02. God's Sovereignty in Creating the Scriptures
Chapter 2 God’s Sovereignty in Creating the Scriptures
Knowing this first that no prophecy of scripture is of private interpretation. For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20-21).
There is no mistaking the fact that the Bible claims God as its author. It seems fantastic that God could give perfect thoughts to imperfect men and make sure that what they write is perfectly inspired. (2 Timothy 3:16) Every scripture inspired of God (Greek: “is God breathed”) [is] also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction, which is in righteousness. He was so perfectly sovereign in this that it was said that He used men’s mouths. (Luke 1:70) As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets that have been from of old. (Jeremiah 1:9) …The Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth. The prophets themselves also claimed this by prefacing their words with “Thus saith the Lord.”
Jesus not only said that His words were from God but that they also would judge us and that they are eternal life. (John 12:48-50) He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my sayings, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I spake, the same shall judge him in the last day. (49) For I spake not from myself; but the Father that sent me, he hath given me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. (50) And I know that his commandment is life eternal: the things therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto me, so I speak. Jesus passed on this inspiration to those whom He sent. (Matthew 10:40) He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me. New Testament teachers and prophets like Paul claimed this inspiration. (1 Corinthians 14:37) If any man thinketh himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him take knowledge of the things which I write unto you, that they are the commandment of the Lord. Can the divine inspiration of Scriptures be proven? In this book, I will relate to you a few miracles that have happened to me, which have no reasonable explanation other than the supernatural power of a living, loving God, Who reacts to our faith in the Scriptures. The most impressive miracle to me is what happened to me when a friend challenged me to read the Scriptures. I was not at all convinced that God wrote them and I was, I thought, fairly happy living in sin. I enjoyed my dope, alcohol, hobbies, and generally pleasing myself with no desire to serve God or to be holy. However I had a curiosity about the supernatural fulfillment of prophecies thousands of years old that were attributed to the Bible. So never having had an interest in reading, I started to read. At the time, I really did not know what was happening to me. This was the first time I really could not put a book down. I found myself neglecting everything I held dear in the world, reading almost every spare moment. Before long, I really wanted to know the One who wrote this book, and I knew Him to be God.
About this time, I noticed that my stash of dope had been sitting in the cabinet untouched and my almost finished Kawasaki Z-1 show chopper got no attention. This was not the old me. My ski boat, racecar, school bus camper, and gun collection all fared the same. I eventually sold or gave them away. I knew that God’s hand was upon me to reveal Himself to me. When we put the Word in us, we put God in us. He is the Word (John 1:1). I desired to obey what I was reading. When the Word said to be baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit, I did. Sin was running off me like water off a duck’s back. When my new TV got in the way, I got rid of it. I respected the Word more than men or religion for its power to deliver and bless. Can the divine inspiration of Scripture be proven scientifically? Science is observable and demonstrable. My testimony is just that to those who knew me and to myself but for further skeptics, I will share another miracle. Ivan Panin was forced to leave Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution and come to the United States. He became a Harvard Scholar, professor, and mathematician, who once tutored Albert Einstein. His training, devotion to Christ and the Scriptures well-equipped him for his future work. Here he found his life’s work in scientifically proving the divine inspiration of Scriptures. For fifty years, Dr. Panin devoted twelve to eighteen hours a day to this work. The basis for his revelation, which he called numerics, was the ancient Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament Scriptures. The Hebrews and Greeks used their letters also for their numbers. In other words, the whole Bible was actually written in numbers also. What Dr. Panin discovered is that when he used the numbers, the 66 books of the Bible showed a pattern of numbers and divisibility that no other writing had. He diligently researched other Hebrew and Greek writings and found no pattern. This included the apocryphal books added in the Catholic and other early Protestant Bibles, including the original King James Version before its many revisions.
I have read Dr. Panin’s works for many years and am totally impressed. Below is a small sample of his volumes of work from a pamphlet titled Astounding New Discoveries. The number seven is by far the most common number used in the surface text of the Bible, used in Revelation alone more than fifty times, but it is also common beneath the surface of the whole Bible.
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE, VERSE ONE “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
FEATURE ONE The number of Hebrew words in this verse is exactly seven.
FEATURE TWO The number of letters in the seven words is exactly twenty-eight, or four sevens.
FEATURE THREE The first three of these seven Hebrew words contain the subject and predicate of the sentence. These three words are translated – “In the beginning God created.” The number of letters in these first three Hebrew words is exactly fourteen, or two sevens. The last four of these seven words contain the object of the sentence. These four words are translated – “the heavens and the earth.” The number of letters in these last four Hebrew words is fourteen, or two sevens.
