On January 26, 2006, the Maranatha team released the following clue,

‘The perceived mistakes were designed to authenticate those who will reveal the answers; it is not advised to pursue the prize through these aspects.’

Not that many of the clues they provided were ever really “solved”, the meaning of this particular clue was a never ending source of confusion. The puzzle book was full of mistakes, but the slue says not to use them to pursue the prize because they are there to authenticate or confirm those who find the answers. The mistakes apparently were designed to confirm the various steps required to decode the Bible. One mistake in particular haunted searchers almost from the very first day of the hunt.

The two sets of Rules used to interpret the text of the Key that were developed in ‘The Key – Part 2’, add either 1 or 2 to the gematria value of the text for each punctuation mark, italicized letters, the letter ‘U’, and verse numbers. Figure 1 shows the amount to be added for each item in the two sets of rules. The total of both rules forms the the number sequence 2223.

Figure 1 – The Two Sets of Rules and 2223

2223 was found very early in the Maranatha hunt by just about everyone involved, but the meaning was never satisfactorily resolved, and the authors of Maranatha never revealed the meaning either. There were a lot of guesses, but the purpose remained elusive. 2223 was found using the Index, or Table of Contents for the book. The page numbers of the first four chapters of the book were incorrectly identified in the Index. The difference between the actual page numbers and the Index page numbers was 2, 2, 2, and 3, respectively. Figure 2 shows the page numbers for the four chapters.

Figure 2 – Maranatha Index Mistakes and 2223

The total gematria value of the first four chapter titles, the Index page numbers, and the correct page numbers, in Figure 2, is 1537. This is the same value as the total value of the Key text from Revelation page 1 with “JESUS” spelled with “J” instead of “I”, shown in Figure 3.

A Note about the Mistakes in Maranatha

In the Maranatha hunt, many searchers quickly learned that there were both blatant and subtle “mistakes” scattered throughout the book. Most people tried to use the “mistakes” as a guide for solving the puzzle, even though the Maranatha authors tried to make it clear to us that the “mistakes” were not part of the solution for the Prize. This was probably one of the many reasons that no one was ever able to solve the puzzle. The “mistakes” were too great of a distraction, and with little else to focus on, the “mistakes” derailed many searchers.

The second book, The Companion, that was released about a year later was full of “mistakes” that were more obvious and plentiful than in the original book. During the hunt, the authors released monthly clues. Two of those clues related tot he “mistakes” in the book. Duncan danced around the issue when asked about them, but never really gave a cobcrete answer about whether the mistakes in the second book were real or accidental, which only fueled the tendency of searchers to use the “mistakes” as part of the attempted solutions.

If not for the confusion caused by the myriad of “perceived mistakes”, the Maranatha hunt might very well have been successful.

26th January 2006

‘The perceived mistakes were designed to authenticate those who will reveal the answers; it is not advised to pursue the prize through these aspects.’

In this clue, they used the term “perceived mistakes”, which can be interpreted to mean that “mistakes” were intentional, rather than being real mistakes.

30th September 2006

‘The Mistakes are not to light your way but to prove where I’m from’

In this clue, the message seems to be that the mistakes will not guide the search, but will only act as confirmation once a searcher reaches a certain point in the hunt. At that time, the meaning of the “mistake” should become apparent.

Perhaps the reason for the “mistakes” will become evident as the quest to break the code unfolds. The “mistakes” in Maranatha seem to be related to information discovered during the hunt for the real treasure.

Figure 3 – Revelation Page 1, Key Text with “JESUS” (Click to Enlarge)

The single digit summation in the left column, after all the rules are applied to the text, is 94, highlighted green in Figure 4. There are a total of 94 characters in the first four chapter titles of Maranatha.

Figure 4 – Revelation Page 1 Key Text with Rule Set 1 (Click to Enlarge)

There is a lot going on in this simple looking Index, and I am sure that I have not found everything yet. Figure 5 shows the Index page as written in the Maranatha book. The chapter numbers were added to show some of the hidden information.

Figure 5 – The Maranatha Index, As Published

• 661 in Figure 5, highlighted green corresponds to the total value of the left column after applying the rules in Figure 4. This appears to be a confirmation of the rules and development of the Key.

• The page numbers on lines 6, 7, and 8 have single digit summations of 2, 3, and 4, respectively. In reverse order, lines 6, 7, and 8 are line numbers 4, 3, and 2.
• 234 + 432 = 666, confirming the importance of lines 6, 7, and 8, and the use of single digit summation.

• Note that “suggested” on line 6, highlighted red, is not capitalized. This “mistake” calls attention to this word. The title of this section is different on the actual page of the book. “suggested” is changed to “Further” on page 47 of the book.
• As written in the Index, lines 6, 7, and 8 have a total gematria value of 672.
• Changing “suggested” to “Further” gives a total gematria value of 661 for lines 6, 7, and 8.
• Again 661 matches the value of the left column in Figure 4.

• Using line numbers 6,7, and 8, the numbers 666 and 888 can also be readily obtained.
• 678 – 12 = 666
• 876 + 12 = 888
• Using the number 12 twice hints at the two sets of rules in developing the Key because the text of both Key pages are reduced to 12 numbers in each set.
• 876 is also the number of pages between the two Key pages, not including the Apocrypha, which are Page 12 of II Samuel and the last Page of Revelation

• Highlighted blue, the single digit sum of page numbers for lines 4 and 5 give the number “77 = CHRIST”, which is was used extensively in the search for the Key.
• Line 4 and the summation of 7, also gives the number “74 = JESUS”.

• The gematria value of the page number on line 3 is 55.
• If 5 was added to the single digit summation on Line 3, then lines 1, 2, and 3 would equal 666.
• 55 + 5 can be interpreted as 555. This confirms the value 555 used in developing the Key.

The “mistakes” in Maranatha appear to confirm that the current approach for developing the Key to the primary code in the Bible is correct.