6000 YEARS ENDING
(Investigator 116, 2007
September)
I did a Google
search for
"6,000" and found your site which said you get opposing sides in
disputes to give their best evidence concisely.
I wonder
what you think of
this?
Speaking
of the time of
judgment Peter says not to ignore this relationship, that 1,000 years
is like a day, and a day is like 1,000 years. (2 Peter 3:8). All the
Bible writers understood that God made the world in six days and the
4th Commandments says He gives us six days to do all our work.
Integrate Peter's text and we have 6,000 years till the time of
judgment, but how would we know when 6,000 years are complete?
TIME
Magazine noted – "May
5, 2000: the date that Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn will
line up with the sun and moon – the first time in 6,000
years."
(Jan
17, 2000, European Edition)
On the
surface, it looks
like God missed His time, but we may be forgetting what Jewish sages
know, that every important truth is found in the Torah, the first five
books. Specifically, Joseph had a dream of the sun, moon and stars
making obeisance to him, but the dream didn't make sense until, after
seven years of famine, his brothers lined up and bowed before him like
the stars in his dream.
We've
had seven years
without famine and perhaps we are in line for the seven bad years to
start?
This is
from a webpage I'm
preparing.
Richard
Ruhling
NUMEROLOGY DOESN'T ADD UP
John H Williams
(Investigator 120, 2008 May)
Regarding Richard
Ruhling's
letter in Investigator #116 (6000 Years Ending), I'd advise him to
validate his information before incorporating it in a website. "Best
evidence" means different things to different people, and I'm skeptical
about that which "Jewish sages know", as well as "every important truth
found in the Torah".
The
number 6,000 is just
that, a number, of no more significance than 5,999, 1984 or 2001. Some
give extra weight to millennial numbers but history suggests that
little of great import occurred in 1000 or 2000, apart from "the best
Olympics ever in Sydney"!
When the
Gregorian calendar
(retrospectively) clicked over to 1000 CE there were other dating
systems used by most of the world's people, including three Hindu ones,
a Buddhist/Thai solar (1543/4), a Chinese (3636), a Coptic (716) and a
Japanese Imperial (1660): a reminder that one needs to consider other
cultures' non-apocalyptic perspectives.
In
1000CE, the greatest
scientists/mathematicians were all Muslims, Leif Ericsson the Viking
had landed in Vinland (Newfoundland), Scandinavia and Hungary were
becoming Christianised, Constantinople was big and powerful, while the
Song Dynasty ruled China. It had 101 million of the world's 310 million
(estimated), used gunpowder and paper money, and produced 125,000 tons
of iron per annum! In England 99% of the population were illiterate,
most adults died in their 40s and, as there was no sugar, honey became
a form of currency.
Apocalyptic
expectation
about the year 1000 was apparently largely confined to Christian monks
in France.
There's
no shortage of
material on the May 2000 planetary 'Grand Alignment', and should
Richard do some reading he'll find the following:
- There's
some bad
science about, as well as misapplication of scientific ideas, and
astronomy is often misunderstood and/or misused (See Phil Plait's
'Bad Astronomy').
- A similar
multiple
planetary conjunction took place in 1962.
- The May
2000
confluence will re-occur in 2438.
- Even if all
the
planets and the Sun were perfectly aligned, the tidal impact would be
an extremely small rise of 0.042mm!
- The theory
of gravity
does excite some who have a minimal understanding of it: our Moon
exerts a far greater pull than all the planets combined, and 10% more
tidal pull than the Sun.
Is
Richard asking us to pay
attention to what a biblical character apparently dreamed over
3500 years ago in relation to the coincidental arrangement that
occurred in May 2000? The pseudo-maths of numerology just doesn't add
up, though it was a 'big number' in the ancient world, and was acquired
by the Jews from Babylonian and Zoroastrian cultures. Even a cursory
glance at this topic (see The Skeptic's Dictionary) will demonstrate
its invalidity.
Joseph's
"seven good and
seven bad years" is more likely to be allegorical rather than authentic
history. Is Richard saying that "we've" had seven years without famine,
and now we're in for seven bad (famine) years on the basis of what's in
the OT, and is he offering this as "evidence"?