FEATURE FOUR
These last four Hebrew words consist of two objects. The first is “the heavens,” and the second is “and the earth.” The number of letters in the first object is exactly seven. The number of letters in the second object is seven.
FEATURE FIVE The three leading words in this verse of seven words are God–the subject – and heavens and earth–the objects. The number of letters in these three Hebrew words is exactly fourteen, or two sevens. The number of letters in the other four words of the verse is fourteen, or two sevens.
FEATURE SIX The shortest word is in the middle. The number of letters in this word and the word to its left is exactly seven.
FEATURE SEVEN The number of letters in the middle word and the word to its right is exactly seven.
These are only a few examples of the many amazing numeric facts, which have been discovered in the structure of this first verse of only seven Hebrew words. Literally dozens of other phenomenal numeric features strangely underlie the structure of this verse. (Many additional features are given in the complete, 167-page edition of Astounding New Discoveries © 1941, by Karl Sabiers, a student of Panin. Some later versions were edited or even plagiarized to prove poor manuscripts.)
Thus, according to the law of chances, for twenty-four features to occur in a passage accidentally, there is only one chance in 191,581,231,380,566,414,401 – only one chance in one-hundred-ninety-one quintillion, five-hundred-eighty-one quadrillion, two-hundred-thirty-one trillion, three-hundred-eighty-billion, five-hundred sixty-six million, four-hundred-fourteen-thousand, four-hundred-one. (The nomenclature herein used is the American, not the British.)
Many brief Bible passages have as many as seventy or one hundred or more amazing numeric features in the very structure of their text. If there is only one chance in quintillions that twenty-four features could occur together accidentally, what would the chance be for seventy features to occur together accidentally? When there is only one chance in thousands for something to happen accidentally, it is already considered highly improbable that it will occur at all. When there is only one chance in hundreds of thousands, it is considered practically impossible. But here there is one chance in not only millions, but billions, and trillions, and quadrillions, and quintillions, that merely twenty-four features could occur together in a passage accidentally.
If that is not enough to convince any sane man, there are patterns of eight, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, thirty-seven, forty-three, etc., on top of the sevens throughout the Word. Larger patterns connect book to book, Old Testament to New Testament and show the correct order of the books. What all this proves is that one divine, brilliant mind wrote the Bible rather than thirty-three simple men, with relatively no schooling, who lived in different countries over a span of 1,600 years. If men wrote the Bible, they would have all had to live at the same time and place and all been mathematical geniuses. Then they would have each had to write their book last with the knowledge of the numeric pattern in all the other books. Men have tried to write a simple numeric text with very few features and failed miserably. The Hebrews had extremely stringent rules for the scribes to follow in copying the ancient manuscripts. God did this through them in order to preserve this pattern of perfection in the Scriptures that we might have the “God-breathed” Word of God. If a Greek or Hebrew letter is added, removed, or changed, the pattern breaks in that text. The main problem today in publishing Bibles is deciding which manuscript to use. It makes common sense to use only ancient manuscripts, which were close to the original with less likelihood of human mistake. Using a copy of a copy of a copy, etc. makes no sense, and yet, because of prejudices or lack of availability of ancient manuscripts, some have published Bibles from these. Needless to say, the ancient manuscripts proved to be much more numeric. What God has done through numerics is to give us a method by which we can find out which manuscript is right and where each one is right or wrong. Numerics has made searching multiple translations obsolete. It also makes it possible to find out which translation is the most accurate. In comparing the Bibles up through the early 1900’s, Dr. Panin rated the Revised Version, which was slightly revised for Americans and called the American Standard Version, as “head and shoulders above its competitors.” Before discovering Dr. Panin’s work I came to this conclusion from Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words and comparing manuscripts. I want to point out in almost any Bible you pick up, you will find the needed knowledge of salvation and holiness. Some may want to start with easy reader versions until they gain a little knowledge, but for the finer points in teaching, accuracy is important. Toward this end, Dr. Panin worked diligently. Two outstanding results of his work are the numerically correct Numeric English New Testament and the Numeric Greek New Testament. In my own research, I consider them the most accurate available.
There are words or word groups or verses that when added up have values that tend to connect things theologically and sometimes show up in the surface text. Some have called this Bible science “theomatics.” This is also the name of the first book on the subject by Jerry Lucas and Del Washburn. Here are a few examples of their calculation discoveries with my notes, which prove God’s sovereign design in Scriptures.
