Zenith 2016 Part 7

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A couple of points need clarification at the beginning of this entry having to do with 1) date-setting; and 2) extra-biblical sources for interpreting end-times prophecy. Setting dates in particular for eschatological affairs have been illustrated historically to be unwise, discrediting those who make such predictions concerning the timing of future events.

          In general, Christians should simply always be ready for the end of the age and the coming of Christ, because, “Ye know not what hour your Lord doth come” (Matthew 24:42). Jesus further told His followers that the exact date of His arrival would be known by “no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only” (Matthew 24:36). While the particular moment of His appearance thus remains a mystery, elsewhere Jesus explained that the “signs of the times” can be discerned (Matthew 16:3), and when His closest disciples asked Him frankly, “What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” He provided a long list of specific indicators that would herald His arrival. He then added that, “When ye shall see these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled” (Matthew 24:3; 33–34). Therefore, while most Christians agree they cannot know the exact “hour” of Christ’s coming or the end of the age, they can know the “season.”

          Another issue when interpreting end-time “signs” comes from the use of non-canonical sources. This is obviously problematic when it includes occult sources such as the writings of famous seers like Edgar Cayce or Jeane Dixon. However, aside from such spirit mediums, it is helpful to recall other bona fide revelations that arrived from sources that today would not set well in our denominational boxes. For instance, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream from Daniel 2. God chose to reveal a prophecy spanning from 605 BC through the second coming of Christ to an arrogant narcissistic pagan king and then required his holy servant, Daniel, to interpret the dream for him. Similarly, God used Balaam, a darkened wizard who now lives in prophetic infamy (2 Peter 2:15; Jude 11; Revelation 2:14) to prophesy, “I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth” (Numbers 24:17), a text which scholars today believe spoke unmistakably of the coming of the Messiah. This Pethorian prediction was well over one thousand years before the birth of Christ and from a hostile source, yet it is probably what led the Magi to Bethlehem. The nameless author of the allegedly lost La profezia used Balaam as an example as well, remarking that the gift of prophecy “is essentially a free supernatural gift, in which God certifies the truth of His faith by communicating to different souls, sometimes even infidels like Balaam, in whom altered states have occurred inspiring them spontaneously to speak marvelously of the most sublime mystery of God.”^[i] Of course we are instructed in the New Testament not to despise prophesying (1 Thessalonians 5:20) as it is a part of the Church Age.

          Having stated the above, not everybody accepts the wisdom of discussing ancient extra-biblical texts or dates such as the years 2012 and 2016 in particular, most publicly identified with the end of the Mayan Calendar Long Count and Precession Cycle. Yet we do so precisely because the upcoming release of Zenith 2016 and others we have written intend to unveil not just what Bible scholars believe about the end times, but what occultists are convinced of and are dedicated to fulfilling. Knowledge is power, we believe, and prayer is most effective when the target is understood. Our enemy is definitely scheming over particular dates, and from Scripture we learn that demons know something about times and dispensations and plot within them, something they most assuredly want Christians to remain ignorant of.For instance, recall when Jesus went into the valley of the Gadarenes and two exceedingly fierce men possessed with devils came out of the tombs crying, “What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?” (Matthew 8:28–29; emphasis added). The Greek word for “time” in this verse is kairos, and means a fixed and definite period of days, a decisive epoch waited for. Somehow the evil spirits knew the dispensation of their judgment had not yet arrived, and knowing they perceive such things, it is not hard to imagine extra-biblical prophecies by those such as the Maya or the Cumaean Sibyl having been infused with occult energy providing supernatural perception anddeception. This was illustrated again in the story of Jannes and Jambres (2 Timothy 3:8), who withstood Moses in the Old Testament, and the Pythian priestess in the New Testament (Acts 16:16–17), who somehow knew that God had sent Paul. This fact—that demons can prophesy, know something of times and seasons, and want true Christians to remain ignorant of their schemes related to those specific periods—is especially important at this juncture because while the first part of the “final mystery of the Great Seal” involveswho is prophesied to rule the novus order seclorum, the second, more disturbing, aspect of the US national cipher has to do with when this deity—and its Nephilim army—are predicted to arrive.

