LESSONS FROM HISTORY
I have a few reasons for providing the information that follows:
* A very recent Posting mentioned eschatologists of the 19th century (1800s) who provided CTR with his ideas on the interpretation of “last-day” prophecies. The information I provide gives an even earlier sweep of history.
* Another recent posting posed the question of the fate of the JW organization. The following information shows that, in time, the proponents dissipate, to be taken over by a later manifestation, probably one that does not admit its debt to the previous exegetes. I expect that the people living 300 years from now will note the existence of the 19th century’s Second Adventists and their offshoots (including CTR’s followers) in a manner that is similar to the following information. Provided the people living in future centuries will be able to access and decipher information on our computer disks.
* A lesson taught by history is to never use contemporary political events to interpret Scripture. A prime example is the focus of several 19th century eschatologists on the Ottoman Empire. Interpret the sacred only with sacred.
Now to the information I wish to provide. It concerns the famous mathematician and physicist, closet alchemist, and one of the foremost scientific intellects of all time, Sir Isaac Newton. He was born in 1642, knighted in 1705 and died in 1727. He thus lived during the latter half of the 1600s and the first quarter of the 1700s.
“Newton was not only a passionate theist, but also a firm believer in the Bible and biblical predictive prophecy. … For Newton, ‘the holy Prophecies’ of God’s Word contain ‘histories of things to come’. But these ‘histories of things to come’ are set out in symbolic and metaphorical language that demand exacting interpretative skills. This was a challenge that Newton took up with unflagging enthusiasm for the last fifty-five years of his life. Newton’s own prophetic exegesis can be placed firmly within the prophetic school established by the early seventeenth-century (1600s) Cambridge polymath Joseph Mede. …
“Like Mede, Newton was an historicist, interpreting the symbols of the Apocalypse as representing the broad sweep of history affecting Christians and Jews from the late first century to the second coming of Christ and the Millennium. Newton also followed Mede in his premillenarian eschatology, interpreting the one thousand years of Revelation 20 as referring to a literal Kingdom of the saints on the earth. Finally, like Mede and other historicist commentators, Newton takes the ‘time and times and the dividing of time’, three and a half years or 1260 days of Daniel and Revelation as 1260 years, using the day for a year principle. Furthermore, Newton synchronizes all the 1260-day periods mentioned in the prophecies of Daniel and John as a single span of time.
“The 1260 years of Daniel begin with the formal acquisition of temporal power by the papacy. For Newton, this time period is represented in the Apocalypse as the 1260 days during which the woman (the Roman Catholic Whore) is nourished in the wilderness (Revelation 12:6), and during which she rides on the back of the Beast (Revelation 17:3), which Newton saw as a symbol of temporal power. The 1260 days in Revelation 11:2-3 likewise refer to the period of the greatest apostasy (the time when the outer court of the Temple is trodden under foot by the Gentiles), which is the same period during which the oppressed and persecuted saints would preach the true Gospel (represented by the period of the prophesying of the Two Witnesses). Eventually, the Beast of the bottomless pit kills the Two Witnesses (Revelation 11:7), but after laying dead for three and a half days, the Two Witnesses are resurrected. For Newton, the resurrection of the Two Witnesses and the recommencement of the preaching are coincident with the fall of Babylon, the corrupt church. Near the end of the 1260 years, Newton believed one would see ‘ ... to be preached in all nations by the two witnesses ascending up to heaven in a cloud.’ The fall of Babylon and the preaching of the true Gospel signal a brief period that will end in the blasting of the seventh trumpet, which in turn will herald the battle of Armageddon, the coming of Christ, the resurrection, the judgement and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, although Newton seems to have believed that these events would be sequenced over several years subsequent to the 1260-year mark. Thus for Newton, who rejected the Trinity as unbiblical, the 1260 years represent the time in which the true, uncorrupt church would be oppressed by the false, corrupt Trinitarian church of the Great Whore. This is the period of deepest apostasy, a time when only a tiny remnant upholds pre-Trinitarian theology. Newton believed he was part of this remnant.
