Generational Clocks

18158 words long.

Published on 2024-06-17

It was while lingering over the chronology in Matthew 1 about a decade ago that the idea popped into my head. What if God measures time by generations of people, not days and years? From that sprang all the rest.

The five Generational Clocks that I have found are few in number, but they were the starting point. Without finding these clocks, I would never proceeded to the others, nor found so much more. This article will summarize such clocks.

God can measure time any way He pleases. The insight that led me to the idea of Generational Clocks was that people are more important than the sun, moon and stars. Humanity's most accurate clocks are based on the radioactive decay of atoms. Before that, we measured time by the reliable motions of the heavenly bodies. Because people count, God counts people.

In a Generational Clock, like human generations each tick can be a different span of time. One generation overlaps the next, so some years may fall during the lives of two people on the clock. A few of the generations may align with the lives of actual people, like Adam and Methuselah. The rest are symbolic generations. There might not be an actual person whose life captures the theme and span of years for that tick of the clock.

For each clock, the following will be given:

• The name of the clock
• The chapters from my books that explain the clock in detail
• Citations of the whole book or select chapters from the Bible that contain the prophecies
• A table with the generation number, start and end years, Bible verse references and prophetic interpretation
• Details about the most significant prophecies found in the clock

I scoured the Bible for prophetic clocks. Some sequences of Bible passages that had a few good matches to history I rejected. Unless every Bible passage (whether chapter, stanza or verse) in the sequence had at least one prophecy that was fulfilled in the corresponding era, unless every generation between the first and last covered by the clock was represented, I discarded the idea and moved on. If God really intended that book or chapter to be a prophetic clock, it would be perfect. No eras would be overlooked.

History of the Idea

My starting point was the genealogy in Matthew 1 which runs from Abraham to Jesus. The logical next step would have been to discover Job's Anti-jubilee Clock, because that clock also runs from Abraham to Jesus. However, I was not expecting any Bible passages or whole books to contain chronologically ordered prophecies. Thus the first structure that I discovered was The Cosmic Chiasm, which is a general comparison of the Bible to world history. From that clock I saw that God had a sequence for which aspects of culture and civilization he would tackle next in His plan to redeem humanity. That was the key insight that enabled me to understand what God is up to in the story of the seven seals on the scroll in Revelation. With each seal that is broken, more than judgment occurs. God is building up a more just world.

In Ecclesiastes I discovered that there were several types of clock. The main one was Solomon's master Celestial clock based on the twenty-eight times. In a chapter titled "Let's Synchronize our Watches", I resolved the question of how long each generation should be. Solomon's Celestial Clock clearly required 120 years per period, but that didn't line up with The Cosmic Chiasm, which seemed to require a period of 119 years. Two things helped me realize that the clocks needed to have separate but almost equal periods. First was the story of Noah's Ark. Prior to the flood, God said that He would set a limit of 120 years for human life. That gives us the 120-year period length. However, the flood ended on the seventeenth day of the seventh month, and 7 x 17 = 119. In a subtle way the same story gives us the number 119. Since Psalm 119 is one of my favorites and inspired major features of my novels, I turned to that Psalm to see if it had anything prophetic hidden in it. That was how I found The Shepherd’s Clock. Each stanza of the poem corresponds to one generation of history, with the first matching the time of Adam, the second the time of Methuselah, and the rest successive 119-year periods.

My thought to search Job for prophetic clocks hinged on four things:

• I had just written Job Rises and was familiar with the material.
• During that writing, I discovered many prophecies in Job but did not see any order to them, chronological or otherwise.
• A also discovered in Job eight prophecies (and after the book was finished, a ninth) that pointed to Jesus which were in chronological order.
• After Job Rises was finished, I discovered the Harvest Pattern in Matthew and observed that the Book of Job followed that pattern precisely. So when I discovered the similar Growth Pattern in Ecclesiastes, it was natural to check if Job conformed to that pattern also.

Between three of my books, I would end up finding seven prophetic clocks in Job. However, the fact that the sequence in Matthew's chronology was from Abraham to Jesus by none of my clocks matched it left me with the feeling that I was missing something.

Another perplexity was about the periods. I found clocks with many different periods. However, there was one period that many other writers on prophecy make much of that I did not see: the fifty-year Jubilee.

I can't recall what the final trigger was that caused me to spot Job's Anti-jubilee Clock. I do recall one observation that sealed the deal. Matthew's chronology makes much of the number forty-two, by breaking history into three sets of fourteen names. By showing the number forty-two, he hid the number fifty. The chronology has fifty names, whether of individuals or collections (like naming someone's brothers as a collection). If you overlap generations of length fifty by one year, you get forty-nine years. Then if you divide the history from Abraham to a few years after Jesus' resurrection into forty-two segments, forty-nine years is the best fit for a period length.

Lastly, I discovered the The Acrostic Clock. I had found a pattern that encompassed half of the Psalms, but when I hit Psalm 112, the prophetic link was weak. I noticed (as many have before) that Psalms 111 and 112 form a unit. They have the same length in verses and matching verses often use the same phrases. The themes of the psalms linked up, as the end of Psalm 111 and beginning of Psalm 112 speak of the fear of the Lord. However, the proper way to interpret these psalms is not by verse, but by poetic line. As the Hebrew scholars have long noted, each phrase begins with a different Hebrew letter, ordered by the Hebrew alphabet. The psalms are acrostics.

Each psalm has an introductory "Praise the Lord!" followed by the twenty-two poetic lines. Since I had already found a clock in Psalm 119, another acrostic psalm, it seemed sensible to search for another clock in Psalm 111 that ran from Creation to Christ. That would leave Psalm 112 to continue the clock from Christ's First to his Second Coming. Since the two psalms had overlapping themes, it makes sense that they have overlapping time ranges. The second half clock backs up to the generation before Christ, then proceeds forwards to the end of history.

What is the point of all this rambling? To find these clocks, I had to make numerous connections between Matthew, Genesis, Psalms, Job and Ecclesiastes. If I did not have ready familiarity with these texts, this would never have happened. The Holy Spirit never said, "Go to Page 200 in your Bible" or some such thing. If I ever was guided to make a connection, it was the Spirit amplifying memories that were already there. There is no substitute for years of patient Bible study and reflection.

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Job's Anti-jubilee Clock

• Bible book: Job
• Book defined in: Plague, Precept, Prophet, Peace
• Chapters in book that describe it:
  • Job's Anti-jubilee Clock, Defined
  • Prophecies from Abraham to David: Job 1-20
  • Prophecies from Solomon to Christ: Job 21-42
• Time span: 1952 BC-108 AD
• Milestones: Abraham to the Apostolic Age
• Intervals: 42 (one per chapter of Job)
• Period: 49 (overlapping 50-year jubilees)

The research that went into finding and defining this clock was fun. It involved spotting and solving an ancient word puzzle. See a record of that work here:

Job's Anti-Jubilee Clock, Defined

This is a summary of all the eras covered by this clock. Since every chapter of Job matches an era of history, the Era number matches the chapter of Job that contains the Prophecy. The Bible References column will name specific verses in Job that are relevant to the prophecy, as well as name passages elsewhere in the Bible that also address this subject, sometimes with phrases that match thus establishing the link. Also note that each era starts one year before the end of the previous era, which overlap is a defining feature of a Generational Clock.

After this summary table, a few of the prophecies will be spelled out in detail.

