Sir Isaac Newton (1643—1727), whose laws of motion and gravity set the stage for a revolutionary change in the way humans viewed the universe and their place in it, was a man of many talents and interest. History tends to view him as primarily a physicist, the inventor of “Newtonian physics,” but he was really so much more: he was also a mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist and theologian, refusing to recognize any boundaries on sources of knowledge. As a result Newton’s activities often strayed far away from the practice of pure science, as has been revealed by the discovery of a prediction he made that the world would come to an end in the year 2060.
Interestingly, Newton didn’t produce a detailed document for publishing that contained this dire warning to the future. Instead, he wrote his prediction on a letter slip above a series of mathematical calculations, showing us how his far-ranging and ever-curious mind could go off on a tangent at a moment’s notice.
- Sir Isaac Newton’s Astronomical Dating of Christ's Crucifixion
- Isaac Newton And His Alchemical Interest In The Lost Pyramid Code
A Scientist Tackles the Book of Revelation
Unlike most modern scientists, who put up walls to separate their work from religion, Isaac Newton blended all of his intellectual and spiritual pursuits in a mixture that represented his finest alchemical creation. He was a Protestant Christian who read the Book of Revelation and took its apocalyptic predictions most seriously, and came to believe that the Battle of Armageddon was an accurate (although perhaps stylized) version of inevitable future events.
In the final chapter of the Book of Revelation, it is written that a war between the forces of good and evil would bring about the end of the world, after which God would reign supreme in a new and better era. In our times it is a tendency to associate this story of battle with modern threats like nuclear war, the use of deadly bioweapons, large-scale acts of terror, or environmental collapse, and in Newton’s time people also speculated about what the circumstances that might convert the Battle of Armageddon from a prophecy to a reality.
Letter from Isaac Newton predicting end of world in 2060. (Jerusalem’s Hebrew University).
In Newton’s case, he was most interested in figuring out when this final apocalypse might arrive, and he thought that an intensive and in-depth study of the Bible was the best way to discover this critically important information. In chapter 11 of the Book of Revelation it references two witnesses who prophesy that the city of God will arrive in 1260 days, and Newton came to believe that the number 1260 actually meant years rather than days.
But when exactly did the clock start on those 1260 days? Based on his interpretation of scripture, Newton concluded that this time span represented the beginning of the abandonment of the true church and the rise of corrupted Trinitarian religions, namely Catholicism (Newton took the rivalry between Protestantism and Catholicism that marked his times quite seriously).
- Sir Isaac Newton’s Secret Quest for the God Engine
- Leonardo Da Vinci’s Notes Show He Understood Gravity Long Before Newton
According to Newton, the key moment that began this period of crisis happened in 800 AD, when the Holy Roman Empire was founded—and when you add 1260 to 800, you get 2060!
Writing under the alias ‘Jehovah Sanctus Unus’ Newton explained his reasoning in the 1704 letter that features his prediction, using the language of his time:
“So then the time times & half a time are 42 months or 1260 days or three years & an half, recconing twelve months to a yeare & 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] kingdoms, the period of 1260 days, if dated from the complete conquest of the three kings A.C. 800, will end A.C. 2060. It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner.”
Given the literal and fervent approach to religion that was common in the early 18th century, Newton’s postponement of Armageddon to the 21st century could be seen as a relatively optimistic prediction, one that would give comfort to people who were worried about history’s most destructive battle taking place in their lifetimes.
Science, Religion, and Natural Philosophy: The World of Sir Isaac Newton
Despite his amazing range of skills and intellectual talents, Newton did not rely on fancy reasoning to come up with this prediction. His prophesy “did not involve the use of anything as complicated as calculus, which he invented, but rather simple arithmetic that could be performed by a child,” Stephen D. Snobelen, a history of science and technology professor at the University of King's College in Halifax, said, in a statement quoted by the Daily Mail.
Portrait of Sir Isaac Newton, from 1689, by Godfrey Kneller. (Public Domain).
In his analysis of the events of the past, present and future, Newton latched onto the figures 1260, 1290, 1335 and 2300 days, which are found in the Books of Daniel and Revelations and related to the end and beginning of certain times. In each instance he interpreted them using the 'day-for-a-year principle,' a move designed to cope with the fact that taking days literally would mean that past prophecies had already failed, since the Bible was written so long ago.
Like any good scientist (and Newton was one of the all-time greats), Newton held onto his theories lightly, with a degree of skepticism and a willingness to change his mind if better information came along.
Newton was “wary of prophetic date-setting,”Snobelen said, and “worried that the failure of fallible human predictions based on divine prophecy would bring the Bible into disrepute.” This self-targeted skepticism was aimed directly at his own prediction, when he wrote that the world “may end later [than 2060], but I see no reason for its ending sooner.”
In another written reference to the date 2060, Newton made explicit his reason for taking up the task of determining when the world would end:
“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. Christ comes as a thief in the night, [and] it is not for us to know the times [and] seasons [which] God hath put into his own breast.”
Today, it may seem strange for a scientist to be so interested in biblical prophecies. But according to Snobelen “Newton was not a 'scientist' in the [modern] sense of that term,” Snobelen emphasized, but instead a “natural philosopher. Practiced from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, natural philosophy included not only the study of nature, but also the study of God's hand at work in nature.”
In Sir Isaac Newton’s view, there was no reason why a man of science should reject religion—or alchemy or astrology, for that matter, both of which Newton took as seriously as he took physics.
Top image: Oil On Canvas Painting Created by South African artist Davin Arries Depicting the Biblical events of Revelation Chapter 4 verse 1 to 11
Source: Davin Arries/CC BY-SA 4.0.
By Nathan Falde