          From Christians to New Agers, skeptics to historians, the world was enthralled until recently with the meaning of the year 2012. In general, the excitement (or dread, as the case may be) surrounded a variety of predictions made by ancient and modern sources concerning a portentous moment in time. Mankind was on course toward unprecedented global upheaval, according to these experts, when the Earth, and all life upon it, will undergo apocalyptica marked by the “thirteenth baktun” of the Mesoamerican Mayan Long Count. The exact end date of this calendar was December 21, 2012, when during the winter solstice at 11:11 GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), the sun arose in Sagittarius, the centaur with a bow—the symbol for Nimrod coming out from the mouth of Leviathan and the sun “god” rising again—Nimrod/Osiris/Apollo. The Mayans predicted this conjunction, interpreting it as a harbinger of the end of the world as we know it and the beginning of a final era. While the Maya were not alone among ancient cultures in this regard—for instance, the Hindu Kali Yuga calendar started approximately during the Mayan Fifth Great Cycle and also predicted global Earth changes following the year 2012—it is the Maya who were mostly credited with fixing the importance of this date. Researchers say cataclysmic events associated with this final dispensation have already started, including geologic upheaval, drought, famine, mass extinction, and the arrival of solar maximum following the year 2012.

          Like the Aztec and Inca, the Maya believed Earth seasons and celestial cycles were affected by otherworldly and prophetic significance. Mayan priests interpreted such activity and coupled it with the mathematics of their calendars, making predictions based on the terrestrial and celestial cycles.

          Early on, the only known Mayan inscription that elaborated on the specific significance behind the end of the thirteenth baktun—December 21, 2012—was discovered on Monument 6 at Tortuguero, in Tabasco, Mexico. Though defaced from area construction and previous looting of the archaeological location, scholars were able to partially translate the monument, finding that it referred to the year 2012 and a return of the spirit of Bolon Yokte K’u, the underworld lord who represents the solar system and the nine support gods orbiting the Sun.

The inscription: Tzuhtz-(a)j-oom u(y)-uxlajuun pik (ta) Chan Ajaw ux(-te’) Uniiw. Uht-oom ? Y-em(al)?? Bolon Yookte’ K’uh ta ?

The interpretation: “The Thirteenth ‘Bak’tun” will be finished (on) Four Ajaw, the Third of Uniiw (K’ank’in). ? will occur. (It will be) the descent (??) of the Nine Support? God(s) to the ?.”

          While New Agers admitted the end of the Mayan calendar thus heralded the return of the spirit of Bolon Yokte K’u to Earth beginning in 2012 (the date the Toltec prophesied the return of the spirit Quetzalcoatl), a few rightly claimed this advent and the roll-over of the Mayan calendar and Jaguar prophecies accompanying it did not forecast the end of the world but rather a new dispensation or Golden Age of ascended consciousness.

          And the Maya were not the only ancient society to foresee the beginning of a new epoch starting in 2012.

          For instance, the “Cherokee Rattlesnake Prophecies,” also known as the “Chickamaugan Prophecy” or the “Cherokee Star Constellation Prophecies,” are part of a series of apocalyptic prophecies made by members of the Cherokee tribe during 1811–1812. The prophecies are very similar to Mesoamerican belief, and are viewed by scholars as likely referring to the return of Quetzalcoatl in 2012–2016. Like the Maya, the Cherokee calendar ended mysteriously in the year 2012 when astronomical phenomena related to Jupiter, Venus, Orion, and Pleiades caused the “powers” of the star systems to “awaken.”

