(2 Th 2:9-10 NKJV) "The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, {10} and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved."

The Trinity Broadcasting Company has produced a hit movie thriller, an action-packed drama called The Omega Code. Thousands of TBN's faithful adherents helped spread the news and millions of professing Christians responded to make it a box office bloomer. The movie is based on a secret code hidden in the Bible that is suppose to foretell the future. Hero, Gillen Lane, attempts to stop the villain, Stone Alexander, from using the stolen code in a plot to take over the world. With the glitzy fanfare of Hollywood, Trinity Broadcasting Network's Paul Crouch released the film which made a stunning 2.4 million dollars the first week in only 305 theaters.

On the surface, this seems to be a tremendous achievement for the Christian faith and a strong advance into the world market with a biblical message. However, the film is more than a fictional plot in the minds of most attendees and decidedly so as far as Crouch and his staff are concerned.

Crouch's son Matthew remarked, "I think I, as a producer, have a core audience that have watched my parents for 27 years," he says. "This is a film we can believe in. This a film we can support, and they did."

The "they" may have been in reference to the thousands of professing Christians that attended the movie during the first week and the multitude that will probably attend when it opens in their venue. These people for the most part consider the movie to be the gospel truth or as close as one can get to it without compromising the integrity of the Scriptures. I wonder how many of these individuals actually understand the significance of what has occurred as a result of the success of The Omega Code.

First of all, The Omega Code is not scriptural at all. In the remotest sense it might be considered somewhat prophetic because of the scripture posted at the beginning of this article. As a lying sign and wonder and no doubt an unrighteous deception, it engages in diverting people away from the apocalyptic truth that clearly is in stark opposition to the message of The Omega Code.

The code itself is based on a discovery of an Ouija-like process of detecting secret words hidden in texts that is called Equidistant Letter Sequencing, (ELS). ELS uses an arbitrary method of selecting letters from a particular text by counting an equal number of spaces in any direction until one spells out a word. Thus, if the word you are searching for isn't in the sentence, all one has to do is try counting vertical or diagonal, or some other direction, through the text. Sometimes, a "leap" is allowed from one to fifty letters to discover the right letter. It is not that difficult using the English language to discover secret messages everywhere in the Bible as well as other literature, but it is much easier using Hebrew. In fact, one man, Professor Brenden McKay, took the challenge of Michael Drosnin, the author of The Bible Code, who declared, "When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them." Professor McKay was able to discover the assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi, President Rene Moawad, Dr. Martin Luther King, President John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Yitzhak Rabin and the mention of British princess, Lady Diana, to name a few. Someone was even able to find software mogul, Bill Gates, in the book of Revelation!

Although some self-styled prophets and proclaimers of hidden truth are using ELS on the English Bible to validate their claims, most dispensationalists are using the Hebrew Text. G. Richard Fisher, (no relation) writes in his article on the Bible Code this revealing statement about ELS.

"You can go forward, backward, vertical, horizontal, or diagonal. You can skip five letters or 50 letters (or any number for that matter). It is really nothing more than a giant "Seek'N'Find" or "Word Search" puzzle with endless possibilities, given that you make up the parameter of the search as you go. If you can't find what you're looking for, just increase the boundaries by expanding the playing field with additional rows and columns. And while the technique may take thousands of hours by hand, a computer can accomplish the procedure in seconds. Drosnin's concept is further aided by the fact that the Hebrew language is made up of consonants and no vowels. Thus, "Rabin" could equally be "Robin" or "Reuben." And although Hebrew is read from right to left there are no fixed parameters with the new code game and you can go in any and all directions. Drosnin readily admits: "...you can't find anything without knowing what to look for."

The whole thing smacks of charlatanism, Elmer Gantry in a high tech time warp, or the stuff of too much late night pizza and caffeine soda. How does such an obvious rabbit trail lead to the fabrication of a "Christian" movie that threatens to create new doctrine and support an old, tired, one, Pretribulation Rapture, that has been drained for all its worth in the last forty years. The Pre-tribulation Rapture doctrine has been written about and promoted in more fictional books and sensationalized with more pseudo-scriptural videos than any other evangelical, fundamentalist, eschatological doctrine in this half-century. Hal Lindsey's fictional book, The Late Great Planet Earth, sold more copies than any other book in the 1970's. It began the deep slide into the heretical chasm of apocalyptic prophesy that has only gathered momentum as the new millennium approached.  Now, in the year 2000, I wonder why the sensation merchant/prophets are so silent?  Maybe they are waiting for a event that will give them an opportunity to spin off more of their sensational, deceptive, prophesies with the accompanying money-making books and videos.  

The danger to unsuspecting professors of Christianity is that the new doctrine that The Omega Code may create is a cultic-style probing into the Bible rather than taking it at face value. For the Dispensationalist's who are the overwhelming promoters of ELS, this is a blatant hypocritical departure from their standard declaration of supporting Biblical literalness. The stock mantra of dispensationalist's, a term that defines the followers of J. N Darby, is, "We are the only one's who interpret the Bible literally."  To do otherwise, they declare, is to promote liberalism and eventual apostasy. In light of their long-standing defense of dispensationalism as a literal interpretation of the Bible, one has to wonder why these avid sensationalists have radically departed from their claim of literalness to favor such a farcical process of biblical interpretation such as ELS.

The fact is that dispensationalism had ran out of the type of sensationalism that unnerve the masses and cause them to buy more books and Rapture kits. Fearing a charge by men, such as, Gary DeMarr and Dave McPherson, the most prominent dispensationalist writers met in Dallas several years ago and vowed to flood the market with Rapture books and videos. This they did until evangelicalism was saturated. They stroked the old themes until they had milked pre-tribulation rapture of every possible thrill, but the result was the desensitization of the masses to the provocative, apocalyptic message of the coming Great Tribulation. Now with the new millennium about to crash their meal wagon, they have to strike with all their force at the voices that are mounting against the aberrant false doctrine of pretribulation rapture. Those voices are sure to demand that these profit prophets should repent and cease from their errant ways when all the foretold events do not occur.

I stand opposed to The Omega Code since it is based on a procedure that more closely resembles witchcraft and occultic divination than spiritual revelation. ELS is not new. It has been used for years by cults and false religions to establish their validity. None need buy into it now at this critical time in Christianity. This is creeping apostasy at its worst, merchandising and manipulating God's Word without any sign of slowing down. It would be better to take heed to the words of the Apostle Paul posted prior to this article and arm oneself with a mind set on truth. Jesus declared that the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth. Thus, none need instruction from extra-biblical literature and video's concerning what is patently clear in the God's Word. If God wanted a code hidden in the text to be revealed at some later date, I'm sure He would have not have chosen the sorry, misinterpreting, process of ELS to bring it out. God doesn't make any mistakes and He doesn't play word games.

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