For 3,000 years a secret code in The Bible has remained hidden. Now it has been unlocked by computer - and it may reveal our future. The code was broken by a distinguished mathematician, and later corroborated by world-famous academics. It foretells events that happened thousands of years after it was incorporated in The Old Testament - from World War 2 to the Gulf War. Now an extraordinary new book presents what best-selling author Michael Drosnin believes is irrefutable proof of the existence of God in "The Bible Code". It was one murderous deed that finally convinced him it was for real...

'A mathematician has discovered a hidden code in The Bible that appears to reveal the details of events that have taken place thousands of years after The Bible was written,' Eliyahu Rips disclosed in a letter to Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel.
'The reason I'm telling you about this is that the only time your full name - Yitzhak Rabin - is encoded in The Bible, the words "assassin that will assassinate" cross your name.
That should not be ignored, because the assassinations of both John and Robert Kennedy and Anwar Sadat (the Egyptian leader) are also encoded in The Bible - in the case of Sadat with the first and last names of his killer, the date of the murder, the place, and how it was done.
I think you are in real danger, but that the danger can be averted.'

On November 4, 1995, more than a year after the letter was delivered to Rabin by his close friend, the poet Chaim Guri, came the awful confirmation - a shot in the back from a man who believed he was on a mission from God, the murder that was encoded in The Bible 3,000 years before.

The assassination of Rabin is dramatic confirmation of the reality of The Bible code, a hidden text in The Old Testament/Covenant which reveals the future and proves the existence of God.

The code was discovered by Dr. Eliyahu Rips, one of the world's leading experts in group theory, a field of mathematics which underlies quantum physics.

It has been confirmed by eminent mathematicians at the prestigious American universities of Harvard and Yale (including David Kazhdan at Harvard and I. Piatetski-Shapiro at Yale), and been replicated by a senior code-breaker (Harold Gans) at the U.S. Department of Defence, who tested it with his own computer-program.

Rabin's assassination was not the only modern event found. In addition to the other assassinations, hundreds of other world-shaking events are also encoded in The Bible - everything from World War 2 to Watergate, from Winston Churchill to Bill Clinton, from the Holocaust to Hiroshima, from the Moon landing to the collision of a comet (Shoemaker-Levy) with Jupiter.

And the Rabin murder was not the only event discovered in advance - the Jupiter collision was found, with the exact date of impact, before it happened, as were the dates of the Gulf War.

It doesn't make ordinary sense in our secular world, especially to those who are not religious and scientists, who would normally be the first to dismiss it as millennium fever.

However, Harvard, Yale and Jerusalem's Hebrew University have some of the world's leading mathematicians. They have all confirmed that there is a code in The Bible which reveals the future.

It may all seem beyond belief. But the man who discovered the code is considered a near genius in the world of mathematics.

Eliyahu Rips is so self-effacing that he tends to give other people credit for his own work, and one would never guess he is a world-famous mathematician. When Michael Drosnin met him in June 1992, he assumed that there would be nothing to his claim.

Rips pulled down a volume from his bookshelf and read to him, quoting an 18th-century sage called the Genius of Vilna; 'The rule is that all that was, is, and will be (Revelation/Apocalypse 1:8*) unto the end of time is included in The Torah (in The Bible), from the first word to the last word.'

* Revelation 1:8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

Drosnin picked up a Bible from the desk in his study, and asked Rips to show him the Gulf War. Instead of opening The Bible, he turned on his computer. 'The Bible code is a computer-program,' he explained.

The Bible code was discovered in the original Hebrew version of the Old Testament, The Bible as it was first written. That Book, now translated into every language, is the foundation of all Western religion. But the mathematical code exists only in Hebrew, because that is The Bible's original language.

Eliyahu Rips told Michael Drosnin that the first hint of the encoding had been found more than 50 years ago by H.M.D. Weissmandel, a rabbi in Prague who discovered that if he skipped 50 letters, and then another 50, and then another 50, the word 'Torah' was spelled out at the beginning of The Book of Genesis.

The same skip-sequence again spelled out 'Torah' in The Book of Exodus, Book of Numbers and Book of Deuteronomy.

'I heard about it totally by chance,' said Rips. That was 12 years ago. 'At first I tried just counting letters like Weissmandel. You know, Isaac Newton also tried to find the code in The Bible, and he considered it more important than his theory of the universe.'

Sir Isaac Newton was the first modern scientist; he worked out the mechanics of the solar system and discovered the force of gravity. He was certain, too, that there was a hidden code in The Bible that would reveal the future. He learned Hebrew, and spent half his life trying to find it.

