I recently got a bible code program download from the internet to check it out. As a Methodist minister, I feel that I know the bible about as well as anyone, and I was pretty skeptical about this bible code program. If you aren't familiar with the idea – and many Christians aren't – it basically is a method of divination that dates back to Kaballisticscholars. Basically the idea is that there are hidden codes in the Bible, which can be discovered by doing certain kinds of searches for patterns in letter distribution. For example, you could assemble sentence by using every fifth letter, or every sixth letter, and seeing if it forms words. The coolest part is every bible code program has different ways of doing this. Some will look for a search term – for example, a name or a date – and count the number of letters in that term. Then they will scan the bible from the point where that word occurs, looking for words in the combinations of letters that it selects.

I don't really understand all the intricacies of bible code programs, but I don't really trust them. The bible is God's revealed wisdom to us, his church. To use a bible code program to turn the bible into a cheap tool of divination seems to be a way to subvert the message of the good book, or at least to miss it while looking for cheap fixes to all of your problems. You don't really need a bible code program. The bible has good advice written right into it in plain enough language without using some fancy divination tools.

Of course, many people, especially certain so-called Christians, use their bible code program as a way to try to predict the coming of the end of the world. I consider this not only a misuse of the bible, but actively an evil thing to do. These people are obsessed with the end of this good world that God has given us, and practically drool over any promise or hope that it is coming to a close. Instead of believing in the love of Christ, they use their bible code programs to look for evidence of an apocalypse where, they believe, they will see everyone who doesn't agree with them thrown into a fiery abyss. Leave judgment to God, I say, is the righteous way to act. Try to save the souls you can, and pray for the rest.