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DAVE HUNT IS FEATURED HEREHe
believed in the Drosnin tricks, promoted them, and then reversed..... |
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We
had hoped it would not come to this, but Dave Hunt has forced us to put him on
this page. Several months back, Dave attacked sister Gail Riplinger for
her stand for the King James Bible. Dave attacked her on hearsay, then he
opened public debate with Texe Marrs on the textual subject. Since that
time, Dave has stepped up his correction and tinkering with the Bible, and he
has made it plain that he does NOT believe that the English Bible could be preserved
by God just as accurately as God gave the original writings.
There is a principle at work here: You mess with God's Word, and God messes with your mind. King Saul is the classic example. He changed God's instructions to kill all of the enemy people and cattle, then he claimed he had done all that God told him to do. Eve also messed with God's simple Word given to her, and she and Adam took the human race into depravity over dessert.
Dave Hunt has now graduated. He has corrupted God's Word, added to it, and thrown in his lot with Christ haters. Dave WILL quickly repent, or we must consider him a heretic-- an agent provocateur. All of his rantings and seeming exposure of evil become a small joke next to his latest slippage. To wit...
HERE
IS A VERY USEFUL DISCUSSION OF THE BIBLE CODES: http://www.scp-inc.org/newslttr/n2202/
The URL of the actual page is weird and my compiler rejects it. You
will therefore arrive at the site's INDEX page. Hit "bible Codes PartI.html"
Oct.
27, 1997
Dave Hunt has now come to an even lower state. He has formed an ecumenical association of ministries to Roman Catholics. In this group called "Ex-Catholics For Christ," Hunt has gathered those who do NOT believe in the soon rapture of the Lord's church, those who attack the Blood of Christ, those who believe Jesus was not the Son of God in eternity past, those who believe in the irradication of the old nature, those who are divorced and re-married in adultery, and those who are committed to the Charismatic Movement. We have a letter which proves that Dave Hunt has also forbidden the very hallmark of his own ministry-- reproof and rebuke.
Thus, this letter from Eric and Diane Groetz:
Subj: your web site
Date: 97-10-24
From: groetz@jbic.com (eric & diane groetz)
To: steve@balaams-ass.com
Dear Steve,
I just wanted to let you know that we are writing our next issue of The GOODNEWS letter and I will be referring all our readers to your excellent web site. My sister, Rebecca is also writing an in depth article concerning the abominable christmas celebration which we will email to you in case you would like it. (I'm sure you will...it gives the pagan-catholic connection)
I also wanted to let you know that it was hard to read your article concerning Dave Hunt because we always tried to believe in his sincerity. However, Mr. Hunt and others asked FCFC to join their new organization called "Ex Catholics For Christ" (since we took the best name..former catholics..hehehe). In their statements...they said if we join, we would be forbidden to rebuke others in this organization in matters of:
1. eternal security,
2. woman preachers,
3. charismatic movement or
4. the KJV Bible issue.
This really angered us. It was saying that they feel they are above rebuke! WE refused to join with them needless to say.
Also, in one of Dave Hunts newsletters, he said that Christ "died spiritually".
I'm sure you are aware of where he got that teaching. (Kenyon, Copeland, Hagin) I am told that in his new book, he goes into further detail about this statement. Have you heard anything about it?
Keep in touch!
Totally love your website.
Diane Groetz
Editor: BLESSED QUIETNESS JOURNAL-- We are now dropping all backing of all members of Ex-Catholics For Christ. Hunt started this journey into mediocrity by attacking the King James Bible and by attacking Gail Riplinger and her book without reading it. I predicted he would go off the deep end because God will not tolerate a man in a large place who attacks the Word of God. Thus, and I say this charitably, I TOLD YOU SO. Really, it is a blessing to see Dave Hunt play the fool this way since many saints will now have to give us a verdict on this heretic. How about YOU?
We at BLESSED QUIETNESS JOURNAL heartily commend Eric and Diane Groetz to your attention as separated and tested missionaries of Christ. They should receive ALL of your support which now goes to any member of ECFC or John MacArthur's ministry. In particular, Richard Bennett, who married a woman who was divorced, attacks the Bible teaching of the Rapture of the Lord's Church before the Great Tribulation. Please E-Mail the Groetz and encourage them for their stand against the majority on the broad way.
Here is Dave Hunt's answer to a question in his newsletter:
Question: In the March/April 1993 issue, of Perhaps Today Jack Van Impe writes that Jesus died spiritually..."the Lord Jesus Christ took both the first and second death-the grave and the Lake of Fire upon Himself when He died." Pastor David Hocking also taught that Jesus died spiritually. Recently, on the radio, Chuck Smith stated that Jesus' Spirit died. Did Jesus die spiritually? Was the Trinity separated? If the Spirit of God died, who was in charge of the universe while God was dead...?
