While he was busily applying his genius to virtually every earthly academic pursuit, he also began applying it to theology, chronology, and the Bible, for which he developed a lifelong passion. He was convinced that Christianity had strayed from the teachings of Jesus and that the Bible is to be read as literal truth. And he became especially fascinated with the end of days as depicted both in Revelation and in the book of Daniel, commonly considered to be the Revelation of the Old Testament. His only book about the Bible, published six years after his death in 1727, was Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, in which he said:
The prophecies of Daniel and John should not be understood till the time of the end: but that some should prophesy out of it in an afflicted and mournful state for a long time, and that but darkly, so as to convert but few. But in the very end, the Prophecy should be so far interpreted so as to convince many. Then saith Daniel, many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased … If the general preaching of the Gospel be approaching, it is for us and our posterity that these words mainly belong: In the time of the end the wise shall understand, but none of the wicked shall understand. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this Prophecy, and keep those things that are written therein.
In 1704, Sir Isaac Newton wrote several letters regarding the Apocalypse; his mathematical conclusion about when the end of times would come, based on calculations found in unspecified passages in the book of Daniel; and his prediction that the Second Coming of Christ would follow worldwide epidemics and wars, and that it would preceded a thousand- year reign on Earth by the saints themselves. These letters, carefully preserved and collected over these three centuries, came into the possession of the Israel National Library in 1969.
And in February of 2003 Sir Isaac Newton’s official calculation regarding the end of the world, scribbled on a scrap of paper, was revealed to the public for the first time.
The year, according to Newton, will be 2060. He added:
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 fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophecies into discredit as often as their predictions fail.
So there you have it. 2060. The date of the end of time, calculated from biblical information by the most brilliant mathematician the world has ever known, to do with as you will.
Madame Helena Blavatsky
Madame Helena Blavatsky was a fascinating woman—fearless adventurer, ardent student of the paranormal, sought-after clairvoyant of dubious authenticity, cofounder of the Theosophical Society for the study of spiritualism and the occult sciences, and author of a book, The Secret Doctrine, that confirmed her skills as a very gifted prophet. Some of her most outspoken critics dismissed her as a complete fraud, while Albert Einstein kept a copy of The Secret Doctrine on his desk.
She was born in Russia in 1831. Her father was a soldier, and her mother was a successful novelist. A hint of her peculiar relationship with the truth can be found in the fact that throughout her life she claimed that her mother died when Helena was an infant, even though she was actually twelve years old at the time of her mother’s death.
Helena was seventeen when she escaped a loveless three- month marriage to a Russian general named Nicephore Blavatsky, who was more than twice her age. She spent the next ten years traveling. The specifics of those ten years vary from one account to the next and will never be reliably unraveled. But Helena’s version included two years of study with the lama in Tibet, where admittance was not easily granted in the 1800s, particularly to women.
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