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The Bible Code speaks of the Hezekiah Factor

Michael Drosnin, an investigative reporter, has written three books on The Bible Code. The first came out in 1997. The Bible Code is based upon something called Equidistant Letter Spacing (ELS). By this "Code," using the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, if you count every seventh letter in a particular text, or every tenth letter, or every hundredth letter (etc.), certain words, phrases or sentences are spelled out which appear to have significance.

Take Micah 5:2 for example. . .

"But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity."

This has long been understood to be a prophecy that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. In fact, King Herod was told this in Matt. 2:3-6 at the time of Jesus' birth.

At any rate, in the verse above, each 49th letter from the fourth yood spells Yeshua. Furthermore, if you look at every 48th letter, it spells "Mary" and "Joseph." Thus, on the surface of the verse, it is apparent that the Messiah would come of the tribe of Judah and be born in Bethlehem. But in the Bible Code, the same verse also reveals His name (Yeshua) and the names of Mary and Joseph.

With the aid of modern computers, men have been able to search the Bible Code for prophecies that foretell the future as well. Drosnin, a self-proclaimed atheist, learned from it that Israeli Prime Minister Rabin was going to be assassinated. He tried to warn Rabin, but was unsuccessful, and soon the event occurred. After the assassination, it became easier to find details in the Bible Code, and it was seen then that the name of the assassin (Amir) was also written in the Code, along with the location (Tel Aviv), and even the Hebrew year 5756 (or Sept. 1995 to Sept. 1996). He was actually assassinated on November 4, 1995.

It is theorized that all major events in history were so encoded in the Scripture. They ran tests with other books but found no particular patterns that foretold anything. So far, only the Bible has been proven to contain these Codes.

Drosnin speculates that this Code may have been inserted by space aliens with greater technology. As for myself, I prefer to believe in God. I mean, did those space aliens appear not only to Moses but to every other writer of the Old Testament? Anyone who could believe such a thing must have great faith in space aliens. I only wish Christians had that much faith in God.

Anyway, with this background, I want to focus on one particular story that Drosnin told on page 175 of his first Bible Code book, published in 1997. In discussing the year 1996, which often appeared in the Bible Code, he writes:

"The year was revealed in a unique verse, one that told the future backwards.

"The foremost translator of ancient Hebrew texts, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, the man Time magazine called 'a once-in-a-millennium scholar,' pointed that verse out to me.

"I went to see Steinsaltz when I first heard about the Bible code. The rabbi is also a scientist, and I wanted to see what he thought about a code in the Bible that predicted the future, foretold events that happened thousands of years after the Bible was written, reported in detail a future that did not yet exist.

" 'In the Bible time is reversed,' said Steinsaltz, noting an odd quirk in the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament. 'The future is always written in the past tense, and the past is always written in the future tense.'

" 'Why?' I asked.

" 'No one knows,' he said. . .

"He opened his Bible, looking for a passage from the first of the prophets, Isaiah. 'Here, in Isaiah, it says that you need to look backwards to see the future,' he said.

' 'Where Isaiah says, "Tell the things that are to come hereafter," you can translate the same words to read, "They told the future backwards".' . . .

"Isaiah 41:23 states, 'Tell the things that are to come hereafter, and we will be dismayed and behold it together.'

"And now when I looked at the letters in reverse, the future told backwards, I saw that the mirror writing spelled out a year--5756 [i.e., 1996].

"It was not in a code. It was just there. . .

"Overlapping "5756" the reverse text openly stated, 'They changed the time.'

This odd biblical fact, shown to Drosnin by Rabbi Steinsaltz, is illustrated perfectly in 2 Kings 19 and 20. The king of Assyria had already conquered Samaria and had deported the House of Israel. Eight years later, he came to conquer Jerusalem and the land of Judah. King Hezekiah then asked counsel from Isaiah, who was in Jerusalem at the time.

Isaiah told him that God would defend Jerusalem. 2 Kings 19:33 says of the Assyrian king, "By the way that he came, by the same shall he return." The sign that Isaiah gave Hezekiah was a Jubilee sign:

²⁹ Then this shall be the sign for you; you shall eat this year what grows of itself, in the second year what springs from the same, and in the third year, sow, reap, plant vineyards, and eat their fruit.

This occurred eight years after the fall of Samaria. Samaria fell in 721 B.C., which was Israel's 14th Jubilee since their Jordan crossing, when they began counting their sabbatical years and Jubilees on their calendar. Eight years later the Assyrians laid siege to Jerusalem, but Isaiah gave Hezekiah a Jubilee sign. How could Isaiah declare a Jubilee over Jerusalem eight years late?

The Jubilee sign speaks of three years, because in the 49th and 50th years, they were not supposed to sow or reap, but they could do so in the third year (i.e., the 51st year). Isaiah, then was speaking of the years 8, 9, and 10 from the actual Jubilee Year in 721 B.C. Essentially, he was telling them that they would obtain a Jubilee ten years late.

How? By "returning," or turning back the clock ten years. This is, of course, why the next chapter speaks of the manipulation of Time, when God turned the clock back 10 steps on the sun dial of Ahaz (20:11).

Israel and Judah had separated in 931 B.C., and 210 years later, Samaria fell (721). Jerusalem was delivered ten years later (711), which was 220 years after the original split in the kingdom.

God recreated this split in 1776 when America revolted from Britain over the issue of high taxes without representation (same as in 1 Kings 12). So 210 years later was the year 1986, the 120th Jubilee from Adam. As such it overlays with the year 721 B.C., which was Samaria's undeclared Jubilee.

Ten years later was 1996, overlaying with Isaiah's prophecy of deliverance by means of the Jubilee that was declared ten years late. When we received this revelation, we understood that we were to declare the Jubilee on the Day of Atonement, Sept. 23, 1996. In so doing, we also understood that God would "turn back the clock" ten years on His prophetic sun dial, so that 1996 was actually 1986. That way, the Jubilee could be late, but yet on time.

Hence, Michael Drosnin writes that in 1996 "they changed the time." Also, "they told the future backwards." This is a reference to the peculiar manipulation of Time that God did in 1996. The Church did not declare the Jubilee in 1986, but God allowed the Jubilee to be declared ten years late by telling the future backward.