Era #	Year Range	Bible References	Subject of Prophecy
1	1952-1902 BC	Job 1:5 Genesis 11:26	Abram
2	1903-1853 BC	Job 2:9-10 Genesis 12, 15, 17, 18:9-15, 19	Abraham & Sarah
3	1854-1804 BC	Job 3:3 Genesis 21	Isaac, Hagar, Ishmael
4	1805-1755 BC	Job 4:6,11-21 Genesis 26:1-5	Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, Esau
5	1756-1706 BC	Job 5:2, 8-13, 24-26 Genesis 29-31 (esp. 30:37-31:16), 32:24-28, 37:3	Jacob, Laban, Leah, Rachel
6	1707-1657 BC	Job 6:10, 15-20, 22-24, 27 Genesis 37, 39-47	Joseph & his brothers
7	1658-1608 BC	Job 7:1-3, 9-12 Exodus 1:8-11	Israelites
8	1609-1559 BC	Job 8:4-7, 11-13 Exodus 1	Israelites
9	1560-1510 BC	Job 9:23-26 Exodus 2, 34	Moses
10	1511-1461 BC	Job 10:16-19 Exodus 2	Moses
11	1462-1412 BC	Job 11:4-10, 16-17, 20 The Pentateuch, Exodus 33:11, Deut 30:11-15	Moses
12	1413-1363 BC	Job 12:15, 17-25 Joshua 10:12-14,11, Judges 10:7-8, Numbers 14:24,30	Joshua
13	1364-1314 BC	Job 13:6-22 Judges 3:7-11	Othniel & Judges in general
14-15	1315-1265 BC 1266-1216 BC	Job 14:4-6,12, 15:5,9,20-22,24,27,31-32 Judges 3:12-30, Acts 13:20-21	Ehud
16	1217-1167 BC	Job 16:5,7-8,16-17,19-21 Judges 6:12, Ruth 1:1,19-21, 4:13-17	Ruth, Naomi, Gideon
17	1168-1118 BC	Job 17:5,8-9 Judges 9	Abimelech
18	1119-1069 BC	Job 18:4-19 Judges 11-16	Jephthah, Samson
19	1070-1020 BC	Job 19:9,23-27 1 Samuel 4:10-22, 5, Exodus 33:15-20	Eli, Ichabod
20	1021-971 BC	Job 20:2-3,8,24-25,28 1 Samuel 13:8-14, 30:5, 31:3-4	Saul, Samuel, David
21	972-922 BC	Job 21:12-15,22,32-33 Psalm 150:1-6, Philippians 2:9-11	Solomon
22	923-873 BC	Job 22:23-28 1 Kings 12:13-16,26-28;14	Jeroboam
23	874-824 BC	Job 23:8-9 2 Kings 2:16-18	Elijah, Elisha
24	825-775 BC	Job 24:9,22-23 2 Kings 5:1-3	A slave girl, Naaman, Elisha
25	776-726 BC	Job 25:1-6 Jonah 4:5-11, Psalm 22:6-7	Jonah, Ashur-dan III
26-27	727-677 BC 678-628 BC	Job 26:11-13, 27:14-15,20-23 2 Kings 19:35-37	Israel, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon
28	629-579 BC	Job 28:7-8 Isaiah 39:1-6; Ecclesiastes 7:15-18	Hezekiah, Isaiah, Babylon
29	580-530 BC	Job 29:2-6,21-25 Lamentations 1:1-3	Babylonian Exile continues
30	531-481 BC	Job 30:12-15,31 Psalm 137:1-6, Nehemiah 1:3	Jerusalem
31	482-432 BC	Job 31:1-3,29-30 Exodus 17:14-16	Esther, Mordecai, Haman
32	433-383 BC	Job 32:17-22 Malachi 1:5	Socrates
33	384-334 BC	Job 33:23-26 Malachi 3:1	Malachi
34	335-285 BC	Job 34:6,13,18-20	Alexander the Great
35	286-236 BC	Job 35:5,10-11	Eratosthenes, Euclid
36	237-187 BCs	Job 36:10,22,26	Archimedes, Synagogues
37	188-138 BC	Job 37:2-8,20	The Septuagint
38	139-89 BC	Job 38:33	Hasmonean Kingdom, Rome
39	90-40 BC	Job 39:9-12,19-24,27-30 Isaiah 11:6, Habakkuk 1:8, Zephaniah 3:3, Ezekiel 22:25-27, Psalm 80:12-13	Rome, Jerusalem
40	41 BC-10 AD	Job 40:15-20 Daniel 2, Matthew 10:24, Revelation 13	Rome, Egypt
41	9-59 AD	Job 41:3-8,13,19,27,33 Revelation 11:4-5, Acts 2	Leviathan, Jesus Christ
42	58-108 AD	Job 42 Romans 5:11	The Church

The main theme of this clock is that after long centuries of worsening conditions in Israel, the hoped for year of Jubilee finally arrived. The law of the year of Jubilee called upon people to cancel debts, restore lost property and free slaves. The debt was sin, the property was a deed to a plot of land in the kingdom of heaven, and the slaves were all who were in bondage to Satan. Jesus was that Jubilee.

Here are some representative prophecies from "Prophecies from Abraham to David: Job 1-20":

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Chapter: 6

• Year range: 1707-1657 BC
• Subjects: Joseph & his brothers
• Cross-reference: Genesis 37, 39-47
• Discussion:

This was an eventful time.

• 1701 BC. Joseph born when Jacob was 91.
• 1695-1692 BC. Jacob wrestles with an angel.
• 1686 BC. Joseph, age 17, sold into slavery by his brothers.
• 1673 BC. Joseph, age 30, enters Pharaoh's service.
• 1673-1659 BC. Fourteen years plenty & famine in Egypt.
• 1662 BC. Jacob enters Egypt at the age of 130.

Parallels between Joseph’s story and Job 6 are obvious.

15 But my brothers are as undependable as intermittent streams,

as the streams that overflow

16 when darkened by thawing ice

and swollen with melting snow,

17 but that stop flowing in the dry season,

and in the heat vanish from their channels.

18 Caravans turn aside from their routes;

they go off into the wasteland and perish.

19 The caravans of Tema look for water,

the traveling merchants of Sheba look in hope.

20 They are distressed, because they had been confident;

they arrive there, only to be disappointed.

…

22 Have I ever said, ‘Give something on my behalf,

pay a ransom for me from your wealth,

23 deliver me from the hand of the enemy,

rescue me from the clutches of the ruthless’?

…

27 You would even cast lots for the fatherless

and barter away your friend.

- Job 6:15-20,22-23,27

Joseph’s ten brothers (excluding Benjamin) were worse than “undependable”, deciding to “barter away” their younger brother for cash to satisfy their jealous pride. Joseph longed for someone to “pay a ransom” for him, but Pharaoh’s cupbearer forgot for years to reciprocate the blessing that Joseph’s dream brought him. That man deserves Job’s earlier word:

“He who withholds kindness from a friend

forsakes the fear of the Almighty.”

- Job 6:14

Even the analogy of streams that “stop flowing in the dry season” matches the famine that plagued the land.

Amid all these trials, Jacob persevered and maintained hope in the dreams that God gave him as a boy. He retained his morals, as proved when he refused to commit adultery with Potiphar’s wife and behaved as a model prisoner. Truly, God’s words were as precious to him as they were to Job:

This would be my comfort;

I would even exult in pain unsparing,

for I have not denied the words of the Holy One.

- Job 6:10

The previous eras dealt with the challenges of fatherhood, marriage, family relationships, jealousy and mistreatment at work. Now we have outright betrayal. The turning point in Joseph’s story is when he forgives his brothers. What of Job?

Teach me, and I will be silent;

make me understand how I have gone astray.

- Job 6:24

There is no hint of forgiveness in Job 6, only Job’s plea that God teach him where he has gone wrong. That answer would await the final chapter, Job 42, when God commands Job’s friends to offer sacrifices of repentance and Job to grant them forgiveness. We have Joseph. We have Job. Will we wait until the end of our stories to forgive? Here is a prayer to consider:

This very day,

Lord, help me be

A friend or brother’s

Jubilee;

Forgiving,

Canceling,

Setting free,

The time and place

Are up to me.

Chapter: 11

• Year range: 1462-1412 BC
• Subject: Moses
• Cross-reference: The Pentateuch
• Discussion:

Chapters 9 and 10 of Job alluded to Moses, the helpless child, and Moses, the fugitive. With chapter 11, we meet Moses, the prophet. In verse 2, Zophar’s taunt inverts a fantastic blessing. “Should a multitude of words go unanswered, and a man full of talk be judged right?” No, the multitude of words should not go unanswered, but the proper answer is faith, obedience and gratitude. While Job by God’s affirmation spoke correctly about God by his multitude of words, what other man spoke a greater multitude of words of greater weight? Who but Moses! At least forty human authors penned the Bible, but none wrote more of it than Moses. Not only can Moses be “judged right”, it is by his words, the commandments he delivered to us from God, that all mankind shall be judged.

Of what other man besides the Savior can we say this?

For you say, ‘My doctrine is pure,

and I am clean in God's eyes.’

But oh, that God would speak

and open his lips to you,

and that he would tell you the secrets of wisdom!

For he is manifold in understanding.

Know then that God exacts of you

less than your guilt deserves.

- Job 11:4-6

Moses’ words constitute the very definition of what “doctrine is pure”. Not only did God “speak and open his lips to” Moses, he did one better. “Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend…” (Exodus 33:11a)

Now Zophar said one thing with which Job would agree in chapter 28. The path to wisdom is so long, so high, and so deep that we cannot reach it by our own effort.

Can you find out the deep things of God?

Can you find out the limit of the Almighty?

It is higher than heaven—what can you do?

Deeper than Sheol—what can you know?

Its measure is longer than the earth

and broader than the sea.

- Job 11:7-9

Yet what does Moses tell us? God has crossed that infinite gap to give His wisdom to us!

For this commandment that I command you today

is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.

It is not in heaven, that you should say,

‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us,

that we may hear it and do it?’

Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say,

‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us,

that we may hear it and do it?’

But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and

in your heart, so that you can do it.

See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.

- Deuteronomy 30:11-15

Earlier in this book there was talk of summons, by Pharaoh, God or Moses. The summons were a test of who had authority and who did not. This same question is posed in Job:

If he passes through and imprisons

and summons the court,

who can turn him back?

- Job 11:10

Pharaoh tried to keep the Hebrew people imprisoned. He failed. How did God “turn him back” when Pharaoh tried to stop them from leaving? He did it by working His wonders, two of which are echoed by Zophar’s words:

You will forget your misery;

you will remember it as waters that have passed away.

And your life will be brighter than the noonday;

its darkness will be like the morning.

- Job 11:16-17

The latter reference is to the plague of darkness. The former refers to the parting of the Red Sea (or less likely the plague of blood on the Nile). The final negative example summarizes the outcome of all that God did through Moses:

But the eyes of the wicked will fail;

all way of escape will be lost to them,

and their hope is to breathe their last.”

- Job 11:20, ESV

The sons and daughters of Israel were given an undeserved “way of escape”. We don’t deserve ours either, but the offer still stands.

