Newton’s end times calculation corrected!

By WND Staff

The Hadron Particle Collider did not destroy the world last week, and scientists at CERN outside Geneva are sipping champagne and celebrating.

But if the No. 1 best-selling author of a new book is correct, they might want to re-cork the bottle.

In “Temple at the Center of Time: Newton’s Bible Codex Deciphered and the Year 2012,” by David Flynn, a book that has skyrocketed up the best-seller charts following its release this month, the author makes a correction to Isaac Newton’s research, pointing to the year 2013 as “the time of the end.”

In 2003, the Daily Telegraph in London published a front-page story declaring that, according to Isaac Newton, the world would end in 2060. This was the first time that this calculation of Newton became widely known. However, various biographers and researcher of Newton’s theology had encountered it since 1991 when most of his manuscripts were released on microfilm at the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem.

According to Flynn, in the 1660s when Newton believed that the end of days was imminent, there seemed no reason to work out the approximate year in which it would occur. With the Great Plague, the fire of London and the apocalyptic fervor of the times, it seemed obvious to Newton that the end time had already arrived. But over the ensuing decades of his life, Newton became increasingly aware that his convictions had been premature. Near the year 1705, when Newton was in his sixties, his concern for preventing the repetition of the same error compelled him to invest his considerable knowledge to setting the matter of the time of the end to rest. The paper in which Newton recorded this calculation was the subject of the article in the London Daily Telegraph in 2003. Very few readers understood Newton’s reasoning for the date, not being scholars of end time prophecy themselves. Newton wrote concerning it:

This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful 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 which God hath put into his own breast.

 

Newton arrived at the year 2060 in a straightforward manner. He believed that the last world empire at the coming of the Antichrist would be a revived Roman Empire, a concept wholly embraced by eschatologists in modern times as well. He also believed that this had actually occurred in A.D. 800 through the coronation of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III as ruler of the revived Roman Empire in the West.

As described by the prophet Daniel, and John in Revelation, the revived Roman Empire will rule for one “week,” a period of seven times 360 days, or 2,520 days total. In the midst of this week, at 1,260 days, the Antichrist will desecrate the future temple in Jerusalem. Following the day/year guideline, Newton assigned 1,260 years of the Revived Roman empire before Antichrist’s desecration of the temple. This he did realizing that the rebuilding of the temple and the judgments of Revelation did not follow the rebirth of the Roman Empire in A.D. 800. None of the prophecies of the End of Days followed the coronation of Charlemagne as Emperor of the revived Roman Empire after 1,260, nor for that matter, any of the years up until Newton’s day. Therefore, he established each day with a year from A.D. 800, arriving at the year A.D. 2060.

In a manuscript number 7.3g, f. 13v. of the Yahuda collection, Newton was even more specific about the 2060 date.

So then the time times & half a time are 42 months or 1260 days or three years & an half, reckoning twelve months to a year & 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.

But Newton’s prediction of Charlemagne’s revived Roman Empire starting in A.D. 800 and existing until the return of Christ was contradicted in 1806 when Napoleon forced the Empire’s dissolution.

“But,” says Flynn, “there remains a valid aspect of Newton’s calculation. There is reason to believe he was correct in his assumption that there would be 1,260 years until the return of Christ at the rebirth of the Roman Empire, but that the year he chose was incorrect. There is actually a better date based on the founding of Rome and the methodology of Daniel’s prophecy.”

Flynn explains: “The Romans had fixed the birth of the city of Rome and the Empire in 753 B.C. It was believed that the patriarch of the city, Romulus, had marked out the boundaries for the wall of Rome in this year. Known as Ab Urbe Condita (literally, from the founding of the city) the Roman calendar began with 753 B.C. according to the dating of Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 B.C.) who lived at the time of the Empire itself.

Because of how the prophet Daniel divided the prophetic week in half, Flynn believes the original founding date for the empire of the prophecy, Rome, would follow this pattern and be bisected. Therefore, correcting Newton’s date, the year 753 B.C. designates the founding of the physical Rome while A.D. 753 establishes the rebirth of spiritual Rome. Counting 1,260 years forward from A.D. 753, one arrives at the year 2013.

Additional significance can be attached to this finding when considering that 2013 follows the end of the great cycle of the Maya calendar and the planetary cycle of the Aztec calendar, which concludes Dec. 21, 2012. This date has raised apocalyptic fears in corners around the world. According to “The Bible Code,” the world will end on this date due to a collision with a meteor, asteroid, or comet. Another theory – the “Novelty Theory” – claims time itself is a “fractal wave,” which will end abruptly in 2012. Even the popular television program X-Files speculated that colonization of the earth by “aliens” would occur in December 2012.

The Maya themselves describe past visits of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, descending through a “hole in the sky” on a rope ladder. They believe at the end of 2012 the serpent rope will emerge again from the center of the Milky Way, and Quetzalcoatl will return, heralding a new era at the start of 2013. Another version of the story has Quetzalcoatl sailing down on a winged ship, causing some to speculate that a UFO armada or “mother ship” could descend and take up position over earth on that date.

Besides this type of speculation, an unusual number of important events will occur beginning in 2012. NASA is predicting the next Solar Maximum will arrive in 2012 and will be the strongest in 50 years. At the same time, the sun will align with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in 26,000 years, on the exact date of the end of the Mayan calendar, Dec. 21, 2012. This will also be the year when the United States and the United Nations elect a new president and a new secretary general, considered by some to be the two most powerful “thrones” on earth, and the seat from which prophecy experts say the Antichrist will rule or receive power.

On a YouTube video here, well-known preacher Jack Van Impe says that the year 2012 and the end of the Mayan Calendar could mark the return of Jesus Christ.

Based on his research into the Jewish Feasts, Pastor Mark Biltz of El Shaddai Ministries (as laid out in a series of two DVD teachings produced by WND Films called “The Feasts of the Lord”) believes this time frame between 2012-2015 could be prophetic and may signal the return of Christ. He says for people who believe in a “pre-tribulation rapture,” this would make the year 2008 very important. For those who believe in a mid-tribulation rapture, 2012 may mark their departure. And on his website, he adds “if you’re prewrath, then 2014 might be interesting [and] if you’re a posttribber, 2015 is the date to watch for.”

Get “Temple at the Center of Time: Newton’s Bible Codex Deciphered and the Year 2012,” by David Flynn