In fact, according to his biographer John Maynard Keynes, it became an obsession. When Keynes became provost at Cambridge University, he discovered there the papers that Newton had packed up in 1696 when he had retired as provost.

Keynes was shocked. Most of the million words in Newton's own handwriting were not about mathematics or astronomy, but esoteric theology. They revealed that the great physicist believed there was hidden in The Bible a prophecy of human history.

Newton, said Keynes, was certain The Bible, indeed the whole universe, was a 'cryptogram set by The Almighty', and wanted to 'read the riddle of The Godhead, the riddle of past and future events Divinely Foreordained'.

Newton was still searching for The Bible code when he died. But his lifetime quest failed no matter what mathematical model he applied.

The discovery that had eluded Newton was made by Eliyahu Rips because he had the one essential tool that Newton lacked - a computer. The hidden text of The Bible was encoded with a kind of time-lock*. It could not be opened until the computer had been invented.

* Daniel 12:4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and "seal" the Book (Rev. 5:1-5), [even] to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and [evil] knowledge (1 Tim. 6:20) shall be increased.

To understand how The Bible Code works, imagine that The Old Testament is constructed like a giant crossword puzzle. It is encoded from beginning to end with words that connect to tell a hidden story.

Rips explained that each code is a case of adding every fourth or twelfth or fiftieth letter to form a word. Skip x spaces, and another x spaces, and another x spaces, and the hidden message is spelled out.

This is best explained by reading the paragraph below, 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.

But it is more than a simple skip code. Criss-crossing the entire known text of The Bible, hidden under the original Hebrew of The Old Testament, is a complex network of words and phrases, a new revelation. There is a Bible beneath The Bible.

'It doesn't matter if we're looking in a text of 100 thousand or 100 million letters, you will not find coherent information - except in The Bible.

'A great part of mankind now assumes that The Bible is just old folk-lore, myth, that science is the only reliable picture of reality. Others say that The Bible, as The Word of God, must be true, and therefore science must be in error (as the Bible itself says in 1 Timothy 6:20 - JAH).

'I think that, finally, when we understand both well enough, religion and science will come together.' (It is now too late for that - JAH).

In the three years since the Rips-Witztum paper was published, no-one has submitted a rebuttal to the maths journal. No scientist who has actually examined The Bible Code challenges it. They all started out as skeptics, and all ended up believers.

Einstein once said; 'The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent. Time, he said, is not at all what it seems. It does not flow, it exists simultaneously with the past.

But a question remained; if the future could be known, could it also be changed?

Religious and academic authorities have never agreed on the origins of The Bible. Spiritual leaders say The Torah - The First Five Books, Genesis through to Deuteronomy, were written more than 3,000 years ago by Moses*. The academics say they were written by many hands over many hundreds of years.

* The Bible rightly states that God gave The Torah to Moses, which is borne-out by the discovery of The Bible mathematical code - JAH.

However, the argument turns out to be irrelevant. The Old Testament has been a settled text for at least 1,000 years. There is a complete version from A.D.1008 (the Leningrad codex), and every Hebrew Bible that now exists is the same, letter for letter.

So the text used in The Bible code computer program has not changed in at least 1,000 years. A hoax is simply ruled out because it would have required a forger who could see the future.

That was, of course, the big question - how could the future be known? Drosnin went with Rips to see one of Harvard's top mathematicians, David Kazhdan, who told him he believed the code was real, but he could not explain how it worked.

'It does appear that The Bible was encoded 3,000 years ago with information about future events,' said Kazhdan. 'I haven't checked it as a statistician, but I've seen the results. There are no scientific grounds to challenge it. I think it is real.'

'How does it work?' Drosnin asked.

'We don't know,' said Kazhdan. 'But we recognised the existence of electricity a hundred years before we could explain it.'

Drosnin asked Rips and Kazhdan how anyone, man or God, could see what did not yet exist. He had always assumed that the future did not exist until it happened.

Rips replied first with a theological answer. 'The world was created,' he said. 'The Creator is not confined by time or space. For us the future is non-existent. For The Creator, the whole universe from beginning to end (Revelation/Apocalypse 1:8) was seen in one stroke.'

Kazhdan gave a Newtonian explanation. 'Science accepts that if we know the position of every molecule and atom, we can foresee everything,' he said.

'In the mechanical world, if we know the position and velocity of an object - a bullet or a rocket to Mars - then we could also know precisely when and where it will arrive. So there's no problem in that sense about knowing the future.'