Answer: Van Impe, Hocking, and Smith are Biblically correct in this regard. Confusion arises because "Jesus Died Spiritually (JDS)" is the label attached to the heresy taught by Hagin, Copeland and other "word-faith teachers": that our redemption comes not from Christ's death upon the cross, but from His being tortured by Satan in hell for three days and nights. Copeland, for example, says, "He allowed the devil to drag Him into the depths of hell as if He were the most wicked sinner who ever lived.... Every demon in hell came down on Him to annihilate Him.... [T]hey tortured Him beyond anything that anybody has ever conceived.... In a thunder of spiritual force, the voice of God spoke to the death- whipped, broken, punished spirit of Jesus... [in] the pit of destruction and charged the spirit of jesus with resurrection power! Suddenly His twisted, death- wracked spirit began to fill out and come back to life.... He was literally being reborn before the devil's very eyes. He began to flex His spiritual muscles...Jesus Christ dragged Satan up and down the halls of hell.... Jesus... was raised up a born-again man.... The day I realized that a born-again man had defeated Satan, hell, and death, I got so excited...! (Believer's Voice of Victory, September 1991)
It is both fanciful nonsense and heretical to teach that our redemption comes through Satan torture~ng Jesus in hell. That would make Satan our co-redeemer. If he didn't torture Jesus enough we wouldn't be saved-and if he did, do we thank him? Incredible! Satan isn't the proprietor of hell. He hasn't even been there yet. Nor will Satan torture the damned but will himself be tortured with "everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (Mc 2s:4 ) when death and hell have been "cast into the lake of fire" (Rev 20:14).
Before He died, Jesus cried in triumph, "It is finished" (Jn 19:30), indicating that our redemption had been accomplished on the Cross. Christ told the thief on the cross who believed in Him, "To day shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Lk 23:43), not in hell! He said, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Lk 23:a6). Yet Hagin, Copeland, et al., say He ended up, instead, in the hands of Satan in the depths of hell!
Did Jesus die "spiritually"? The Bible says that He "taste[d] death for every man" (Heb 2:9). All that we deserved He endured, which must have included death to His human body, soul and spirit. No, God the Father and the Holy Spirit didn't die, Christ did. Was the Trinity, then, separated? No, God is One. Yet Jesus did cry in agony, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (PS 2z: ~; Mc 2z:as; r.tk i s:34). What could that mean? It is a mystery beyond our comprehension, as is the statement that "it pleased the Lord (Yahweh) to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin" (Isa 53:10). We only know and believe that the full penalty demanded by God's infinite justice against sin was paid by Christ upon the Cross, and that he who knew no sin was made to be sin for us (2 Cor 5:21 ). Christ was punished by God as though He were sin itself so that we could be forgiven and have eternal life as a free gift of His grace.
Editor: BLESSED QUIETNESS JOURNAL-- I am sorry that the references did not survive the transfer of this from the Goertz. We will try to get them for you. Hunt has the Trinity one third totally dead, yet he claims they were still one. This is madness, and it shows how Hunt's mind is not on the Word of God. There is NO place in the Bible that states that Jesus' spirit died. All of this has to be done by juggling various texts.
Ps 16:10 For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. This text does not speak of Christ's spirit, nor does it imply that His soul or spirit died. Only Christ's body died. Following this line of Hunt's will cause a saint to delve into the novel. After this fantasy is absorbed, some other more grevious novelty will become appealing. Eventually, the saint will be following William Branham or some such nut case. Keep an eye on Hunt.
THIS
ARTICLE IS THE GREATER POINT OF THIS PAGE,
as alluded to in the headering:
I am going to give you the whole text of a "Question & Answer" item in THE BEREAN CALL for September 1996, then we will discuss the heretical attack on the Word of God contained in the item. The following item shows the classic guruistic relationship saints crave today from those who minister to them. The following is an example of what we are determined will NOT happen between you and us here at Balaam's Ass Speaks.
Thus:
Question: I read something recently that intrigued me-- the claim that there is a secret message encoded in the Torah at certain letter sequences, which was impossible to discover until computers were developed to their present capabilities. Are you familiar with this theory, and if so, what do you think of it?
Answer: The methods with which I am somewhat familiar involve the Masoretic Hebrew test which forms the basis of the King James Bible. No other text provides the amazing results. One method involves changing the spacing between the Hebrew letters. An example is the recent discovery by Orthodox rabbis that by merely changing the spacing between the letters (leaving the letters in the same order) in the last phrase in Genesis 15:17, "a burning lamp passed between those pieces" becomes "decree God into Rabin evil fire fire." This is not only remarkable but awesome for the following reasons: 1) Genesis 15:7-21 records the covenant God made with Abram giving the promised land to him and to his seed and specifically identifying its boundaries; 2) Rabin had repeatedly defied this covenant, stating that he would not abide by its "geography" but would continue to barter that land for "peace"; 3) This passage was being read in synagogues around the world on the very day that Rabin was shot twice by an assassin.
Of course, it could be argued that the above is pure coincidence, and there is no way to prove otherwise. Each person must come to his own conclusions. There is another discovery, however; which cannot possibly be dismissed as coincidence. It involves computer searches for words at certain letter intervals which must, of course, fit a consistent pattern. The original work was done by mathematical statisticians Doron Witztim, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenburg of the Jerusalem College of Technology and the Hebrew University, and was first published in the eminent Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. The original study involved 300 pairs of related words such as "rain" and "umbrella," "hammer" and "anvil," etc.
Every pair was found in close proximity a number of times. Inasmuch as these were randomly chosen pairs, the study concluded that no matter what other parts were chosen, they, too, would be found. This was incredible and mathematically could not happen by chance, not could any human agency, even with the help of computers, devise a text in which the letters form words and sentences with normal meaning and contain these hidden sequences.
