Author Bio
SHORT BIO (from back cover)
Author Bruno Curfs, M.Sc., was born in 1969 in the Netherlands. He was raised as a Roman Catholic and he studied Mathematics from 1987-1993. He, afterwards, worked in Information Technology. In 1989 Curfs converted to full gospel Christianity. He followed his own path, practically cut off from family and friends. He prayed to God to show him His plan for his life. In 2001 he started to question his beliefs. This led to a personal crisis in 2006 that lasted for two years. In October 2007, things turned around for Curfs as he found a valuable reference that was mind-shattering and changed his life forever.
EXTENDED BIO
I was born in 1969, in the Netherlands and raised Roman Catholic. From 1987 to 1993, I studied mathematics at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
In 1998, I converted to full gospel Christianity. I had no idea what I was in for, but I always wanted to know what the Bible was all about. I felt I needed to make a personal commitment to God and gradually it became an absolute priority in my life. I was baptized for the second time, in a church that wanted to baptize me after a short introductory course. After that I immediately left the church again and never considered to join a church.
After my study, I worked in the Information Technology. Nothing seemed impossible and I started as a coach, giving a course in programming to my new colleagues. About a year and a half later, when the course was perfected according to me, I started working in the field. In a few years, I advanced from junior programmer to senior programmer, technical designer and debugger. I thanked God for all of my riches. You would say that my life was a success.
As a Christian, I shared my faith with one close friend. I did not attend any church, as I did not believe that a church taught the same what Jesus taught. Because looking at the world we live in and the amount of Christians among us, I believed there must be a radically different approach than the one taught by the churches. I believed in a very personal approach, to study the Bible alone fervently without any other books and ask the Holy Ghost every day for guidance and understanding. I thought that this resembled closest the way that the first disciples learned, who were near Jesus on a daily basis. They had theory and practice in one package. In my case, theory was the written word, practice was my daily life guided by the Holy Spirit. I believed that this approach would make me stronger in the long run, by not depending on ‘outside’ help. After several years, I believed I had built a strong personal relationship with Jesus and trusted Him with all of my life.
In 2001, I found a book by Friedrich Weinreb, an orthodox Jew, who explained things about Jesus that I did not know as a Christian. That was shocking and interesting at the same time. He kindled my interest for the Hebrew Alphabet, with its numbers attached to them. He explained the validity of the New Testament from a Jewish perspective. I found that very refreshing. He gave it his own very personal and creative twist. It did not bother me at all. I learned the Hebrew Alphabet and became interested in learning Hebrew, but I did not pursue it at the time.
Then the unthinkable happened in 2006: I had a personal crisis. It had festered for many years. I was not happy and my belief in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit had not changed that one bit. If anything, I had become very radical, and my heart was torn between what I believed was God’s will for everybody--to believe in Jesus’s sacrifice for everybody to obtain total forgiveness and eternal life--and the reality I was faced with, where family, friends and colleagues lived as if Jesus had never lived or died and did not even want to talk about Him--and that in a Christian country, I might add. I could not deny that there was something completely wrong with me. I was not a happy Christian. My relationships had not healed. In fact, also my job became very demanding and seemed to become too much to handle for me. Nothing seemed to work out. Why?
Intuitively I turned to the Bible for answers. This time I started to study the Old Testament in Hebrew. The first verse I studied, set me on the course of discoveries that has not ended yet.
In Psalm 27:14 we read:
Wait on the Lord,
Be of good courage,
And he shall strengthen thine heart.
Wait, I say, on the Lord.
The keyword that I looked at was ‘wait’. I discovered that the Hebrew verb used in the original text is in piel, a verb modality indicating intensity. The dictionary states that this verb in piel should be translated with ‘to expect’. This was a shock. For me, ‘to wait’ and ‘to expect’ are not similar at all. I prefer expecting. If anything, waiting seems passive, and expecting is active.
If I found an error in the translation in the first verse I studied, how would I find the state of the rest of the Old Testament? I freaked out, because I started to see that an inaccurate translation might be fatal for those, like me, who believe in the infallibility of the Bible. The Bible was so dear to me that I considered it also my personal possession. It was part of my upbringing, part of my culture, part of my heart.
And it had been messed with! I checked this verse in many translations and languages, but all of them have this mistake. However, the translation should be:
Expect of the Lord,
Be of good courage,
And he shall strengthen thine heart.
