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This June 9, 1997 article from Time Magazine is about The Bible Code, a book by Michael Drosnin that claims that the assassination of Yitzak Rabin was foretold in the hidden codes of the Torah, and that many other dreadful events of the near future may be predicted the same way. It is based on the system used by Israeli mathematician Eliyahu Rips, a respected professor. at Jerusalem's Hebrew University. However, Rips has denounced Drosnin's work and said that using the code to predict the future is futile.

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While the three authors were working on their paper, Michael Drosnin, a former reporter with the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, became interested in encrypted messages in the bible. He interviewed and spent time with Rips, then started using similar methods to search through the Bible for word sequences that might be used to predict future events. His most famous find was a "prediction" of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin which he located in 1994. Drosnin warned Israeli officials, but Rabin was assassinated in 1995.

Drosnin took this prediction, plus other coded messages he found, and wrote The Bible Code. In the book Drosnin claims he has found predictions of the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, and Anwar el-Sadat. In addition to mayhem, Drosnin found the name Edison encoded near light bulb and electricity, as well as Newton near gravity. Drosnin's most chilling message was a prediction that World War III would start in 1996 with a nuclear attack on the state of Israel. This didn't pan out, but Drosnin later reported he found the work "delayed" encoded near the prediction.

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Other critics found flaws not just with Drosnin's book, but with Rips, Witztum and Rosenberg's paper. Some were unable to duplicate the experiment with the same success as Harold Gans. Others pointed out that the bible in its current form is not letter by letter exactly the same as the original texts that have been lost to history. Even small variations would destroy codes, especially if those codes employed long skips between letters ( Drosnin's Rabin prediction employed a skip of 4,771)

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"Any attempts to predict the future based on hidden Torah codes are worthless"
(World-Renowned Professor of Mathematics Eliyahu Rips)

(Jerusalem, June 4, 1997) The Israeli research team which uncovered the scientific basis for the hidden codes in the Book of Genesis categorically rejected attempts to predict the future based on these codes. They warned against being taken in by the sensational claims in Michael Drosnin's controversial book, 'The Bible Code.'

"All attempts to extract messages from Torah Codes or to make predictions based on them are futile and of no value," said the Hebrew University Professor of Mathematics, Eliyahu Rips, at a press conference in Jerusalem today. "The only conclusion that can be drawn from the scientific research regarding the Torah Codes is that they exist and that they are not a mere coincidence."

Professor Rips set out with colleague physicist Doron Witztum to research seemingly unique patterns encoded in the Book of Genesis. Scanning the text by computer using a scientific method called Equidistant Letter Sequences (ELS), Witztum and Rips proved that by skipping an equal number of letters in the Hebrew text of Genesis, significant clusters of related codes existed that were not due to chance. They showed that hidden in the text is very detailed information about many historical events such as the Holocaust, the French revolution and the Oslo accords.

Following a rigorous six-year peer review process, the codes research results were published in the scholarly journal Statistical Science. More recently, the results were duplicated and expanded by Harold Gans, a former cryptologic mathematician at the US Defense Department.

"Codes don't reveal any secret messages or prophecies about whom to marry or who will win the NBA championship," said Witztum. "I was the first one to investigate the possibility of divining the future through these codes. Following logical and empirical tests, I found incontrovertible evidence proving it's impossible to predict the future with the hidden codes."

Drosnin's claim that he predicted the horrible assassination of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has captured the public imagination. Drosnin showed Rips what Drosnin considered to be a hidden prophecy. "Unfortunately, Drosnin, like many others at the time, guessed something terrible might happen," said Rips. "But, it is scientifically impossible to make any predictions with codes."

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