Continuing their research, Witzim, et al. took the names of the 34 most prominent Jewish men from the ninth to nineteenth centuries and discovered that these names were in the Masoretic Text as well, in close proximity to the date of each one's birth and death. Of course, there is no possible way that any human author writing the Torah in about 1600 BC could have known such data, let alone have encoded it. The researchers added the names of the 32 next most prominent Jewish leaders and again the computer found them, together with their dates of birth and/or death. The results were published in the Statistical Science Journal [ Editor: Which comes right after Malachi , right? ], whose editor wrote, "Our referees were baffled: their prior beliefs made them think the Book of Genesis could not possibly contain meaningful references to modern day individuals, yet when the authors carried out additional analyses and checks the effect persisted. The paper is thus offered to Statistical Science readers as a challenging puzzle." Puzzle indeed to atheists!
Additional mathematical scholars and scientists from Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, and the Hebrew University have verified the above results after much careful checking. Of course, there are many critics who refuse to accept the study as proof of divine authorship; but no one has been able to find a flaw in the work. As further test, for example, other Hebrew texts such as that of Tolstoy's War and Peace were tested and no such patterns could be uncovered. Even other versions of the Bible produced no results, only the Masoretic Hebrew Text.
I have not attended any of the seminars being given or studied the original research papers. My knowledge has come only from the articles written about this work; nor do I have the technical expertise to give an unqualified opinion. I have a mere bachelor's degree in mathematics from UCLA, and studied cryptography only as a hobby while in the military and university. Based upon that limited knowledge and experience, I see no alternative but to believe God encoded the Torah with these and many other sequences involving modern persons [ Editor: please read, "pagan Christ haters" ] and events. Their discovery in our computerized age (impossible prior to this time) would seem to offer irrefutable evidence of God's existence and His authorship of the Bible. There seems no other rational explanation.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR OF THE SKEPTICAL INQUIRER
Feb. 24, 1998
Editor: BLESSED QUIETNESS JOURNAL-- Steve Van Nattan-- These letters were in response to an article by David Thomas. These people are "skeptical" about ALL faith and phenomena of any kind which cannot be proven by science. If the Bible Code of Drosnin were the work of God, we would just ignore the Skeptical Inquirer, but since Drosnin is a pagan trickster, the world's skepticism about the rest of the world's nonsense is very interesting.
Thus, I have here several letters to the editor of the SI. They will add greatly to the debate, and these letters alone trash both Dave Hunt and his agnostic guru Drosnin:
As introduction, I need to point out that David Thomas, in the Skeptical Inquirer, discussed the insane possibility that the Hebrew in a computer format would be encoded with the Word of God via inscription which was hidden from humanity for circa 5000 years. Thomas then ran computer code models like those described by Dave Hunt above-- the work of Drosnin. Thomas came up with all sorts of coded messages from the King James Bible and a law case called Edwards vs. Aguillard. Thomas used the KJV to show that the messages could be gathered from any Bible version, and the law case was meant to be a totally non-sacred test. He got lots of prophetic messages from the law case. Whose god inspired the written brief of that law suit? Perhaps guru Dave Hunt could tell us. So, here are the letters to the editor. These people, who do NOT believe in anything they cannot test physically, could figure this out. I think it's about time some alleged Bible believers learn that Satan is counterfeiting all things holy. Some holy skepticism would be in order under the circumstances.
Debunking the 'Bible Code'
David E. Thomas's expose of The Bible Code by Michael Drosnin was very persuasive ("Hidden Messages and the Bible Code," November/December 1997). In fact, Thomas's examples of idiot messages obtained by using the same decoding method in the King James Version of the Bible involved a lot more effort than Drosnin's because Thomas's messages in English included all the vowels as well as the consonants. Drosnin's word games in Hebrew left out all the vowels, which enabled Drosnin to force upon his consonants an enormous variety of declensions and conjugations at his whim.
One prime example of Drosnin's methods is when he claims that "dinosaur" and "asteroid" appear in the Hebrew text. To find the letters for "dinosaur," Drosnin has to begin in the first half of Genesis and finish in the last half of Deuteronomy; in other words, this one word spans virtually the whole of the Pentateuch, with roughly thirty-eight pages (at roughly a thousand letters per page) of a printed Hebrew Bible between each letter in "dinosaur." And it's not even "dinosaur" as the word is spelled in the relatively few Hebrew dictionaries that have it; it's Drosnin's unique spelling, his own transliteration into Hebrew letters of the English word that didn't exist until 1841.
While we're at it, the word he says is "asteroid" is really the very word used throughout the Hebrew Bible for star. Similarly, when Drosnin says he found "Watergate" with his code, he didn't find the Hebrew name that appears repeatedly in Nehemiah, chapter 8; he found his own transliteration of the American hotel name. So Drosnin "finds" messages hy torturing or even abandoning the Hebrew language.
One technical question not answered by Drosnin, nor by the sundry other authors touting their own Bible code messages, is the provenance of his computerized Hebrew text. The methodology of the Bible code dictates that even one letter added or dropped from the text could throw off most of the messages found (and cause different messages to appear). Moreover, Drosnin was using a Hebrew text that had been computerized, and the differences between that medium and print could add their own characteristics For example, the handful of traditional peculiar letters raised, enlarged, shrunk, etc. might be homogenized, and the multitude of traditional marginal notes might be incorporated into the main text where they'd be included in the letter counts. And, of course, there is the question of how carefully the computerized version was proofread and edited.