EXAMPLE Add up the numbers in Jesus and you get 888. This is divisible by 111. Lord God in Genesis 3:9 = 111.
Notice the divisible value 111 ties Jesus to God in the Old Testament.
Jesus = 888 or 111 x 8 Lord God = 888 or 111 x 8 – inRevelation 15:3 Lord Jesus = 111 x 11 – inRevelation 22:20
Word = 111 x 2 Nazarene = 111 x 2 My beloved Son = 111 x 14 Some hidden values show up in the surface text.
SURFACE TEXT (Revelation 13:16) …the number of the beast …is Six hundred and sixty and six.
HIDDEN IN THE VALUES (1 Peter 5:8) Adversary = 666 (John 1:9) In the world = 666 (Revelation 12:12) Great wrath = 666 (Revelation 18:3) Merchants of the earth = 666 (Revelation 17:15) Where the harlot sits = 666 (Revelation 13:6) Blasphemy against God = 666 x 3 (Revelation 16:13) Mouth of the dragon = 666 x 3 (Revelation 13:3) The whole world wondered after the beast = 666 x 5 (Revelation 11:18) And to destroy the ones destroying the earth = 666 x 5 Notice that 666 ties together Satan, the wicked, and the kingdom of the world.
SURFACE TEXT (Revelation 14:1)…behold, the Lamb …and with him a hundred and forty and four thousand….
HIDDEN IN THE VALUES (Romans 11:7) The elect = 144 (Revelation 14:12) The faith = 144 x 7 (Revelation 22:17) The bride = 144 x 7 (Revelation 14:3) The 144 thousands = 144 x 7 (Luke 12:37) Blessed are those servants = 144 x 7 (Romans 9:11) Elect of God = 144 x 10 (Revelation 14:4) Purchased first fruits = 144 x 10 (Revelation 1:7) Clouds = 144 x 10 (“Behold He cometh with the clouds”) [These are obviously clouds of white-robed saints.]
Notice that 144 ties together God’s kingdom of the righteous elect. While the number “666” identifies those who manifest the name (Greek:“character and authority”) of the beast in their forehead in Revelation 13:16-18, the number “144” identifies those who have the name (Greek:“character and authority”) of Jesus and the Father in Revelation 14:1.
I hope you get the idea. These were some of the shorter phrases. Notice that doctrines of the beast, the harlot, and the world are connected. Doctrines of the righteous, the elect, and the Lord’s coming for them are connected. The whole Bible is full of this connection of doctrines by common values like 100, 144, 111, 153, 276, 666, 700, 1000, 1500, etc. Del Washburn continued to research and wrote several more books on theomatics.
Another fantastic mathematical proof of the inspiration of Scriptures has been discovered. It has been popularly called “the Bible code,” which is also the name of the first book on the subject by Michael Drosnin. Below is a summary of things gleaned from his book.
John Maynard Keynes, who was provost of Cambridge University, discovered the papers of an earlier provost from 1696, Sir Isaac Newton. Keynes, who wrote Newton’s biography, reported that most of Newton’s writings were not about math, gravity, or the solar system, but theology. He reported that Newton believed there was a code in the Bible that recorded human history, past and future. Newton had been diligently searching for this for many years before he died. The Genius of Vilna, an 18th century sage said, “The rule is that all that was, is, and will be unto the end of time is included in the Torah, from the first word to the last word. And not merely in a general sense, but as to the details of every species and each one individually, and details of everything that happened to him from the day of his birth until his end.”
More than fifty-five years ago, Rabbi Weissmandel of Czechoslovakia discovered that if he picked every fiftieth letter from the beginning of Genesis the word “Torah” was spelled out. He found this skip sequence also in the rest of the books of the Torah, which are the five books given through Moses. Dr. Eliyahu Rips, a renowned Israeli mathematician, eventually unlocked this code by computer, an instrument that his predecessors lacked. His findings have been affirmed by first class mathematicians around the world in scientific journals, at Harvard, Yale, and Hebrew University, where he is Associate Professor of Mathematics. He has termed this code as “equidistant letter sequences” or “ELS.” The sequences can skip one or many thousands of letters and can go from right to left or left to right in the text with the same letter being used more times than we know. This makes layer on top of layer on top of layer, etc. of information beneath the text of the Scriptures. Of course, words with few letters can be found randomly in other writings this way. However, in Scriptures, the words, phrases, or sentences grouped with other related words, phrases, or sentences of different skip sequence in the same text make this happening by chance beyond the realm of reason. Since Michael Drosnin’s book, many Bible code software programs have become available. By using this software, volumes of discoveries are being made around the world. I have found discoveries with my own software. A friend found my wife’s name and my own with our marriage date. Another friend found his family tree. If relatively unimportant things are found, just think about how much is actually there. It is probable that the Genius of Vilna was correct.
