Seeking SOLID proofs

1 Peter 3:15 is probably the verse most widely quoted by apologists to declare why everyone should have a reasonable faith:

 

1 Peter 3:15New International Version (NIV) 15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,

 

I was challenged by this verse. I attended a conference with Michael Ramsden on February 2013, he’s an associate apologist from Ravi Zacarias Ministries. An interesting point he brought forward is that when people is asked why do they believe on what they believe, people usually explains how they came to believe. The issue is that how you come to believe may only show that specific circumstances occurred to convince you about the worldview you accepted. On the other hand, knowing why you believe explains the reason regardless of the circumstances. Why do I believe in the worldview presented in The Bible? Because without God, I’m hopeless. I cannot be good per the standard of God. Only God is my hope. The only worldview which agrees with this is the one in the Bible. Anyway, I think is necessary as well to explain in some manner how I was convinced that The Bible is reliable. I think is necessary to explain how I was convinced that we can trust the Message of the Bible.

 

The Bible is the most scrutinized book in all history. That scrutiny has come from within and from outside Christianity. Large amount of scholars (secular and non secular) have dedicated their lives to study the Bible, its history and its reliability. For example, Bruce Metzger is one of those who defend the reliability of the Bible. His studies concluded that of the 20,000 – plus – lines of the Bible, 99,6% are accurate. His conclusion came from textual criticism, a science which compares the textual variations of the available manuscripts (and fragments) of the Bible.

 

You may probably have shared as well the frustration I felt when looking at scholar opinion about the Bible. In the same way you find supporters, you can find scholars criticizing the Bible. A great example of this group is Bart Erhman, agnostic New Testament scholar (previously Christian) who exposes that there exist myriads of apparent contradictions in the Bible. I read Misquoting Jesus and Jesus interrupted; perhaps his most renowned books about the topic. Bart Erhman has stated in multiple debates that even though the majority of textual variants do not compromise the theology of the Bible, few of them do matter for him. And for him, these specific textual variants made him decide he could not rely on the text of The Bible.

 

So there is no consensus. It’s impossible to base your decision to believe is the Christian world view by reading what scholars say. It’s frustrating, but other people cannot make the decision for you. In my life, God has shown me multiple subjective experiential proofs that He is the God spoken of in the Bible. I have had visions, dreams and revelations that proof beyond what reason can explain that He is God. However, this is proof only for me. These are proofs that I cannot tangibly show to others. Not everyone would be able to believe without having faith on the fact that I am not lying about the experiences I’ve had.

 

So, in my journey I decided to look for consistent objective proofs. Given my subjective experiences, I felt I could approach The One whom I called God asking for guidance. I wanted to find whether there were proofs within the Bible of His authorship. I wondered if there were any supernatural features in the Bible, something to show that its author is also supernatural. Since the New Testament Books are only considered authoritative by Christians, I decided to focus on the Old Testament. Over a period of 12 months, I found interesting proof in three areas.

 

1. Ancient Hebrew and Pictogram

One day in 2011 I was in Houston. While driving, I heard on the radio someone speaking about how some ancient hebrew pictograms of the name of God (YHWH) gave clues of some of the major theological claims in Christianity. This is something that is quite interesting but also quite extensive. I’ll try to explain.

 

First, let me explain what a pictogram is. When you go to MacDonald’s, and you see a door with a little figure of a woman painted on, you know that it is the ladies room. That drawing does not need to say in words “Ladie’s Toilet”. We know only by looking at the symbol. That’s a pictogram, a symbol or an image that conveys a widely known message within it.

 

Now let’s look at the history of Hebrew. The Hebrew language script has evolved over time. The oldest version of Hebrew (paleo-Hebrew) was made of symbols, each one representing each one of the letters. The first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet is Aleph. In modern Hebrew, the symbol is “א”. In  paleo-hebrew, it was a sign of the Head of an Ox. The following chart shows a summary of all of the letters in ancient Hebrew. Hebrew slowly evolved and the letters changed, until becoming the alphabet we know today.

 

 Now that we have explained what pictograms are, we can talk about one of the names of God presented in the Old Testament.  Probably you have heard this word before: Tetragrammaton. This is the English name given to the Hebrew word composed of the letters Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh – “יהוה”. To the followers of Rabbinical Judaism, this is the unpronounceable name of God. This is translated to English as God, YHWH, Jehovah or Yahweh. Rabbinical Jews when reading in Hebrew would not pronounce this word, rather they would read “Adonai” or simply “Ha-Shem” (The Name). If we look at the table above, we would find that the pictogram of the Tetragrammaton in paleo-hebrew shows a right hand (yod), a man with arms raised saying “hey!” (heh), a peg or nail (vav) and again the man  arms raised saying “hey!” (heh).