Drosnin mentions two leading editions-- the Koren Hebrew Bible published in Jerusalem in the 1960s and distinguished for its elegant typesetting (although its text is mostly dependent on an edition by Heidenheim a century earlier) and the Leningrad Code, the world's oldest dated complete Hebrew Bible manuscript, which is the basis of the text of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and the pocket Bibles distributed by the Israeli Army. But Drosnin doesn't say that he actually used either one (the Leningrad text is more likely to be available in computer format). Drosnin also says that he had found messages in the Books of Isaiah and Daniel and that these messages had been hidden "three thousand years ago." You don't have to be a skeptical inquirer to reject this claim: Even the most unscientific literalistic Fundamentalist knows that neither Isaiah nor Daniel lived as much as three thousand years ago.
Bernard J. Sussman
______ AND ________
We (Skeptical Inquierer) received a letter
from the writer with the following comment:I might add that since that letter was written another book on so-called Bible Codes was issued by an Israeli publisher. The two computer techies who wrote it did reveal their methodology - which was also presumably Drosnin's; namely, they used a computer program which was on the market, by which the operator specifies to the computer which Hebrew words he is looking for, and the computer looks over and over again, trying different intervals and directions, until it either finds those words or exhausts itself. This means that the words found by Drosnin did not merely appear by surprise, but that Drosnin looked for them and kept looking until they materialized or until he tried a different spelling that would materialize.
This is like drinking endless cups of tea until you find the tea leaves that give you the message you want.
There is a very recent paperback, Who Wrote the Bible Code? - A physicist probes the current controversy by Randall Ingermanson, PhD (1999, Waterbrook Press, Colorado Springs, a div. of Random House, 180 pages). He uses higher math to debunk the Bible Code. Among the flurry of (pro-) Bible Code books, there was one published in Israel that used a slightly different notion - one which revealed a great deal about the software used by Drosnin, including details that Drosnin deliberately kept in the dark. They used the software to find words that they selected, the computer would search over and over again, in all intervals, in all directions, starting from all possible starting points, until it found a "patch" of the Hebrew Bible where the two or three selected words more or less converged ... and then they read the plain text of the Bible at that point, looking for relevant Bible verses appropriate to the encoded words. It was a cute method of bibliomancy and I would prefer it at least to Drosnin's pretense of being surprised by hidden words that he had actually chosen. At least with this other method, people are reading the words of the Bible.
Sincerely, Bernard J. Sussman, JD,MLS,CP
sussmanbern@hotmail.com
Bernard J. Sussman, J.D., M.LS., C.P.Bethesda, Md.
I thoroughly enjoyed David Thomas's article on the Bible-code phenomenon.
Wouldn't it be fascinating to apply his message-searching programs to texts of biblical length consisting of a random sequence of letters? If useful, the random text could be biased to include the proper letter frequencies found in English.It would also be interesting to apply his programs to text derived from genetic sequences. (Although genetic sequences are represented with the symbols C, C, A, I and T, it is possible to develop codes that I map the symbols to twenty-six letters of the alphabet.)
Finally, it would be fascinating to create an artificial manuscript in such a way A that it encodes a complete message that appears astounding, such as, "The CIA killed Kennedy." In fact, perhaps someone is already thinking of doing this roger on Oprah! The secret manuscript could be "discovered," and the secret messages revealed.
Clifford A. Pickover
IBM Thomas Research Center Yorktown Heights, N.Y
LETTERS FROM READERS
Einstein's god, as everyone has heard, is raffiniert (cunning) but nor bose (mean). Drosnin's god violates both of these terms. An omniscient agent would surely come up with a more sophisticated code (actually it's a cipher) than the hoary "Caesars alphabet" substitution that Drosnin presents us with and has misapplied. In practice, the key to a cipher derives from the text itself and not from the fiat of the decipherer. There is also the question of the ratio of plain text to its "enciphered" information.
Read the great lampoon which used the Drosnin search method and did a search of Drosnin's own book. The results are at the right and are a hoot.
READ MORE HEREIs it efficient to use hundreds of pages to get two or three words? On behalf of Einstein's god, I protest these indignities. I myself vote for the book of nature, the traditional text for "argument from design" hermeneutics. As for Einstein's second point, the "plain text" of the Scriptures is enigmatic enough to have obsessed millennia of exegetes. There is an embarrass des mysteres already and no justification to posit mote. The question of messages that need a computer to access them calls into question not only the character of Drosnin's god his chosen people are apparently computer nerds but also his planning. 'i'he 1963 assassination of Kennedy took place before the widespread availability of computers. But granting, for the sake of argument, a message in cipher, just what sort of information might it usefully provide?
Drosnin's god shows a Democratic bias in selecting assassinations. Why not "Lincoln, Booth, Ford Theater" or even "Ronald Reagan, watch out"? It would seem, however, that what's gleaned should fit the nature of the plain text. That the Bible should contain a cryptic litany of the mishaps of twentieth- century politicos but nor say anything about its own central dilemma is absurd on the face of it. In the context, something like "Jesus saves!" or alternately 'Jesus is not the messiah" would be more to the point. But such a message would stir up the wrong kind of controversy: it wouldn't sell books. Good work!
Bob Robinson
I heard Michael Drosnin, author of The Bible Code, speak on the Dianne Rehm Show on NPR recently and I was very skeptical of all but his most mundane claims. I was, therefore, very pleased to read David Thomas's article confronting those claims head-on.
