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by MICHAEL DROSNIN
MORE than 2,000 years ago, a Messianic cult hid out in the
hills above the Dead Sea, waiting to be joined by angels for the final battle
against evil, preparing for the 'War of the Sons of Light with the Sons of
Darkness'.
Fearing that the Romans would destroy the last remaining copies of the Bible,
this small group of ancient Israelites hid hundreds of parchment scrolls in the
caves of the sheer desert cliffs.
In 1947, a Bedouin shepherd boy threw a stone into one of the caves, and heard
the sound of pottery breaking. Inside a broken urn he found the oldest known
copy of any book of the Bible.
I climbed those cliffs days after I learned that the Bible, proven by the Dead
Sea Scrolls to be at least 2,000 years old, concealed a computerised code which
foretold events that happened thousands of years after the Bible was written.
I sat for hours at the top of the barren mountain, looking out over the bleak
landscape that had not changed in the millennia since the cult encamped there.
The next day, I went to the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, and saw on display
the most ancient prophecy of the Apocalypse, the 2,500-year-old Isaiah scroll.
The entire original text of Isaiah, found intact in those caves above the Dead
Sea, was now wrapped end-to-end around a huge drum that stood on a pedestal,
over a deep open well in the centre of the domed museum.
Whv, I wondered, was the scroll displayed in this unique way? I called Armand
Bartos, the architect who designed the museum.
"It was originally designed so that the drum could automatically retract, go
down to the level below, and be covered over by steel plates," said Bartos.
"Why?" I asked.
"It was done to protect the earliest copy of the Bible known to the world," he
said.
"From what?" I asked.
"Nuclear war."
No one yet knew that in the ancient scroll was a hidden warning that Jerusalem
might be destroyed in a nuclear attack, an 'atomic holocaust' that might trigger
a 'world war' - the real Armageddon.
THE secret was in a 'sealed book'. Isaiah describes a
terrible Apocalypse yet to come, a truly frightening vision of a future war, and
then states: 'For you this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a book."
It is the first reference to the secret 'sealed book' in the Bible. It is a
vision of our future that was hidden, first in a cave, and then in a code that
no one could decipher until the computer was invented.
Isaiah predicts that the 'sealed book' will be opened: "On that day the deaf
will hear the words of the book, and from the doom and the darkness the eyes of
the blind will see it."
And in the hidden text, first revealed by mathematician Eli Rips, the same
verses of Isaiah reveal that the sealed book is the Bible code: "He recognised
the words, they will be computerised, his report they heard on this day, the
secrets, the magical words of the book."
The 2,500-year-old warning of a nuclear war could be found only with a computer.
And now the Bible code revealed when and where the real Apocalypse might begin.
I checked every year in the next hundred years. Only two years, 2000 and 2006,
were clearly encoded with 'world war'. The same two years were also encoded with
'atomic holocaust'. They were the only two years in the next hundred encoded
with both 'atomic holocaust' and 'world war'.
There is no way of knowing whether the code is predicting a war in 2000 or 2006.
The year 2000 is encoded twice, but 2006 is mathematically the best match. And
there is, of course, no way of knowing if the danger is real.
BUT if the Bible code is right, a third world war by the
end of the century is at least possible, and a world war within the next ten
years is a probability we cannot ignore.
The next war, according to the code, will be fought with weapons of mass
destruction never used in battle before. World War II ended with Hiroshima, but
now there are at least 50,000 nuclear weapons, from atomic artillery shells to
multi-warhead ballistic missiles. Each can destroy a whole city. The whole world
could be obliterated within a few hours.
World War III would literally be Armageddon.
The warning of when and where and how our world might face the real Armageddon
was hidden in the most sacred verses of the Bible 3,000 years ago, foretold in a
22-line scroll that is central to the Bible.
The scroll is called the 'Mezuzah'. It contains the 170 words which, from all
the 304,805 words of the original five books of the Bible, God commanded be kept
in a separate scroll and posted at the entrance of every home.
'In 5760' and 'in 5766' - the years 2000 and 2006 are encoded in those 170
words.
'World war' - the only time it is encoded in the entire Bible - appears in the
same place, and crosses one of the sacred verses.
'Atomic holocaust' - the only time it is encoded in the Bible - also appears
with the same two years in the same two verses of the scroll.
The Mezuzah contains 15 verses, and begins with the most important commandment:
'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.' Twice within those few
verses God tells exactly how the words must be preserved:
'And these words, which I command thee this day shall be in thy heart, and thou
shalt teach them diligently to thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou
sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest
down, and when thou risest up.
'And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thy arm, and between thy eyes. And
thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thy house, and on thy gates.'
The years in which World War III might begin were revealed in the most carefully
saved words of the Old Testament.
And where the years 2000 and 2006 are encoded, the hidden text warns of war: 'It
will bombard your country, terror, devastation, it is being launched.'
It could not be by chance that the warning of when the world might face a
nuclear war was encoded in two of the 15 verses of the Bible that God twice
commands be memorised, taught to the children, and recited every day and every
night.