Chapter: 13

• Year range: 1364-1314 BC
• Subjects: Othniel, Judges in General
• Cross-reference: Judges 3:7-11
• Discussion:

In 1358 BC, Joshua died and the era of the judges began. Othniel was the first judge and served forty years, the majority of this generation. This chapter of Job focuses on one theme: bringing a court case to God to be judged. The word “case” (as in court case) appears seven times in Job (in the ESV). The first appearance and greatest number of appearances fall in this chapter.

During the time of the Judges, God would allow Israel’s enemies to triumph over them as punishment and discipline for their transgressions. Then he would send a judge to rescue them. Compare this to Job’s powerful declaration of faith that the one who chastises him will also rescue him:

Though he slay me, I will hope in him;

yet I will argue my ways to his face.

This will be my salvation,

that the godless shall not come before him.

- Job 13:15-16

Instead of quoting most of Job chapter 13, here is a word porridge of phrases it includes related to the majesty of the prosecution of a court case:

argument… pleadings… falsely… deceitfully…

show partiality… plead the case… searches… deceive… rebuke…

show partiality… majesty… defenses… silence… speak… argue…

salvation… declaration… prepared my case…

in the right… contend… grant… withdraw…

call… answer… speak… reply.

- Job 13:6-22

Job even addresses the issue of the injustice of confessions obtained under duress:

Only grant me two things,

then I will not hide myself from your face:

withdraw your hand far from me,

and let not dread of you terrify me.

- Job 13:20-21

There is no question any longer. The chapters of Job are perfectly attuned to the spiritual and political situation in Israel. If you feel like you are being judged harshly, turn to Job.

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Now here are some representative prophecies from "Prophecies from Solomon to Christ: Job 21-42":

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Chapter: 22

• Year range: 923-873 BC
• Subject: Jeroboam
• Cross-reference: 1 Kings 12, 14
• Discussion:

For his pride, God tore half the kingdom from Rehoboam, son of Solomon. He gave it to Jeroboam, who ruled over the northern kingdom of Israel from 922-901 BC. However, because Jeroboam desired power more than obedience to God, the Lord withdrew His blessing. Thus in 913 BC, he lost the Battle of Mount Zemaraim. The core of his sin was using religion as a means to maintain control over his people. As if making one golden calf wasn’t bad enough, he made two!

And Jeroboam said in his heart,

“Now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David.

If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the

temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of

this people will turn again to their lord, to

Rehoboam king of Judah, and they will kill me

and return to Rehoboam king of Judah.”

So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold.

And he said to the people,

“You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough.

Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you

up out of the land of Egypt.”

- 1 Kings 12:26-28

The parallel verses in Job are spot on:

If you return to the Almighty you will be built up;

if you remove injustice far from your tents,

if you lay gold in the dust,

and gold of Ophir among the stones of the torrent-bed,

then the Almighty will be your gold

and your precious silver.

For then you will delight yourself in the Almighty

and lift up your face to God.

You will make your prayer to him, and he will hear you,

and you will pay your vows.

You will decide on a matter,

and it will be established for you,

and light will shine on your ways.

- Job 22:23-28

Jeroboam did not listen. His god was an idol of gold. His line of kings was not established and in his kingdom darkness reigned. In 1 Kings 14, the prophet Ahijah told Jeroboam’s wife that their son would die, even though the boy was good unlike his father. This is like what was written in Job:

But you say, ‘What does God know?

Can he judge through the deep darkness?

Thick clouds veil him, so that he does not see,

and he walks on the vault of heaven.’

Will you keep to the old way

that wicked men have trod?

They were snatched away before their time;

their foundation was washed away.

- Job 22:13-16

Thus the king’s son was snatched away before his time, as judgement from God. These words would find an opposite fulfillment in the next generation. In those days Elijah would pierce the clouds and walk on the vaults of heaven, snatched away not for judgement, but as a reward for faithfulness, on chariots of fire.

Chapter: 24

• Year range: 825-775 BC
• Subjects: A slave girl, Naaman, Elisha
• Cross-reference: 2 Kings 5
• Discussion:

This chapter of Job is about injustice against the poor. There was no lack of that during this generation. What is surprising is the grace that a powerful man received courtesy of his wife’s slave.

There are those who snatch the fatherless child from the breast,

and they take a pledge against the poor…

Yet God prolongs the life of the mighty by his power;

they rise up when they despair of life.

He gives them security, and they are supported,

and his eyes are upon their ways.

- Job 24:9,22-23

In this story, the fatherless child is a Jewish slave girl carried off to Syria by invading soldiers. The mighty who despaired of life was the enemy general, Naaman. The slave girl had mercy on her master, giving him advice about whom he could visit who would cure him of his leprosy.

Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria,

was a great man with his master and in high favor,

because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria.

He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper.

Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off

a little girl from the land of Israel, and she worked

in the service of Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress,

“Would that my lord were with the prophet who is

in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”

- 2 Kings 5:1-3

Thanks to the girl, whose name we never learn, Naaman journeys to see the prophet Elisha and is healed. This is a powerful example of the power of loving your enemy, which Jesus would one day repeat on a cosmic scale.

Jumping back to Job’s complaint in 24:22-23, I am humbled. Job was confused by God’s behavior. God seemed to be blessing these mighty but wicked people. When I read these words years ago, I assumed that Job was missing the big picture. Those wicked people would eventually get the justice they deserved. It was a matter of seeing God’s eternal plan. The blessings they received sprang from God patiently deferring his judgement upon them; their wealth was merely the fruit of their own wickedness left unpunished. Their increase derived from God being passive, not active. Thanks to the comparison with the story of Naaman, the full force of Job’s words hit me. God actively arranged for Naaman to be healed. God does as He teaches: He loves His enemies. Anyone who is not staggered by this reality like Job was is a fool. It is a glorious but terrifying reality.

This story deserves comparison to the clock’s theme of an anti-jubilee. The jubilee sets slaves free. Naaman’s compassionate slave girl was not set free. The jubilee restores property and cancels debts. Assyria, which had captured land and treasure from Israel, offered to pay Elisha for healing, but he refused payment. The Jubilee year begins with celebrating the Day of Atonement, a Jewish ritual. In the end, Naaman pleads for Elisha to pray for God to have mercy on him when he is required to stand beside his king at Assyria’s pagan temple. This is as anti-jubilee as it gets. God’s ways are beyond our understanding.

Chapter: 30

• Year range: 531-481 BC
• Subject: Jerusalem
• Cross-reference: Exilic Psalms, Nehemiah 1
• Discussion:

By the time of this generation, the Babylonian Exile was over, but Jerusalem and Judah remained in deep distress. Nehemiah would not return to rebuild until the next era, but the introduction to his book describes the state of affairs at this time.

And they said to me,

“The remnant there in the province who had survived

the exile is in great trouble and shame.

The wall of Jerusalem is broken down,

and its gates are destroyed by fire.”

- Nehemiah 1:3

The breaches in Jerusalem’s walls mirror Job’s analogy for the lack of protection plaguing him:

On my right hand the rabble rise;

they push away my feet;

they cast up against me their ways of destruction.

They break up my path;

they promote my calamity;

they need no one to help them.

As through a wide breach they come;

amid the crash they roll on.

Terrors are turned upon me;

my honor is pursued as by the wind,

and my prosperity has passed away like a cloud.

- Job 30:12-15

Job in this chapter also makes a musical analogy:

My lyre is turned to mourning,

and my pipe to the voice of those who weep.

- Job 30:31

By this time, most of the Old Testament had been written. The time of silence between the Testaments would soon begin, when the tongues of the prophets would be stilled. The most powerful words of Scripture written in these years were the Exilic Psalms. Among them, Psalm 137 stands out:

By the waters of Babylon,

there we sat down and wept,

when we remembered Zion.

On the willows there

we hung up our lyres.

For there our captors

required of us songs,

and our tormentors, mirth, saying,

“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How shall we sing the Lord's song

in a foreign land?

If I forget you, O Jerusalem,

let my right hand forget its skill!

Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,

if I do not remember you,

if I do not set Jerusalem

above my highest joy!

- Psalm 137:1-6

Exiled Jews mourned Jerusalem after it was destroyed. This prophecy in Job shows God’s deep compassion. The Lord began to mourn and sympathize prophetically with the people of Jerusalem a millennium earlier. His love endures forever. Though you enter a time of suffering today, the Lord’s compassion for you began before you were born.

Chapter: 35

• Year range: 286-236 BC
• Subjects: Eratosthenes, Euclid
• Cross-reference: N/A
• Discussion:

Elihu’s words are lofty:

Look at the heavens, and see;

and behold the clouds, which are higher than you...

Because of the multitude of oppressions people cry out;

they call for help because of the arm of the mighty.

But none says, ‘Where is God my Maker,

who gives songs in the night,

who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth

and makes us wiser than the birds of the heavens?’

- Job 35:5,10-11

As a new Christian, this passage of Job spoke to me more than any other, because I was once an oppressed person who literally sang songs in the night, seeking relief from despair. I sang those songs in college, in a place where people study the science of the heavens.

The start of this generation included the final decade of the life of Euclid, the famed Greek mathematician and teacher. A more fitting example of one prone to “look at the heavens” was Eratosthenes, chief librarian of Alexandria. He lived from 276-194 BC. Among his discoveries were a means to measure the circumference of the Earth and its axial tilt. He created the first global projection of the world. His library was the center of learning in the ancient world. In those days, God began to divulge to mankind the secrets of the heavens.

