Letter from Sir Isaac Newton in 1704 predicts when the world will finish

Sir Isaac Newton, a renowned scientist known for formulating the laws of motion and gravity, predicted the world as we know it would end in 2060.

Newton scrawled this ominous warning on a letter slip above a series of mathematical calculations more than 300 years ago.

He believed in biblical visions of the Apocalypse — specifically the Battle of Armageddon — and based his prediction on his Protestant interpretation of the Bible and events that followed biblical history. 

This prophesied war is described in the last chapter of the Book of Revelation, and pits the forces of good (led by God) against the forces of evil (led by the kings of the Earth). 

Scripture states that this battle would mark the end of the world, ushering in a new era of peace brought by God. 

Newton used math and dates in biblical history to land on the apocalypse, employing days mentioned in scripture as years to interpret the prophecy.

To him, these time periods (especially 1260 years) represented the time span of the abandonment of the Church and the rise of ‘corrupt’ Trinitarian religions, chiefly Catholicism that some Protestant view as a cult.

Newton studied history to determine the precise date that this abandonment formally began, and settled on 800 AD: the year that the Holy Roman Empire was founded.  The year 800 AD plus 1,260 gave Newton the year 2060.

Sir Isaac Newton wrote an ominous prediction on a letter slip above a series of mathematical calculations more than 300 years ago, stating that the world as we know it would end in 2060

‘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,’ reads the 1704 letter.

‘And the days of short lived Beasts being put for the years of lived [sic] 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.’ 

Stephen D. Snobelen, a history of science and technology professor at the University of King’s College in Halifax, said 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.’ 

Newton used 1260, 1290, 1335 and 2300 days that are found in the Book of Daniel and Revelations, which discuss the end and beginning of certain times. 

However, he instead saw them as years using the ‘day-for-a-year principle,’ a method used to interpret Biblical prophecies that states the word ‘day’ symbolizes a year.

In the Book of Revelations,  Christ and the saints would intervene to establish a global Kingdom of God that would reign for 1,000 years on Earth, according to Snobelen.

Newton also believed that around this time, corrupt branches of Christianity would fall, and the true Gospel would be preached openly.

Before the second coming of Christ, the Jews would return to Israel, according to biblical prophecy, and rebuild The Temple.

Newton, a renowned scientist known for formulating the laws of motion and gravity, was also a devout Christian who believed in biblical visions of the Apocalypse

While Newton did not believe the world would cease to exist in 2060, he did believe that the Battle of Armageddon would usher in the second coming of Christ and a new era of peace

But despite his efforts to predict the end of the world, Newton was ‘wary of prophetic date-setting,’ and ‘worried that the failure of fallible human predictions based on divine prophecy would bring the Bible into disrepute,’ Snobelen wrote.

Newton even questioned his own prediction that the current era would end in 2060. 

‘It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner,’ he wrote.

In another prediction referencing the date 2060, Newton stated: ‘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.’ 

Today, it may seem counterintuitive for a scientist to be so preoccupied with biblical prophecies. 

But according to Snobelen: ‘Newton was not a ‘scientist’ in the [modern] sense of that term. Instead, 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,’ he added.

‘For Newton, there was no impermeable barrier between religion and what we now call science. Throughout his long life, Newton laboured to discover God’s truth — whether in Nature or Scripture.