I
suspect that Richard
believes in the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath), a concept which, to me,
belongs in the surreal realm of literal-minded fantasy. Trust me,
Richard, someone's thought this up and run with it for millennia, and,
as we'll soon be dead, it'll all be irrelevant, unless you believe that
a 'ghostly' remnant of us will be hauled off to a sky court for
judgement.
Since
Peter II was written
around 150CE by someone believed to be Silvanius (Simon Peter, who was
illiterate, having died around 64CE) so it seems that what Richard
believes in could happen in 6150CE. However, as he's aware, there've
been innumerable prophecies and predictions of rapturous or wrathful
end times, but history records a never-ending story, while the Earth's
demise, via our Sun's, will occur one astronomically distant day.
Biblical
phrases sound
meaningfully prophetic, and may be earnestly believed, but with a less
literal/more skeptical reading they appear as figurative poetic
imagery, intended as persuasive spin for the dominant 'spiritual'
paradigm (Yahweh, prophecy, Heaven, Day of Judgement). I think that
this realm has no real basis, and it didn't exist then and doesn't now,
apart from 'ingrained' beliefs in the minds of believers. By the way,
the earliest Yahweh was, understandably, a "savage, partisan god of
war, one of several deities worshipped by the Israelites"(K Armstrong).
I don't
believe there's an
entity micro-managing the cosmos. I've previously referred to this god
as being anthropomorphically imagined by a patriarchal society. Why
should it be male? Why should it need a gender? Is there anyone so
deluded that they believe that we look like this sky god? Assuming that
the thousands of gods of the ancient world were imaginary, isn't it
stretching credulity to believe that only this ancient Jewish god (who
later mutated to became the Christian god) is fair dinkum?
I find
it hard to
comprehend that so many believe the myth of a 'human' god being
'fathered' by his 'dad' via one third of an indivisible trinity
"immaculately" impregnating a woman (retrospectively) free from
"original sin", then returning 'home' after 'death'. This story is
unbelievable and flagrantly elusive to William of Ockham's Razor and
his principle of economy.
(I've
just discovered, to
my surprise, that the doctrine of Immaculate Conception was announced
by Rome as recently as 1852, while the dogma of the "Assumption"
stated, in 1951, that Mary (Mariamne) was sinless, and since the wage
of sin is death she couldn't have died and went straight to Heaven!)
(God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens, p 117)
I
encourage Richard to
write again, supporting his assertions, and/or attempting to debunk my
views. He's a reader of Time Magazine (as am I), so has looked beyond
the Good Book: however, any persuasive argument needs to recognize the
figurative/allegorical nature of the writing in ancient texts, about
which there's a robust debate as to their historicity.
'Heavenly'
bodies are
highly unlikely to "make obeisance" to any Earthling, even a biblical
hero, so it's futile attempting to connect happenings up there to what
may be earnestly and devoutly wished for down here. The answer to
Richard's question, "how will we know when 6,000 years are complete?"
depends on which year the count began, which we don't know, but, even
if we did, I'd bet my super that the 6,000th will be just as ho-hum as
were 1000CE and 2000CE.
Notes:
Jacob
was the 11th son of
Joseph, who founded two of the 12 tribes of Israel (Ephraim and
Manassah, Genesis, Chapters 37-50). "Joseph lived to be 110", and is
mentioned in the Quran.
Jacob's
"coat of many
colours", was in fact a coat of many sleeves (a mistranslation of the
Hebrew word for sleeves).
References
Armstrong K A History of
God, Knopf, New York, 1993
Carroll RT The Skeptic's
Dictionary: A collection of strange beliefs, amusing deceptions and
dangerous delusions, on numerology
http://skepdic.com/contents.html
Glaber R (Dijon monk, d
1044) Medieval Sourcebook (corrected by Roy J, L'An Mille Hachette
Paris 1885).
Hitchens C, God is Not
Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Allen &Unwin, New York, 2007
Lacy R. & Danziger D.
The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the Century, Bay
Books, 1999
Peter II, KJV Bible, Thomas
Nelson Inc., Nashville 1977
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000#World.Population