'But if you ask me if I am surprised that the future is encoded in The Bible,' added Kazhdan, 'of course I am.'

Doron Witztum - Rip's colleague - had done an extensive search for 'the Holocaust' in The Bible code, and found it spelled out in extraordinary detail. 'In Germany' was encoded with 'Nazis' and 'Berlin'. And the man who actually ran the concentration camps, 'Eichman' was encoded with 'the ovens' and 'extermination'.

I. Piatetski-Shapiro, a leading academic at prestigious Yale university, had seen these findings and he was startled. 'As a mathematician,' he said, 'my instinct (in-tuition - the inner voice - JAH) is that there is something real here.'

But he cannot explain how it was done. 'There is no way within the known laws of mathematics to explain seeing the future,' he said. 'Newtonian physics is too simple to explain a set of predictions this complex and detailed. Quantum physics is also not enough.

'What we're talking about here is some super intelligence that stands outside.' The mathematician paused for a moment, then declared; 'I think that the only answer is - that God exists.'

'It is possible, theoretically, to believe in The Bible code without believing in God,' he added. 'But if you assume God exists, you don't have to answer the question:- Who can see the future?'

Drosnin went to see Israel's most famous mathematician, Robert J. Aumann, a member of both the Israeli and the U.S. National Academy of Science. 'The Bible code is simply a fact,' he said.

'The science is impeccable. Rips's results are wildly significant, beyond anything usually seen in science. I've read his material thoroughly, and the results are straightforward and clear.

'It goes contrary to all my training as a mathematician, and even the religious thinking I've come to be comfortable with. There has been nothing like it in all the hundreds of years of modern science.'

Aumann talked to leading mathematicians in Israel, in the United States, all over the world. No-one could find a flaw in the maths. Finally, on March 19, 1996, the most famous mathematician in Israel told the Israeli Academy of Science; 'The Bible code is an established fact.'

The question is whether the Bible mathematical code tells us what will happen or may happen, presents one predetermined future, or predicts all the possible futures.

Physicists have been locked in the same debate ever since Werner Heisenberg formulated his famous Uncertainty Principle, which states that there is not one future, but many possible futures.

In the end, all conventional science, indeed all conventional concepts of reality, may be irrelevant (1 Timothy 6:20*). If some Being that stands outside the system, outside our three dimensions, outside of time, encoded The Bible, the code may not obey any of our laws (Deuteronomy 4:2), scientific or otherwise.

* 1 Timothy 6:20 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane [and] vain babblings, and OPPOSITIONS OF SCIENCE (knowledge) FALSELY SO CALLED:

Once we admit that we are not alone - that there is some super-intelligence infinitely beyond our own - everything else must be re-examined.

And the greatest scientist of our time, Albert Einstein, never accepted that the universe was governed by chance. 'Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing,' said Einstein. 'But an inner voice (God) tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the "Old One" (The only True Reality - Koran Sura 22:6; etc.*).

* Sura 22:6. This is so, because "I AM" is the Reality: it is He Who gives life to the dead, and it is He Who has power over all things.
22:62. That is because "I AM" - He is the Reality; and those besides Him whom they invoke,- they are but vain Falsehood: verily "I AM" is He, Most High, Most Great.
23:116. Therefore exalted be "I AM", The King, The Reality: there is no God but He, the Lord of the Throne of Honour!
31:30. That is because "I AM" is the (ONLY) Reality, and because whatever else they invoke besides Him is Falsehood (and therefore Fantasy); and because "I AM",- He is the Most High, Most Great.
40:69. Seest thou not those that dispute concerning the Signs of "I AM"? How are they turned away (from Reality)?-
40:70. Those who reject the Book (Bible) and the (Revelations) with which We sent our Apostles: but soon shall they know,-

'God,' said Einstein (the Believer), 'does not play dice.' (and neither should you, with your lives - JAH).

There is still a great deal no one knows about The Bible mathematical code. Eliyahu Rips, who knows more than anyone (about the mathematical code), says it's like a giant jigsaw puzzle with thousands of pieces, and we have only a few hundred.

Drosnin asked Rips if there was any limit to the information that was in the code, how much of our history was hidden in The Bible. 'Everything,' said the mathematician.

Given that the original text of The Old Covenant/Testament (the "Song of Moses") was only 304,805 letters long, how could that be possible?

'Theoretically there is no limit to the amount of information that could be encoded,' said Rips. He started writing down an equation. Drosnin couldn't understand the maths, but he got the point. Even with a limited data base, there could be an endless number of combinations and permutations.