“For Newton, therefore, the 1260-year period commenced when the Pope gained temporal power and dominion. Determining this commencement date was one of the most important elements to the decipherment of apocalyptic chronology, as the time of the end could be established by adding the 1260-year period to this commencement date. When was this date? In fact, there is no indication that Newton ever settled rigidly on a single date. Instead, he recorded in his prophetic manuscripts a series of commencement dates, beginning in the 1670s with the date 607 A.D. The general tendency of his studies of apocalyptic chronology was to push the commencement date further and further forward in history, resulting in conclusion dates as late as the twenty-third and twenty-fourth centuries. On a single folio at the end of an early eighteenth-century manuscript treatise on the Apocalypse, Newton considers four commencement dates: 609, 774, 788 and 841 A.D. The first date provides conclusion dates for the 1260, 1290 and 1335 years of 1869, 1899 and 1944. Newton appears to have been attracted to the 609 date because of the decree of Phocas in or around this year that granted Pope Boniface IV the right to ‘set up the Images of the Virgin Mary & all the Martyrs in the place of the Images of Cybele & all the heathen Gods in the Pantheon at Rome & in their honour instituted the annual feast of all saints’. Image worship was a major litmus test of apostasy. The commencement date 774 relates to the acquisition of temporal power by the Pope. Newton writes that it was in 774 that ‘the Pope gained his temporal ... dominion by the grant of Charles the great [Charlemagne] & thereby became a king ... ye rest of ye horns’. The commencement date 774 provides a conclusion date of 2034 A.D. …
“On another folio … appears the following calculations and statements [by Newton]: ‘So then the time times & half a time are 42 months or 1260 days or three years & an half, recconing twelve months to a yeare & 30 days to a month as was done in the Calendar of the primitive year. And the days of short lived Beasts being put for the years of lived [sic for ‘long lived’] kingdoms, the period of 1260 days, if dated from the complete conquest of the three kings A.C. 800, will end A.C. 2060. It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner. This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fancifull men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, & by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail. Christ comes as a thief in the night, & it is not for us to know the times & seasons wch God hath put into his own breast.’ …
“Newton was most unhappy with date-setting. On this rare occasion when he writes down a conclusion date, he is careful to qualify it in two ways: first, the end many come later than 2060 and, second, this late date was also meant to quash the ‘rash conjectures’ of those in his own time who were setting dates for his own age. This is not to say that Newton did not take the 2060 date or prophecy in general seriously, for he most definitely did. …
“The date 2060 did not represent for Newton the annihilation of the globe and its inhabitants, but a dramatic transition to a millennium of peace. In other words: the end of the secular world and the beginning of the Kingdom of God. Summarizing and paraphrasing Revelation 21 and 22, Newton outlines some of the events subsequent to the date 2060 (or thereabouts) in one of the apocalyptic charts now housed in Jerusalem:
“ ‘A new heaven & new earth. New Jerusalem comes down from heaven prepared as a Bride adorned for her husband. The marriage supper. God dwells wth men wipes away all tears from their eyes, gives them of ye fountain of living water & creates all ... things new saying, It is done. The glory & felicity of the New Jerusalem is represented by a building of Gold & Gemms enlightened by the glory of God & ye Lamb & watered by ye river of Paradise on ye banks of wch grows the tree of life. Into this city the kings of the earth do bring their glory & that of the nations & the saints raign for ever & ever.’
“Although there are examples from Newton’s period of prophetic exegetes who put the time of the end off until the year 2000, the trend was to place the end within or not long after one’s lifetime. Thus, one of the most striking aspects of Newton’s prophetic chronology is the lateness of his commencement dates. Joseph Medc (1586-1638) believed that the 1260 years began in 395 with the sounding of the first trumpet, implying that the sounding of the seventh trumpet, the fall of the Antichrist and the commencement of the millennial reign of Christ would come in 1655. William Lloyd (1627-1717), the Bishop of Worcester, placed the end within his own lifetime, announcing in person to Queen Anne in 1712 that the Roman Church would fall and that papal city would be destroyed by a flame of fire from heaven in the year 1716 - and that these dramatic events would be succeeded by the reign of Christ on earth for the thousand years. Newton’s own prophetic disciple William Whiston (1667-1752) set 1736 as the end of the 1260 years and the year 1766 as the beginning of the Millennium. As Newton knew only too well, Whiston made a career of broadcasting these dates to the learned world. Whiston’s openness in this regard is likely one of the reasons Newton eventually broke with his quondam disciple.