Expect of the Lord
There is also no ‘I say’ in the repetition of ‘Expect of . . . ’
At once, I decided to expect of God that he would guide me to a new job, by sending somebody to my door or by a personal letter of somebody who had heard of me and would hire me. Added to that, I expected of God that they would investigate my talents, so I could be of use to them. It was quite something to expect.
It happened in October 2006. I received such a letter and my new employer would draw up my ‘talent profile’ as they called it. This would be used to match my talents with the required talents for any assignment. I never had experienced such a miracle. I was very excited about this and I took that job. I told my family and friends that a miracle had happened.
Something kept telling me that there was something strange going on here. Would God only listen to somebody who had understood one Hebrew word? Also, since the distinction between ‘to wait’ and ‘to expect’ was only in the pronunciation (!) and not in the letters, I pondered about this for quite a while. In the original text, before the Masoretes added vowel pointing in the 7th century C.E., there had been no indication of the pronunciation in the text, just the three letters forming the verb. So, how could a Hebrew mind decide between ‘to wait’ and ‘to expect’ in this context by just looking at the letters? And how were the different interpretations of the verb connected to the three letters used? To me they were just a random combination of letters, such as QVH. This was a clue that I did not fully grasp at the time. According to me, the only one that had changed was me. I was the one that had decided to expect something. I had never done that quite the same way. But there was this other possibility, namely that the Hebrew Letters had a mysterious power. Whether it was God who had answered me or that something else had happened, my prayer had worked and it had something to do with the Hebrew Letters.
I started to search for clues on the web. I found many useless ones. There are sites that find all kind of fantastic relationships in the letter-number patterns. But none of those fantastic relationships had any relationship with my feelings, with the miracle that had actually happened. Those patterns did not explain anything to me. They were just there, but what did it mean?
Then, in October 2007, I discovered a website dedicated to the work of Carlo Suarès (he died in 1976). I had never heard of him before. Something about the Hebrew Letters. Something different. I ordered one of his books in a new edition of 2005 with a new foreword by Gregg Braden. Also never heard of. I started to study this book and I was stunned. Here was an author who disclosed the true Kabbala. It was abstract, but I knew that this was what I had been looking for. The letters contain meaning! I started to experiment with this and the results were mind-blowing.
I became convinced that another book should be written about it, less abstract and with more examples, with more tangible things, with a more personal feel to it. So, I set out to write that book and learned in the process what I always had wanted to know.
It became clear that the nature of the Hebrew Alphabet explained every confusion I have ever had. It gave me all the answers I had longed for. In fact, I believe that all my questions have been answered--and there were not just a few . . . In itself that is a lonely place. Now I needed to find a way to apply what I had learned. I needed to start sharing it, myself. Overcoming my initial resistances was not easy at all. But this is it, I would say. I did it. Step one, the book. Step two to follow.
I started writing this book in March 2008, asking: "Have you ever wanted to know what the Bible really is about?" Well, I did, with all my heart and mind and strength. My book gives you a head start to (re)discover its deepest meaning and message, hidden in plain sight in a code (abstract), namely in the Hebrew Alphabet. I discovered that these eternal symbols of the One energy have the potential to be awakened in the human heart (experience) and take on a life of their own there. This has enabled me to forgive others and myself and live the life of my dreams. Now you.
My book is at the same time a fragmented and an integrated view of everything I have learned. It might not necessarily be easy to read or easy to digest. But it is written with this realization pouring out on every page: that there is more to life, for everybody to find (such as: to find who you are, and all other answers).
It is you who are that which most people believe God is. Because also you are essentially spirit and invisible, sic! Whatever is a part of you is not you, whatever you are a part of is not you. Yet, whoever you are is only for you to find. And when you find yourself, you are like me (not what you know of me): formless, infinite, eternal, all-knowing, source of abundance, loving. Your existence and your life will become forever interconnected with mine.
The Golden Rule is stated in different forms throughout the Bible, but these are from the New Testament:
This presents each of us with the challenge to come to that point where you not only know (with your mind) what love is, but that you actually unconditionally love with your heart; because there is nobody excluded from the ‘brethren’, nobody excluded from God. This book is for everybody, my kinsmen and kinswomen.
