Letter from Isaac Newton predicts the exact date the world will end

A letter from the renowned English scientist Sir Isaac Newton predicted when the world would end as we know it.

The warning, scrawled above a maths calculation on a letter slip in 1704, says Earth will ‘reset’ in 2060.

Newton, known for formulating the laws of motion and gravity and inventing calculus, also had a life-long interest in religion and believed in biblical visions of the apocalypse – especially the Battle of Armageddon.

This prophesied war is mentioned in the final chapter of the Book of Daniel and Revelation, and pits the forces of good, led by God, against the forces of evil, led by the kings of the Earth.

The battle will be won by the forces of good, it predicts, and there will be a new era of peace.

To come up with the date, Newton used the ‘day-for-a-year principle,’ a method employed at the time to interpret biblical prophecies, reports the Mail Online.

He used the 1260, 1290, 1335 and 2300 days mentioned in the Book of Daniel and Revelation (which discusses the end and beginning of certain times) and interpreted each day as a year.

Writing under the alias ‘Jehovah Sanctus Unus’, he said in the letter: ‘So then the time times & half a time are 42 months or 1260 days or three years & an half, recconing twelve months to a yeare & 30 days to a month as was done in the Calendar of the primitive year.

‘And the days of short lived Beasts being put for the years of lived kingdoms, the period of 1260 days, if dated from the complete conquest of the three kings A.C. 800, will end A.C. 2060. It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner.’

In another prediction where he mentions the date 2060, Newton wrote: ‘This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, [and] by doing so bring the sacred prophecies into discredit as often as their predictions fail.

‘Christ comes as a thief in the night, [and] it is not for us to know the times [and] seasons [which] God hath put into his own breast.’

Stephen D. Snobelen, a history of science and technology professor at the University of King’s College in Halifax, told the Daily Mail that Newton’s prediction ‘did not involve the use of anything as complicated as calculus, which he invented, but rather simple arithmetic that could be performed by a child.’

He said Newton was not a scientist in the modern sense of the word – he was a ‘natural philosopher’.

‘Practised from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, natural philosophy included not only the study of nature, but also the study of God’s hand at work in nature,’ Mr Snobelen added.

He said Newton believed there would be a new era and that the biblical prophecy called for the Jews to rebuild The Temple before the second coming of Christ.

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