A couple of years ago I got a leaflet through my door at work declaring 'The Bible Decoded'. I would have thrown it away it was so basic to the eye. Except that the headings caught my attention. Some of the mysteries they claimed they had unravelled were, 'Who is the faithful and discreet slave', 'What is the date of Armageddon', 'Evolution and creation harmonized', as well as some other phrases that seemed rather reminiscent, but also subtly different to JW preoccupations. The contact name for the organization was 'The Lord's Witnesses' and they had a website address http://www.bibledecoded.com
Checking this out when I got home, I must admit I was flabergasted by what I saw. It was like going back 80 years in time to Rutherford. Wild interpretations, but way beyond anything I ever read even in that old literature. These people believe there is a code hidden virtually everywhere in the bible. Ok so that's not new at all. But these ideas were straight out of the witnesses, only developed 100 fold. Basically he has taken the old witness ways of interpreting the Bible, e.g. prophetic parallels, type and anti type, repetition for emphasis (seriously) and much more, methods of interpretation that they always applied very haphazardly (e.g. so why is this story from the old testament actually a prophecy and this other one isn't?), and distilled it down to some sort of scientific method. He's got a zillion rules laid out one by one for interpreting the bible yourself.
You have to admire the time and effort he's put into it all, and he has at least addressed some of the issues witnesses ignore. The evolution debate was one I looked at straight away. Inconvenient scientific facts are admitted that JW's would never touch, but then from them out pops an incredible theological conclusion like an alien that make you think 'why did you bother'? The thing that made me laugh most though was the way he came out of the organization. You have to read his a time chronology to believe it, the devolopment of his thinking while he was in the witnesses, the way he published various papers with his ideas, went to see the governing body to make them see the new light, and then interprets all the rebuffs as if they are in fulfillment of the prophecies, the same as the witnesses did in the old days. The word megalomania came to mind, and ironically the thing that was impressive was how long he managed to avoid getting disfellowshipped during years of full fledged 'apostasy'.
So all of this was a couple of years ago. A couple of weeks ago, I thought I'd check his site again to see how the interpretations had changed. He had had all these dates on his site with his predictions for the next few years filled in, and something pretty big like the beginning of Armageddon marked in for 2008. I was thinking 9/11 has got to be relevant to all this, so I checked out his chronology and yes that's been worked in as you would expect, true to his forbears.
And then this evening on the BBC Watchdog (a consumer interests programme) they had an item about a 'scam' or so they implied it. The story was about some companies who's business it is to fax around to individuals and other companies claiming to be doing a survey of the public, asking an emotive current affairs question and then inviting faxed replies to a premium rate phone number. All of these fax companies were connected to one individual, Gordon Ritchie. So this Gordon Ritchie is in the studio to answer questions about his 'dubious practices'. After discussing this whole matter with him, the interviewer then asks the most incredible but seemingly irrelevant question "Haven't you started your own religion where you claim you have interpreted the bible code?" and "Don't you claim to have uncovered that Armageddon is coming in 6 years time?" The programme here takes on a rather surreal atmosphere and I gloss over half his answers, thinking back and wondering. Then he's asked "Do you believe you are the Messiah?", and I listen and he says "In a way yes, in the sense that Messiah means annointed one, and I am being used by God, but I don't believe I'm Christ..." and then some more stuff I don't even take in, cause I just can't believe this is a consumer affairs programme and they're having this crazy religious discussion on BBC primetime.
Anyway. That's it. Sorry if it's been too long. Check out the site if you're into that sort of thing. It was amazing to me to see something potentially just at its beginning, budding off the witnesses, just as Russell did off the adventists all those years ago, and patently not having learnt any lessons from the last hundred years of Witness history.