 

Here is what I found really interesting: The name of God means “Behold The Hand, Behold The Nail”. His name tells us that God is that one who presents his nailed hand. Also, if you look at it in more detention, the “yod” letter is a right hand. Interestingly, The Son of Man, The Messiah, Jesus is the one seated at the right hand of the father (Psalm 110:1, Mark 14:62, Daniel 7:13-14). This pictogram shows in only four letters multiple theological claims presented in the New Testament: Atonement, The cross, Grace and The idea that God is multiplicity in Unity (Trinity). As I said before, this all has roots in history, archaeology and rabbinical Judaism. Not within Christianity.

 

My amusement was increased after doing the same exercise for other names of God present in the Bible:

Name of God	Meaning in English	Idea behind Pictogram
YHWH – יהוה	He Exists	Behold the hand, behold the nail
Elohim -  אלהם	Gods	Behold the blood of God
Adonai – אדני	My Lords	The door to God is the Son
El-Ro’i -ראי	He who sees	The Right Hand exists from the beginning
YHWH Shalom - שלם	Peace, Completeness	The blood of the crushed (one) binds (us)
YHWH Shaddai – שדי	The Almighty	The crushed right hand is the door
YHWH Yire - יראה	The Provider	Behold the right hand and leader from eternity
YHWH Nissi – נסי	My sign, My Miracle	The thorned Son is the right Hand
YHWH Shammah – שמה	The Lord is There	Behold the blood of the crushed
YHWH Tsidqenu – צדקנו	Our righteousness	Gathered in the path to salvation by The Son
YHWH Rapha – רפא	The Healer	The word of God is Eternal
YHWH Raah – רעה	My Shepherd	Behold the path to the Head (the Father)
YHWH Tsavaot – צבאות	Lord of Armies	The way to the stronghold, to the house of Power is secured on the cross
YHWH Meqodishkem – מקדשכם	He who sanctifies	The blood is the door to the narrow path
El Olam – עולם	God Everlasting, Eternal	Watch and know, the Nail is the covenant of the Blood
Qanna – קנה	Zealous	The Narrow path to God is the Son
El-Elyon – עלין	The Almighty	The right Hand, the Son, He knows and guides
The First and The Last (Aleph & Tav) – את	First and last	God on the Cross
‘Et – אית	The sign	God nailed on the Cross
Ruach Ha’qodesh -  רוח הקדש	Holy Spirit	The Chief who teaches, separates and presents the narrow path, the door to God
Yamin - ימן	The right hand	The blood on the right hand, the right Hand is God

 

As a disclaimer, I should mention that I performed all this study on my own. I am keen to show in detail how I came to this. I did research from specialized sources on archaeology, ancient Hebrew scripts and Judaism. But I did not attempt to adapt the works of others into this. I truly believe this was the response of what I asked God for. I asked for proofs of reliability of the Bible. In my opinion this is a solid proof. I’m stunned when thinking how I was lead to find this proof in the texts zelously guarded by the sect of Judaism which rejected Christ. I’m amazed to see a proof which presents confirmation of the Biblical claims clearly expressed in the New Testament within the contents of the Old Testament.

 

2. Breaking the code

Equidistant Letter Sequence is a method by which specific letters from a text can be selected to reveal an otherwise unknown message. This has been used in wars to deliver coded messages through the enemy lines. It works as follows. Let’s say I want to hide the name of a person within the phrase:

“A new day, see! Talk over!”

Let us say in a separate channel of communication, I let my friends know that the hidden name is found, by selecting every 3^rd letter after selecting the first letter. By following this instruction my friends could find that the hidden name is Adele: A new day, see! Talk over!

A group of Jewish mathematicians have claimed that the masoretic text of the Torah (Old Testament) contains multiple hidden messages. Using a mathematic algorithm, matrixes and computers, people have managed to find historical events such as 9/11 and the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. These claims have touched on the edge of sensationalism. I wish I had sufficient material to proof it right or wrong. The truth is I can’t tell if those codes indeed are real or not.  Contradictors of the Torah code claim that this is matter of chance, and that even in the text of Mobby Dick it’s found a matrix predicting the murder of John F Kennedy.

 

Though it is true that hidden messages could appear in any book, the probability is lower and lower if the message found on a single string is longer and longer. All codes are not equal. The longer a code is, the less likely it is to just be due to chance. Skeptics treat all codes in any book as equal, and there are some ELS codes within sections of the Old Testament that are quite complex and long. From a mathematical perspective some people has derived statistical probabilities of finding a code by chance, based on the length of the ELS. The following table shows the estimates:

Table 1. Probability of occurrence of an ELS chain by chance on a 2 pages text.

