My recent article entitled “Evidence of Design” raised many questions about the Bible Codes. As noted in “Evidence of Design” there are many occurrences within God's Word that clearly are beyond chance or accident or coincidence. Read Chuck Missler's book Cosmic Codes (ISBN 1-57821-093-3) and be amazed!

In the early years of the Twentieth Century, Dr. Oskar Goldberg published a Torah study entitled The Pentateuch – A Number Edifice: Discovery of a Uniformly Executed Numerical Script. The Pentateuch, or the Torah, is the collection of the first five books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

Just before World War II a Jewish rabbi, apparently following the study of Dr. Goldberg, made an interesting discovery. Rabbi Michael Weismandel noted that the word Torah appeared if you started with the first Hebrew letter tav in Genesis 1:1 and counted every fifty letters. Rabbi Weismandel called this “Equidistant Letter Spacing,” or ELS.

Next Rabbi Weismandel found the same thing in the first verse of Exodus. The word Torah appeared in spaces of fifty letters. When he came to Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy it did not work. Then he found that in the beginning of Numbers and Deuteronomy the word Torah appeared backwards in spaces of fifty letters. Finally, in his studies he found that the Name of God, JHWH, appeared in Leviticus, beginning with the first Hebrew letter jot in the first verse, in equally spaced letters of eight.

What we have is a design in which the word Torah points toward the center book, Leviticus. In the first two books, Torah is written forward. In the last two books, the word Torah is spelled backward. In the center book is the Holy Name of the Lord. Remember, there are NO coincidences in God's Word. It is like a five-branch Menorah design, with the Name of God in the servant lamp, or center, position.

Mathematicians in Israel took the work of Rabbi Weismandel and applied the power of a computer. They discovered a fascinating array of names in the Torah. For instance, they found the names of twenty-five plants native to Israel encoded from Genesis 2:7 through Genesis 3:3, which describes the creation of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. ELS only works in the Hebrew Massoretic text Bible. There is a Hebrew Samaritan Bible. It does not work. ELS does not work in the Hebrew translation of War and Peace. It only works in God's Word, and only one version at that.

Michael Drosnin wrote about the work of the Israeli mathematicians in his book The Bible Code. Drosnin acknowledged the seemingly impossible nature of the code, but sadly attributed it not to the Lord, but to an intelligence not of this world, whatever that means. Drosnin was looking for a way to foresee the future. That is not the intent of the Bible or the Bible Code.

The Bible Code discovered by Rabbi Weismandel is a fascinating confirmation of the Hand of God in His Word. All the information found goes far beyond mere chance or probability. The Lord is wise and powerful beyond our comprehension. Praise His Holy Name!