Posted on 02/21/2003 5:35:31 PM PST by MadIvan
Sir Isaac Newton, Britain's greatest scientist, predicted the date of the end of the world - and it is only 57 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.
Gad! Noooooo! I will only be 113 by then!
So many fish, so little time!
Hey, everybody needs a hobby.
The parable of the fig tree (matthew 24:32), just before the day and hour verse (matthew 24:36).
I hate to get into scripture quoting, but I had to here to answer your question.
He didn't say the day or hour. He said Year. :-)
I think the theory is that he suffered the effects of mercury poisoning (from his experimentation in alchemy) in his old age and became rather loony. He almost lost the prestige he earned earlier in life.
Expect terrorism to get progressively worse until then, as more and more Muslims catch millennial fever.
Since we're doing scripture:
“And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:19-21)
It's not that hard to be precise.
It's hard to be accurate.
My prediction is that the world will end on precisely 2061-06-23 17:23:44.9922. I can't guarantee the accuracy of this prediction.
Same here.
Doomsday bump to you.
For those of us who believe, the promise is sobering. We keep a sharp lookout for the signs of impending overflash so we will not become trapped in the inferno as did the concert-goers in Rhode Island.
Some tout that magnetic pole reversal will bring about the end of the world.
How come the world's still here then? ;-)
Damn. Your making it hard to plan my activities for that date and time.
It isn't. You just think it is.
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