It could not be by chance that the years most clearly encoded with 'world war'
were both hidden in the 170 words that were saved in a separate scroll for 3,000
years, and are still today fastened on the doorway of nearly every home in
Israel.
If even one letter is missing, a Mezuzah cannot be used. Someone wanted to make
absolutely certain, no matter what happened to the rest of the Bible, that these
words, this scroll were preserved exactly as originally written, with its hidden
code intact.
And that ancient code, which now predicted that World War III could start within
a decade, also had predicted that World War II would start 'in 5700' - in the
modern calendar 1939-1940.
NOW, though, instead of a nuclear war between superpowers,
the world may face a new threat - terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.
'Terrorism' is encoded with 'world war', and right below 'third' appear the
words 'war to the knife'. It suggests a war of total annihilation. It is clearly
encoded with 'atomic holocaust'.
The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union changed the world. It removed America's
chief adversary, but made the world's biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons
available to terrorists. A U.S. Senate committee last year confirmed the danger.
'Never before has an empire disintegrated while in possession of 30,000 nuclear
weapons,' the vice chairman, Senator Sam Nunn, stated.
Calling the former Soviet Union ~ 'vast potential supermarket of nuclear
chemical, and biological weapons', Senator Richard Lugar warned that 'the
probability that one, two or a dozen weapons of mass destruction detonating in
Russia, or Europe, or the Middle East, or even the United States, has
increased'.
'The fall of communism' was foretold in the Bible code. The only time the word
'communism' appears at all 'the fall of' and 'Russian' are encoded with it.
'China' is encoded just below. Intertwined with 'in China' is a prediction -
'next'.
To many in the West, the collapse of the Soviet Union was seen as a victory. The
end of communism in China would be seen as a final triumph.
But chaos in another nuclear power would also increase the risk that weapons
that can destroy whole cities might be sold to, or stolen by, terrorists. If the
Bible code is right, nuclear terrorists may trigger the next world war.
It may begin as former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres suggested - a few
days after I had met him to warn him of a possible nuclear attack - when a
nuclear weapon 'falls into the hands of irresponsible countries, and is carried
on the shoulders of fanatics'.
Jerusalem, the most fought-over city in history - from the time King David
conquered it, and the Babylonians burned it, and the Romans destroyed it and the
Crusaders besieged it, down through 3,000 years of bloody conflict that did not
end when the Israelis took it back in the 1967 war - is clearly encoded in the
Bible as the target of the predicted nuclear attack.
Only one world capital is encoded anywhere in the Bible with either 'atomic
holocaust' or 'world war' - 'Jerusalem'. The phrase 'Your city to be destroyed
by an act of terrorism' crosses 'atomic holocaust'.
And the target is confirmed in the most ancient prophecy of the Apocalypse, the
one found intact among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
'Woe to you, Ariel, Ariel, the city where David settled!' warns Isaiah, using an
old biblical name for Jerusalem.
The siege that reduces the Holy City to 'dust' is described in words that are
vividly apocalyptic: 'Suddenly, in an instant, the Lord Almighty will come with
thunder and earthquake and great noise, with windstorm and tempest and flames of
a devouring fire.'
It is an extraordinarily accurate vision of an 'atomic holocaust', as foreseen
thousands of years ago, expressed in the only words an ancient seer could use.
Compare it to a modern description of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima: 'The
whole city was ruined instantly. The centre of the city was flattened. Half an
hour after the blast, fires set by the thermal pulse began to coalesce into a
firestorm, which lasted six hours.
'For four hours at midday, a violent whirlwind, born of the strange
meteorological conditions produced by the explosion, further devastated the
city.'
The words that seem to echo Isaiah are from Jonathan Schell's classic account of
the 1945 bombing in The Fate Of The Earth.
No one in Hiroshima heard the explosion. The blast created a vacuum. But miles
away there was a tremendous noise, a terrible 'thunder' unlike anything heard
before.
THE Hiroshima bomb was exploded in the air, almost 2,000
feet above the city. If a nuclear bomb were exploded on the ground, as would be
likely in any terrorist attack, the horror would be even greater.
The entire population of' a city would instantly be reduced to dust. Again, from
Schell: 'Any human being in the area would be reduced to smoke and ashes; they
would simply disappear.
'The incinerated population, now radioactive dust, would rise up into the
mushroom cloud, then fall back to the ground.'
Now listen again to Isaiah: 'Brought low, you will speak from the ground, your
speech will mumble out of the dust, your voice will come ghostlike from the
Earth, out of the dust you will whisper.
'And your many enemies will become like fine dust, the ruthless hordes like
blown chaff. It will happen suddenly, in an instant.'
It is an odd description of an ancient siege, but a perfect vision of the
aftermath of a nuclear strike and counter-strike. And then there is the curious,
cryptic passage: 'For you this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a
book.'
