2060 - The End? June 19, 2007
Posted by Steve in : Breaking News, Church, Powerful Passages , add a commentThis week, a letter from Sir Isaac Newton has gone on show in Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, where Newton uses the Bible’s Book of Daniel to calculate the date for the Apocalypse. He believed the Apocalypse would come in 2060 – exactly 1,260 years after the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire, according to the recently published letter.
The note reveals a deeply spiritual side to a man more usually regarded as a strict rationalist. Newton, known as the founder of modern physics, secured a royal exemption from ordination in the Church of England – something normally expected of academics in his day – so he would not have to follow its teachings.
But he confidently stated in the letter that the Bible proved the world would end in 2060, adding: “It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner.” He got at least one other thing right – in another document, he interpreted biblical prophecies to mean that the Jews would return to the Holy Land before the world ended.
Newton, who died 280 years ago, wrote that the end of days would see “the ruin of the wicked nations, the end of weeping and of all troubles, the return of the Jews (from) captivity and their setting up a flourishing and everlasting Kingdom”. Yemima Ben-Menahem, one of the curators of the exhibition, said: “These documents show a scientist guided by religious fervour, by a desire to see God’s actions in the world.”