          A portion of the “Rattlesnake Prophecy” reads:

At this time [the end of 2012] of the fingers striking Jupiter that Orion Star System will awaken. And the Pleiades and Orion will war once again as in old. Jupiter and Venus will awaken to its destiny of Time/Untime of cycles. Orion will war with Pleiades, Jupiter will war with Venus.…

[Following] the year…2012 an alignment will take place both on the Cherokee calendar and in the heavens of the Rattlesnake Constellation.… It is the time of the double headed serpent stick. It is the time of the red of Orion and Jupiter against the white blue of Pleiades and Venus…the Cherokee Rattlesnake Constellation will take on a different configuration. The snake itself will remain, however; upon the Rattlesnake shall be added upon its head feathers, its eyes will open and glow, wings spring forth as a winged rattlesnake. It shall have hands and arms and in its hands shall be a bowl. The bowl will hold blood. Upon its tail of seven rattles shall be the glowing and movement of Pleiades.

            The Rattlesnake shall become a feathered rattlesnake or feathered serpent of Time/Untime [Quetzalcoatl?].

            And upon the Rattlesnake is also the Milky Way. A crossing of the Milky Way shall be seen at these times.

            And the Cherokee calendar shall end in the year 2012…[heralding] the coming of the Pale One once again.^[ii]

2012 and Prophecy from the Zohar on Messiah’s Return

Widely considered the most important work of Jewish Kabbalah, the Zohar is a collection of books written in medieval Aramaic over seven hundred years ago containing mystical commentary on the Pentateuch (five books of Moses, the Torah). In addition to interpreting Scripture, the Vaera section (volume 3, section 34) includes, “The signs heralding Mashiach,” or, “The coming of the Messiah.” The fascinating date for “his” appearance is set in the Zohar during 2012–2013. Given the rejection of Jesus by orthodox Jews as Messiah, this seven-hundred-year-old prediction indicates the Antichrist “arrived” circa 2012–2013.

The Eight-Hundred-Year-Old Prophecy of Rabbi Judah Ben Samuel

Will the years immediately following 2016 be prophetically important for Israel and the world? Earlier we noted when seventy years (a biblical generation) is added to 1948—the year Israel was formally recognized as an independent nation by the United Nations—it brings us through the year 2018. Does this mean the year 2019—exactly seven years after 2012—would mark the year that Jesus Christ returns with the armies of heaven to establish His rule over Earth? According to an eight-hundred-year-old prophecy, it certainly could. Before he died of cancer, J. R. Church analyzed the ancient predictions of Rabbi Judah Ben Samuel and noted:

Ludwig Schneider, writing for Israel Today(March 2008) said, “Some 800 years ago in Germany, Rabbi Judah Ben Samuel was a top Talmudic scholar with an inclination for the mystical. Before he died in the year 1217, he prophesied that the Ottoman Turks would conquer Jerusalem and rule the Holy City for ‘eight Jubilee Years.’” A biblical Jubilee year consists of 50 years. Fifty multiplied by eight equals 400 years.

Afterwards, according to Ben Samuel, the Ottomans would be driven out of Jerusalem, which would remain a no-man’s land for one Jubilee year. In the tenth Jubilee year [2017]…the Messianic end times would begin.…

Looking back at Ben Samuel’s prediction, we should note that the Ottoman Empire did conquer Jerusalem in 1517, exactly 300 years after the rabbi’s death, and was defeated 400 years later in 1917.

In Israel Today, Ludwig Schneider continues, “This came to pass 300 years after Ben Samuel’s death. He could not have based this prophecy on events that could be foreseen, but only on the results of his study of the Bible.

According to Leviticus 25, the nation is reunited with its land in the year of Jubilee. Therefore, the Jubilee year plays an important role in Israel’s history. In this case, the Jubilee began with the defeat and conquest of the Mamelukes in Jerusalem by the Ottoman Kingdom in 1517. The Turks reigned over Jerusalem until the British General Edmund Allenby defeated them exactly eight Jubilees later in 1917.

