Are Hidden 'Bible Code' Messages Ominous Nuke Warnings?

Physicist David E. Thomas downloaded an except of Drosnin's new book and ran another algorithm on the characters after stripping out spaces and punctuation, coming up with the word "megalomania." (Image credit: David E. Thomas.)

Author Michael Drosnin believes he has information that's vital to national — indeed global —security, and he is concerned that President Obama is being shielded from these important revelations by senior members of the administration.

Drosnin is so concerned, in fact, that he took out a full page ad on Dec. 8 in the New York Times today (page A27) that asks, "Why Won't the White House Let the President Read This Letter?" Under that is a photograph of Osama bin Laden, with a large caption that reads, "Bin Laden May Already Have Nuclear Weapons." How did Drosnin get this information? He read it (along with the weapons' location) in the Bible: it was "first stated by a code in the Bible as the hide-out for nuclear weapons... The code clearly states that Al Qaeda has nuclear weapons there." [Did UFOs Disarm Nuclear Weapons?]

Hundreds of millions of Christians who have read the Bible may be scratching their heads, wondering how they missed the "clear" references to nuclear weapons and Al Qaeda among the gospels and parables. The answer is that Drosnin, author of the best-selling "Bible Code" book series, claims he can see things in the Bible that no one else can.

Drosnin believes that the Bible contains codes (hidden in numbers and letters) accurately predicting world events.

Drosnin's critics have demonstrated that the meanings he found were simply the result of selectively choosing data sets from a vast sea of random letters within the Bible text. For example, physicist David E. Thomas showed that the patterns Drosnin and others found were the result of "data mining." If you run a computer program through enough massive pieces of text (whether the Bible or "War and Peace" or "Moby-Dick"), looking for enough patterns (every 10th letter, every 12th letter, etc.), it will eventually spit out some words and jumbled sentences that could be interpreted to make sense. It's the sort of thing that the veritable room full of monkeys with typewriters would be able to generate, given enough time.

Thomas demonstrated this for LiveScience by downloading an excerpt from Drosnin's new book from his website. "It was 3,681 characters in length after stripping spaces and punctuation, or just over one percent of the Torah's length," Thomas explained. "I ran two quick algorithms, and even though the chapter is short, it teems with amazing 'Bible Codes'. For example I found the words 'vain' and 'hoax' in one analysis, and the word 'megalomania' in another. Do these codes mean anything? Of course not! They just serve to show how easily hidden messages can be produced in any text, not just the Torah."

Drosnin does not explain why God would bother to hide messages in Biblical text that can only be revealed (by him) through complex computer algorithms scouring millions of letters. If the deity felt the message was important, presumably it could have been presented clearly and plainly.

The most likely answer to Drosnin's question is that President Obama is not interested in responding to claims based on numerology, scripture, or fortunetelling — nor in helping Drosnin promote his new book.

Benjamin Radford is managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries. His Web site is www.RadfordBooks.com.

Benjamin Radford is the Bad Science columnist for Live Science. He covers pseudoscience, psychology, urban legends and the science behind "unexplained" or mysterious phenomenon. Ben has a master's degree in education and a bachelor's degree in psychology. He is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and has written, edited or contributed to more than 20 books, including "Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How to Solve Unexplained Mysteries," "Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore" and “Investigating Ghosts: The Scientific Search for Spirits,” out in fall 2017. His website is www.BenjaminRadford.com.