Author Bruno Curfs, M.Sc., was born in 1969 in the Netherlands. He was raised as a Roman Catholic and he studied Mathematics from 1987-1993. He, afterwards, worked in Information Technology. In 1989 Curfs converted to full gospel Christianity. He followed his own path, practically cut off from family and friends. He prayed to God to show him His plan for his life. In 2001 he started to question his beliefs. This led to a personal crisis in 2006 that lasted for two years. In October 2007, things turned around for Curfs as he found a valuable reference that was mind-shattering and changed his life forever.
EXTENDED BIO
I was born in 1969, in the Netherlands and raised Roman Catholic. From 1987 to 1993, I studied mathematics at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
In 1998, I converted to full gospel Christianity. I had no idea what I was in for, but I always wanted to know what the Bible was all about. I felt I needed to make a personal commitment to God and gradually it became an absolute priority in my life. I was baptized for the second time, in a church that wanted to baptize me after a short introductory course. After that I immediately left the church again and never considered to join a church.
After my study, I worked in the Information Technology. Nothing seemed impossible and I started as a coach, giving a course in programming to my new colleagues. About a year and a half later, when the course was perfected according to me, I started working in the field. In a few years, I advanced from junior programmer to senior programmer, technical designer and debugger. I thanked God for all of my riches. You would say that my life was a success.
As a Christian, I shared my faith with one close friend. I did not attend any church, as I did not believe that a church taught the same what Jesus taught. Because looking at the world we live in and the amount of Christians among us, I believed there must be a radically different approach than the one taught by the churches. I believed in a very personal approach, to study the Bible alone fervently without any other books and ask the Holy Ghost every day for guidance and understanding. I thought that this resembled closest the way that the first disciples learned, who were near Jesus on a daily basis. They had theory and practice in one package. In my case, theory was the written word, practice was my daily life guided by the Holy Spirit. I believed that this approach would make me stronger in the long run, by not depending on ‘outside’ help. After several years, I believed I had built a strong personal relationship with Jesus and trusted Him with all of my life.
In 2001, I found a book by Friedrich Weinreb, an orthodox Jew, who explained things about Jesus that I did not know as a Christian. That was shocking and interesting at the same time. He kindled my interest for the Hebrew Alphabet, with its numbers attached to them. He explained the validity of the New Testament from a Jewish perspective. I found that very refreshing. He gave it his own very personal and creative twist. It did not bother me at all. I learned the Hebrew Alphabet and became interested in learning Hebrew, but I did not pursue it at the time.
Then the unthinkable happened in 2006: I had a personal crisis. It had festered for many years. I was not happy and my belief in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit had not changed that one bit. If anything, I had become very radical, and my heart was torn between what I believed was God’s will for everybody--to believe in Jesus’s sacrifice for everybody to obtain total forgiveness and eternal life--and the reality I was faced with, where family, friends and colleagues lived as if Jesus had never lived or died and did not even want to talk about Him--and that in a Christian country, I might add. I could not deny that there was something completely wrong with me. I was not a happy Christian. My relationships had not healed. In fact, also my job became very demanding and seemed to become too much to handle for me. Nothing seemed to work out. Why?
Intuitively I turned to the Bible for answers. This time I started to study the Old Testament in Hebrew. The first verse I studied, set me on the course of discoveries that has not ended yet.
In Psalm 27:14 we read:
Wait on the Lord,
Be of good courage,
And he shall strengthen thine heart.
Wait, I say, on the Lord.
The keyword that I looked at was ‘wait’. I discovered that the Hebrew verb used in the original text is in piel, a verb modality indicating intensity. The dictionary states that this verb in piel should be translated with ‘to expect’. This was a shock. For me, ‘to wait’ and ‘to expect’ are not similar at all. I prefer expecting. If anything, waiting seems passive, and expecting is active.
If I found an error in the translation in the first verse I studied, how would I find the state of the rest of the Old Testament? I freaked out, because I started to see that an inaccurate translation might be fatal for those, like me, who believe in the infallibility of the Bible. The Bible was so dear to me that I considered it also my personal possession. It was part of my upbringing, part of my culture, part of my heart.
And it had been messed with! I checked this verse in many translations and languages, but all of them have this mistake. However, the translation should be:
Expect of the Lord,
Be of good courage,
And he shall strengthen thine heart.
