In 1630, aboard the Arbella, Governor John Winthrop delivered his famous sermon, A Model of Christian Charity, in which he laid out a vision for the future of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In closing, he quoted Deuteronomy 30:15-20, warning that just as Israel had been given the choice between life and death, blessings and curses, so too would the new settlers of America. What he did not know was that within this very passage—used to define America’s covenantal destiny—the name “America” was hidden in the Hebrew text at an equidistant letter sequence (ELS).
This discovery is no mere coincidence. It strongly suggests that the hand of God was at work, encoding this reference centuries before America would emerge as a nation. Given the historical and prophetic weight of this passage, this finding not only testifies of God’s divine foreknowledge and the role of America in God’s overarching plan, but also establishes a prophetic link between ancient Israel and the future United States of America.
What are ELS codes?
The acronym ELS stands for Equidistant Letter Sequencing. When I speak of ELS codes in the Bible, I am referring to coherent messages encrypted within the Hebrew text of the Old Testament at equidistant letter sequences, which are either directly prophetically and contextually relevant to the biblical passages in which they are encoded, or which combine with specific elements of the plain text of the passages in which they occur to form new cohesive prophetic messages which exist independently of the plain text narrative.
To illustrate, consider the phrase “ELS BIBLE CODES.” If we begin at the first letter and skip every six letters, we retrieve the sequence “L,” “S,” and so forth, eventually spelling “ELS.” This demonstrates how certain words or phrases can be encoded within the text, waiting to be discovered.
While skeptics argue that such patterns can occur randomly, authentic Bible codes exhibit a striking alignment with the surrounding textual themes, making them difficult to dismiss as mere statistical anomalies.
“America” encoded in Deuteronomy 30
I recently discovered an ELS code about America, which I believe is authentic based on the specific passage in which it is encoded. It is found in part of Moses’ farewell address to Israel in the book of Deuteronomy.1 Behold:
As can be seen, the name “America” is encoded at an ELS of every 125 letters backwards in these 11 verses, beginning in verse 20 and counting backwards through verse 10.2
Why is this significant? Because Deuteronomy 30 contains Moses’ prophetic exhortation to Israel, warning of blessings for obedience and consequences for disobedience. Strikingly, this very passage was quoted by Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay in his seminal 1630 sermon, A Model of Christian Charity. His words set a course for what would become the United States, framing the colony’s founding as a covenant with God.
Although the word “America” appears multiple times in the Hebrew Bible at short ELS distances, what makes this particular instance compelling is the context in which it is found. The passage that inspired America’s covenantal foundations is the very one where the name America appears in hidden form. This suggests that, from heaven’s perspective, the American people were spiritually birthed not in 1776, but in 1630, when they covenanted with God upon their arrival.
The Significance of Massachusetts Bay and America’s Covenant
In order to be able to discern the topical relation between America and Deuteronomy 31:10-20, one must have a working knowledge of America’s colonial history.3 The significance of the word “America” appearing in this specific biblical passage is that this very portion of Moses’ farewell address was quoted by Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay in 1630, at the close of his prophetic sermon “A Model of Christian Charity”, which set the future nation on a course of destiny.
The significance of Massachusetts Bay in the context of America
At the time that Winthrop delivered his sermon, the Puritan refugees he was addressing were in the process of planting a colony in New England that would just 150 years later become the very cradle of the American Revolution. The degree to which the Massachusetts Bay Colony contributed to the development of the future United States cannot be overstated. This was the site of the Boston Massacre, as well as Revolutionary war battles like the Siege of Boston. It was also here that the infamous sons of Liberty would one day disguise themselves as Native Americans and dump 342 chests of British tea into Boston Harbor.
In short, the spirit of liberty which came to define American national identity was birthed in the colony founded by Winthrop and the Puritans. Accordingly, from heaven’s perspective, this tiny seemingly insignificant colony that they were getting ready to plant at the time that he delivered this sermon, is the future United States.
Contrary to what secular historians would like everyone to believe, the most prosperous and powerful nation in the world was a covenant people before it was a secular nation-state. While the American Republic came into being in 1776-1789, from heaven’s perspective “the American people” came into existence in 1630 when Winthrop delivered this sermon and the Massachusetts Bay Colony was planted.
