Holy Revelation

A debut book offers a key to figuring out the numerical codes embedded in the Bible.

The practice of gematria, or the discovery and decoding of meaningful numerical values embedded within nonnumerical alphabets, is an ancient discipline that was eventually adopted by more mystical strains of Judaism. In this volume, Stone provides a mathematical legend of sorts that decodes various phrases and names from the Bible along these lines. The work includes an “English end-time decryption table” and decodes alternate names for God (“The Ultimate One,” “The Deity”), religious concepts (“Our Salvation”), and a host of other seemingly random notions (“The Big Kahuna,” “Tears of a Clown”). More than once, the author presents the decryption of his own name, birthdate, and Social Security number. In the introduction, Stone writes: “The task at hand is to present Immanu-el (GOD with us), the Creator, etc., and make the specifics verifiable. The onion has many layers and subtleties as the number nine (9) suggests. But this book is a journey, and the end is the realization of God’s human/Divine identity.” The volume subdivides into 12 chapters, but what precisely distinguishes the subject matter of each of them is both unstated and generally inscrutable. This is a short book—only 64 pages—and very little commentary is included. The subject is certainly intriguing. Some sense of the historical and theological significance of such encoding would have been both edifying and interesting to the reader. As it stands, most of the chapters provide decryption without any accompanying explanation, and so this is essentially a reference guide without instructions with regard to its use. And, given the fact that the Bible was not originally composed in English, what is the religious significance of the decoding of an English alphabet translation? The author never addresses this issue. In Chapter 11, Stone inexplicably turns political: “President George Herbert Walker Bush, as Hitler, proclaimed in Japan the New World Order as Hitler had done. President Bush promptly fell on his face: Divine Intervention.” Even for the most ardent religious enthusiasts and those intensely fascinated by such codes, this volume promises little insight into the practice or even the author’s ultimate intentions. In other words, this is less a book than a catalog of puzzles.

A strange collection of biblical codes that lacks wide appeal.