Revelations of the future are harder to come by because a person must have some kind of idea what to ask the software to search for. Drosnin found the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the year it was predicted a year before it actually happened. He also warned the Prime Minister, but sadly the prediction was fulfilled on time. Later, the assassin’s name was also found. He also found two months in advance the collision of the following: Shoemaker-Levy / will pound Jupiter / 8th AV (July 16).
Another thing that has been found is that the surface text is many times connected to the code beneath it. Drosnin shared an example of this in Daniel 12:4 where “computer” is encoded beginning with the words “shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end.” It is clear that the information sealed up in the Bible code could not be revealed until the time of the end when computers became available. Confirming this fact, beginning in Deuteronomy 12:11, “Bible code” is encoded and in Deuteronomy 12:12, “sealed before God” is encoded. A few of the other codes found in his book are the Holocaust, the moon landing, WWII, Watergate with the impeachment, the Wright brothers with their airplane, Edison with his light bulb, Newton with gravity, both Kennedy assassinations with the assassins, Bill Clinton’s election, the Oklahoma City bombing with Murrah Building and Timothy McVeigh, etc. Most of these are given with pertinent information and sometimes dates. Also, there are future warnings of nuclear world wars, comets and asteroids striking the earth, terrible earthquakes, plagues, economic collapse, etc. Most of these are given with pertinent information and many times dates. Some of these are warnings just as Jonah warned Nineveh, which are conditional upon man’s actions, and some are prophecies that will surely come to pass. The above codes have been in the Torah for over 3,000 years. Even more important proof of God’s sovereignty in the inspiration of Scriptures are the hundreds of prophecies in the surface text and the thousands of prophecies in the types and shadows of all the Bible that are consistently coming true after 2,000-3,000 years. No psychic, palm reader, crystal-ball reader, prognosticator, etc. can do such a thing, as Daniel also said. King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream in which was hidden the future of the kingdoms of the world until the end. When the devil’s false prophets could not reveal the dream or the future therein, Daniel by the Spirit of God did. First he told the king of his error in seeking the future from these people. (Daniel 2:27-28) …The secret which the king hath demanded can neither wise men, enchanters, magicians, nor soothsayers, show unto the king; (28) but there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and he hath made known… what shall be in the latter days. Only a sovereign God could reveal to the king this future revelation of the history of the world. It is evident that the devil cannot accurately predict the future through his prophets because he has no sovereignty to bring it to pass. He can predict in the short term what he plans to bring to pass that is also ordained of God, but since all of his plans are not ordained, he makes many false prophecies.
Codes have been found recently throughout the Bible by various other researchers, such as Jesus’ name found throughout the Old Testament beneath prophecies of the coming Messiah, the World Trade Center attack, the involvement of Osama Bin Laden, the anthrax attack, the soon coming nuclear wars, the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein’s missile attack on Israel, Yasser Arafat and his war on Israel, the Enron catastrophe and its domino effect, the coming one-world currency, Flight 587, Flight 800 hit by a missile, the coming national ID card, the future bombing of the United States by al Qaeda and Bin Laden, the future nuclear attack by terrorists, the terrible government decisions that take away freedoms, abortion bringing the wrath of God, etc.
Numerics, theomatics, and the Bible code are several of the many different types of hidden codes found in Scriptures. I am convinced that a combination of these will uncover the greatest mysteries. To Bible code researchers of the New Testament, I have some advice: use Dr. Panin’s numerically correct Numeric Greek New Testament and you will find more and longer codes because only one letter added or subtracted from the original will destroy the numeric pattern in the text.
Only a mind beyond our comprehension could have designed these codes simultaneously beneath an intelligible text. Dear Friends, since God has made His Word so impressively exact, do you think He would ever depart from it? (Psalms 119:89) For ever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven. (Psalms 89:34) My covenant will I not break, Nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. (Hebrews 6:18) …It is impossible for God to lie…. Since this is true and God has spoken, He has bound His actions by His Word. His Word not only sets the conditions for eternal life but also sets the conditions for blessings and curses in our earthly life. There is nothing more important than studying God’s Word that we may learn to live in God’s kingdom and in so doing avoid the curses and live under the blessings.