Here are a few book reviews I gave for some of the books I read while researching End Times and 2019: Michael Drosnin’s The Bible Code, John Major Jenkins’ Maya Cosmogenesis 2012: The True Meaning of the Maya Calendar End-Date, and Tim LaHaye’s Are We Living in the End Times? If you like what I have to say about these books, perhaps you’ll appreciate End Times and 2019.
I picked up a cheap copy of Michael Drosnin’s “Bible Code” at a yard sale many years after it came out. I had always been intrigued by the idea that information could be encoded in the Bible through ELS, and that computer analysis might reveal something that had not been discovered before computers made these searches possible. I had never read the book previously because I had heard you could get the same results analyzing “Moby Dick” or anything else of sufficient length.
But I am also an author of books on prophecy, and I know there are incredible levels of math and science encoded in ancient myths and books. So after years of research and writing and knowing that somewhat similar ideas do have merit, I read the “Bible Code.” Drosnin is a good writer. If I see a fictional novel he writes in the future I will read it. The book flows well and is an entertaining read, which partially makes up for the disappointing content. There was nothing in the book to convince me that the odds of finding such phrases in the Bible are very high. And this comes from someone who takes Bible prophecy seriously and “wants to believe.”
The bottom line is that many mathematicians have come out against Drosnin’s claims. They have found similar “warnings” or descriptions of events by performing the same equidistant letter searches to “Moby Dick,” “War and Peace,” and other literature. Drosnin claims the mathematical odds of finding such miraculous words and phrases in the Bible is astronomical. He claims that mathematicians back him up. But in reality it would be far more surprising to NOT be able to find such words and phrases, given the almost infinite permutations of the searches, and dozens of mathematicians have refuted the main premise of the “Bible Code.”
Drosnin also chose to keep writing sequels. It’s hard to blame someone for following up on a successful book, but in this case additional writing just gave the author the chance to insert his foot into his mouth and further discredit himself. His original premise, as I understood it, is that God is real, the Bible is divinely inspired, only God could have planned the Bible to contain such codes, and they describe future events which could only have been foreseen by a God outside our restrictions of past, present, and future. Yet Drosnin more recently says he doesn’t even believe in God. And that the revelations from what he has decoded are meant to warn us to avert disasters. To warn us so we can avoid biblical disasters and make the events foretold in the Bible not come to pass.
I’m not sure what audience Drosnin is trying to write for, but in his sequels he is arguing that Bible prophecy doesn’t necessarily happen as written and can be averted, and that there is no God. He also rants about many left-wing issues, suggesting that we change the way we deal with the Middle East, the environment, and climate change. I would think he is alienating most of his potential audience: people who think there might be codes hidden in the Bible. I assure such readers there is fantastic information “hidden” in the Bible, but I do not think anything useful is revealed through ELS. In a sense this book is dangerous; it is a very well written promotion about a theory which is nonsense, and many eager readers with little background in mathematics will be convinced the idea has merit. Two stars.
In Maya Cosmogenesis 2012: The True Meaning of the Maya Calendar End-Date, author John Major Jenkins secures his spot as the number one expert on Mayan cosmology, astronomy, and myth. He understands Mayan culture on a level few other scholars achieve, and when he clearly explains that Mayan culture and mythology are dominated by astronomy, you can accept the idea as fact. Almost everyone has heard that the Mayan Long Count – a 5125 year cycle often erroneously referred to as “The Mayan Calendar” – ends on December 21, 2012. But there are some strange ideas about what this means in regard to things like a new expansion of consciousness or the end of the world.
The Mayan calendar (which like our own calendar, never ends) is based on cycles of the precession of the equinoxes – the slow wobble of the Earth’s axis of rotation. One of these astronomical cycles of about 25,800 years does end on December 21, 2012, if we use the same references many ancient cultures like the Maya used: the winter solstice sun will be in close alignment with the center of our galaxy. Is this a historically meaningful moment in time or is it no different than someone’s odometer flipping from all nines to all zeros?