“It is possible that the late date he assigned for the events of the time of the end was meant to reflexively cover his lack of open preaching. Whether or not this is so, it is certainly the case that one reason why Newton saw the Kingdom of God so far in the future was because he was profoundly pessimistic about the deep Trinitarian apostasy he saw around him. Newton’s apocalyptic chronology and late date for the fall of Roman Babylon thus reveal his theological radicalism. As the Gospel was not to be preached until around the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Protestant Reformation is reduced almost to an irrelevancy in the history of the Church. In the date 2060 Newton’s heresy and apocalyptic thought come together.”
Excerpt taken from: “A Time and Times and the Dividing of Time: Isaac Newton, the Apocalypse, and 2060 A.D” by Stephen D Snobelen, Canadian Journal of History, Dec 2003. (Accessed 12 September 2005 at http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3686/is_200312/ai_n9342144)
Also refer to: http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/prism.php?id=44
(I am not able to provide quotations inside those yellow [or is it green – I have problems with some colors] boxes. I have not been provided with that facility.)
LESSONS FROM HISTORY
by Doug Mason 32 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Doug Mason
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the sage
Doug! Marvelous lessons form history. Eschatology is truly the solid food of scripture. Chronology, the 6,000 years of human history thus far, the gentile times, the 1,260 years, the 2,520 years, are all relevant to understanding end times.
After leaving the organization 20 years ago, I spent my time in researching that subject. Am now sharing my work on the internet. Click on the link below then scroll down to chapter 5.
The Sage!
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Pahpa
Doug Mason
Thanks for sharing that interesting information. Christians down through history have been anticipating the return of Christ. Even the early Christians thought it was imminent. So, it isn't strange that various Christian groups have read the "signs" in their own historical times. This would be particularly true when circumstances were bad.
Barbara Tuchman spoke of increased expectation of "the end" in her book, A Distant Mirror." The 13th century seemed to have all the "signs" of the end time prophecies. Wars were widespread and devasting. The black plague ravaged most of civilization. Churches and their leaders were corrupt and venal.
Even some of the Reformers believed the "end" was coming in their generation. They really believed that the Catholic church was "Babylon the Great."
Christians should be cautious in view of history of these mistakes of the past. Jehovah's Witnesses are not the only ones to believe that we are living in those prophetic times. Many sects believe that Christ's coming is near. Religious authors have became wealthy by writing books on the subect. But Christ is clear when he warned that we would not know the "day or hour" of his return which would come as a "theif in the night."
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tmo1965
Doug Mason,
What a load of WTS rubbish!! Whenever someone tries to calculate dates and time periods by applying unfounded "Biblical rules", that is a dead give away that they are speaking junk theology. Remember, "No on knows the day or the hour", which is God's way of telling us that we can't calculate any dates.
WAKE UP!!! The WTS is NOT God's channel of communication.
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Doug Mason
tmo1965,
I respectfully suggest you read my post again, with greater care.
I have been exposing the WTS's errors since 1964.
Doug -
meritixj
You know Jim Jones had the following quote over his throne "Those who do not remember the past, are condemned to repeat it" - Hmmmmm doesn't that sound a bit familiar
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Gill
'2060 AD'! Hmmm! Too far in the future for him to suffer for being right or wrong.
Could it be that the world has always been expecting Apocalypse, because Apocalypse always does come in one way or another, sooner or later......so all prophets win, as long as they don't commit themselves to a date?
The lesson from history should be, 'Shut up with your prophecying. Get on with living and doing your best for your fellow man. Live everyday fully and prepare for anything.'
Nothing else is needed.
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Fred E Hathaway
Jehovah has always had his prophets. That's why 1/4 of the Bible is prophecy. That's why we even have Daniel giving the dream and the meaning of it to King Nebuchadnezzar. Jehovah always knows who his true prophets are, even when they're up to a ruse. A familiarity of the Scriptures shows that to be true.
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Gill
However, there are no real prophecys in the Bible as a careful look at the dates and also the real possibility of false dating of books makes it a very considerable chance if not a real fact that these so called prophecys were all made AFTER and not POST the events in question.
The Bible is NOT a prophetic book.
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Fred E Hathaway
There are prophecies in the midst of fulfillment, and also some very soon to be fulfilled. Check the current Watchtower publications for details.