To begin this study, we must state unequivocally that there is no existing calendar known to mortal man which gives us an accurate account of the age of the earth, and even though we can compute with relative accuracy, the events and prophecies given in the Bible, we are to acknowledge that because God has never given us a beginning date for the creation of the world, and because there are some discrepancies in the methods of counting the years from Eden to Abraham, all figures during that time are approximate, and not to be held as set in stone.
However, there must be a profound disconnect between the prophecies of the scriptures pointing earth’s inhabitants to last day events, and the time frame given in the current Jewish calendar, which has been adopted for the most part by many Bible scholars in tabulating the approximate age of the earth, for if we use that method of reckoning, then we still have 224 years to go before we approach the much anticipated six thousand mark.
This is the reason why yesterday on the Jewish calendar, black Friday was marked thus:
Fri, 27 November 2015 = 15th of Kislev, 5776
ט״ו בְּכִסְלֵו תשע״ו
The Jewish official calendar is the Hebrew one. And according to Jewish counting, on September 24, of 2014, we entered the Year 5775, that is - the supposed 5775th year since the world was created on Saturday night, October 6, 3761 BCE.
Now, it is true that we also believe in the Biblical narrative of creation, however, the method used of calculating the age of the earth, refuses to square evenly with apocalyptic prophecies of the Bible, and therefore Joel sounds an urgent alarm in the holy mountain of God, that our salvation is now much nearer than when we first believed. And his solemn trumpet call has also been echoed by several of the other Bible writers, warning the inhabitants of the earth that Christ’s 2nd coming will take the world by storm, and most people, including Christians will be entirely unaware that the proverbial “harvest is past and the summer is ended”. Let’s read:
Joel 2:1 Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand.
12 Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning.
15 Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly,
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.
31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come.
Luke 21:34 And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.
35 For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.
1st Thessalonians 5:2 For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
3 For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
4 But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
6 Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.
One of the main reasons why we cannot depend on the Jewish calendar for knowing where we are now in the stream of time, is because, after the rejection of Christ by the Jewish nation, they ceased to be God’s peculiar people, and the privileges they had previously enjoyed, of having the sacred oracles and prophecies given them by God, were permanently curtailed after the time prophecy given to Daniel concerning them had elapsed.
Thus, because of the forfeited, privileged position, of the Hebrew people, we are now forced to revisit the Hebrew tabulations as it pertains to the actual age of the earth, which is off the mark, for as stated before, there is currently a profound disconnect between the prophecies that are being fulfilled as we speak, and the time frame given in the Jewish calendar, when pitted against a few definitive statements written in the scriptures.
In addition to this, whatever the Jewish calendar, or any other for that matter might read, the Bible tells us that God’s work upon the earth will be cut short, and thus it is imperative for us to investigate the truth pertaining to where we now are in earth’s history. Let’s read:
Romans 9:28 For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth.
Matthew 21:42 Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?
43 Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.
Therefore, we owe it to ourselves to observe what the scriptures say concerning the age of the earth, and also the given time frames of the fulfillment of certain prominent prophecies. According to the prophet Daniel, the birth of Christ into this world was to take place around the time of three to five B.C., and after His crucifixion, three and a half years would elapse to close off their probation, with the destruction of Jerusalem taking place in A.D 70. Then the year 1844 would bring to and end, the longest time prophecy given in the book of Daniel, bringing us to the beginning of Christ’s investigative judgment, which started in the fall of that same year. Let’s read:
Daniel 9:24 Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.
Since seventy weeks, of seven days is equal to 490, then the next passage of scripture must of necessity have a much deeper meaning than what appears on the surface, for Christ was apparently pointing the minds of His Jewish hearers to something ominous in the not too distant future, something cataclysmic of which most of them were unaware. Let’s read:
Matthew 18:21 Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?
22 Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.
23 Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his
servants.
Full Definition of “THEREFORE”
a : for that reason : consequently
b : because of that
c : on that ground
Daniel 9:25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
Daniel 8:13 Then I heard one saint speaking, and another saint said unto that certain saint which spake, How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot?
14 And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be
cleansed.
27 And I Daniel fainted, and was sick certain days; afterward I rose up, and did the king's business; and I was astonished at the vision”…..
The command to rebuild Jerusalem was confirmed by king Artaxerxes in the year 457 B.C, which would place the beginning of the investigative judgment, or “The cleansing of the sanctuary” in 1844 A.D., or 2300 years later, but if we were to follow the Jewish method of computation, the year 1844 A.D would be 5605, and if we were to use Christ’s birth as the dividing line between the B.C and the A.D time period, there would actually be a deficit of about 239 years, when compared against the six plus one format given in the Old Testament, as it pertains to both days and years.
Hence the reason why there is a serious disparity between the end time prophecies given in the Bible which are currently being fulfilled as we speak, and the Jewish calendar, which puts us many years into the future, when the earth, for all intents and purposes, will most likely be already decimated by the coming of Christ. And whilst we are on the issue of six plus one, it will be well for us to observe that God is a God of order, and whatsoever He has set in motion will come to fruition in the fullness of time. Let’s read:
Genesis 1:31 And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
Exodus 20:8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
Exodus 21:2 If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.
Exodus 23:10 And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof:
11 But the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thy olive yard.
Leviticus 25:2 “When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a Sabbath unto the Lord.
3 Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof;
4 But in the seventh year shall be a Sabbath of rest unto the land, a Sabbath for the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.
The math is simple folks, for if God is now giving the Hebrews instruction pertaining to His ideals for the planting and rejuvenation of the earth, and since He has stipulated that the land must rest one year for every six years of planting, then it means that sixty years of cultivation will require ten years of rest, six hundred years of planting will require one hundred years of rest, and six thousand years of tilling the soil must result in one thousand years of Sabbatical rest.