What surprised me the most about Drosnin's appearance on NPR was his claim that nor only were actual future events predicted in the Hebrew Bible thousands of years ago (e.g., the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin), but all possible future events as well! Thus, if you were to find "Clinton" crossed with "assassin assassinates" that might mean that President Clinton was going to be assassinated, or possibly that some other person named Clinton was going to be assassinated; or it might mean nothing at all. If that is indeed the case, then of what possible use are these "predictions"? If any of them might or might not be true than how do the "predictions" in the Hebrew Bible imply a god, some other "higher power, or that "we are not alone"? Of course, the whole debate becomes moot once you begin to find similar "predictions" in the KJV of Genesis and in Edwards v. Aguillard, which Drosnin assured NPR listeners were not there!
Thanks again for a great magazine, and keep up the good work!
Stanley Alluisi
Choctaw, Okla.
David E. Thomas did an outstanding job of debunking this Bible-code nonsense. However, I am afraid that some of my fellow evangelicals such as Grant R Jeffrey have embraced The Bible Code, and they will nor pay attention to this fine article, since it was written by a skeptic. Therefore, I wrote Mr. Jeffrey myself and attempted to convince him that there are many reaons to doubt the results of this research by Eliyahu Rips. Hopefully Jeffrey will pay attention, since he knows that I do not disagree with him theologically. I also pointed out to Jeffrey that many evangelicals are not convinced at all by the evidence presented in The Bible Code. For instance, Hank Hanegraaff noted in the September/October 1997 Christian Research Report that May Lou Nielsen, manager of For Heaven's Sake bookstore in Longmont, Colorado, stated, "I had one customer who wanted to order 100 copies of The Bible Code. I told him there are serious flaws with ELS (Equidistant Letter Sequencing). I hate to sacrifice the sales but I also want to have integrity in what I sell."
I wish I could recommend The Signature of God: Astonishing Biblical Discoveries by Grant R. Jeffrey, but I disagree with the chapter that deals with ELS. Evidently Jeffrey was guilty of being overzealous, and the result was that his spiritual discernment suffered. Jesus does not want his followers to be gullible but sensible and prudent. He instructs them, "Lo, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; be wary and wise as serpents, and be innocent harmless, guile less and without falsity as doves" (Matthew 10:16, Amplified Bible). I am glad that the falsity of The Bible Code has been exposed, but it saddens me that Jeffrey has to some degree hurt the reputation of evangelicals because he claimed it was the "Signature of God."
Everette Hatcher III
Little Rock, Ark.
If God, or whoever, had coded some important messages in the Bible, how come they all refer to the second half of this century? Were there no noteworthy persons in the few thousands of years before Clinton? Take a few: Caligula, Caesar, Vercingetorix, Artila, Montezuma, Columbus, Marco Polo, Cromwell, Washington, Napoleon, Darwin, Gandhi.
This dearly shows (apart from the basic fallacy of the hidden code) how narrow a horizon Drosnin has in dealing with a unique historical document.
Lassi Hyvarinen
Divonne les Bains, France
I wish the soundly conceived and clearly presented material in David E. Thomas's "Hidden Messages and the Bible Code" could be made available to a wider audience. I enjoy sharing with friends and my children how mathematically literate thinking can reveal deception.
Glenn Matteson
San Luis Obispo, Calif.
Editor: Skeptical Inquirer-- For an update on Bible-code developments, see Dave Thomas's Follow-up column in this issue, page 57.
Editor: BLESSED QUIETNESS JOURNAL-- Steve Van Nattan-- In spite of the unbelief in the above folks, they have made some very useful observations. I want to note Two major considerations:
FIRST,
There are two kinds of prophecy common today. The first type is "I told
you so" prophecy, while the other is "Look out, here it comes" prophecy. God
does not waste his time saying, "I told you so." That is for us believers
to say after the "Here is comes" is fulfilled. In order for prophecy to
be authoritative and God authenticating, it has to ALL be "Look out, here it comes"
prophecy. Dave Hunt, in his past publications which I quoted above, is enthralled
with the "I told you so" codes. Hunt shows a basic defect in his knowledge
of God. Here are texts which show how God delivers "Here it comes" prophecy:
Amos 3:7 Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.
The timing is as clear as it can be to any forth grader. The prophecy comes BEFORE God acts so that the faithful will be ready and eager to receive His mighty Acts.
Mark 1:2 As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee.
Jeremiah 29:19 Because they have not hearkened to my words, saith the LORD, which I sent unto them by my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them; but ye would not hear, saith the LORD.
The point of the prophecy was to tell Israel UP FRONT to repent and get right or be judged, not to tell them after the judgment why God did it.
Revelation 10:7 But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.
God has said "Look out, here it comes" through his prophets from Adam onward. Noah, Moses, David, and all the Old Testament prophets have said thousands of things which had to wait anywhere from a couple of years to thousands of years to be fulfilled. Some have yet to be fulfilled, and we wait eagerly for that day we can see such a prophecy come true so that we too can say, "I told you so" to agnostics and skeptics.
When the six day war took place, thousands of believing preachers got into their pulpits the next Sunday and had a great time pointing out that the world had just seen the fulfillment of prophecy that was 2500 years old. Such is the way of a Holy God who knows what He is doing.
Drosnin's codes gave a lot of prophetic bilge which had happened TOO LATE to make a difference. Prophecy is a "get ready" message. How could we "get ready" for the assassination of Kennedy in 1997? How could we do anything about Rabin after he died. This is pure garbage and UNLIKE Jehovah.
