John and Doves,
Few would argue with the claim that Isaac Newton was a brilliant man, ahead of his time. He was fascinated with the Bible and spent most of his life trying to understand it. It's interesting to note that he specifically mentioned 2006:
1260 Years of Apostasy – 746-2006 A.D.Newton counted the 1260 years from 746 A.D. and arrived at the year 2006. This was 1260 years of ongoing religious apostasy. What event occurred in 746 A.D.?
The Muslim religion may be said to begin with the flight of Mohammed in 622 A.D. In 630, he entered Medina in triumph, destroyed pagan idols and declared the Kaabah a mosque (house of worship). At his death in 632, Arab military leaders expanded the Muslim world, under the Caliphs. Non-Muslim conquered peoples had to pay a special tax. At first, only a few were converted to Islam. Beginning about 746-750, conversions to Islam increased until it became the predominant religion in all the conquered lands. This was certainly one form of “great apostasy” from the truth.
At that time, two branches of Islam -- the Shiites and Abbasids – overthrew the Omayyad Caliphate and became the two dominant branches of Islam.
Meanwhile, in the Christian world, the Catholic church was plunging further into great apostasy. Pope Zacharias (741-752) was instrumental in making Pepin, father of Charlemagne, King of the Franks, a Germanic people occupying western Germany and northern France. Zacharias sought the protection of “Pepin the Short,” to protect Rome from the Lombards. In return for this aid, he helped him to be crowned the king of France. Pepin was the son of Charles Martel, who conquered the Muslims at Tours, in 732, preventing all Europe from falling to Islam. This was one of the most significant battles in all history, preserving “Christian Europe” from becoming the final outpost of Islam, thus preventing Islam’s conquest of the entire world.
Pepin was crowned, with the pope’s help, king of France. Says Philip Schaff, in History of the Christian Church, “This was the first step toward the creation of a Western [Roman] empire and a NEW political system of Europe with the POPE and the German emperor at the head” (vol.IV, “Mediaeval Christianity, p.233). He goes on, “The POPE claimed and exercised now for the first time the same power” which the servants of God in Israel had in anointing the kings of Israel.
Thus the woman began to ride the Beast, inaugurating the Roman Empire of the Middle Ages. The apostle John foresaw this woman – church – riding upon the back of the Beast in Revelation, chapter 17. An angel told him, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters . . . And I saw a WOMAN sitting on a scarlet BEAST, which was full of names blasphemy. . . And on her forehead a name was written: MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH” (Rev.17:1-5). This woman was “drunk with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (verse 6). The King James Version speaks of her as the “great whore” (verse 1).
This was a signal point in world history, and the apostasy of the Roman Church. Says Schaff, “To such a height of blasphemous assumption had the PAPACY risen already as to identify itself with the kingdom of Christ and to claim to be the dispenser of temporal prosperity and eternal salvation” (p.234).
Pepin later led his army to Italy, conquered the Lombards, and gave their lands to the Pope, a large part of central Italy. This was the beginning of the PAPAL STATES, or the TEMPORAL DOMINION of the Popes – civil control of Rome and central Italy, established by Pope Zacharias and his successor Pope Stephen, which was recognized by Pepin in 754. Thus central Italy, once the head of the Roman Empire, and later ruled by the Goths, came to be ruled by the “Head” of the Church – the Pope. This temporal kingdom lasted for 1,100 years, till 1870, when on the outbreak of war between France and Germany, Victor Immanuel of Italy took possession of Rome and added the Papal States to Italy.
It seems evident that this was the great “apostasy” which Newton had in mind, when he counted 1260 years from 746, coming to 2006.
In addition to this, however, note the following: Schaff declares, “Childeric III, the last of the hopelessly degenerate Merovingian line, was the mere shadow of a monarch, and forced to retire into a monastery. Pepin, the ruler in fact, now assumed the name, was elected at Soissons (March, 752) by the acclamation and clash of arms of the people, AND ANOINTED, like the kings of Israel, by Boniface or some other bishop, and two years after by the pope himself, who had decided that the lawful possessor of the royal power may also lawfully assume the royal title. Since that time he called himself ‘by the grace of God king of the Franks.’ The pope conferred on him the title of ‘Patrician of the Romans (Patricius Romanorum), which implies a sort of protectorate over the Roman church, and civil sovereignty over her territory. For the title ‘Patrician,’ which was introduced by Constantine the Great, signified the highest rank next to that of the emperor. . . . On the other hand, this elevation and coronation was made the basis of PAPAL SUPERIORITY over the crowns of France and Germany” (pp.233-234).
Note two things: 1) Pepin began his “legal” reign as king in 752 – 6 years after 746. Thus it was a period of SEVEN YEARS between the “beginning” of the apostasy in 746 and the full-blown apostasy in 752. Counting 1260 years from 752 A.D., we come to the year 2012 – the anticipated END OF DAYS and return of the Messiah, and the conclusion of Daniel’s “seventh week.” Thus this period of time seems to symbolize and be a “type” of the final seven years of this Age, and Daniel’s final “week” of the 70 weeks prophecy!
2) Note that Pepin’s elevation as “king” was based on the Pope’s influence, power, and the “basis of papal superiority” – another way of saying, the WOMAN (the Catholic Church) at this juncture literally BEGAN her ride upon the “back of the Beast”!
It is very significant that like the Bible codes, and Biblical chronology, Isaac Newton also came up with the year 2006 as being the “beginning of the End of Days” – the beginning of “Armageddon” – starting his countdown from 746 A.D. And seven years later would constitute the “End of Days,” 2012, and the conclusion of the present Age of man!
Steve Mullin