Chapter: 39

• Year range: 90-40 BC
• Subjects: Rome, Jerusalem
• Cross-reference: Isaiah 11:6, Habakkuk 1:8, Zephaniah 3:3, Ezekiel 22:25-27, Psalm 80:12:13
• Discussion:

The pivotal time for each beastly kingdom in Daniel’s prophecies is when it captures Jerusalem. This era saw Jerusalem change hands once again, when the Roman general Pompey besieged the city in 63 BC. The fourth beast in Daniel is called variously terrible and the legs of iron on a magnificent statue. In other Old Testament prophecies Rome is also symbolized by wolves, which fits Rome’s own origin myth of its founders, Romulus and Remus, being suckled by wolves.

The Roman legions marched behind a soldier (called an aquiline) bearing a special emblem, called a signa militaria. Over the years, the emblem design underwent changes. The most ancient standard employed by them is said to have been a handful (manipulus) of straw fixed to the top of a spear or pole. After that, they shifted to various animals, before Gaius Marius standardized upon the eagle in 104 BC. This means that the eagle became the primary symbol of Rome less than a score of years before this era began. According to Pliny the Elder, the full list of animals used as insignia is:

• eagle (the Aquila)
• wolf
• ox with a man's head
• horse
• boar

This would be a curiosity if not for the parables found in Job 39 and elsewhere. Rome is symbolized as:

• A wolf in Isaiah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Ezekiel.
• The wild ox is described in Job 39:9-12.
• The horse is described in Job 39:19-24.
• The boar only shows up once in the ESV (in Psalm 80), but it looks like it might also describe Rome.
• The eagle appears in Job 39:27-30.

Only a small number of empires ever broke down the walls of Jerusalem, Rome did it multiple times and its devastation was the worst:

Why then have you broken down its walls,

so that all who pass along the way pluck its fruit?

The boar from the forest ravages it,

and all that move in the field feed on it.

- Psalm 80:12-13

Finally, the last parable in Job 39 is about the eagle:

Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up

and makes his nest on high?

On the rock he dwells and makes his home,

on the rocky crag and stronghold.

From there he spies out the prey;

his eyes behold it from far away.

His young ones suck up blood,

and where the slain are, there is he.

- Job 39:27-30

The eagle nesting on high is Rome occupying Jerusalem. With three of Rome’s five military logos showing up in one chapter of Job and the other two matching imagery in other Bible prophecies, it looks like the Bible nailed it. These prophecies were given from centuries to over a millennia before Rome even existed. God’s foreknowledge is unassailable.

Of course, the other clock from Peace, like Solomon Never Knew, matching as its 39th era the years 1923-2042 AD, prophesied an even more astounding eagle-related event. Which eagle made its nest higher than any other nest in the history of eagle’s nests? That would be the eagle whose occupants in 1969 said:

*“The eagle has landed.” *

That eagle is the symbol of the new Rome.

Chapter: 40

• Year range: 41 BC - 10 AD (No year zero!)
• Subjects: Rome, Egypt
• Cross-reference: Daniel 2
• Discussion:

In 44 BC, on my birthday, the Ides of March, Julius Caesar was assassinated. Augustus Caesar, greatest of Rome’s emperors, succeeded him. This triggered over a decade of civil wars, ending in 32 BC with the Battle of Actium, whose loss prompted Antony and Cleopatra to commit suicide. This completed the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire.

The creation of the Roman Empire is memorialized in Job 40 and likened to a monstrous beast named Behemoth:

Behold, Behemoth,

which I made as I made you;

he eats grass like an ox.

Behold, his strength in his loins,

and his power in the muscles of his belly.

He makes his tail stiff like a cedar;

the sinews of his thighs are knit together.

His bones are tubes of bronze,

his limbs like bars of iron.

He is the first of the works of God;

let him who made him bring near his sword!

For the mountains yield food for him

where all the wild beasts play.

- Job 40:15-20

As noted in the previous section, the ox is one of the five animals used by Rome to represent their legions. Bronze is associated with Daniel’s third empire, Greece. Rome had bones of bronze because it adopted much from the Greeks: philosophy, mathematics and Greek as the trade language of the empire. Daniel’s fourth empire, generally accepted to be Rome, had legs of iron, matching that analogy. Finally, the place “where all the wild beasts play” is Egypt. It had previously been conquered by the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, and now in this era, the Romans. It would later be conquered by Islam. Egypt would become the breadbasket of the Roman Empire and “yield food for him”.

In prophecy, Behemoth shall have two incarnations. The first was Rome and the second shall be the beast from the sea of Revelation 13. One feature they share in common is a strong commitment to law and order, ruthlessly applied. Behemoth is therefore lawful evil, while Leviathan is chaotic evil. The laws of Behemoth may permit much evil and prohibit much good, but the stability it provides is not entirely devoid of benefits. The Pax Romana permitted a great expansion in world trade, preserved and advanced Greek philosophy, mathematics and science, and enriched its upper classes immensely.

Yes, Rome counts as “first of the works of God”. No empire comes close to lasting as long as it did, or having as great an influence upon the entire world. However, this verse applies to another of God’s works who was begotten in this era, the Incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ. These two, Rome and Jesus, belong together. In Job, God said, “Let him who made him bring near his sword!” Centuries later Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34) When the Roman emperor named Christianity the state religion in 380 AD via the Edict of Thessalonica, Rome became Christ’s sword, wielded by his church to spread the gospel.

Chapter: 41

Of all the prophecies in this generational clock, the most detailed and profound is contained in Job chapter 41. It prophesies the suffering and crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ and the establishment of a new covenant. It does this through negative philosophy, telling us all the good things that an evil sea serpent WILL NOT do for us. Those are the very things that are Lord DID do for us. This prophecy is described in the following article on this website:

The Journey Pattern

That is all for Job's Anti-Jubilee Clock. It ended with the greatest Jubilee, the coming of Christ who forgives all out debts.

You may be tempted to think that I cherry-picked the best prophecies to show here and that the ones I did not show are vague and weakly supported. No, I selected the prophecies from these chapters because they were the shortest!

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Job’s Chapter Clock

• Bible book: Job
• Book defined in: Peace, like Solomon Never Knew
• Chapters in book that describe it:
  • Let’s Synchronize Our Watches
  • Dialogue with History: Job 1-19
  • CSI Babylon: Job 20
  • The Second Half: Job 21-37
  • Father Time: Job 38-42
• Time span: 4020 BC–2280 AD
• Milestones: Creation to Second Coming of Christ
• Intervals: 42 (one per chapter of Job)
• Period: 119 years (except Adam & Methuselah)

On Subjectivity

The scale of the prophetic content in Job grew on me slowly over a period of years. After finding Job's "Job description for a savior", which named nine aspects of Jesus' ministry in chronological order, I entertained the possibility that there were more such clocks. This clock I found before the previous one (Job's Anti-Jubilee Clock). After the idea occurred to me, I set out to prove it. That meant trying to find at least one prophecy in each chapter of Job. That required a lot of digging. The clock runs from the Creation to Christ's second coming - all of human history!

A common criticism of attempts to match Bible statements to history is how subjective such correspondences are. On the surface, many verses can be matched to multiple events throughout history. The same criticism can be leveled against my matches, but with a difference. By dividing Job into forty-two parts and matching each to an era of history, I reduce the number of years that could contain an event that matches a passage from over six thousand years to just 119 years. This focusing effect diminishes the likelihood of a false match.

A second lens that focuses our attention is the Bible. For eras that preceded the Babylonian exile, the matching event must be one recorded in the Bible or alluded to by it. Some eras of history are scarcely mentioned in the Bible. A few verses or a chapter in one book may be all that the Bible has to say about that era. For one of Job's prophecies to match an event in one of those obscure generations by chance is unlikely.

A third lens appears on the other side of history, for eras that follow the birth of the Church. Those events must be related to the Church, Christian nations, the Jews or modern Israel. Again, this so limits the pool of possible matching events that when a match is found, most subjectivity has been removed.

The fourth lens is significance. If the Word predicts a plague, history is replete with plagues. The clock based on the Ten Commandments matches the plague of boils to the era of the Black Plague. That ranks as history's worst plague. Many of the prophecies in the clocks match the most extreme example in history of the type of event predicted. Such rankings testify to the objectivity of the clock interpretations. In this clock, for example, Job 12 prophecies a drought. It lines up with the Great Drought of the 13th century BC that was spoken of in the book of Ruth. This is considered to have been the worst drought in recorded history. It ended the Bronze age, brought down empires and led to the such disorder that every major city in the eastern Mediterranean from Greece to Egypt was burned to the ground.

The odds that the forty-two chapters of Job would all have such prophecies that match historical events in chronological sequence by chance is vanishingly small.

All that is great, but finding the matches was hard. I am not the first person to try to mine sequential Bible chapters, paragraphs or verses for prophecies arrayed in chronological order. Years ago I read a book by J.R. Church, Hidden Prophecies in the Psalms: I Will Open My Dark Saying Upon The Harp. He tried to match each Psalm to a year of the twentieth century. A few Psalms matched their assigned year well but the rest were not convincing, even to a credulous twenty-something. That soured me on the idea for decades. I would eventually make successful prophetic use of the Psalms in a systematic way in Plague, Precept, Prophet, Peace. To get there, I had to start with a narrow focus, Psalm 119 by itself. Next, I tackled the Historic Psalms and a few others. Later came the Thunder Psalms. Only after repeated attempts to discover the structure of the Psalms, which is the most complicated Bible book by far, did I find a large structure spanning the whole book that incorporated fifty psalms (with gaps) and another that made use of the first twenty-eight (without gaps). The punchline is this: even if you believe that a book contains a prophetic clock and scrutinize its parts, if you do not guess the correct start and end years and number of periods, you will fail. It is impossible test all possible combinations. That is why deciphering Solomon's poem was essential. It helped me crack several riddles and got me close with a few more.