Jenkins rules out the insignificance of the date. The Maya describe the astronomy we are about to see in the sky in their myths about One Hunapu and the Hero Twins. They devised a Long Count of over five thousand years which they *backdated* to begin long before Maya society existed, so that the cycle of this great length would end in December 2012. The Maya also built a huge pyramid at Chichen Itza which is like an alarm clock for the 21st century, structurally marking the era in which a certain astronomical conjunction takes place. The 2012 end date is a very important date to the Maya. December 2019, seven years later, may be even more important to them.
Jenkins also admits that the Maya, like many ancient cultures, were very focused on world ages, world creation and destruction, and world renewal. He knows that 2012 is central to these Mayan concepts. But he does not believe there will be a crustal displacement (pole shift) or any other physical catastrophe that would end civilization, despite acknowledging that such destructive events have happened in the past. (p. 330) Jenkins merely expects a “pole shift in our collective psyche” and a positive transformation of consciousness.
As an author on related topics, I will say I am disappointed in Jenkins on this one issue. The spiritual transformation of consciousness strikes me as new age drivel best suited for hippies in the 1960s. The idea that the Maya would arrange all aspects of their culture to focus on events starting in December 2012, merely because they thought we will experience changes in our thinking, seems like a hopeful and silly disregard of Maya cosmology and their central thoughts on the creation, destruction, and renewal of the world. Anyone familiar with the Maya, Jenkins included, knows they believed in several worlds which were destroyed in the past, and that we are about to enter a new world after 2012.
I do not believe this is meant to be interpreted as a development of consciousness; I think very bad times are ahead. My research suggests that the seven years from December 2012 to December 2019 are crucial, and that while Christians might view a seven year tribulation as the last years in the current system of things, the Maya view them as the first years in a new world, one which will already be far different from the one we know years before the culmination of the end times in December 2019. (Many clues in the Bible, and even the Mayan “Popul Vuh” creation story point to late 2019.)
I think “Maya Cosmogenesis 2012” is a fantastic, five star book and a wonderful introduction to Mayan astronomy and beliefs. There is a focus on astronomy, myth, and archeology, and readers could do a lot worse with other books on the Maya. Readers may also be interested in books like Hancock and Bauval’s “Message of the Sphinx,” Hapgood’s “Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings,” Weidner and Bridges’ “The Mysteries of the Great Cross of Hendaye,” and de Santillana and von Dechend’s “Hamlet’s Mill.”
Tim LaHaye is a great writer and a very knowledgeable Bible scholar who interprets Bible prophecies literally. Of course, anyone’s interpretation comes through their own personal filter. The authors write from the perspective of a pre-tribulation rapture, but many famous and intelligent people hold the post-trib view. The authors make the traditional assumption that Matthew 24:36 conclusively tells us that no one can know the hour or the day of future events; but if the Greek word “oiden” really means “has known” instead of “knows” then perhaps end times events can be calculated. The whole point of being given signs is to give us more insight into the timing of events, especially as they draw near.
“Are We Living in the End Times?” does a great job explaining the Book of Revelations literally, from the school of thought that most American Christians share. It offers insights into the events we can expect to see in the future, and raises the question of just how near those future events may be. As an author writing about Bible prophecy myself, I will merely suggest to readers that any mortal author has limitations. (And as I disagree with some of LaHaye’s interpretations, I only rate this book with four stars.) Having spoken to Tim LaHaye in person on these topics, I found out he assumes that while we may know more detail on the timing of such events as they approach, he wasn’t particularly concerned about all the signs available for analysis because he doesn’t expect Christians to be “Left Behind” to suffer through such events. Other interpreters have different opinions. Read several interpretations (this is a great first book to start with) then re-read the Bible and decide for yourself.
— contributed on July 9, 2014 by David Montaigne author of End Times and 2019
http://endtimesand2019.webs.com/
About Author