“Ben Samuel’s prophecy was fulfilled precisely because 1517 to 1917 is exactly 400 years. Afterward, Jerusalem was a no-man’s land for 50 years during the time of the British Mandate (1917–1967) and the time of Jordanian rule (1947–1967), another Jubilee year. During the Six Day War in 1967, Israel captured Jerusalem from Jordan and the city returned to the Jewish people after nearly two millennia of exile. After that, the countdown for the Messianic age began.”

Schneider assumes that since Rabbi Judah Ben Samuel’s prediction appears to be fulfilled to date, then 2017 should launch the beginning of the Messianic era.^[iii]

2012 and Matthew 24

Is it possible that Jesus marked the year 2012 as the start of the final age? When His disciples asked, “Tell us, when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world [aion]?” (Matthew 24:3), Jesus answered, “as the Days of Noe [Noah] were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be” (Matthew 24:37).

          The word aion in this text is not the general word for “time” (chronos) in Greek. Aion is the word the Greeks used to designate an actual cycle of the Milky Way alignments or the span of an age. Before he passed away, David Flynn emailed me to say: “The answer Jesus provided His apostles for ‘when’ the end of the aion would occur was specific. The astronomical signs in the heavens would be just as those during the days of Noah when Leviathan encircled the horizon in the dawn of the Summer solstice. There could have been no more accurate comparison made between our present time than the age of Noah.… The present aion is coming to a close. Like the sunteleiabefore, there will be great upheaval and change.”^[iv]

Protestant Reformers and the Years 2012–2016

Among the turn-of-the-century protestant reformers, there were an astonishing number of theologians that believed the False Prophet and Antichrist would take the stage between the years 2012 and 2016! The famous preacher Jonathan Edwards was convinced of this possibility and held a postmillennial view based on the twelve hundred and sixty days the woman is in the wilderness in Revelation 12:6. He interpreted those days as the years that the true Church was to be oppressed by the papists. Clarence Goen writes of this, “Edwards considered that the most likely time for the…reign of Antichrist was 1260 years after AD 756 (the acceding of temporal power to the Pope),”^[v] which would place the apex of Antichrist’s power squarely in 2016 (and it seems judicious to observe that 2016 falls in range of 3.5 years from June, 2012). When we were doing research for the book, Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope Is Here, we learned of this belief by Edwards and sought to verify it by examining a collection of his personal voluminous writings. We found confirmation within a series of his sermons, preached at Northampton, Massachusetts in 1739, on how history and prophecy coincide:

I am far from pretending to determine the time when the reign of Antichrist began, which is a point that has been so much controverted among divines and expositors. It is certain that the twelve hundred and sixty days, or years, which are so often in Scripture mentioned as the time of the continuance of Antichrist’s reign, did not commence before the year of Christ four hundred and seventy-nine; because if they did, they would have ended, and Antichrist would have fallen before now. The rise of Antichrist was gradual. The Christian church corrupted itself in many things presently after Constantine’s time; growing more and more superstitious in its worship and by degrees bringing in many ceremonies into the worship of God, till at length they brought in the worship of saints, and set up images in their churches. The clergy in general, and especially the bishop of Rome, assumed more and more authority to himself. In the primitive times, he was only a minister of a congregation; then a standing moderator of a presbytery; then a diocesan bishop; then a metropolitan, which is equivalent to an archbishop; then a patriarch. Afterwards he claimed the power of universal bishop over the whole Christian church; wherein he was opposed for a while, but afterwards was confirmed in it by the civil power of the emperor in the year six hundred and six. After that he claimed the power of a temporal prince, and so was wont to carry two swords, to signify that both the temporal and spiritual sword was his. He claimed more and more authority, till at length, as Christ’s vice-regent on earth, he claimed the very same power that Christ would have done, if he was present on earth reigning on his throne; or the same power that belongs to God, and was used to be called God on earth; to be submitted to by all the princes of Christendom.^[vi]

          We also found this letter by Edwards which addresses the 1260 days specifically:

To the Rev. Mr. M’Culloch.