Back to Job

Early on, I had identified a dozen or so reasonable matches for this clock in Job, but was still not convinced. My matches included the crucifixion of Christ and the Babylonian Exile. The Bible has so many prophecies of those two events that finding them in the "right" chapters of Job proves nothing. Other matches were vague. I needed to find a rare but significant event so rich in prophetic details that the match was beyond questioning. When I reached Job 20, the clock parameters defined the corresponding era as falling in the years 338-219 BC. Without that timing information, I would never have discovered what was prophesied, the identity of a blasphemous ruler who died a painful death. Previously, it was after I solved a series of Bible riddles that I inferred the clock that arranged them into a clock sequence. With Job 20, for the first time I cracked a mystery using the clock itself to guide me. In science, a good hypothesis is one that enables you to make accurate predictions about things not previously measured. In such cases, an experiment can be conducted after making the prediction which can confirm or reject the hypothesis. Job 20 confirmed my hypothesis. After that, I leaned heavily on the clock definitions to tell me where in history to look for the fulfillment of prophecy. The result was the discovery of hundreds of prophecies that have already come to pass. Many of those prophecies were not previously identified as such. Others were known to be prophecies by nobody had yet figured out when they came true.

Here is a list of all forty-two eras for this clock, which runs from the Creation until Christ's return. After that we will look at the mysterious ruler whose death was foreordained by Job 20, plus a few more prophecies from Job that are part of this clock.

Some of the eras are grouped together below. They correspond to runs of chapters having the same speaker in Job. One of the most surprising discoveries was that the tone of the speaker in Job dictates the the tenor of the times. A good speaker speaks of better times, while a bad speaker speaks of worse times. Thus Satan's chapters (one and two) were the worst of times and match the fall of man and Noah's flood. Job's chapters were better times while his friends' chapters were worse times. The times matching the speeches of Elihu and God also have their own distinct flavor.

God "pierced the fleeing serpent", binding Satan.
Rome split in two, East and West, as Daniel prophesied.

Era #	Year Range	Bible References	Subject of Prophecy
1-2	4020-2361 BC	Job 1:3 Genesis 2:8	Exile from Eden Garden of Eden was in the east and Job was "the greatest of all the people of the East"
3	2361-2242 BC	Job 3:3-15,19 Genesis 9:25-27	Origin of Slavery
4-5	2242-2004 BC	Job 4:18-19,5:19,21-24,26 Genesis 10	First beastly empire of Nimrod, Tower of Babel, decline in human lifespan
6-7	2004-1766 BC	Job 6:2-3,22-23;7:1-3 Genesis 22:17;31:40	Covenant with Abraham, Jacob toils for Laban
8	1766-1647 BC	Job 8:4,11-12,16-19 Genesis 37	Joseph sold into slavery in Egypt
9-10	1647-1409 BC	Job 9:8,25-26;10:5-8,17 Exodus 2,14; Joshua 22:34	Moses saved in a papyrus basket, Crossing the Red Sea Joshua conquers Canaan Confrontation with tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh
11	1409-1290 BC	Job 11:10-12 Judges 5:10;6:4;15:14-17; Judges 19:1-30;21:25	Time of the Judges begins People are as stubborn as donkeys
12-14	1290-933 BC	Job 12:15-17; Job 13:1,3-4,15,27; Job 14:7-9,21-23 Ruth 1:1; Samuel 1; Isaiah 11:1	Latter days of the Judges, especially Samson. Great Drought that ended the Bronze Age. Hannah, mother of Samuel. King David.
15	933-814 BC	Job 15:8-9,28,30 1 Kings 18	Elijah vs the Prophets of Baal
16-17	814-576 BC	Job 16:11-17;17:3,5,11-16 2 Kings 19; 2 Chronicles 36:23; Jeremiah 13:16,29:10-11	King Hezekiah versus Assyria. Cyrus, king of Persia's decree to rebuild Jerusalem.
18	576-457 BC	Job 18:7-11,14,16-19 Esther 7:7-10	Mordecai, Esther and Haman
19	457-338 BC	Job 19:9-13 Nehemiah	Nehemiah rebuilds the wall, but many Jews still in Exile. The crown (sovereignty over their own affairs) has been stripped from Israel's head.
20	338-219 BC	Job 20 Ancient secular historians: Flavius Arrianus, Ptolemy, Plutarch, Quintus Curtius	Death of Alexander the Great
21	219-100 BC	Job 21:14-15,17,19-20 1 Maccabees 6:1-17	Persecution of Jews by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Miracle of Hanukkah. Death of Antiochus.
22	100 BC - 19 AD	Job 22:2-4,28-30 Malachi 4:2 John 8:12,12:32	Birth of Jesus Christ, the Light of the World who came to "lift them up".
23	19-138 AD	Job 23:3-12,17 Matthew 6:11,27:45 John 13:33 Revelation 14:14	Ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Darkness during the crucifixion. Apostolic Age.
24	138-257 AD	Job 24	Roman Persecution of Christians.
25	257-376 AD	Job 25:1-6	Roman Persecution peaks, then is ended by Constantine.
26	376-495 AD	Job 26:2-4,10-13 1 Kings 7:21 Daniel 2:3	"How you have helped him who has no power!" - Job 26:2 By the Edict of Thessalonica (380 AD), Rome becomes a Christian Empire.
27	495-614 AD	Job 27:13-18,20-23	Plague of Justinian. Byzantine-Sasanian War. Benedictine Order founded.
28	614-733 AD	Job 28:16,19-21	Islam. Venerable Bede.
29	733-852 AD	Job 29:21,25 Inscription on Alcuin's Tomb	Charlemagne. Alcuin, wrote on Ethics (subject of Job 29). John Scottus Eriugna, wrote on freedom.
30	852-971 AD	Job 30:3	King Wenceslas
31	971-1090 AD	Job 31:7-10,38-40	The end of one season of sowing the gospel, including the Baptism of Rus in Kiev.
32	1090-1209 AD	Job 32:5-6,14,17-19	"his anger was aroused": the First Crusade.
33	1209-1328 AD	Job 33:23-24	Rules of war civilized though ransom. Saint Francis of Assisi.
34	1328-1447 AD	Job 34:6-7,20-21 Revelation 3:2	Black Plague: "his arrow inflicts an incurable wound". Advance of Ottoman Empire and Collapse of Byzantium.
35	1447-1566 AD	Job 35:5,9-11 2 Corinthians 3:17	Reformation, Copernican Revolution, Renaissance.
36	1566-1685 AD	Job 36:6-7,16,22,24,26-28,30,32-33	English Civil War, Educational Revolution in England. Pilgrims settling America, innovations in Christian hymn writing. Little Ice Age, William Gilbert's work on electricity. Ussher's work on Chronology. General Crisis of the 17th Century.
37	1685-1804 AD	Job 37:2-10,19-20,22	Little Ice Age continues, General Crisis of the 17th Century concludes Great Awakening, American Revolution
38	1804-1923 AD	Job 38:12-14,17-18,22-29,33,35,37-41	Righteous laws and social movements, like abolition of slavery. Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. Roald Amundsen reaches South Pole, "storehouses of the snow". Theory of Cloud Seeding. Electric power transmission, telegraph, telephone. Dominance of the British Empire, World War I.
39	1923-2042 AD	Job 39:3,5,9-12,19-25,27-30	Human needs met by great abundance Labor movement, reduced infant and maternal mortality Apollo Moon landing - "the eagle has landed"
40	2042-2161 AD	Job 40:9,19-23 Revelation 13:11	Behemoth empire arises from the land.
41	2161-2280 AD	Job 41:4,27,33 Revelation 13:1	Leviathan empire arises from the sea.
42	2280 AD - ?	Job 42	Christ returns!

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Selections from Job's Chapter Clock.

The prophecies in Job capture the full sweep of human history and warn of trying times to come. It is impossible to believe this without seeing how detailed and accurate some of these prophecies are. What follows is a sampling drawn from the following chapters in Peace, like Solomon Never Knew:

• Dialog with History: Job 1-19
• CSI Babylon: Job 20
• The Second Half: Job: 21-37
• Father Time: Job 38-42

Predictive prophecy is a prominent target for those wishing to deny the supernatural and undermine trust in the truthfulness of Scripture. A common tactic is to argue that if a prophecy is undeniably detailed and accurate, it must have been written after the event happened. The earliest Old Testament fragments only date back to the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls (3rd century BC to first century AD). The earliest New Testament testament fragments date back to the second century AD and the earliest complete New Testament (Codex Sinaiticus) to the third century. Thus critics of Bible prophecy argue from silence. According to them, any prophecies of events that occurred before the time of Christ can be discounted.