Furthermore, in delineating His future purposes to the Hebrew people, and in explaining the principle of root cause and effect, whenever violation of the Sabbatical rest occurs over extended periods, God specifically stated that His people would be brought into captivity by a heathen nation, and the reasons are given so that there may be no misgiving on our part as to the seriousness of the six plus one format introduced in Eden, and reiterated and stipulated at Mt. Sinai. Let’s read:
Leviticus 26:31 And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours.
32 And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it.
33 And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.
34 Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths.
35 As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it.
And then, as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the western sky, the word of The Lord will come down like a train, to be fulfilled when the measure of the guilt of the Hebrew people is full, for after years of violating the six plus one format, the Sabbatical rest for the land comes due. And so said so done, for a heathen nation comes upon the scene, destroys the city of Jerusalem, and carries very many of the Hebrews captive, leaving the land desolate, so that it may enjoy the Sabbaths of rest that are required. Let’s read:
2nd Chronicles 36: 18 And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king, and of his princes; all these he brought to Babylon.
19 And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof.
20 And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon; where they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia:
21 To fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept Sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years.
Question: How is it then that the earth will be made entirely desolate for exactly one thousand years in Revelation chapter 20? And how is it that this fact is also confirmed by the prophet Jeremiah, who lived hundreds of years before John was even born? Is it a coincidence, or could it be a repetition of the six plus one format, which God gave to us in Eden, and again confirmed to the Hebrews. And if so, could it be that the earth is approaching six thousand years, hence the reason why all of the last day events we are given in the scriptures seem to be converging in quick succession, as if a final climax is about to take place? Let’s read:
Revelation 20:1 And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
2 And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,
3 And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.
4 And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
5 But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.
In speaking of this very time, the prophet Jeremiah was shown in vision the condition of the earth as it will be during the one thousand years referred to in Revelation, and we should not be surprised to find that it replicates on a much broader, scale the very same desolation experienced by the Hebrews, when their land became due for its Sabbatical rest. Let’s read:
Jeremiah 4:23 I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.
24 I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly.
25 I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.
26 I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by his fierce anger.
27 For thus hath the Lord said, The whole land shall be desolate; yet will I not make a full end.
28 For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black; because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it.
29 The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen; they shall go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks: every city shall be forsaken, and not a man dwell therein.
My fellow Christians, this just cannot be a mere coincidence, and since God is not a man that He should lie, then the next question we will need to ask ourselves is “Where are we now in the stream of time, and how close are we to the ushering in of the one 1000 years of Sabbatical rest? It is worthy of note that our current system of education based on the theory of evolution must be seriously flawed, according to the “Six plus one” format given in the scriptures, and very soon that great lie that has been perpetuated by Darwin and his followers will be unmasked for what it really is.
And then it will be that many of earth’s inhabitants will see too late, that the world is not nearly as old as science would have us believe. This then means that current scientific methods of carbon dating, on which we rely securely, must now be brought into question, if as science says, many of the fossils and archaeological discoveries date back to millions and millions of years. The fact is that through the theory of evolution, a very great lie is being peddled to the multitudes, and according to the Bible it is not God who is behind it. Let’s read:
Numbers 23:19 God is not a man that he should lie; neither the son of man that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?
Very many statements have been made by the servant of The Lord in regards to the age of the earth, and while the Hebrew calendar puts the six thousand year mark two hundred plus years into the future, God has through His prophet stated otherwise, and thus it behooves every person to study carefully, that which has been revealed, so that the final conflict, which will usher in God’s everlasting kingdom of righteousness, will not find any of us sleeping, as is so often cautioned in the scriptures. Here are just a few samples of what is being spoken about. Let’s read:
[The Desire Of Ages pp. 413] For six thousand years, faith has builded upon Christ. For six thousand years the floods and tempests of satanic wrath have beaten upon the Rock of our salvation; but it stands unmoved.
[The Great Controversy pp. 659>660] For six thousand years, Satan's work of rebellion has “made the earth to tremble.” He has “made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof.” And “he opened not the house of his prisoners.” For six thousand years his prison-house has received God's people, and he would have held them captive forever, but Christ has broken his bonds, and set the prisoners free.
Even the wicked are now placed beyond the power of Satan; and alone with his evil angels he remains to realize the effect of the curse which sin has brought. For a thousand years, Satan will wander to and fro in the desolate earth, to behold the results of his rebellion against the law of God. During this time his sufferings are intense.
Since his fall, his life of unceasing activity has banished reflection; but he is now deprived of his power, and left to contemplate the part which he has acted since first he rebelled against the government of Heaven, and to look forward with trembling and terror to the dreadful future, when he must suffer for all the evil that he has done, and be punished for the sins that he has caused to be committed.
In closing, we present three prophecies given in the scriptures pertaining to the last days of earth’s history, and then, if we are honest in heart, we will need to ask ourselves the following two questions: [1] Are those stated prophecies now being fulfilled?
[2] Are we very close to the six thousand mark, or according to the Jewish calendar, are we two hundred plus years away? Let’s read:
Daniel 12:1 “And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time”
4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
Matthew 24:6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass”…..
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. 8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
Luke 17:26 And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.
27 They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
28 Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
29 But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
30 Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.
If it took us just twenty years to reach the “Days of Lot”, as far as gay marriage is concerned, what on earth makes us think that the coming of Jesus will be 224 years away? We end with a solemn passage of scripture which cautions us not to sleep during these days of upheavals and unrest, days of terror and uncertainty, but rather to watch and be sober, for the coming of The Son of Man is actually very near, even at the doors. Let’s read:
Mark 13:35 Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning:
36 Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. 37 And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.
He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what The Spirit saith unto the churches.
God bless!