The Bible IS the Word of God...
Tyler Nally (tnally@csci.csc.com)
Tue, 13 Feb 96 12:56:05 CST
Greetings Saints in Jesus Name!
Years and years ago I read a tract about the Bible being the true word of
God. I remembered it to be pretty impressive. The other day, when cleaning
up a drawer in my desk at work, I came across the very tract that I remember
from long ago.
The name of it is: The Holy Bible - Wholly True
Author : Winkie Pratney
Published by : Pretty Good Printing of Last Days Ministries
Copyright : 1979
Being as I like the use of numbers.... I took the time to look at the
tract and type in the part about a Russian mathematician named Panin
and his studies after his reported conversion....
What you will read over the next few hundred words is approximately the last
two-thirds of the entire tract. The first part dealing with the credentials
of the bible, it's writers and how most all of them couldn't communicate
with each other, and the Bible as a science book....
Bro. Tyler
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In 1882, a young immigrant from Russia was just graduating from
Harvard. He had a wonderful conversion to Christ, after travelling
as an agnostic who often lectured on atheism! A brillian
mathematician, multi-lingual scholar and literary figure, Panin began
to study the Scriptures as a Christian. Knowing Hebrew, Aramaic and
Greek, he began to read them in the original languages. Both the
Hebrew and Greek are unique in that they do not have a number system.
In otherwords, they do not use special symbols for their numbers
(like our Arabic numerals 1,2,3 etc.) but use instead the letters of
their alphabets to represent numbers.
Aware of the numerical values of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets,
Panin experimented one day by replacing the letters with their
corresponding numbers in Scripture. Here is Panin... a mathematical
genius, a Hebrew and Greek scholar, and he loves playing with
numbers. Suddently, his trained mind saw a mathematical pattern! As
he studied more intesely, his excitement grew. A few short hours of
work had him utterly amazed. The verses he had studied bore
unmistable evidence of an elaborate matematical pattern, far beyond
random chance, or human ability to construct. This discovery marked
the turning point in his career, and from that time until his death
in 1942, he devoted his entire life to the study of Bible numerics.
He showed, first of all, that the Bible, in its original language, is
a skillfully designed product of a mathematical mastermind--far
beyond any human possibility of deliverate structuring. He later
supplied a representative of the Nobel Research Foundation with over
43,000 sheets of his studies accompanied by his statement that this
was his evidence that the Bible was the Word of God. Their reply
was, "As far as our investigarion has proceeded... we find the
evidence overwhelmingly in favor of such a statement." He then
issued a challenge throughout leading newspapers of the world to offer
a "natural explanation" or refute the facts; not a single person was
able to do so.
-- WHAT HE FOUND --
Psa 12:6 "The words of the Lord are pure words; as silver
tried in a furnace on the earth, refined 7 times."
Panin found that patterns of prime numbers, such as 11, 13, 17, and
23, BUT ESPECIALLY 7, were found in great clusters. He would add up
the sum of all numerical values for different words, sentences,
paragraphs, passages, and whole books, and he found the same patterns
in each of the forms! He found that the number of WORDS in a
vocabulary divides by 7. The number of proper names, both male AND
female divides by 7. The number of words that begin with a vowel
divides by 7, likewise the number of words that begin with a
consonant. The number of LETTERS in a vocabulary divides by 7, and
those letters, those that are vowels and those that are consonants
also divide by 7. Words that occur more than once divide by 7, and
also words that appeared only once! The number of nouns is divisible
by 7, also the words that are not. Even the number of words
beginning with each letter of the alphabet! And on and on... Panin
only stayed on a passage long enough to confirm beyond resonable
doubt the statistical evidence for supernatural design. But he
stated that the longer you stayed on one, it would continue to yield
further and further evidgences of pattern within patters until the
mind reeled!
--- SOME EXAMPLES ---
Here is an example from the OT. Just the very first sentence in the
Bible. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen
1:1). That's the way it comes out in English, in the Hebrew it's
exactly 7 words. The 7 words have exactly 28 (4x7) letters. There
are 3 nouns (God, heavens, and earth). Taking the letters of these,
substituting their number equivalents and adding them up, you get a
combined total of 777 (111x7)! There is one Hebrew verb--created.
It's total numerical value is 203 (29x7). The first three words
contain the subject with exactly 14 (2x7) letters, likewise the other
four are the object with exactly 14 letters. The Hebrew words for
the two objects (heaven and erth) each have 7 letters. The value for
the first, middle, and last letters in the sentence is 133 (19x7).
The numeric value of the first and last letters of all the words is
1393 (199x7); the value of the first and last letters of the first
and last words of the verse is 497 (71x7). The value of the first
and last letters of EACH of the words between is 896 (128x7). And so
on, and so on... in this verso alone there are 30 different features
of 7. I have listed only 11 of them! The chance of this happening
accidently is 1 in 33,000,000,000,000 (33 trillion).
And now an example from the New Testament: Mat 1:1-11. The
vocabulary has 49 words (7x7). 28 words begin with a vowel (4x7),
the remaining 21 (3x7) with a consonant. 7 end with a vowel. 42 (6x7)
with a consonant. The 49 (7x7) words have 266 letters (38x7). Out
of the 266 letters, 140 (20x7) are vowels, 126 (18x7) are consonants.
Also, of these 49 words, 14 (2x7) occur only once. 35 (5x7) occur
more than once. 42 (6x7) are nouns, 7 are not. These remaining
common nouns have exactly 49 (7x7) letters. Male names occur in all
56 (8x7) times. The names of only 3 women appear in the passage, and
the Greek letters of their names add up to 14 exactly!
Panin said it would have taken Matthew several months, working 8 hours
a day to construct the genealogy, even if it WERE possible. But the
names were chosen BEFORE MATTHEW WAS BORN!
--- SOME EXAMPLES ---
The whole Bible is like this. I am just taking one small chunk of it
and doing it in detail. Every paragraph, passage and book in the
Bible can be shown to be constructed in the same marvelous way. What
kind of fantastic collaboration between the disciples could have
produced this structure without computers? How could mere fishermen
and tax-collectors produce this kind of inredible structuring and
design? What is crazy, is that Mark is a Roman. Luke a Greek, and
Matthew a Jew, but they all wrote with the same pattern. Each one
wrote with their own unique flavor. Mark's style is different, but
the pattern is the same right through! So who wrote it? One Mind,
one Author --One God-- many different writers, but one WRITER. Can
you imagine what kind of Mind would do this and not even care if you
ever found out?! What I want to see is how smart God is! These are
not just words, it's an incredible mathematical pattern. It dances
with its own poetry in mathematics. A computer would go into
raptures over this! It's like a building where every piece joins
perfectly into each other. And what is wild, is you can't pull even
ONE word out, without damaging the whole pattern. So the Bible
carries withing itself, a self-checking, self-verifying protection
factor. If a person comes along and says I don't like this one, the
whole pattern falls apart. This cannot be found in any other
religious "holy" book in the world.
--- No Other Conclusion ---
You can put any test that you like on this book and nothing is even
in the same category, not even in the same class. It is not a
book--it is God who has spoken in history, and that is why He says,
"My Word is quick an powerful and it is sharper than any two-edged
sword!" Only the 66 books of the Scriptures bear this divine seal.
Not other work of man in ANY language even faintly resembles the
intricate structure and design of the Bible. The fact remains -- only
and INFINITE MIND could hav devised this BOOK OF BOOKS. Now you must
take what it says, as just what it is... THE WORD OF GOD.