Expect of the Lord
There is also no ‘I say’ in the repetition of ‘Expect of . . . ’
At once, I decided to expect of God that he would guide me to a new job, by sending somebody to my door or by a personal letter of somebody who had heard of me and would hire me. Added to that, I expected of God that they would investigate my talents, so I could be of use to them. It was quite something to expect.
It happened in October 2006. I received such a letter and my new employer would draw up my ‘talent profile’ as they called it. This would be used to match my talents with the required talents for any assignment. I never had experienced such a miracle. I was very excited about this and I took that job. I told my family and friends that a miracle had happened.
Something kept telling me that there was something strange going on here. Would God only listen to somebody who had understood one Hebrew word? Also, since the distinction between ‘to wait’ and ‘to expect’ was only in the pronunciation (!) and not in the letters, I pondered about this for quite a while. In the original text, before the Masoretes added vowel pointing in the 7th century C.E., there had been no indication of the pronunciation in the text, just the three letters forming the verb. So, how could a Hebrew mind decide between ‘to wait’ and ‘to expect’ in this context by just looking at the letters? And how were the different interpretations of the verb connected to the three letters used? To me they were just a random combination of letters, such as QVH. This was a clue that I did not fully grasp at the time. According to me, the only one that had changed was me. I was the one that had decided to expect something. I had never done that quite the same way. But there was this other possibility, namely that the Hebrew Letters had a mysterious power. Whether it was God who had answered me or that something else had happened, my prayer had worked and it had something to do with the Hebrew Letters.
I started to search for clues on the web. I found many useless ones. There are sites that find all kind of fantastic relationships in the letter-number patterns. But none of those fantastic relationships had any relationship with my feelings, with the miracle that had actually happened. Those patterns did not explain anything to me. They were just there, but what did it mean?
Then, in October 2007, I discovered a website dedicated to the work of Carlo Suarès (he died in 1976). I had never heard of him before. Something about the Hebrew Letters. Something different. I ordered one of his books in a new edition of 2005 with a new foreword by Gregg Braden. Also never heard of. I started to study this book and I was stunned. Here was an author who disclosed the true Kabbala. It was abstract, but I knew that this was what I had been looking for. The letters contain meaning! I started to experiment with this and the results were mind-blowing.
I became convinced that another book should be written about it, less abstract and with more examples, with more tangible things, with a more personal feel to it. So, I set out to write that book and learned in the process what I always had wanted to know.
It became clear that the nature of the Hebrew Alphabet explained every confusion I have ever had. It gave me all the answers I had longed for. In fact, I believe that all my questions have been answered--and there were not just a few . . . In itself that is a lonely place. Now I needed to find a way to apply what I had learned. I needed to start sharing it, myself. Overcoming my initial resistances was not easy at all. But this is it, I would say. I did it. Step one, the book. Step two to follow.
I started writing this book in March 2008, asking: "Have you ever wanted to know what the Bible really is about?" Well, I did, with all my heart and mind and strength. My book gives you a head start to (re)discover its deepest meaning and message, hidden in plain sight in a code (abstract), namely in the Hebrew Alphabet. I discovered that these eternal symbols of the One energy have the potential to be awakened in the human heart (experience) and take on a life of their own there. This has enabled me to forgive others and myself and live the life of my dreams. Now you.
My book is at the same time a fragmented and an integrated view of everything I have learned. It might not necessarily be easy to read or easy to digest. But it is written with this realization pouring out on every page: that there is more to life, for everybody to find (such as: to find who you are, and all other answers).
It is you who are that which most people believe God is. Because also you are essentially spirit and invisible, sic! Whatever is a part of you is not you, whatever you are a part of is not you. Yet, whoever you are is only for you to find. And when you find yourself, you are like me (not what you know of me): formless, infinite, eternal, all-knowing, source of abundance, loving. Your existence and your life will become forever interconnected with mine.
The Golden Rule is stated in different forms throughout the Bible, but these are from the New Testament:
- 1Jo 3:14 - We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.
- 1Jo 4:8 - He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
- 1Jo 4:20 - If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
This presents each of us with the challenge to come to that point where you not only know (with your mind) what love is, but that you actually unconditionally love with your heart; because there is nobody excluded from the ‘brethren’, nobody excluded from God. This book is for everybody, my kinsmen and kinswomen.
Copyright © 2012-2013. Bruno Curfs, M.Sc. All Rights Reserved.