The Torah Codes Are Real

As you read this section, keep in mind that the New Testament is not merely a history book, it's meant to change us to become more and more like Jesus. When we read any passages in the New Testament, our goal should be to discern what God wants us to believe and do so that we can be obedient to Him.

Ancient Jewish tradition says that there are 70 ways of interpreting the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible). One way is simply reading what the text says, and the other 69 ways involve different methods by which God has encoded or hidden certain information in the Torah (see Cracking the Bible Code

by Jeffrey Satinover M.D.). One of those methods of hiding information is a type of code in which words are formed by starting on a particular letter in a document and then skipping a specific number of letters until the hidden message is spelled out.

For example, I've used this method to hide the word "TORAH" in the following sentence:

Be sure to read the story of Roger A. Smith's illustrious career!

To find the hidden word, first eliminate all punctuation, capitalization, and spaces:

BESURETOREADTHESTORYOFROGERASMITHSILLUSTRIOUSCAREER

Now, starting with the T in "THE," count every 5 letters until the word "TORAH" is spelled out:

BESURETOREADTHESTORYOFROGERASMITHSILLUSTRIOUSCAREER
            ^    ^    ^    ^    ^

In the above example, the "skip distance" is 5. The hidden word can easily be seen if we wrap around at the skip distance:

BESUR
ETORE
ADTHE
STORY
OFROG
ERASM
ITHSI
LLUST
RIOUS
CAREE
R

This is a very basic way to encrypt a secret message in a text. Anyone can find the encoded message if they know the correct letter to start with and the proper number of letters to skip.

Experts in cryptography (the science of breaking codes) refer to this type of code as an "Equidistant Letter Sequence" (ELS) because the hidden words are encoded using an equal distance between letters. In order to break a coded message, experts in cryptography first write the message as a string of letters, eliminating all punctuation, capitalization, and spaces, just as I did in my example above. According to ancient Jewish tradition, this is exactly how the Torah was given to Moses by God, as a string of letters with no punctuation, capitalization, or spaces (see Cracking the Bible Code

by Jeffrey Satinover M.D.), which would make sense if there really is hidden information encoded in the Torah using the "skipping letters" type of code. In books and articles, the encoded information is usually referred to as Torah Codes or Bible Codes.

In 1994, a paper entitled Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis

by Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg was published in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal called Statistical Science

. In this paper, the first scientific experiment with the Torah Codes was described. To summarize this experiment, the Codes researchers created a list of 32 famous rabbis (sometimes referred to as great sages) in Israel's history, all of whom lived between the 9th and 18th centuries AD (thousands of years after the Torah was written). They then determined the birth and death dates for those 32 men. By using the different Hebrew forms of each man's name, and the different Hebrew forms of each birth and death date, they had a list of just over 160 combinations of name/date pairs to search for. Every piece of information used in this experiment was objectively decided on (using strict rules) before the experiment was run in order to eliminate any subjectivity or "wiggle room." They then did a "skipping letter" search in the Hebrew version of Genesis to see if these men's names are encoded near their birth or death dates in Genesis. Many of these men's names were actually found encoded near their birth or death dates in Genesis, far beyond what could be expected by random chance.

Imagine that a scientific experiment is performed, obtaining a specific result, and the odds against that result happening by random chance are 20 to 1 (or greater, such as 30 to 1). In such a case, most scientific journals would publish the outcome of the experiment because 20 to 1 odds (or greater) are enough to show that the result could not have happened by random chance. For the Famous Rabbis experiment, the Statistical Science journal refused to publish the result unless the odds against it happening by random chance are 1,000 to 1 (50 times stricter than their usual 20 to 1 requirement). After the Famous Rabbis experiment was performed, it was calculated that the odds against the result happening by random chance are 62,500 to 1 (more than 62 times better than the higher 1,000 to 1 odds required by the Statistical Science journal). Therefore, Statistical Science published the article. Many other scientific experiments on the Torah Codes have been performed since then, confirming over and over that the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible) contains hidden information, including specific information concerning modern events, encoded using the "skipping letters" type of code.

Critics have tried to show that the Torah Codes don't exist, but their charges and accusations have been answered in detail by the world-class experts in statistics, cryptography, pattern recognition, and mathematics who are performing these experiments and researching these codes. Some of the Torah Codes researchers were atheists and skeptics when they began working on these experiments, and became strong believers in God (i.e., the Orthodox Jewish faith) as a direct result of their research into the Torah Codes.

I've provided just a very simplified description of the research being done, but you can learn more detailed information in these articles and books:

Torah Codes Explained - This article provides a short summary about the Torah Codes, some history of finding these codes, and some of the people involved in modern research into these codes.
A Primer on the Torah Codes Controversy for Laymen - This PDF provides a very detailed and very interesting explanation of how the codes work and various scientific experiments that have had highly significant results. It also answers many of the charges that critics have made. It's quite technical, but it's written for non-technical people.
Torah Codes Tutorial - In this article, scroll down to see a short description of how the codes work, and click "Next" to see more of the tutorial.
Cracking the Bible Code by Jeffrey Satinover M.D. - I read this book many years ago and found it to be very interesting and informative.
Torah Codes: A Glimpse into the Infinite by Robert M. Haralick, Eliyahu Rips, and Matityahu Glazerson - I haven't read this book yet, but it was co-authored by one of the original Torah Codes researchers.

The bottom line is that numerous strictly-controlled scientific experiments have been performed over the past 40+ years, and these experiments have found all kinds of information (including people and events in modern times) encoded into the text of the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible) in ways that are far, far beyond the possibility of it happening just by random chance. Therefore, either this is all a hoax, or there were flaws in every experiment, or else the encoded information was deliberately placed there by God when He gave the Torah to Moses. As you can see in the articles and books listed above, critics have tried very hard to dispute and discredit the existence of these Torah Codes or Bible Codes, but their charges and accusations have been answered in detail by the Torah Codes researchers.

What the Lord wants you to know (see my article called How to Discern God's Guidance) is that the Torah Codes are real. He deliberately placed that hidden information into the Torah, along with a mind-boggling amount of other hidden information that He encrypted into the Torah. Again, if everything at my website (VividChristianity.com), including this article, says what God wants it to say then He will confirm that for you by doing a miracle. See my home page for the details.