SECOND,
Drosnin's messages were politically correct. As one writer pointed
out above, Drosnin would have been laughed out of town if he had come up with
messages like, "Christ is Lord," "Jesus Saves," or conversely, "Jesus is not Messiah."
So, did Dave Hunt bother to note that the messages were not salvation and
faith inspiring? No, hunt, and a lot of prophecy junkies went nuts and fed
their souls on messages about agnostics and pagans who have NO place in the flow
of God's divine Plan for the ages. Where was the Reformation? Where
was John Hus? Where was DL Moody? Where was warning about the Whore
of Rome and the Inquisition? Not there. Drosnin would have had to
self-publish that book, and it would have sold a couple of dozen copies max.
Comments
by Steve Van Nattan, Editor of BLESSED QUIETNESS JOURNAL,
on Dave
Hunt's statements on the new cryptic bible (lower case "b" intended):
1. Hunt admits he is not well versed on the methods or research, yet he makes absolute conclusions at the end. He did exactly the same thing with Gail Riplinger's book, New Age Bible Versions. He blasted her mercilessly, yet admitted he had not read the book. This is Fundamental Papistry. The Cardinals at one's elbow do the dirty work, then one reads out the Bull accordingly. John Paul II could do it no better, friend.
2. Hunt has recently rejected the supremacy and unique position of the King James Bible, so this exalting of the KJV seems to be a return to the narrow way. This is of Satan, folks. Hunt would not exalt the KJV until he could do it outside the known text of Scripture. He now gives absolute supernatural authority to an obscure message which you flatlanders can only get from rebel Zionist pagan Jews. So helpful, dear David, so cordial of you. Thanks for nothing, sir.
3. Rabbis are NOT impartial witness. They still hate The Lord Jesus Christ with a passion. They can only tolerate the fact that the alleged Christian sites in Israel bring in buckets of revenue to the state. Otherwise, if they could pull Him down from heaven at this time, they would kill Him again. Hunt is falling all over himself believing these authorities!..... no questions asked. We have NO business accepting the devil's authority this way regarding revelation. Romans 16:17-18.
4. Do you recall the stunt the rabbis played in Genesis 15:17? It came out, "decree God into Rabin evil fire fire." God, NOWHERE IN THE WORD, conveys His Truth in cryptic fashion. There may be application which takes some digging, but the actual words are NOT cryptic and disjointed in the grammar. This is National Enquirer yellow journalism, not that of Jehovah. It would seem that God has a CIA type canon hidden away for us to dig up by stealth.
5. The main problem Dave Hunt has in this regard is that he is adding to the revelation. You may say, "Oh no, these things were always in the Bible." Well then why didn't God tell us more revelation was coming? Why did he tell John to write in the Revelation that nothing could be added (Revelation 22:18-19)? Friend, this revelation has NOT come by "holy men of God" who spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost. It has come by way of Satanic rebels, just like Vaticanus and Siniaticus, the Greek texts used by the Whore Church to slip a mickey to the Lord's Church via the RSV, ASV, NIV, NASV, and Ken Taylor's Living Bible (which is dead).
6. I note that all of the discoveries by these late great scholars were related to Jewish rebels over the ages who hated Jesus soundly. I also note that the prophecy regarding Rabin has NOTHING to do with the ongoing flow or God's history for anyone. It certainly served the cause of the Orthodox Rabbis, who allegedly dug it up from the Torah, for they hated Rabin. And, it certainly gave Hunt a buzz, since he has taken the Zionist line over the years. Rabin, however; is not exactly your man of God, right or wrong about the politics. Hunt has been suckered into the Zionist circle even deeper, and I fear Hunt may soon be on Mount Zion, unwittingly joining "arms" with the Beast he claims to expose.
7. Back to the Rabin story. First, All of the players were UNSAVED CHRIST HATERS. So what if Rabin was tinkering with the Abrahamic covenant? There is NO indication that these pre-Messianic players, especially these German Zionists, are significant at all. Their games today have NO bearing on the Messianic future. Christ will settle all of that at His arrival in the Promised Land in the near future. Also, it is very possible that Rabin was set up by Orthodox rabbis to catch the bullet. There is clearly a Jewish element in Israel today which is quite willing to kill their compromising fellow Israelis. This Rabin story could be a deadly political prank, and Hunt et al are exalting it in the name of biblical Truth. I am not laughing, gentlemen.
8. Recall this statement please-- "Of course, it could be argued that the above is pure coincidence, and there is no way to prove otherwise. Each person must come to his own conclusions." Hunt has taken us from the written legible words of the canon of Scripture to the cryptic interlinear fog, and he then gives us permission to enter deeper into the fog of existentialism by letting each of us declare what is and what is not the Word of God. Do you see what is happening? We are now in Oz. We are in the netherlands of mystic superstition. WE are the ones who choose. Hunt has taken us to Esalin, to Findhorn, Sedona, or to the Gospel according to Shirley McLaine and Ruth Montgomery. You chose, YOU decide, Yea hath God said, maybe YOU can find the revelation privately under a stray period or in the white space between the Alpha and the Omega.