In the end, says Rips, the amount of information is incalculable, and probably infinite.

And that is only the first, crudest level of The Bible (mathematical) code.

We have always thought of The Bible as a book. We now know that was only its first incarnation. It is also a computer-program. Not merely a book that Eliyahu Rips typed into a computer, but something that its Original Author actually designed to be interactive and ever-expanding.

The Bible code may be a timed series of revelations, each designed for the technology of its age (Daniel 12:4*).

* Daniel 12:4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and "seal" the Book (Revelation/Apocalypse 5:1-5), [even] to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and [evil] knowledge (1 Timothy 6:20) shall be increased.

It may be some form of information we cannot yet fully imagine, something that would be as strange to us now as a computer would have been to people 3,000 years ago.

'It is almost certainly many more levels deep, but we do not have a powerful enough mathematical model to reach it,' says Rips. 'It is probably less like a crossword puzzle and more like a hologram. We are looking at two-dimensional arrays and we probably should look in at least three dimensions, but we don't know how.'

No one can explain how the code was created. Every scientist, every mathematician and physicist who understands the code, agrees that not even the fastest super-computers we have today - not even all of the computers now in the world working together - could have encoded The Bible in the way it was done 3,000 years ago.

'I can't even imagine how it would be done, how anyone could have done it,' says Rips. 'It is a mind beyond our imagination.'

Does it prove there is a God?

For Eliyahu Rips, the answer is yes. 'The Bible code is firm scientific proof,' the mathematician states. But Rips believed in God before he found the evidence. 'The existence of God requires no mathematical proof.'

Even before this new mathematical Bible code was discovered we already had proof that God exists because two-thirds of the Bible is written prophecy that; once decoded, using the word code (please read my "The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse" and "The Invasion of Kuwait in Prophecy" and other booklets), and correlated with our known history; demonstrates that 99.9% of it has already been fulfilled in exact and minute detail. Thus proving the existence of God in the same way that this new mathematical code does. Both, together, cannot possibly be wrong - JAH.

Many will, however, say that we now have the first secular evidence of His existence. I am persuaded only that no human could have encoded the Bible in this way. We do have scientific proof that intelligence outside our own does exist, or at least did exist when The Bible was written.

No one knows if The Bible (mathematical) code accurately foretells what is yet to come*. But that ancient intelligence has encoded The Bible to leave us a warning; that we are about to face the real Armageddon, nuclear world war.

* But the word-code prophecies certainly do - JAH.

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.

Drosnin climbed those cliffs days after he learned that The Bible, proven by the Dead Sea Scrolls to be at least 2,000 years old, concealed a computerized code which foretold events that happened thousands of years after The Bible was written.

He 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, he went to the "Shrine of the Book" in Jerusalem, and saw on display the most ancient prophecy of the Apocalypse, the 2,200 year-old Isaiah scroll (Koran Sura 52:1-3* - JAH).

* Koran Sura 52:1. By the Mount (of Revelation) - the Rock;
52:2. By a Decree inscribed [in Prophecy]
52:3. In a Scroll opened-up [Isaiah 33:16-17; 42:11-12];

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.

'It is the earliest copy of The Bible known to the world,' Armand Bartos said.

Isaiah describes a terrible Apocalypse yet to come, a truly frightening vision of a future war, and then states: 'For you (who are spiritually deaf and blind - JAH) 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 (spiritually) "deaf" will hear the words of the book, and from the gloom and the darkness the eyes of the (spiritually) "blind" will see it.'

And in the hidden text, first revealed by mathematician Eliyahu Rips, the same verses of Isaiah reveal that the sealed book is the Bible (word - JAH) code: 'He recognized the words, they will be computerized (on the Internet - by JAH), 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 (possibly beginning in 2000 and climaxing in 2006 - JAH). 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.

World War 3 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 (The Covenant*), 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 hand, and between thy eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thy house, and on thy gates.'

But a question remained; if the future could be known, could it also be changed? (There are none so blind as those who will not see the obvious - that the reason that this warning is encoded in the Mezuzah is because that is where the answer to all mankind's ills is written - JAH.)

* Deuteronomy 30:15 See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;
30:16 In that I command thee this day to love the "I AM" thy God, to walk in His Ways, and to keep His Commandments and His Statutes and His Judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and the "I AM" thy God shall bless thee in the land where thou goest to possess it.
30:17 But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them;
30:18 I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, [and that] ye shall not prolong [your] days upon the land, where thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it.
30:19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, [that] I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:
30:20 That thou mayest love the "I AM" thy God, [and] that thou mayest obey His voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto Him: for He [is] thy Life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the "I AM" sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob/Israel, to give them.