The more than two score prophetic clocks that I have found refute their arguments. If events from the last thousand years were prophesied then there is no way for them to use this argument. Furthermore, if a whole sequence of prophecies in an unbroken strand from ancient to modern times exists, then the accuracy of the newer prophesies proves more than just the truthfulness and divine origin of the prophet's words about recent times. The prophecies of later times, being structurally bound to the prophecies of older times, prove that those earlier prophecies were written down before the events happened. The clock structure makes the whole set of prophecies an all-or-nothing deal. It is God's secret anti-counterfeiting measure. If a later deceiver inserted a chapter, it would break the clock. If they removed a chapter, it would break the clock. If they altered a true prophecy or tried to insinuate a prophecy of their own, it would corrupt a structure they did not even know about. It is like an art forger who tried to imitate a painting but didn't know that the true artist signed his work with a pigment that glows under a black lamp.

The preceding is preamble to one of the most remarkable prophecies I have discovered so far: Job 20. To my knowledge, no one has ever spotted this prophecy. Read about it here:

The Death of Alexander the Great

Now here are a few shorter and sometimes subtler prophecies.

Chapter: Job 9

• Year range: 1647-1528 BC
• Subjects: Moses
• Cross-reference: Exodus 2
• Discussion:

“My days are swifter than a runner;

they fly away without a glimpse of joy.

They skim past like boats of papyrus,

like eagles swooping down on their prey.

- Job 9:25-26, NIV

The unintended irony of Job! He likens the swiftness of a boat made of papyrus – swift because it is so light – to the course of his life; Job expected to die soon. In this era, what role did a boat of papyrus play? Not exactly a boat, a basket of papyrus rescued Moses from drowning in the Nile.

Later in the first generation of this era, Moses rescued his people from Egypt.

“who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea...” (9:8)

Is that not a poetic image of the people crossing the Red Sea?

Chapter: Job 12

• Year range: 1290-1171 BC
• Subjects: Famine during Ruth's lifetime
• Cross-reference: Ruth 1:1
• Discussion:

This era fell in the middle of the time of the Judges, during the life of Ruth and Naomi. In Ruth 1:1, we learn there was famine in the land. See what Job says:

If he withholds the waters, they dry up;

if he sends them out, they overwhelm the land.

- Job 12:15

You might say, “Anyone can predict a drought. They come all the time. Big deal.” Not so. Scientists concerned about global warming are attempting to reconstruct ancient climates so as to understand our own times. They conclude that sometime between 1250 and 1150 BC, the Ancient Near East endured the fifty year “Great Drought”, the worst in recorded history. It ended the Bronze Age, shattered empires and was the cause of the famine that made Ruth and Naomi leave their home for Israel. Every major city between Pylos in Greece and Gaza was burned to the ground.

For more on this, see:

Smith, Roff. “Drought Led to Collapse of Civilizations, Study Says: Study of fossilized pollen helps solve an intriguing historical mystery.” National Geographic. 2013. Referenced on Jan. 12, 2031 from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131024-drought-bronze-age-pollen-archaeology/

Chapter: Job 18

• Year range: 576-457 BC
• Subjects: Haman's genocidal plot against the Jews
• Cross-reference: Esther
• Discussion:

Job talks about a scheming man who suffers the fate he had intended to inflict on others:

His strong steps are shortened,

and his own schemes throw him down.

For he is cast into a net by his own feet,

and he walks on its mesh.

A trap seizes him by the heel;

a snare lays hold of him.

A rope is hidden for him in the ground,

a trap for him in the path...

He is torn from the tent in which he trusted

and is brought to the king of terrors...

His roots dry up beneath,

and his branches wither above.

His memory perishes from the earth,

and he has no name in the street.

He is thrust from light into darkness,

and driven out of the world.

He has no posterity or progeny among his people,

and no survivor where he used to live.

- Job 18:7-11,14,16-19

Who was caught in his own trap? Who hung from a rope? Who ran afoul of a king? Whose children perished along with him, ending his family line? It was Haman, who was bested by Mordecai and Esther around 473 BC. In the Book of Esther, this influential court official persuaded the King of Persia to allow him and his allies to exterminate the Jewish people. He set up a gallows so that he could kill a Jew named Mordechai, but ended up being hung on it himself.

One reason these prophetic clocks are difficult to interpret is that to get the full prophetic understanding of an era, you must overlay the results from multiple clocks. By combining all the details, you see enough to convince you that they are real. In Solomon's Celestial Clock, the story of Esther falls during "a time to kill". Proud Haman longed to kill Mordechai and all the Jews. In Plague, Precept, Prophet, Peace, another structure in Job is revealed. Successive speeches in Job correspond to God's judgments against a series of ten empires, one for each of the ten commandments. The judgement for breaking the sixth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill", falls on the sixth kingdom in the series, which is Medo-Persia. Here is a quote from the chapter "The Meaning of the Beasts of Job":

All these empires practiced murder, but the Achaemenid dynasty

of Persia took it to a whole new level. From Cyrus the Great

to Artaxerxes V, about thirteen kings (depending on who is counting)

reigned from thrones drenched in blood. Seven were assassinated.

One was executed by Alexander the Great. One died later from a wound

inflicted by a would-be assassin. One died in war. At least three

killed family members or high-ranking noblemen. Artaxerxes III

took the cake, slaughtering eighty family members to secure the throne.

This lust for murder explains the casual way that Xerxes (likely

the ruler when Esther was queen) initially agreed to Haman’s plan

for genocide against all the Jews in the Book of Esther.

Yes, Persia needed to be taught the sixth commandment.

What if you add to this the fact that Mordecai uncovered and

stopped a plot against the king, thus preventing his murder?

God displays his holiness and mercy even against murderous kings.

We can add to this results from the clock explored in the chapter "Solomon's Sundial", where this verse of Ecclesiastes corresponds to the era in which Esther lived:

Wisdom gives strength to the wise man

more than ten rulers who are in a city.

- Ecclesiastes 7:19

The wise man who was strengthened was Mordechai. What was the evidence of his wisdom? He loved his enemy, a king who oppressed his people, by disclosing a plot aginst him. Surely this was a wisdom taught him by God. The "ten rulers who are in a city" were Haman's ten sons. When they perished along with him, their family line ended. You do not need strength in numbers to win if the One True God fights for you.

Chapter: Job 24

• Year range: 138-257 AD
• Subjects: Roman Persecution of Christians
• Cross-reference: Revelation 2:8-11
• Discussion:

The 24th generation was a mixed one. The church spread, but so did persecution. In other generations, the subject of the prophecy was a king, a conqueror, or the savior. This time, the subject is the suffering church. In Job 24, Job is angry at the mistreatment of the poor who do not receive justice or relief from their oppressors. If you compare the hardships Job describes, persecuted Christians endured all of them. Rather than get lost in the poetry, here is a dry recitation of the afflictions listed in Job 24:

• theft of land, flocks, donkeys, oxen
• restricted freedom of movement
• enslavement
• loss of protection
• lack of work opportunities
• no clothes or shelter
• loss of money & possessions
• children seized to pay a debt
• lack of food & drink
• poor health
• poor emotional well-being (groaning, crying out)
• loss of life

Paul listed many of these trials in Romans 8 and the writer of Hebrews listed more in Hebrews 11 when he spoke of the heroes of the faith. Looking back to the seven pieces of peace based on Ecclesiastes 3, these depredations attack all seven. In spite of such opposition, this generation of history ended with Christians entering into the forty year long “little peace of the church”. God listened to Job’s plea after all.

Do not miss the implications of this chapter of Job. Thousands of years in advance, God knew the suffering that His church would endure. Any who believe in God accept that He knows all things. That is not why God tells us these things. He tells us these things so that we can know how much He cares. He tells us these things so that we can know He has a plan to fix the world and that this plan takes our feelings, our dashed dreams and crushed spirits into account. His is not a mechanical and impersonal plan. It is a personal and an intimate plan for our restoration. God can handle our toughest questions:

Why are not times of judgment kept by the Almighty,

and why do those who know him never see his days?

- Job 24:1

He does set those times and He keeps them. We shall surely see His days come to pass.

Chapter: Job 26

• Year range: 376-495 AD
• Subjects: Rome becomes a Christian Empire
• Cross-reference: Revelation 2:12-17
• Discussion:

Job 26 has this to say:

“How you have helped him who has no power!

How you have saved the arm that has no strength!

How you have counseled him who has no wisdom,

and plentifully declared sound knowledge!

With whose help have you uttered words,

and whose breath has come out from you?

- Job 26:2-4

Though Job was mocking his opponents, this describes what God was doing for his church in the 26th generation. By making Rome a Christian empire, he helped a powerless church. By providing ample resources and sending the breath of God – the Holy Spirit – God raised up great thinkers to counsel the church.

He has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters

at the boundary between light and darkness.

The pillars of heaven tremble

and are astounded at his rebuke.

- Job 26:10-11

The “face of the waters” represents the people of the world. The circle is the Mediterranean world of Rome. Outside that circle was the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, inside, the light of the gospel. During this time, Rome split into two pillars, East and West. This mirrors Daniel’s prophecy of the statue with the head of gold. The parts of the statue corresponding to Rome were the legs of iron.

"And he set up the pillars in the porch of the temple:

and he set up the right pillar, and called the name thereof Jachin:

and he set up the left pillar, and called the name thereof Boaz."

- 1 Kings 7:21

Solomon’s temple also had two main pillars. Jachin signifies he shall establish. As the right pillar, it was the Eastern Roman Empire of Byzantium. For its history, it represented the establishment church, with the tightest connection between church and state. Boaz signifies in him is strength. This is the Western Roman Empire. Though it fell first politically and fought for centuries to survive the chaos of the mass migrations of Germanic and other peoples and attendant political instability, the west proved stronger, and became the agent to spread the gospel to the greatest part of the earth. In the west, the church fought hard to be freed of the corrupting control of the state and finally succeeded.