9. I also notice that these scholars, in classic impartiality, didn't bother to enter "The Lord Jesus Christ" or "Paul" and the "Apostles" into their computer. Why? Answer: They hate them. I guess you will just have to decide who you want to lead you to the Truth, Jewish God haters and prophecy junkies like Dave Hunt, or your King James Bible and your pastor who has to answer for the things he teaches. All of the Jews whom these university scholars dumped into the computer-- these whom they claim Jehovah God subtly included between the lines-- ARE NOT the "prominent Jewish men from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries." Whatever Jews have that distinction with God, they will have been men who accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, and real Church history tells us there were some. Furthermore; Hunt seems to have forgotten who is "prominent" in the Church Age-- SAINTS, SIR, NOT Maimonides and sundry agnostic mongrels!!!!! Where was Count Zinzendorf? Or, John Hus?
You see, Dave Hunt, like so many of these "Christian" yellow journalists, answers to no one. There is no way to bring such gurus up short in the local church. They all claim to have a pastor nearby whom they answer to, but their pastoral Balaam is really their puppet who fawns over them ad nauseam. Southwest Radio Bible Church, a number of years ago, went for the Shroud of Turin story. They published a paper exalting it. A number of saints wrote them calling them up short for this diversion into Catholic superstition, but SWRBC has had NO local church authority examining them, so they have NOT, to date, recanted of the Shroud story. God is still using them, and I think it is because they have taken a strong stand for the King James Bible. Hunt is not going to turn out so narrow. He has attacked the Word of God, so he is a hireling.
10. Regarding the letter intervals which Hunt claims cannot be explained other than by the direct intervention of God-- Since when has God gone high-tech? This is the same late great bilge dumped on us by Mormonism's Joseph Smith, Charles Taz Russell of the Jehovah's Witnesses, and Wimber and Wagner of the unHoly Laughter circus. God has been diddling around heaven not paying attention, but just the other day, or decade, God finally sent to us our last and greatest prophet with His final, though late, revelation. The blasphemy of this one is of the highest degree, for the ordinary flatlander, like you and me, cannot get to the lab to check out the work of these scholarly Christ haters. We are asked by Hunt not to question this one. Even Hunt admits he cannot get to the process-- He just believes it. Child-like faith, or an aging egomaniac's lust for acclaim?
11. Note the "eminent" mob that Hunt lords over you-- "Doron Witztim, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenburg of the Jerusalem College of Technology and the Hebrew University," Will they come to your next prophecy conference? If they did, would the average truck driver or fisherman be able to understand the discussion of the high tech machinations in their laboratory? Not a chance groupies. Compare this mob to the Lord Jesus Christ and his "unlearned" disciples. Note please how the Apostle Paul deprogrammed himself of all of this high toned palaver. Hunt has iced your cake of faith with a deadly arsenic paste called heresy by us flatlanders. Beware. KISS. Keep It Simple Saint.
12. Recall please the comment as follows: "The results were published in the Statistical Science Journal, whose editor wrote, "Our referees were baffled: their prior beliefs made them think the Book of Genesis could not possibly contain meaningful references to modern day individuals..."
These men could not believe the prophecy and covenants to modern Jews and Arabs which Jehovah made to Abraham and Hagar, but NOW they are believers. Why? Answer: They have read the fine print served up by the computer and the university mob of PhDs. Well, did any of them get saved? Did anyone "stay to pray?" HA HA HA!
The Editor of Statistical Science ended by saying, "The paper is thus offered to Statistical Science readers as a challenging puzzle." Hunts responded, "Puzzle indeed to atheists!" Yet, Dave Hunt accepts their work at face value as the canon of Jehovah. What can we say for Dave Hunt?
13. Come let us hear the guru speak again please, "Of course, there are many critics who refuse to accept the study as proof of divine authorship; but no one has been able to find a flaw in the work." Do you see where that puts you, my dear simple minded Bible believer? YOU and I, let us rejoice in it, are bucking the scholars of Harvard and Yale. We are rejecting the infallibility of the computer software of a Jewish agnostic University gang. Treachery? NO! We are told we cannot find a flaw in the work of the Devil's crowd. We cannot resist the mighty outbreathings of Hunt et al. Shall we capitulate? Shall we fall at the shrine of Mother Computer and whisper our Hail Mathematician-- Do the stations of the byte?
14. Let the reader beware of this-- The end times are marked by high tech theology. The Gospel is now preached by satellite rather then by old time Gospel preachers. The funds are collected by computer mailing lists. And, mark it well, the MARK of the BEAST will be a numbering high tech system to take all men under control of Satan. This resorting to the computer to get the last Word of canon for us smacks mightily of Satan. Now, we must have cryptography 301 taught in all seminaries so that the complete Bible mutilator can dig up all the secrets from the text on Sunday morning.
Can you hear the late great preacher fresh from Dallas Seminary, "This is an unfortunate rendering here in the Greek. You see, if we feed the computer the Hebrew text and call for the letters sixteen times removed from every fortieth penultimate, we find that the third power from "x," in multiples of pye to the fourth, shows that Moses was really your uncle's aunt. "Get in line. Take a number. We'll be with you shortly." "Thus saith the Pentium." Or, "Now, according to Saint Mac...."
15. Note the following serpentine trick by Hunt: "Even other versions of the Bible produced no results, only the Masoretic Hebrew Text." This is to put you Bible believers and KJV ONLY folks off the track. This implies other versions like the NIV, NASV, and Living Bible were tested. The only text of the Old Testament used in modern English versions is the Masoretic Text. It is mutilated, for sure, but there is no other Hebrew Bible. The Septuagint is claimed to pre-date Christ, but it is quite clear now that it was a fabrication of Origin long after Christ's return to the Glory. This was simply Hunt's way to curry favor with those he offended in his attack on the KJV. Only a fool would go for this one.