 

So having this in mind I looked for serious discussion forums about Equidistant Letter Sequences. I did not want to focus on those who tried to find when the Armageddon was to occur, or those trying to find out whether Obama or Hillary Clinton was the Antichrist. I found several discussion groups who found interesting ELS sequences in specific texts believed to be related to the Messiah. The fact is that within several biblical messianic prophecy passages, there have been found consistently the name of Jesus (Yeshua) in Hebrew, along with other astonishing details of His earthly life. I decided to check those on my own, not with a computer or a bible-code-software. I decided to manually look at the masoretic Hebrew text of the verses and physically find the claimed hidded messages. I wanted to be convinced attest that this is true. I used Hebrew translation resources readily available on the web.

 

ELS about the name of the Son of God

 

Let me show a couple examples. Proverbs 30:4-7 speaks about the Messiah and his word:

4 Whose hands have gathered up the wind? Who has wrapped up the waters in a cloak? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is the name of his son?  Surely you know! 5“Every word of God is flawless;  he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. 6Do not add to his words,  or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar. 7“Two things I ask of you, Lord; do not refuse me before I die

Students of ELS claim that within these verses the message “Yeshua Sha’y ש،  ישוע” (translated Jesus the gift) is found. The code is claimed to be found in skip intervals of 22 letters. I manually checked the appearance of this ELS chain in the text of Proverbs 30:4-7 as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. ELS Chain found in Proverbs 30:4-7 Masoretict text

 

The chain Yeshua Shai contains only 6 characters. As described above, a short chain like this could be found by chance on any text. Two facts called my attention though. The verse asks rhetorically for the name of God and his Son in verse 4. The name Yeshua starts in verse 4 right in the word with which the question starts “mi – who”. These could be mere coincidences, but the problem is the odds are lower as the number of seeming coincidences increase. Also, if you continue to look into skips every 22 letters, it shows that the chain is longer. It’s is found, “Jesus the gift, spitted…”. Because my work was only focused on confirming or discarding the claims of the existence of the ELS chains, I did not look further. However, for the chain I found (which in fact is 10 characters in total, not 6) the odds of finding this by chance are much lower, 1 in 28,850 texts.

 

ELS about the sacrifice of the Messiah

Other texts contain much longer chains. I confirmed their appearance. The following comes in the text of Daniel 9:22-26. On 519 BC God revealed to Daniel the exact year when The Messiah would be crucified. This is approximately 542 years before the crucifixion. In this verse using ELS you find the code “Yeshua, nailed, contemplated in the high mountain”  (ישוע וו לטש במות ). The following is the text of Daniel 9:22-26:

22He instructed me and said to me, “Daniel, I have now come to give you insight and understanding. 23As soon as you began to pray, a word went out, which I have come to tell you, for you are highly esteemed. Therefore, consider the word and understand the vision: 24“Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place.  25“Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. 26After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.

 

The ELS string found in this passage of Daniel is 12 letters long. Its probability of occurrence by chance is 1 in 11,476,500, virtually 0. Another strange coincidence is that the readable text speaks clearly of the death of the Messiah, while the ELS string speaks about how Jesus is crucified and contemplated on the high mountain. How can by chance occur in a text pre-dating the crucifixion by half a millennium present such level of details? How could Daniel 500 years before the crucifixion engineer hiding this message within the text without losing the grammatical integrity of the original text?

 

ELS about the life of the Messiah Suffering Servant

The suffering servant is a famous prophetic messianic passage which describes in great detail the suffering of the Messiah for the transgression of Men. In Isaiah 52 and 53 it’s mentioned that The suffering servant is slain for our iniquities. This is quite a unique claim from Christianity. Within these verses using ELS is found:

·         The names of the apostles,

·         the 3 Marys,

·         Titles assigned to Christ (such as Nazarite, Crucified and others)

·         The name of Caesar, Caiaphas

·         See futher details of what has been attested on the bottom of this article

 

In addition, within these verses a very long code is found with the word Yeshua:

“(the) Desire from above, Yeshua (Redemption) is my title, powerful joy to cover their guilt acts” (שקק מעל ישוע עז ששו עבימ עביא).

This chain is 23 characters long. Though I’m not presenting figures showing the manual checks, I can attest the findings. The probability of finding it by chance in any 2 pages text is 1 in 103,782,446,781,518,000,000. Again, one cannot simply say that it’s mere coincidence finding so many details within the verses (the names of the apostles, Caesar, Caiaphas, etc) and a long chain stating that Jesus is the one who atones for the iniquities. Both the readable paragraph and the ELS message hidden to the naked eye are consistent and non-contradictory. The facts debunk the explanation of coincidence.