The years in which World War 3 might begin were revealed in the most carefully saved words of The Old Covenant/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 memorized, 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 3 could start within a year, also had predicted that World War 2 would start 'in 5700' - in the modern calendar 1939-1940.

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 (Zechariah 14:4-5*) and great noise, with windstorm (Ezekiel 13:11-13) and tempest and flames of a devouring fire.'

* Zechariah 14:4 And his (Christ's) feet shall stand in that Day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the East, and the Mt. of Olives shall split in half towards the East and towards the West, and there shall be an enormous valley; and half of the Mount of Olives shall move towards the North, and half of it towards the South.
14:5 And ye shall flee to the valley of My mountains; when he (Christ) shall touch the valley of the mountain at the place he separated: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the "I AM" my God shall come, [and] all the holy ones with Him. JAH.

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.

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 (Christ's) many enemies will become like fine dust, the ruthless hordes like blown chaff (Mal. 4). It will happen suddenly, in an instant.'

Note well - Isaiah 5:24 Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, [so] their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away The Law (The Torah) of the "I AM" Lord of hosts, and despised the Word (Christ) of the Holy One of Israel.

* Isaiah 29:4 And thou shalt be brought down, [and] shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be, as of one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust.
29:5 Moreover the multitude of thy strangers shall be like small dust, and the multitude of the terrible ones [shall be] as chaff that passeth away: yea, it shall be at an instant suddenly.
29:6 Thou shalt be visited of the "I AM" Lord of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire.

It is an odd description of an ancient siege, but a perfect vision of the aftermath of a nuclear strike and counter-strike (or the Reaping with Fire - JAH). And then there is the curious, cryptic passage: 'For you (who are spiritually deaf and blind) this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a book.'

Isaiah 29:11 And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a book that is sealed, which [men] deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I cannot; for it [is] sealed:
29:12 And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray thee: and he saith, I am not learned.
29:13 Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near [Me] with their mouth, and with their lips do honour Me, but have removed their heart far from Me, and their fear toward Me is taught by the precept of men:
29:14 Therefore, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among this people, [even] a marvellous work and a wonder: for the wisdom of their wise [men] shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent [men] shall be hid.
29:15 Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the "I AM", and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us?
29:16 Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding?
29:17 [Is] it not yet a very little while, and Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be esteemed as a forest?
29:18 And in that day shall the deaf hear the Words of the Book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of darkness.
29:19 The meek also shall increase [their] joy in the "I AM", and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.
29:20 For the terrible one is brought to nought, and the scorner is consumed, and all that watch for iniquity are cut off:
29:21 That make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate, and turn aside the just for a thing of nought.

They remained sealed (to mathematicians - JAH), 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 mathematical code.

Jerusalem, the centre of the Western world's three major religions, the fabled City where David ruled, where Jesus died, where Mohammed is reputed to have ascended to Heaven, might be obliterated in a final battle brought on by religious hatred.

Drosnin had never believed the Apocalyptic Prophecies of The Bible. He 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 unto 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 (not far from Endor - JAH). 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 from 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.

*By Michael Drosnin perhaps. However, I wrote to the Chief of the Joint Staff General Colin Powell at the beginning of the Gulf War in 1990 to warn him about Syria - JAH

But if Armageddon is real, it may begin the way it is prophesied in the plain text of The Bible (in Revelation 9 - JAH).

Revelation 9:13 And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God,
9:14 Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great River Euphrates.
9:15 And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for The Hour, and The Day, (the month, and the year) for to slay the third part of men.
9:16 And the number of the army of the horsemen [were] two hundred thousand thousand (200,000,000): and I HEARD the number of them.

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 (please speak for yourself Mr. Drosnin. They are Mesech [Moscow] and Tubal [Tobolsk] - JAH). 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 (and then Russia - Revelation*).

* Rev. 16:12 And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great River Euphrates; and the "water" thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the East (eastern block) might be prepared.

'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 3 might begin - with an atomic attack on Jerusalem, followed by an invasion of Israel.

At the close of the 20th. century, we are threatened with a kind of chaos that the world has never faced before (Daniel 12:1; Matthew 24:21-22). We have built weapons that can destroy civilization in a single day, and those weapons may now be on the loose.

The predictions in The Bible code seem to fulfill 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 year.

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' (the "Elect" - JAH) appear right above 'atomic holocaust', just below 'the End of Days' - the biblical Apocalypse.

The Bible code (itself) 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.
JAH.