In 1943 war was raging across Europe and Bletchley Park was at the heart of the mission to rid the world of a terrible evil. Access to that remote English mansion was only possible with the highest level of security clearance from the British Government. It is a story of secrecy, espionage and codebreaking. I devote much of my time and energy to decoding the whole Christian thing so that ordinary people who have no church background can get to grips with it. Lots of people I meet believe in God but never take a step towards him because they assume you have to speak a religious language that only religious types understand. But 2,000 years ago, God did something incredible to solve the big problem of our separation from him. He sent his son Jesus, to live on earth, as one of us, speaking our language and to be a massive signpost back to God. Jesus didn’t come to start a religion, he came to replace religion with relationship.
For 50 years Bletchley Park was the nerve centre of British Military Intelligence. But is famous for one epic wartime endeavour, the race against time to break the unbreakable Nazi Enigma Code. The orders and communiques of imminent bombing raids, submarine attacks and troop movements were fed into a weird looking typewriter, nicknamed the ‘Crooked Hand of Death’ The messages were readily accessible over the airwaves and regularly intercepted but the Enigma machines had scrambled them into unrecognisable gibberish. So ships were sunk, towns were bombed and innocent people died while the mathematicians based worked around the clock to break the code.
Through his life, Jesus was the living decrypt of God’s eternal and unfathomable truth. He told stories that the ordinary people understood. Stories of a kingdom of love, a father who searches for us and an eternal home in Heaven. Jesus said “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear” and “If you have seen me, you have seen God” The humble got it and followed him but the proud were outraged and crucified him. The first part of the Bible contains well over 300 coded messages or prophecies about the appearance of the Son of God. His birth in Bethlehem, how he would grow up, the things he would say, how he would live, who his friends would be and his death on the cross.
Jesus was the absolute living fulfilment of every one of them. According to a mathematician, on par with those who worked at Bletchley Park in the war years, the chances of a man’s life lining up with all those prophecies without being the one they were pointing to would be equivalent to covering the whole of Great Britain in coins and then turning over the correct one at random. Or about as likely as breaking the unbreakable Enigma Code by simply by guess work. Pretty unlikely! But in 1943 the Enigma riddle was solved thanks to the genius of Alan Turing, a brilliant team and a strange machine nicknamed ‘Christopher’. It is the ancestor of many other clever machines, you may have heard of them they’re called computers.
Being a Christian is not rocket science. You don’t need a brain the size of small city, a degree from a posh university or a fancy machine. You simply need to humble yourself, take a step of faith towards God and receive a fresh start through the sacrifice of his son. Jesus is the answer to great puzzle of life.