 

The importance of the ELS codes

The importance of these ELS go beyond the low likelihood of occurrence. They are stunning, because these codes are in harmony with the message read on the text. Unlike Mobby Dick and John F Kennedy, these ELS codes are intimately related to the messianic prophecies in which they are found. This demonstrates the supernatural origin of the text of the Bible.

 

3. The control of future events

The Bible claims that God is all knowing. He knows the end since the beginning. Interestingly, though God does not compel any of our actions, He uses the results of our actions to unravel His plan. Prophecy reveal the mighty character of God, who knows all what is to occur, and is powerful to do anything. He foretells us what was to occur for us to believe that it was Him who planned it all from the beginning.

John 13:19 I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe that I am He.

 Many prophecies in the Old and New Testament have foretold events that have occur to even recent History. I’ve attested for the following:

 

Bible passage	Prophecy description
Dan 9:24-26	Exact year of the sacrifice of the Messiah
Dan 12:12	Time between the construction of the Dome of the Rock on the temple mount (The abomination that causes desolation) in 583 CE to the time of the Battle of Tours (Battle which stopped the expansion of the Muslim colonization to Europe) in 732 AD
Dan 7:25	Timing to 1948, creation of State of Israel
Dan 12:07	Time between 583 CE (Dome of the rock) to 1967 – 6 days battle and the first time since year 70 that Jerusalem returned to Israel’s control
Rev 11:2 & 13:5	Gentiles control of Jerusalem until 1967
Rev 11:3-4, 12:6	Israel completely on exile for 1260 years (From Dome of the rock until 1948)
Rev 12:14	724 BC fall of Israel to Independence of USA 1776

 

Though I’m not extending on details, I have reviewed the commentaries of those claiming the fulfillment of these prophecies. I can attest of the mathematical precision of the assertions, as well as the historical and hermeneutical approach utilized. The mathematical accuracy of these prophecies only show that God is the author of these books, for no one could have engineered a hoax involving when USA would be born, or when the Dome of the Rock would be built, or when the nation of Israel would be established, or in which year would Jerusalem return to the control of the nation of Israel. Only God can do that. No other book presents such astonishing proofs, only within the Bible.

 

4. A text with multiple meanings and layers

Studying prophecies, ELS and pictograms have ultimately leaded me to study Hebrew. I wanted to do this in a more educated manner to confirm and study in more depth. I was afraid of doing wrong interpretations. That’s why I’ve been studying for 2 years with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

 

One last proof of conviction came from studying the meaning of names in Hebrew of the characters in the Bible. One day I came across to a video, showing in that when you look at the meaning of the names within the Genealogy from Adam to Jesus, you find at an astonishing message (see http://www.bible-codes.org/Names-Bible-Prophecy-Code.htm video available for easy understanding):

The  God-Man is appointed; a man of sorrow is born!  The Glory of God shall come down from heaven and teach men that by means of His death He shall bring comfort and rest to those who mourn.  "The fame of Babylon extends like a plant-- But I will make Babylon fade away! A friend also branches out (like a plant), enraged with fury! Moses the "Prince" sees God at the burning bush and rejoins his people in Egypt to deliver them. God mocks pharaoh and taunts him before delivering Israel from his cruel bondage. A glorious father, the father of a great multitude laughs as he outwits (his enemy).  A righteous prince sees God!  A mighty one fights! {He joins himself to an assembly, a glorious people whom he rescued, stranger(s) in a strange land, captives delivered by God!"}

O' my people who belong to the prince, a prophet clothed with strength, who serves (the Lord), is here! (He is) the Lord's loving gift, His payment for peace that sets the people free. The Lord has taken hold of me and the Lord is strong! Mighty is the Lord! My strength and help are in the Lord! The Lord is perfect! I took hold of the strength of the Lord and it made me forget my misery.   

Truly, (I am) the Master Builder whom the Lord God healed, whom the Lord raised up, and whom the Lord upholds, did uphold and will uphold!

May the Gift of Jacob (i.e., the nation of Israel) increase in greatness, for God is with us --- the Messiah and Savior of those called out (of Babylon).

 

I tasked myself to confirm these claims, equipped with more Hebrew knowledge and several Hebrew dictionaries. They are truthful findings!

 

What I learned while reviewing the hidden message in the Genealogies from Jesus to Adam, helped me finding something similar when studying Genesis 49. Genesis 49 relates the story of when Jacob called his sons, the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel and blessed them, according to the traditional translation we read in our English bibles.

