End-Time Date Fixers
Last year appears to be of particular interest to Doomsday Sayers. I can recall three separate End-Time related predictions that were sensationalized:
- First, ?was the media hype related to the end of the Mayan “Long Count” calendar on December 21, 2012 as the end of the world. They even produced a movie out of it that grossed more than USD 700 Million worldwide.
- Then, when Family Radio President Harold Camping announced that his calculations led them to believe that the End Times “Rapture” will on occur in May 2011. As May passed by without the Rapture, they moved the date to October.
- Last September, Intercessors For the Philippines, Inc. predicted the coming of the “New Season.” Dubbed as “The Final Dispensation for the End-times before the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus”, dates were fixed to coincide with Jewish Rosh Hashanah (September 28) to?Yom Kippur (October 8, 2011).
Why do they go to such length fixing dates in their prediction of the End Times when the Lord Jesus and his apostles have already forewarned us of its futility?
- “It is not for you to know the TIMES or DATES the Father has set by his own authority.” Acts 1:7
- “No one knows about that DAY or HOUR, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Matthew 24:36
- “Now, brothers, about TIMES and DATES we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” 1 Thessalonians 5:1-2
It’s not for us to judge the motive behind such behavior. They are probably most sincere in their expectations for the blessed hope (Titus 2:13). But it should no longer come as a surprise to us why people do such things.
- In 1844, a Baptist preacher named William Miller announced the coming of the Lord Jesus on October 22. His failure came to be known in the Evangelical circle as the “Great Disappointment.” He did some calculations for Daniel 8 and 9.
- Jehovah’s Witnesses’ founder Charles Taze Russel calculated 1874 as Christ’s Second Coming. But when Christ was not seen, he told his followers that Christ actually came but remain invisible. He also predicted the Rapture in 1878.
Even in the Philippines, we Filipinos, seem to have a knack for End-time date fixing.
During the Presidential campaign of 2010, some of our Christian leaders supporting Eddie Villanueva who was then in his second crack at presidency, circulated their own calculations of the prophecy in Daniel 9:24 (see that a two-part video in Youtube, url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPwYwMPKlQI). In it they said:
“Four hundred and ninety years ago, explorers from Spain, led by Ferdinand Magellan landed in Cebu. They planted the cross that sets us apart for Christ in Asia, our journey to nationhood began…
“March 2010 marks an end and a beginning, seventy times seven years have passed. Four hundred ninety years since the cross was planted in our shores. The season of travail comes to a close. The Jubilee begins.”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPwYwMPKlQI[/youtube]
Please don’t get me wrong. I love the Philippines and I had my share in the campaign of 2004 and in 2010. I also long for the day to come when our country becomes successful in curtailing corruption and poverty. I even praise God that its people is all over the globe and many of them sharing the Gospel. But Pinoy Jubilee, albeit coming from our beloved Christian leaders, is just a bit too much of a stretch.
Daniel 9:24 cannot be taken all by itself. It is part of a bigger context: before it is verse 23 and after it is verse 25. Verse 23 tells us that “Seventy Seven” is a decree for Daniel’s people, the Jews who were taken captive in Babylon, and that it’s an answer to Daniel’s prayerful inquiry while verse 25 tells Daniel what he needed to know and understand about it:
“KNOW and UNDERSTAND this: FROM THE ISSUING OF THE DECREE to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.”
No matter how sincere we are and no matter how earnest our love for country is. We cannot just apply a Divine decree to anything by ignoring its context. In “Chapter 3: Methods of Interpretation” authors Kevin J. Conner and Ken Malmin, in the book “Interpreting the Scriptures: Textbook on How to Interpret the Bible”, wrote:
“In being over-anxious to apply Scripture to the lives of the people, interpreters mistake application for interpretation and read into Scriptures depths of meaning not plainly there…
“History has proven the mystical method to be misleading and of little value to interpreting the Scripture… mystics turn it into a riddle and make it say ALMOST ANYTHING OTHER THAN WHAT GOD MEANT TO SAY” (pp. 13-14).
Daniel was instructed to KNOW and UNDERSTAND that it was FROM the issuing of the DECREE to restore and rebuild JERUSALEM, we cannot just apply it to the Philippines and fix it’s starting point from the Magellan landing on a shore in Far East Asia nor on the year the cross was erected in Cebu.
Iglesia Ni Cristo (1914)?is also found guilty of End-Time date fixing. The May/June 1986 issue of the Pasugo Magazine explained how their founder, Felix Y. Manalo was “commissioned in accordance with Biblical prophecies pertaining to God’s calling a messenger from the Far East (Rev. 7:2-3).”
Based on Revelation 7:2,3 and 2 Peter 3:8, they ingeniously calculated that space of half an hour in Revelation 8:1 to be equivalent to 20.8 years as the gap between two World Wars with 1914 as the year when the angel Felix Manalo rose from the Far East and incorporated Iglesia Ni Cristo just about the year when the four heads of state (whom they refer ro as the four other angels) who met in the Treaty of Versailles.
In the book, “Observation Upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John” published in 2007, Sir Isaac Newton wrote:
“For by joining the accomplishment of the vision with the expiation of sins, the 490 years are ended with the death of Christ.” (p.67)
That is, from the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem stated in Ezra 7:11-26, Sir Isaac Newton reckoned 490 years up to the death of Christ in 34 AD.
After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. Daniel 9:26
At least, Sir Isaac Newton allowed the Scripture to interpret itself. It is worth noting, however, that Newton himself was an end-time date fixer. He calculated that the world will end in 2060. Read this –> Father of Modern Science: World to End in 2060.
Please also read –> ?Ten Things You Need To Know about the Jubilee and Daniel’s Seventy Sevens.
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