Northampton, Oct. 7, 1748.

Rev. and Dear Sir,

[edited out first section]

With respect to your very ingenious conjectures, concerning the period of forty-two months, or one thousand two hundred and sixty days, of the outer court and holy city’s being trodden under-foot of the Gentiles; you know, Sir, that that forty-two months, or one thousand two hundred and sixty days, spoken of Rev. xi. 2. has been universally understood, as being the very same period with the 1260 days of the witnesses prophesying in sackcloth, spoken of in the next verse; and the one thousand two hundred and sixty days of the woman’s being led in the wilderness, chap. xii. 6. and the time, times, and half a time, of her being nourished in the wilderness from the face of the serpent, ver. 14. and the forty-two months of the continuance of the beast, chap. xiii. 5. But it does not appear to me probable that these forty-two months of the continuance of the beast, means the sum of the diverse periods in which the plat of ground, whereon the ancient literal Jerusalem stood, was under the dominion of the Romans, Saracens, Persians, and Turks; but the space of time during which the reign of antichrist or the popish hierarchy continues; and as to the particular time of the downfall of antichrist, you see my reasons in the forementioned pamphlet, why I think it certain that it will not be known till it be accomplished: I cannot but think that the Scripture is plain in that matter, and that it does, in effect, require us to rest satisfied in ignorance till the time of the endcomes.

However, I should be very foolish, if I were dogmatical in my thoughts concerning the interpretation of the prophecies: especially in opposition to those who have had so much more opportunity to be well acquainted with things of this nature. But since you have insisted on my thoughts, I conclude you will not be displeased that I have mentioned them, though not altogether agreeable to yours. I am nevertheless greatly obliged to you for your condescension in communicating your thoughts to me. If we do not exactly agree in our thoughts about these things, yet in our prayers for the accomplishment of these glorious events in God’s time, and for God’s gracious presence with us, and his assistance in endeavours to promote his kingdom and interests, in the meantime, we may be entirely agreed and united. That we may be so, is the earnest desire of, dear Sir,

Your Affectionate Brother and Servant,

In Our Common Lord,

Jonathan Edwards^[vii]

          As Cris Putnam endeavored to demonstrate in our book Petrus Romanus, the pope’s rise to temporal power began when Pope Stephen began courting Pepin around 751 and then became a reality in 756 with the expulsion of the Lombards. Putnam quickly broke out his calculator and saw that 756 placed the target sometime in 2016 which can also be thought of as in the range of three and a half years from 2012. Around that same time during our investigation,a friend named Trey Clark emailed after doing some digging of his own and made us aware of a sermon collection from the 1800s, titled, “Lectures on the Revelation,” by the Reverend William J. Reid, pastor ofFirst United Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which were given over a period of time ending in March of 1876. Like Jonathan Edwards had over a hundred years earlier, Reid deduced the False Prophet and Antichrist would arrive sometime around 2012–2016. Soon we uncovered numerous other ancient examples in which the years 2012 and 2016 specifically were foreseen as when the False Prophet and the Antichrist would appear, followed by the destruction of Rome. These included:

•      The Theological Dictionary of Princeton University (1830)

•      Critical Commentary and Paraphrase on the Old and New Testament by Lowth and Lowman (1822)

•      The American Biblical Repository (1840)

•      Notes on the Revelation of St. John by Lowman (1773)

•      The Christian Spectator, “The Monthly” (1885)

•      Abridgement of Ecclesiastical History (1776)

•      The Works of the Rev. P. Doddridge, DD (1804)

•      The International Sunday School Lessons Pub (1878)

•      Character and Prospects on the Church of Rome in Two Discourses by the Rev. William Mackray (1829)

•      The Panoplist and Missionary Magazine (1809)

•      Lectures on Romanism by Joseph F. Berg (1840)

•      The Congregational Magazine for the Year (1834)

•      The Presbyterian Magazine (1858)

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