>> “Who decided that every 9th letter on every 4th page or whatever would be it?” <<
.
You obviously have not done due dilligence on this.
The codes were found by exhaustive search of digital copies of the Masorite text. God had to have selected them.
The fortune telling nonsense is from after-the-fact search of events that are known, not done in advance of any event.
Its nonsense and wishful thinking by those that have no idea what God’s word is.
The book of Genesis is particularly well-studied in this regard and for a very long time. All the names of the Biblical Patriarchs are encoded in Genesis in the same manner.
So, while I grasp the source of the controversy, I do not grasp the derision. This is not new. In the modern era, some liken the purpose of it to a check sum, an authentication. Some say it's the book sealed unto the end times.
Regardless, it's to me an interesting puzzle. The surface text is vastly more important, but this is far beyond random chance and is there for a purpose.
We do not know just what that purpose is intended to be. Speculation could be a bad thing, but that should not stop further research into the matter, and has not.
Here is a pretty fair summary of the last decade or so, covering both the pros and the cons, for those who might have an interest:
http://unitedisrael.org/blog/2009/11/19/bible-codes-looking-back-a-dozen-years/
What it isn't is a means of predicting the future. The few examples of codes that appeared to have done so are the very rare exception.