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UNSCRAMBLING THE BIBLE CODE

It caused quite a stir back in 1997 when it first came out, because this book suggested that hiding in the Torah were secret, encoded messages with all sorts of predictions about things happening here in the 20th century. If you carved out the letters right, the rise of Hitler was predicted. JFK being assassinated in 1963. His brother, Bobby Kennedy, in 1968. Man landing on the moon. Even a fellow from Hope, Arkansas, rising up to capture the White House in 1992. And all of these events, according to the author, were encrypted in these ancient books written thousands of years ago in the Hebrew language.

Well, The Bible Code, published by Simon & Schuster, generated a lot of excitement and zoomed its way up to the #3 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. But it didn't take long before eminent scholars and theologians, both Christian and Jewish, weighed in to repudiate the proposals made by Michael Drosnin, the former investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Dr. Paul House, a professor of Hebrew and Old Testament studies at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, described the book as a purely bogus operation, in the same category as another failed project entitled 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Occur in 1988.

Well, to be honest, I haven't read The Bible Code, and one reason why is because it suggests that, according to these computer-discovered secret codes, the Second Coming might be in the year 2006 — and my Bible makes it perfectly clear that "(quote) NO MAN knows the day or the hour." We Christians have been painfully slow to learn that lesson already, and I don't want to be a participant in any way, shape, or form in repeating that grave error.

Here's another problem. This is a book which digs through the Torah and then supposedly finds in there a reference to something current that's already happened. In other words, we're finding here predictions from the safety of the other side. It would mean more if someone were to look through these codes NOW, find a clear-cut reference to who's going to win the U.S. presidential election, say, in the year 2016 — we mentioned that on Monday — and then see if it turns out to be right.

Drosnin claims that he did this, discovering an encrypted prediction regarding the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin one year before the event. And we have the predicted Apocalypse he suggests will happen in 2006. But friend, here's the point of contrast. In this vision of Daniel chapter two, given first to King Nebuchadnezzar, and then later given as confirmation to the young prophet Daniel, God's Word plainly spells out major world events, all of them still future, and then these things did happen, one right after the other.

Let's read again the straightforward narrative of the dream, and today we'll use the familiar King James. Notice as we go along:

"Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay."

That's as far as we got yesterday. But the most important part is still to come. Here it is:

"Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces . . . and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth."

Well, friend, there you have it. And let's very carefully catalog when this dream happened; any good Bible can date historically the "second year of his reign," referring there in verse one to King Nebuchadnezzar. That's an established fact: 604 B.C. Babylon was the ruling empire of the world at that time, and Nebuchadnezzar was the reigning monarch. No debate at all about that. So what does this dream mean? Already in verse 29, Daniel reminds the king that as he had been laying there in the royal bed, he'd been worried about the future. What was coming up for Babylon? Were the predictions of his psychics accurate? And by the goodness of the God of heaven, that's precisely what this dream was about to make clear. Let's switch to the New International Version now for Daniel's interpretation, beginning here in verse 27:

"You, O king, are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; in your hands He has placed mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. Wherever they live, He has made you ruler over them all. YOU ARE THAT HEAD OF GOLD."

This huge image of a man, then, represents several world empires, and King Nebuchadnezzar finds himself in the lead role. The dream starts with him! His beloved Babylon is the first of these great, vast kingdoms. HE — really meaning Babylon — is the head of gold.

It's very interesting that the Lord God of Heaven gave the dream with this detail. Because Babylon actually WAS known as a golden kingdom. Here's an explanation from the good scholars who put together the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary for Daniel:

"An abundance of gold was used in embellishing Babylon. [The historian] Herodotus describes in lavish terms how gold sparkled in the sacred temples of the city. The image of the god, the throne on which he sat, and the table and the altar were made of gold."

Here's a bit more "gold," courtesy of the wonderful study reference, God Cares, by Dr. Mervyn Maxwell:

"How beautiful the city [of Babylon] looked! Its outer walls were brick-yellow in color. Its palaces were faced with rose-colored tiles, and its myriad temples with gleaming white. Towering above all, as evidence of Babylon's traditional leadership in the worship of the gods, loomed the seven-tiered, multicolored Etemenanki. Its tallest shrine rose 100 meters, or 300 feet, above the floor of Esagila, the principal temple of Marduk — the most famous temple in the East."

In every conceivable way — luxury, progress, education, inventions — Babylon was a golden empire, and Nebuchadnezzar was presiding over a golden era, residing in splendid comfort in his Summer Palace. But now the interpretive narration continues with our friend Daniel. Here's verse 39:

"After you," he tells the king, "another kingdom will rise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron — for iron breaks and smashes everything — and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others."

All right. Let's count this down, and please remember again, Daniel and the king are living in the year 604 B.C., with the calendar counting DOWN, not up. History tells us that after the death of Nebuchadnezzar in the year 562 B.C., Babylon went downhill fast. His heirs were failed leaders, political turmoil set in, and the golden era began to fade rapidly. Now get this: It was on October 12, in the year 539 B.C., that the armies of the Medes and the Persians invaded Babylon and took over. You can read this incredible story — do you remember the drunken feast and the handwriting on the wall? — for yourself in Daniel chapter five, or in any good history book. And this date is absolutely reliable: October 12, in the year 539 B.C. What do we note here? This happens some 65 years AFTER Nebuchadnezzar's dream. God sends a message, a "Bible Code," if you will, about a future kingdom that, 65 years IN THE FUTURE, will take over. It's a lesser kingdom, an inferior regime represented by the man's chest and arms of silver. Not gold, silver. And do you know what? Historians everywhere agree that the world kingdom of Medo-Persia was inferior to Babylon. Stronger militarily — especially with Babylon in disarray . . . AND drunk! But one commentary even makes this note:

"The Median and Persian conquerors adopted the culture of the complex Babylonian civilization, for their own was far less developed."

Let's move on down. You can read it in the Bible or in the history books, because they're in perfect sync. Medo-Persia survived as a world empire for some 208 years. But then the many city-states of Greece were incorporated into a kind of unified empire by the Macedonians from the north. And a young soldier named Alexander the Great knocked off the last of the Persian kings, Codomannus or Darius III, in the battles of Granicus (334 B.C.), the battle of Issus (333 B.C.), and then the last military nail in the coffin: the battle of Gaugamela in 331 B.C. That's where history usually puts the beginning of Greece's world domination: 331 B.C. Remember again, this dream of Daniel 2 predicts it almost 300 years earlier: the third kingdom represented by the belly and thighs of brass or bronze.

Now what about part four, these legs of iron? Well, friend, we all know that the empire of Rome came on the scene and simply swept through the world. Here's one commentary's take on it:

"Rome won her territory by the force or the fear of her armed might. . . . Crushing one opponent after another, she finally became the aggressive, irresistible conqueror of the Mediterranean world and Western Europe. At the beginning of the Christian Era and a little later, the iron might of the Roman legions stood back of the Pax Romana — the Roman peace. Rome was the largest and strongest empire the world had hitherto known."

So the dream predicts four empires. And history — SUBSEQUENT history — reveals exactly that: four global empires. What comes next?