They remained sealed, until now, revealed by a code that may exist to warn us at
the critical moment of the impending atomic attack.
The long-known biblical prophecy of Armageddon seemed to be confirmed by the
Bible code.
Jerusalem, the centre of the Western world's three major religions, the fabled
city where David ruled, where Jesus died, where Mohammed ascended to Heaven,
might be obliterated in a final battle brought on by religious hatred.
I had never believed the Apocalyptic prophecies of the Bible. I never believed
that God or the Devil would destroy the world, or that the forces of good and
evil would clash in a Final Battle.
But the Bible code's statement that the final battle, Armageddon, could begin in
the Middle East with an act of nuclear terrorism seemed all too real.
The word 'Armageddon' comes from the last book of the New Testament, in a verse
that seems fanciful: 'The spirits of devils, working miracles, go forth onto the
Kings of the Earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that
great day of God Almighty.
And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue
Armageddon.'
But Armageddon is a real place. It is the Greek name for an ancient city in
Israel, Megiddo. In Hebrew, 'Mount Megiddo' is 'Harmegiddo'.
I stopped to see the ruins of this ancient fortified city when, late one night,
I was en route for Jerusalem. It seemed inconceivable that this remote place
would ever really be the site of a major battle.
But, near Megiddo, hidden to tourists, is one of Israel's most important Air
Force bases, Ramat David. It is in the north, facing Israel's implacable foe,
Syria. It would be on the front line of any real war in the modern Middle East.
'Armageddon' is encoded in the Bible with the name of Syria's leader, Hafez
Asad. In fact the name of the actual site of the long-prophesied Final Battle
appears with his name in a single skip sequence 'Armageddon, Asad holocaust.'
'Syria' is encoded with 'world war'. It is the country that stands out, because
it is not expected. 'Russia' and 'China' and 'USA' also appear with 'world war',
but they are the three superpowers most likely to be involved. Syria is the
surprise.
But if Armageddon is real, it may begin the way it is prophesied in the plain
text of the Bible.
The last book of the New Testament predicts a final war of unprecedented fury:
'Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the
nations in the four quarters of the Earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them
together to battle.'
No one knows where the ancient 'Gog and Magog' were located. But the original
prophecy of the Final Battle, told in Ezekiel, is that Israel will be invaded
from the North. The only modern enemy north of Israel is Syria.
'Syria' is encoded in Ezekiel, starting in the verse that predicts the invasion.
Syria's allies are named: 'Persia' and 'Phut' - countries that are now called
Iran and Libya.
The plain text of Ezekiel predicts a terrible battle between Israel and the
surrounding Arab nations. According to the Bible code, that is how World War III
might begin - with an atomic attack on Jerusalem, followed by an invasion of
Israel.
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HOW THE CODE WAS CRACKED
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TO find the Bible code, Dr Eli Rips first eliminated all the spaces between the
words and turned the entire original Bible into one continuous letter strand,
304,805 letters long. In doing that, he was actually restoring the Old Testament
to what some believe was its original form. According to legend, it was the way
Moses received the Bible from God - 'contiguous, without break of words'.
The computer then searches the strand of letters for names, words, and phrases
hidden by a particular skip code, which is best explained by reading the
following paragraph, starting at the first letter, and skipping every three
letters: 'Rips ExplAineD thaT eacH
codE is a Case Of adDing Every fourth or
twelfth or fiftieth letter to form a word.' The hidden message is READ THE CODE.
The program starts at the first letter of the Bible and looks for every possible
skip sequence - words spelled out with skips of one, two, three, all the way up
to several thousand.
The computer then cuts the letter strand into rows of equal length, and
stacks them one upon another, so that the hidden word appears vertically, or
diagonally, with each letter highlighted.
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AT THE same museum in Jerusalem where the Dead Sea Scrolls
are on display, there is another exhibit - the original manuscript of Einstein's
Theory of Relativity. The equation that changed the world, that started the
atomic age - E=mc2 - is shown there in the scientist's own
handwriting.
But what really caught my attention was something g else Einstein had said: 'I
do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV
will be fought with sticks and stones.'
At the close of the 20th century, we are threatened with a kind of chaos that
the world has never faced before. We have built weapons that can destroy
civilisation In a single day, and those weapons may now be on the loose.
The predictions in the Bible code seem to fulfil the open prophecy of the Bible,
and the horror is now given a face and a time and a place - the real Armageddon,
perhaps within a decade.
But the code is more than a warning. It may be the information we need to
prevent the predicted disaster. The words 'code will save' appear right above
'atomic holocaust', just below 'the End of Days' - the biblical Apocalypse.
The Bible code is not a promise of divine salvation. It is not a threat of
inevitable doom. It is just information. Its message is that we can save
ourselves.
In the end, what we do determines the outcome. So we are left where we have
always been, with one big difference - we now know that we are not alone.
ABRIDGED extract from THE BIBLE CODE, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
on May 30, 1997. Copyright Michael Drosnin 1997.
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