The Judge by Randy Singer

Author:Randy Singer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Christian / Suspense, FICTION / Suspense
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2012-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

“Notice that I added some letters at the end as filler.” Wellington looked at Nikki, who nodded. “Now, instead of writing the letters in the code from left to right across the rows, we can write them from top to bottom along the columns,” he continued. “This will scramble them so that our message would read M-E-A-K-C-E-E-A-R-S-O-X and so on.”

“I see,” Nikki said, hoping the comment might speed things along.

“That’s just one form of transposition cipher, so I thought I would start there.”

Wellington flipped the pages in his notebook, showing Nikki a lot of different matrixes. “None of those worked,” he said. “So I tried some mathematical formulas to see if I could detect a pattern.”

He turned the page again. “Voilà! It was right under my nose the entire time.”

Nikki noticed the new pattern Wellington used on the page. “This is called the rail-fence cipher,” Wellington explained. “It’s so basic that I couldn’t believe I didn’t see it earlier. You just write the entire message on two different lines, alternating between them, and then you write the encoded message by copying the entire first line and then following it with the entire second line.”

Wellington turned toward Nikki. “Did you read chapter 2 in Finney’s book?”

“I skimmed it.”

“Good. Then you know it’s about the paralyzed man that some friends brought to Jesus for healing in a house so crowded that they had to drop the man in through the ceiling. Jesus pronounced forgiveness of the man’s sins, but the Pharisees were thinking that He had committed blasphemy. So to prove He had power to forgive sins, Jesus healed the man as well.”

“Which, of course, would lead any reasonable person to suspect a rail-fence cipher,” Nikki said sarcastically.

“Exactly,” Wellington said, proving once again that cipher experts didn’t do sarcasm. “Finney’s point was that too often we just operate on the physical plane, whether it’s our health or finances or whatever. But Jesus first dealt with the man’s spiritual condition and maybe wouldn’t have healed him at all if the Pharisees hadn’t been so critical. So Finney is saying we need to be cognizant of both dimensions—the spiritual and the physical—and the rail-fence cipher is a perfect picture of that because it only makes sense if you integrate the two planes together.”

“Did you solve the code?” Nikki asked. She avoided church so she wouldn’t get preached at. She didn’t need the Right Reverend Wellington Farnsworth making up for lost time in the minivan.

“Sorry. I just get into this stuff. It’s a verse from the apostle Paul after he had prayed without success for God to remove a thorn in his flesh.” He slid the paper over toward Nikki. “As you read, alternate from the top line to the bottom, and you’ll see what I mean.”

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