16. Please re-read the last paragraph Hunt wrote. I put it in bold print. This is truly amazing, friends. Hunt admits he has not done his homework and that he really is a bystander in this business. Then he goes on to state that he absolutely believes (similar language to the born again experience as we have it in the Bible) that God has given this cryptic nonsense as proof of His own existence, and Hunt directly associates this with the proof of the authorship of the Word of God. I told you that when a man messes with God's Word, as Hunt did when he attacked Gail Riplinger and her defense of the King James Bible, then God messes with that Bible mutilator's mind. Hunt has now come full circle, and he is chasing his tail folks.
Dave Hunt's faith is now founded on the notions and high-tech interpretations of unsaved Christ hating university scholars from Israel, Harvard, and Yale. Hunt's preacher is now a Pentium 200. Friends, can we not settle this right now? Dave Hunt is a hireling. He never was born again, and he has now attempted to lead the Lord's sheep, the Church, into the fold of Satan and his blasphemers.
Feb. 25, 1998
DAVE HUNT SWITCHES GEARS WITHOUT REPENTANCE
Is his February 98 edition of The Berean Call, Dave Hunt has changed his line on the Bible codes 180 degrees. He is now warning the readers to be cautious of such codes and doubtful things.
BUT, Hunt did not repent.
Hunt did not apologize for leading his groupies astray into Mother Goose doctrine.
Hunt implied that his readers were the ones who were susceptible to being deceived.
This is the way of a demonic possessed guru. YOU are the dope. YOU are the gullible flake. YOU are the one needing warning and watching lest YOU go astray.
I HAVE NEWS FOR DAVE HUNT-- DAVE, YOU ARE THE HERETIC. The worst thing is that you, sir, would try to pass this off as a problem of your readers.
I told you that I believed Hunt was an agent provocateur-- Now I am certain of it. I don't want to take the space to put Dave Hunt's latest material here, but I assure you, he has now taken a BOLD STAND against the Bible codes. This is too little and too late to save his foolish deceptions of the past, which are reported above.
1 Timothy 6:20 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:
Revelation
22:18 For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this
book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues
that are written in this book:
19 And if any man shall take away from
the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the
book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written
in this book.
SAD UPDATE REGARDING OTHERS WHO ARE NOW PLAYING THE NUMBERS:
JULY 21, 1997
The following is simply dropped here in tact from Marty Bee:
Subj: Re: Blessed Quietness Journal
From: (Marty Bee)
To: Steve Van NattanThanks for the news letter. It came just after I received a reply from James Randi on the "Bible Code." He told me that he was sorry but all forms of religion were "wishful thinking" to him.
(So your letter came as a fresh wind). He has some very good critiques of the Drosnin book and also has a "PROPHETIC MACHINE" on his website that does the same kind of Numerology tricks that the Bible Code is supporting.
http://www.randi.org/
Did you know that Grant Jeffrey and Henry Morris have gotten on this crazy train also? Yep that's right good old Grant and good old Henry have both bought into this occult practice/idea (all that the word "occult" means anyway is "hidden"). Of course I think that Jeffrey is charging somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred bucks for a version of the software. (I love the smell of money in the morning...).
Has the whole Christian world gone a little "nuts"?
I will try and forward the address of Job Martin to you as soon as possible.
Marty Bee
Feb. 2000
Then last night on Praise the Lord, Hal Lindsey was interviewing Chuck Missler. Chuck was plugging his book on the Bible "codes," and as proof of the "codes," he talked about the disputed ending to Mark 16. Chuck mentioned all sorts of patterns in the verses, and then Hal said, "When I was at Dallas Seminary, I got a degree in Greek. We only studied this passage from the standpoint of linguistics"-- clearly implying that had his prof had access to such a marvelous thing as this "code," they could have done even more in-depth research!
Then Missler mentioned that there were 24 Greek words not found in any other of the Gospels, and he talked about the statistical improbability of this-- and the point is? But funniest of all was when Hal made a comment to the effect that if this information had been available when the higher critics had been most strident, we could have easily shut them up just by producing such "astonishing information." Can you see Bultmann or Borkamm in pain as they are confronted with the Drosnin Code? These German Liberals and Rationalists did not even know if the nose on their face was real or an illusion. A thousand codes would have only been so much rubbish to them.
What blasphemy! As God was late giving us the best tools for defending the faith. These men are devils, and I have no reason to believe I shall ever see them in heaven. God is holy, and he will NOT allow blasphemers to hang out in his heaven and around his throne.
Update
2012
VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL DROSNIN
This man is an atheist,
and he still believe his Bible code is valid. Please mediated on this as you watch.
Would God use an atheist, who still refuses to believe God is real and Jesus is
the Messiah, to bring such alleged revelation in the End Times?
LINKS:
DAVE HUNT CONSIDERED
A GOOD TECHNICAL DISCUSSION OF BIBLE CODES WITH RESEARCH POTENTIAL: http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/spiritualcodes.html
NUMEROUS ASSINATION PROPHECIES FOUND IN "MOBY DICK"--
This you have to see to believe:
http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.htmlDave Hunt and his pal James White, the Bible mutilator
http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=93
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