 

The Hebrew language is extremely rich. God used this language to convey His message for humanity. More importantly, God used history and real situations to prophesy what His plan of salvation was. In Genesis 49 you will discover that there is a parallel message conveyed with this story when you check the meaning of the names of Jacob and each of their sons, in a similar fashion as with the genealogies from Adam to Jesus. However, in Genesis 49 you can find a perfectly correct parallel meaning within the text. The text has 2 true meanings. One, from the story of the descendants of Jacob, and a second meaning  which comes from combining literal meaning of the names of the persons, and looking at parallel meanings of each of the words of the masoretic Hebrew text of Genesis 49.

 

For your understanding, in Hebrew some words may have multiple meanings. For example, the word מִשְׁכָּב (mishkab) which literally is a wooden place to rest, can mean bed, or coffin, or bier. Also, the names of people have their own meaning: A western example, Richard means strong; a biblical example, Abraham means Father of Multitude. So extending these principles, let me explain with an example. The phrase Richard is blue, can have the following meanings:

·         Richard is feeling sad

·         The Strong is lacking air (he turned blue)

 

Using this technique the message below was extracted. I present the translation of Genesis 49 as found in the NIV to allow you compare. Both translations are valid, it's simply that God's words are full of multiple meanings, like puns. Only God can do something like this. I hope you enjoy this reading.

Note: In brackets are notes for clarification and facilitation of the translation.

(for the whole parallel comparison of the two versions, see http://jtruthtobelieve.blogspot.com/2014/04/christ-prophecy-in-genesis-49.html)

 

I can’t explain how Moses could hide within the message so many details of Christianity: The concept of substitutionary atonement, details of the death on the cross, the cleansing power of the blood of the Messiah, the concept of the church as the spouse of the messiah… To me these are clear proofs that go beyond the capability of anyone to engineer a hoax.

 

 

What’s the meaning of all this? Trying to get the big picture

 After finding and testing these evidences, I had to stand back and think. As I said, I decided to investigate the Old Testament and in specific the masoretic Hebrew text, because this is the text used by Rabbinical Judaism today. Rabbinical Judaism does not recognize Jesus is the Messiah. Therefore, Rabbinical Judaism would have no interest on accommodating any evidence within the text they’ve guarded for thousands of years to support Jesus’ messianic-hood.

 

It is equally important to highlight that all this evidence is hidden to the naked eye, and it has been protected from the alleged corruption and inconsistencies found by skeptics. I also can’t think of any mind capable of doing this over thousands of years secretly, even more when people has lacked of the technology available today.

The Bible is Historicity, consistency and reliability revealed over thousands of years to dozens of earthly authors makes it a miracle on its own. This is the reason why I can’t really come with intellectual arguments to contradict the Bible.  It’s message is consistent: I’m not good, I deserve the wrath of God; however He loves me so much that He himself took my punishment; He is Jesus, He is The Messiah, and the evidence goes beyond the possibility of a Hoax.

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Isaiah 53 ELS table details

 

Name	Begins Isaiah	Word	Letter	skip Interval
Yeshua	53:10	11	4	-20
Nazarite	53:6	11	3	47
Messiah	53:11	1	1	-42
Shiloh	53:12	21	4	19
Passover	53:10	13	3	-62
Galilee	53:7	1	2	-32
Herod	53:6	4	1	-29
Caesar	53:11	7	4	-194
The evil Roman city	53:9	13	2	-7
Caiaphas, High Priest	52:15	7	3	41
Annas	53:3	6	5	-45
Mary	53:11	1	1	-23
Mary	53:10	7	3	6
Mary	53:9	13	3	44
The Disciples	53:12	2	3	-55
Peter	53:10	11	5	-14
Matthew	53:8	12	1	-295
John	53:10	11	4	-28
Andrew	53:4	11	1	-48
Philip	53:5	10	3	-133
Thomas	53:2	8	1	35
James	52:2	9	3	-34
James	52:2	3	4	-20
Simon	52:14	2	1	47
Thaddaeus	53:12	9	1	-50
Matthias	53:5	7	4	-11
Let Him be crucified	53:8	6	2	15
His Cross - Crucified	53:6	2	2	-8
Lamp of the Lord	53:5	5	7	20
His signature	52:7	8	4	49
Bread	53:12	2	3	26
Wine	53:5	11	2	210
From Zion	52:14	6	1	45
Moriah	52:7	4	5	153
Obed (servant)	53:7	3	2	-19
Jesse	52:9	3	1	-19
Seed	52:5	2	2	-19
Water	52:7	9	1	-19
Levites	54:3	3	6	19
Joseph	53:2	1	2	210