the prophesies. For All the prophesies that have come true over the thousands of years, its impossible odds. It would be completely impossible, that by chance, these prophesies randomly came true. Old testament prophesies that point to jesus… and so on… you should read some and research.
and Russ… theres no need to be a smart ass, you have a good thought, good opinions. but that one line, from what i wrote, does in no way prove me wrong. If you do your own research and get back to me it would be a way better arguement.
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:41 pm
The point of this page is to point and laugh at the comedy of the “Holy-est Word Search Ever”
September 18th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
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