America’s Parallel to Ancient Israel
The Puritan settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (est. 1630) were fleeing religious persecution and came to the new world seeking freedom of worship. Having the Bible-centric worldview that they did, they saw many parallels between Israel’s exodus from Egypt and what we might describe as their “exodus from England.” Just as God had delivered Israel from the cruel bondage of Egypt and brought them into their own land where they could worship him freely, so too the Puritan settlers of Massachusetts Bay believed that God had delivered them from religious persecution of the English crown and had brought them into the new world on eagle’s wings. However, just as Israel’s divine deliverance and blessings was not without some conditions and stipulations, but rather was based on a covenant agreement between the people and God—so it was for the Puritan settlers of Massachusetts Bay.
The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay entered into a covenant with the Lord during the course of their voyage to the new world. It is precisely because of this covenant, and all the promises of divine blessing attached to it, that the United States of America became the most prosperous and powerful nation on the planet. A full record of this covenant agreement is preserved in John Winthrop’s sermon.
While space will not permit us to get into the particulars, this covenant agreement between God and the colonists was in many ways patterned after the Sinai covenant between God and ancient Israel. As it had been with Israel long before them, God promised to continue to bless the people and to make them prosperous. In exchange, the people were to love their God above all else and to walk in his ways. Above all else, this meant maintaining brotherly love and a strict code of social justice as biblically defined. If at any point in the future the people forsook this covenant agreement and began worshiping other gods (e.g. their own prosperity), they were assured that they would perish from off the land that God was giving them. Winthrop’s warnings echoed those of Moses’ to ancient Israel in his farewell address in the book of Deuteronomy.
Thus just as Israel’s inheritance of the promised land was conditional and contingent upon their obedience to the stipulations of the their covenant with God, so it was with the colonists of Massachusetts Bay. In essence, Israel’s exodus from Egypt, the covenant between them and God, and their entrance into “the Promised Land”—became a convenient comparative template for America’s colonial forefathers. It is in the context of this comparison between themselves and ancient Israel, in which Governor Winthrop (being moved by the Holy Ghost) quoted Moses’ exhortation in Deuteronomy 30 in the close of his sermon to his fellow colonial settlers. Behold:
I shall shut up this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel, Deut. 30: Beloved there is now set before us life and good, Death and evil, in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments and his Ordinance and his laws, and the articles of our Covenant with him, that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may blesse us in the land whither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away, so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced, and worship and serve other Gods, our pleasure and profits, and serve them; it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whither we pass over this vast sea to possess it;
Therefore let us choose life—that we, and our seed may live, by obeying His voice and cleaving to Him, for He is our life and our prosperity.4
Although Governor Winthrop was unaware of the prophetic significance of these comparisons and his own words, by quoting this portion of Moses’ farewell address in his sermon to his fellow colonists–he had unknowingly set the future nation on a course of destiny by establishing that the history of ancient Israel would function as a prophetic paradigm through which the history of America would unfold. This is a much larger mystery that it would be inappropriate for me to try and explain here, but what this essentially means is that major events in American history would mirror specific historical events that occurred in ancient Israel–the former being “re-enactments” of the latter.
Conclusion
While the statistical probability of this particular code may not be extraordinary, it is my opinion that its placement within a passage that defined America’s covenantal identity is intentional.5
Governor Winthrop, unknowingly echoing Moses, framed the Puritan journey as a divine mission—an interpretation seemingly validated by the ELS code embedded in the very scripture he quoted. This finding affirms that America was founded on a covenant relationship with God, and as Deuteronomy warns, obedience to this covenant determines the nation’s prosperity or decline.
More importantly, this hidden reference to America also establishes a prophetic link between the United States and ancient Israel, reinforcing the idea that America’s history was destined to unfold as a reflection of the biblical nation’s journey. Just as Israel’s blessings and judgments were determined by its adherence to the covenant, so too has America’s rise and challenges followed a similar pattern. This further establishes Israel as a template through which America’s history would unfold, offering a prophetic blueprint for its future course.
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Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2021 Zerubbabel- Because these verses encompass a relatively large amount of text, I unfortunately had to use very small fonts in order to get a clean presentable screen-shot of the table. I therefore apologize in advance if you have to squint to read the text.
- It should be noted that this particular ELS code is not found in certain editions of the Hebrew Bible due to minor orthographic variation across manuscripts.
- The colonial period encompasses the years between about 1607-1776.
- Winthrop, John. “A Modell of Christian Charity (1630).” From the Collections of the MA Historical Society (Boston, 1838), 3rd series 7:31-48). Accessed 1 May. 2021. <http://history.hanover.edu/texts/winthmod.html>
- For a far more statistically significant Bible code about America, see this article.
