About the Author:

Christopher Byrnes Matthews was born in Australia in 1954. His normal occupation is that of a professional watercolour artist intermixed with energetic periods of building renovation and writing.

He has published two novels:

AL JAZZAR (1981 joint winner of the Australian / Vogel literary prize )

SACRED SITE. ( 1993 )

He has long had an interest in Middle Eastern history, politics and religion and has visited the region many times.

Al Aqsa Mosque from outside the Walls, Jerusalem, Israel	Jerusalem Rooftops, Israel

 

Kharga Oasis Market, Egypt	Yialos, Island of Symi, Greece.

The Origin of

THE NAME CODE books:

Christopher Matthews stumbled across the Name Code phenomenon quite by accident.

In March 1997 he decided to write a irreverent novel in which Elvis Presley would make an appearance as an archangel in Australia's outback. In seeking a justification for the dead singer's heavenly position Matthews went to his bookshelf and thumbed through an old Hebrew dictionary.

He played with the names of the dead singer, translating them into Hebrew hoping to find a 'hidden' word or a phrase that might add coincidental substance to his farcical plot.

With some amusement, he found a couple of words that fitted his plot perfectly and so included them in his story. Over the following weeks as the novel progressed, Matthews returned a number of times to reconsider Elvis Presley's names. He translated them in many ways. It was all very strange....

He had noticed that biographically prophetic sentences and coherent statements on biblical themes could be decoded from Presley's many names when they were written both forward then backward in Hebrew. Such ongoing word play was a somewhat irrational pastime ( best indulged in privately...) but the results were amusing, intriguing and also somewhat disturbing.

As a passionate atheist Matthews was more than aware that such biblical parallels as found in Presley's names should have a rational secular explanation. They could not be 'divinely' inspired. They had to be a random coincidental phenomenon....

Matthews finished his novel and then turned his attention back to the names of Elvis Presley. What had started as a joke had now assumed a more serious dimension. On the subject of 'hidden messages' Matthews had found far more than he had bargained for.

But just how far did this strange Presley messianic name-message 'coincidence' extend?

Matthews persisted in his private word games. A casual glance in a Hebrew dictionary had turned into a passion spread over weeks and then months. The extent of the Presley biblical parallels was bewildering. More research proved that the names of Presley's parents, grandparents and great-grand parents efforlessly extended the biblical parallels and resultant messages into a multi generational phenomenon. Eventually the Presley biblical parallels could be seen to stretch over 9 generations and include more than 70 ancestors. It extended far beyond what one could rationally call 'random coincidence.'

At this stage Matthews approached a recent acquaintance, the multi-millionaire Australian business man John Singleton, with the idea of making a television documentary detailing the weird godly Messiah Elvis messages. With characteristic good humour and entrepeneurial spirit, Singleton quickly agreed.

The first part of the documentary was made with film being shot in America and Israel. As part of the documentary project, Matthews visited Jerusalem again in early 1998, this time interviewing four different Hebrew language professors, historians and senior lecturers from Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion Universities. Their expertise covered every aspect of the Hebrew language from ancient cuniform Semitic scripts through Dead Sea Scrolls research, Mishnaic Hebrew, Kabbalah and current day Hebrew studies. Matthews had the meetings video taped. At this time his research into the Name Code phenomenon was still in its rudimentary stages but the response he received from the four distinguished Israeli scholars was most encouraging.

All four confessed they had never seen anything like the sequences of name messages or the biblical parallels that he laid on the table before them. As a concept 'Name messages' were unheard of. And the comprehensive nature of the Presley family biblical parallels was also totally unprecedented.

The Israeli scholars were both noticably amused and bemused but they genuinely praised Matthews' Hebrew scholarship. Such validation was warmly received by the Australian goy coming as it did from published Hebrew scholars.

With the basics of the Presley name-message phenomenon validated by independent experts, the first Elvis: God and King documentary was completed and offered to television networks both in Australia and America. The response was the same everywhere.

Total rejection.

It was too far-fetched. It was too blasphemous. With all commercial avenues blocked the Elvis documentary project was finally shelved. The world moved on. Everyone soon forgot about Elvis Presley and his strange messianic 'name-messages'.

Everyone except Christopher Matthews.

His passion had become an obsession.

He bought bigger and better Hebrew dictionaries and over the next ten years was able to piece together a far better understanding of the historic parameters of the mysterious 'name code' and how it functioned. He discovered that its pathways of hidden messages extended far beyond Presley and his immediate family. They stretched out silently across the centuries to include sequences of Presidents and Prime Ministers and to secretly infect the holy books of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

In almost every case the messages were found encoded in names. In every case the code process remained constant. In every major sequence of names the divine author of the coded messages precisely identified himself.

Matthews visited Israel three times researching different aspects of the Name Code phenomenon. The amount of material that he amassed increased a hundred fold. When turned into a manuscript the abridged version contained 1,700 name messages. Its 1,700 pages were divided to form three bulky volumes.

In late 2005 with the manuscripts largely complete Matthews decided to contact one of the Hebrew scholars interviewed eight years before, to see if he would be willing to supply a written evaluation of the first volume of THE NAME CODE.

The Israeli Professor of Hebrew Language willingly agreed. He read the manuscript and was again fulsome in his praise. He found the book 'fascinating' and the material 'astonishing'. He strongly recommended it for publication ...but warned that many people would find its contents '... no less threatening than international terrorism.'

The Professor was so impressed with the manuscript that he offered to submit it personally to the editors of a leading Israeli publishing house with whom he had a close association.

For some reason however, this Jerusalem based Jewish publisher was less than enthusiastic about publishing any 'Elvis is God' book no matter what Elvis's name messages said.

Strange about that...

Similarly, every literary agent or mainstream English language publisher that Matthews approached became instantly apoplectic at the first sight of the subject, the size of the three manuscripts and a mere glimpse at the unintelligible accompanying Hebrew script. They wanted no part of it.

So, here it is on the web, available as ebooks or in the flesh by print- on -demand. See BUYING THE BOOKS.