Newton set 2060 for end of world
By Jonathan Petre Religion Correspondent
http://www.isaac-newton.org/newton_2060.htm
Sir Isaac Newton, Britain’s greatest scientist, predicted the date of the end of the world — and it is only 53 years away.
His theories about Armageddon have been unearthed by academics from little known handwritten manuscripts in a library in Jerusalem.
The thousands of pages show Newton’s attempts to decode the Bible, which he believed contained God’s secret laws for the universe.
Newton, who was also a theologian and alchemist, predicted that the Second Coming of Christ would follow plagues and war and would precede a 1,000-year reign by the saints on earth — of which he would be one.
The most definitive date he set for the apocalypse, which he scribbled on a scrap of paper, was 2060.
Newton’s fascination with the end of the world, which has been researched by a Canadian academic, Stephen Snobelen, is to be explored in a documentary, Newton: the Dark Heretic, on BBC2 next Saturday.
“What has been coming out over the past 10 years is what an apocalyptic thinker Newton was,” Malcolm Neaum, the producer, said.
“He spent something like 50 years and wrote 4,500 pages trying to predict when the end of the world was coming. But until now it was not known that he ever wrote down a final figure. He was very reluctant to do so.”
Thousands of Newton’s papers, which had lain in a trunk in the house of the Earl of Portsmouth for 250 years, were sold by Sotheby’s in the late 1930s.
John Maynard Keynes, the economist, bought many of the texts on alchemy and theology. But much of the material went to an eccentric collector, Abraham Yahuda, and was stored in the Hebrew National Library. It was among these documents that the date was found.
7K says ~ Newton is thought by many to be the greatest scientist of all time. It is less well-known that he was an avid Bible researcher with what he considered a mandate from God to reveal prophecy. He was also a holy man ~ a virginal eunuch who sincerely believed in Christ. Some of his scientific thinking unhinged the world.
But his passion was Bible prophecy, and he considered it diligently, bringing light to it from history. His perfectionistic approach yielded many papers on the subject, especially dealing with Daniel's prophecies.
He is only recently famous for predicting this date 2060, as the conceivable return of Christ. He did this to dispel the constant, irritating date-setting by teachers of his time.
Augustine was also irritated by the date-setters of his day and countered the problem by presenting a symbolic interpretation of prophecy that many still go by today.
Many theologians and scholars of all stripes take seriously the biblical admonition from Christ himself: "No man knows the day or the hour of the coming of the Son of Man (the Messiah)."
The reference of "the day or the hour" is recognized by Jews as coming from the fact that they could not predict from year to year the exact day to celebrate Rosh Hashana. Not predicting is a sure way to avoid embarassment. History is replete with failures in this regard.
But Newton's semi-prediction is interesting in that he had pushed it off into our time. 2060 is still in a time-frame that could fall within the scope of a 6,000-year "plan" suggested by the biblical text itself. But more on this in later posts.
3 comments:
I saw that article. There is a scientist after God's heart. Pretty cool. We will most likely see a bunch of negative stuff on Sir Isaac. The world hates true believers and he seems to fall in that Category. He no doubt is close in his prediction. I welcome more stuff on this. It is fascinating.
PV
I've been reading some interesting stuff lately about the modern way of thinking. It was an era of history that was focused on "monological" rationalism (even in the church). Modernism and science deified the "it." They only looked at the surface of things. So, with Newton, his metaphysical journeys were supressed in favor of his amazing scientific stuff. So another side of him may come out in the future.
Postmodernism looks more at the whole picture: surfaces and the innards both. Newton was like that, too. He wasn't just focused on the surface as the only way to get at truth (and I mean, by that, truth as revealed through knowledge of the world, not truth as revealed in the Spirit, accessed by faith in the Holy One of Israel). Newton seemed to be tuned in to both means of learning "truth."
As far I know about Mr Newton and his interest of knowing about the end of the world boils down to know what the real newton was behind the scenes. After he died, the person in charge to do his biography was sent to Newton's place and only found esoteric writings, he didn't find any Bible or anything along the lines. He was astonished as to what he found regarding Mr. Newton. He practiced the occult which was engaged with alchemy, it made sense because he wanted to find out how to convert metals into gold. This info can be found on his biography investigation. He practiced astrology and spiritism. In his writings he claimed to speak to spirits to guide him with inquisitive motives. Jesus said: 'by their deeds or fruits you will know who are my disciples'. Beware of what shines outside but look into what is inside.
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