By his power he stilled the sea;

by his understanding he shattered Rahab.

By his wind the heavens were made fair;

his hand pierced the fleeing serpent.

- Job 26:12-13

Rahab has multiple meanings in the Bible. It can mean insolence or pride, be a terrible sea serpent, or refer to the woman of Jericho who protected the Israelite spies. It also refers to Egypt. During this period, the church of Alexandria reached the zenith of its influence within the empire. Thus the shattering of Rahab could mean the victory of the church over hostile forces within Egypt, such as the Arian heresy, which began in Alexandria.

Since verse 13 refers to a fleeing serpent, Rahab here is either a synonym for Leviathan, or a different beastly empire posing similar danger to the faithful. In Job 41, God challenges Job to pierce Leviathan with a fishhook. No mortal can, but the immortal God can. What occurred in this generation? Satan was bound (following the Edict of Thessalonica in AD 380), causing him to lose control over the Roman Empire. The empire was caught on a fishhook, hence it could be controlled and guided by the fisherman. Remember how Jesus told his disciples that he would make them “fishers of men”? The heirs of Saint Peter caught a really big fish!

This is not a trifling prophecy that Job was given. God took a weak, persecuted people in thrall to the greatest and longest lasting empire the world has ever known and turned that power over to them. This is the ultimate example of "How you have helped him who has no power". Despite this, how many people do you know that turn to Job to understand God's prophetic plan for the world? I read Job for years and saw NONE OF THIS. That is how spiritually deaf we are.

Chapter: Job 36

• Year range: 1566-1685 AD
• Subjects: England and the American Colonies
• Cross-reference: William Gilbert, James Ussher
• Discussion:

If Job were written by a false prophet a thousand years after the real man lived, what would you expect? The earlier prophecies would be detailed, because the author already knew the outcome; they happened before he was born. Then as the prophecies go farther and father into the future, they would become more vague. If they did match history, it would be a strange and subjective match, like something by Nostradamus. Instead, what do we find? The details become clearer and richer. This is partly because I know much about recent history and comparatively little about medieval history or before. It is easier for me to find matches to happenings since the Reformation. Job 36 exhibits this nicely.

The theme of Job 36 is “God is not powerless”. The aftermath of the Protestant Reformation was scores of wars. The Thirty Years War alone claimed millions of lives, including half the population of Germany. All those armies and soldiers proved unable to extinguish the Protestant faith, because God granted a measure of His power to Lutherans, Calvinists, and other groups striving to worship God as their conscience commanded.

He does not keep the wicked alive

but gives the afflicted their rights.

He does not take his eyes off the righteous;

he enthrones them with kings

and exalts them forever.

- Job 36:6-7, NIV

God did grant the afflicted their rights. Consider the strange wording here. He enthrones them not as kings, but with kings. During the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans and other like-minded Christians executed the king of England and briefly ruled England, not as kings, but as a commonwealth with a parliament. How did England progress to the point that such a large resistance was able to rise up and oppose the crown? Furthermore, many monarchs have been overthrown throughout history, but they were always replaced by another king. Where did they get the ideas and skills to fashion another form of government, even if it failed after a short time?

They got them in school.

God is exalted in his power.

Who is a teacher like him?

- Job 36:22, NIV

Lawrence Stone, in “The Educational Revolution in England 1500-1640”, revealed something remarkable. Between the Reformation and the mid-seventeenth century, England built schools. Lots of schools! In fact, the number of schools increased more than tenfold. Puritans especially were keen to teach everyone h ow to read so that they could read the Bible. England devoted one quarter of all charitable funds to the construction of schools and their endowment, so that the poor could be educated. By the end of this period, over half of all people in England could read.

This carried up to the college level. By 1640, Stone estimated that a minimum of 2.5 % of all Englishmen had a college degree. Don’t be fooled: that was a lot. After the civil war college enrollment dropped, due to economic and other reasons. It would not be until the 1930s – three centuries later – that the proportion of college educated men would again reach that number. Stone relates contemporary opinion of this development:

In the middle of the seventeenth century both natives and foreigners were struck by the remarkable educational attainments of nobility and gentry. James Harrington reminded his fellow-countrymen that "you have, or have had, a nobility or gentry the best studied, and the best writers (at least next to Italy) in the whole world". "I think the English Nobility and Gentry are now as learned as ever in any Age they have been; and as the Nobility and Gentry of any other Nation is", remarked Edward Waterhouse with truly English love of understatement.

So what was the basis for the English people to yearn for and fight for a more just political order? They were the best educated people the world up to that time had ever seen. What of the Colonies they were planting in America? Massachusetts required every town of fifty families to support a schoolmaster, and every town of a hundred families to build a school. The Puritans were crazy about education and founded Harvard University in 1636, less than two decades after the Pilgrim’s landed. Truly, who is a teacher like him?

How about them Pilgrims? Consider what these verses might mean:

He is wooing you from the jaws of distress

to a spacious place free from restriction,

to the comfort of your table laden with choice food.

- Job 36:16

That sure sounds like religious refugees “wooed” into leaving Europe, now celebrating the first Thanksgiving in a new place, “free from restriction”.

Remember to extol his work,

which people have praised in song.

- 36:24, NIV

Many have remarked about the “Hymn Explosion” of the 18th century, led by Isaac Watts, the father of the English Hymn. How much poorer would we be without “When I survey the wondrous cross”, “Joy to the world”, or “I sing the almighty power of God”? However, the bursting forth of song in that century was due to a revolution in this one, the 17th. The century began with metrical psalms whose authors studiously avoided making changes to the words of the Psalms that could make them scan and rhyme. This made their doctrine sound at the expense of making many almost unsingable. Most congregational singing followed a responsorial form called “lining out”. Those “versified psalms” continued to employ chanting styles and musical forms from Medieval times. The century ended with “freely composed hymns”. They were original English compositions instead of translations, and were loosely derived from Bible texts using a chord structure similar to what we are accustomed to today. Edna Dorintha Parks, in her 1957 Phd. Dissertation “English Hymns and their Tunes in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”, explored the rich legacy of hymns from that generation that Watts and his contemporaries had to build upon. We may have forgotten their songs of praise, but they were offered to God, and He heard them.

He draws up the drops of water,

which distill as rain to the streams;

the clouds pour down their moisture

and abundant showers fall on mankind.

- Job 36:27-28

The 17th century was plagued by the onset of the Little Ice Age, characterized by cold winters and wet summers. This shortened the growing season by three weeks and caused glaciers to advance. The resulting crop failures exacerbated the death toll from the wars of religion.

See how he scatters his lightning about him,

bathing the depths of the sea...

He fills his hands with lightning

and commands it to strike its mark.

His thunder announces the coming storm;

even the cattle make known its approach.

- Job 36:30,32-33

Were not the wars and revolutions of that time with their thundering cannon storm enough for this comparison? With another prophetic detail, Elihu shines a light on a remarkable scientific discovery of that age, the magnetic model of the earth. The Englishman William Gilbert was the first man to use the word electricity. He wrote De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus, et de Magno Magnete Tellure, On the Magnet and Magnetic Bodies, and on That Great Magnet the Earth. He not only put forth the idea that the earth is a big magnet, he hypothesized that the center of the earth is made of iron. He believed (incorrectly) that this magnetic force was what kept the moon in orbit around the earth. Though wrong, his ideas inspired Johannes Kepler who later derived the laws of planetary motion. Gilbert also rejected the idea that the stars sat on spheres, and postulated that vast numbers of unseen stars existed beyond those we could see.

Given the connection to Gilbert’s theories of electricity and magnetism as well as the thunder of war, these verses refer to the scientific and political revolutions that were about to unfold. Those two ideas would intersect in the next generation in the person of Benjamin Franklin, who demonstrated that lightning consists of electricity and also agitated for that coming storm: the American Revolution.

To us, the arrival of storms is unpredictable. To God, everything is timed to perfection:

How great is God—beyond our understanding!

The number of his years is past finding out.

- Job 36:26

In his two volumes on Biblical Chronology, published in 1650 and 1654 AD, Bishop James Ussher improved upon the Venerable Bede’s work from centuries before. It is impossible to comprehend prophecy when history is disordered and mismeasured. This author would never have made his discoveries if not for Ussher’s patient scholarship. In every way, as we approach the Day of the Lord, the church is making progress in deducing the full and accurate meaning of God’s Word. “The number of his years” is still fuzzy, but before that day arrives, that number will come into focus.

Chapter: Job 38

• Year range: 1804-1923 AD
• Subjects: The Age of Missions
• Cross-reference: ?
• Discussion:

In the chiastic outline of Elihu and God’s speeches in Job Rises, the theme of chapter 38 is “God speaks of his power”. The social upheaval and turmoil of this generation and the one to follow it (our own) are His doing, unparalleled in human history.

The earth takes shape like clay under a seal;

its features stand out like those of a garment.

- Job 38:14, NIV

How did God put his stamp upon humanity during this generation?

• Slavery forcefully outlawed in most of the world
• Serfs freed in Russia
• Dalits (untouchables) & other low caste peoples in British India enjoyed modest improvements in status and rights
• Women gained the right to vote and hold office in dozens of nations
• Democratic institutions matured
• Prisons reformed
• Public education expanded, literacy increased
• Mentally ill treated more humanely
• Old age pensions instituted
• Science, Medicine & public health advanced
• Agriculture, industry & transportation revolutionized
• Christianity spread by missionaries worldwide

Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?

Tell me, if you know all this.

Job 38:18, NIV

Explorers searched out those “vast expanses”, with Roald Amundsen in 1911 reaching the South Pole, the heart of earth’s greatest “storehouse of snow”.

Have you entered the storehouses of the snow

or seen the storehouses of the hail,

which I reserve for times of trouble,

for days of war and battle?

- Job 38:22-23, NIV

Those storehouses proved decisive against Napoleon in 1812. First, the Russian Winter, worsened by the continuing Little Ice Age, killed, crippled or captured hundreds of thousands of Napoleon’s soldiers, humbling the largest army ever assembled in Europe up to that time. This was critical, because Napoleon’s treaties, alliances, and wars were directed at isolating and weakening Britain, God’s primary agent for eradicating slavery throughout the world. After Napoleon returned from exile in Elba following his first defeat, he was bested once more by bad weather. Torrential rains contributed to his downfall at Waterloo in 1815. What caused those rains? According to Caroline Brogan, scientists finally have a logical explanation: volcanoes.

In “Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo caused in part by Indonesian volcanic eruption”, Brogan lays out the case. Six volcanoes erupted between 1808 and 1815 with a VEI (Volcanic Explosivity Index) of four or more, the last being Mount Tambora in Indonesia with a VEI magnitude of seven, the most powerful eruption in 1,300 years. When volcanic ash fills the atmosphere, it blocks the sun, cooling the earth. The major impact of the final eruption was felt in 1816, the famous “year without a summer”.

Have the gates of death been shown to you?

Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?

- Job 38:17

Snow in June and frost in August caused crop failure, famine, and widespread typhus outbreaks.

From whose womb comes the ice?

Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens

- Job 38:29

The death and suffering was felt worldwide. It forced many New Englanders to migrate, accelerating America’s westward expansion. Eery fog blocked the light of the sun at midday. Mary Shelley and her friends in England encamped together to wait it out. The macabre noctilucent clouds, fog, and chill put them in a strange mood so they challenged each other to see who could write the scariest story. Shelley wrote Frankenstein.

The strangest effect of the volcano was on the ionosphere. The ash short-circuited the earth’s electric field, producing a pulse of cloud formation two months later on the other side of the world, handing the victory to Wellington and leaving England as Europe’s dominant power.

What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed,

or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?

Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,

and a path for the thunderstorm,

to water a land where no one lives,

an uninhabited desert,

to satisfy a desolate wasteland

and make it sprout with grass?

Does the rain have a father?

Who fathers the drops of dew?

- Job 38:24-28, NIV

Yes, God prepared the snow and ice for “days of war and battle” and destroyed Napoleon's Grand Armee, one of the largest armies ever assembled. He used volcanoes to disperse lightning and cause condensation, literally fathering the drops of dew.

God offered mankind this challenge:

Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?

Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens

when the dust becomes hard

and the clods of earth stick together?

- Job 38:37-38

In 1891, Louis Gathmann first theorized a means of seeding clouds using liquid CO2 to cause rain on command, to tip the water jars of heaven. Practical methods would become feasible during the next generation. The laws of gravity were discovered during the previous generation, but during this time, men like Gauss, Faraday and Maxwell discovered the laws of electromagnetism:

Do you know the laws of the heavens?

Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?

Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?

Do they report to you,

‘Here we are’?

- Job 38:33,35, NIV

How amazing! It was during this generation that mankind learned just that – how to send lightning bolts on their way. Samuel F. B. Morse, Leonard Gale, and Joseph Henry created the Telegraph, which can report “Here we are” at great distances. This was followed by the telephone (by Meucci of Italy, Borseul of France, and Bell of America), and electrical power transmission systems of Edison, Tesla and Westinghouse. Truly, in those days, God spoke of his power – electric power. Even Bell acknowledged this, for his first Telegraph message was, “What hath God wrought?”

What God wrought during this period was to thrust England into prominence as the greatest empire of all time:

Do you hunt the prey for the lioness

and satisfy the hunger of the lions

when they crouch in their dens

or lie in wait in a thicket?

- Job 38:39-40, NIV

Who was the lioness? Victoria, Queen of England and Empress of India. Britain’s symbol is a lion, and Victoria ruled as its lioness for sixty-three years. She reigned longer than all her predecessors and oversaw a massive expansion of the British Empire. Many peoples fell prey to her navy. At one point, Britain devoted a quarter of all expenditures to fighting the slave trade on land and sea.

Have you ever given orders to the morning,

or shown the dawn its place,

that it might take the earth by the edges

and shake the wicked out of it?

- Job 38:12-13, NIV

It was once said that “the sun never sets on the British Empire”. For a time, a part of Britain was always seeing the dawn. She took the whole earth by the edges (roughly a quarter of all the world’s land and people) and shook the wicked – slave traders – out of it.

And for her pride and thievery of the wealth of the nations, for exceeding the authority granted to her by God, England would be punished in the next generation by the Second World War, then be stripped of most of her colonies. As for this generation, it ended with the horror of the Great War.

Who provides food for the raven

when its young cry out to God

and wander about for lack of food?

- Job 38:41, NIV

God provided food for the raven, from the corpses littering the battlefields of Europe. The end of Job 38 announced the end of the great kingdoms and empires of Europe.

If you combine what we learn here in Job 38 with the results from other clocks, we better understand what God was doing in this era. According to Solomon's Celestial Clock, this era was "A time to speak". It was the church doing the speaking. In this era, God gave the church the telegraph, telephone and radio to facilitate the spread of the gospel. Humans needed to master the science of electromagnetism so that we could create these inventions. All that is named here, as well as the adventurous spirit to travel even to the South Pole in pursuit of this goal. Anyone who can read Job 38 and not be in awe of how perfectly its words capture that time in history is blind to its brilliance.

Job 39

• Year range: 1923-2042 AD

My book describes many societal changes prophesied in Job 39. That chapter is as marvelous as chapter 38. However, in the interest of brevity, I will only give one, which relates to God's speech about the eagle. Who could that eagle be?

Does the eagle soar at your command

and build its nest on high?

It dwells on a cliff and stays there at night;

a rocky crag is its stronghold.

From there it looks for food;

its eyes detect it from afar.

Its young ones feast on blood,

and where the slain are, there it is.

- Job 39:27-30, NIV

The United States is symbolized by an eagle. We built a nest on a cliff higher than any other nation: on the moon. The lunar module was named Eagle, and when we landed, Neil Armstrong said, “The Eagle has landed.” During this generation, America has enjoyed peace, but also fought in over forty wars. When we pursue our enemies, we see them from afar: using aircraft, orbiting satellites and drones. This combination of two ideas – God’s plentiful provision and reference to America – define America as the most blessed nation the world has ever seen. Where is our gratitude?

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The Shepherd’s Clock

• Bible book: Psalm 119
• Book defined in: Peace, like Solomon Never Knew
• Chapter in book that describes it: Psalm 119: The Shepherd’s Clock
• Time span: 4020 BC–19 AD
• Milestones: Creation to Incarnation of Christ
• Intervals: 22 (one per 8 verse stanza)
• Period: 119 years (except Adam & Methuselah)

Among the portions of the Bible that aided in my discovering and synchronizing the many prophetic clocks, Psalm 119 was pivotal. I had found one clock whose period seemed to be 120 years (Solomon's) and another that was 119 years (the Cosmic Chiasm). I was convinced I must be mistaken about one of them, but which? I was stuck. Until I resolved the question I could not make further progress.

Here is the final section of the chapter "Let's Synchronize our Watches" in Peace, like Solomon Never Knew. It describes my conundrum and how it is an example of a technique used by God to conceal His wisdom.

The Punchline: Pride

Why did I just waste a chapter of this book talking about harmonization attempts that failed? It comes down to trust. After clearing away problems that could be resolved easily, two irreconcilable ideas remained. One idea was the pattern from Job Rises that I began working on about seven years ago. It was my baby and sprang from my own imagination. It was the genesis of all my work on eschatology, my first breakthrough. The opposing idea was that “a time to uproot” must encompass the years of the Babylonian Exile. In my spirit, the conviction arose to trust the Word and not my own ideas, however precious. I needed to admit that my own ideas, which provided a good enough approximation to get me started, needed to be revised. The pride of the scholar is his fiercest opponent.

So it was not a bloodless argument about dates and formulas. It was a stubborn refusal to surrender. How consequential was this surrender? It almost caused me to abandon my research; it almost prevented me from discovering the most important prophetic structures and writing the rest of this book. Every time a new idea wouldn’t mesh with what I already had, I would tell God, “That’s it! I won’t go any further.” Then I would pray for a way to resolve the inconsistency. If I didn’t find a path around the obstacle, I was ready to quit. God’s Word is perfect. If my interpretation has obvious flaws, I will not put it before the world. Deceiving others with clever ideas just to bolster my pride is not something I am willing to do.

This work is both a creative and a critical process. Most new ideas are useless and wrong, but unless you search for them and work through them, you will never get to the true and useful ones. You must alternate between flights of fancy and careful parsing of Scripture, theology and history. Sometimes you need to run a long way with a crazy idea that lacks support just to see if it fits. When mathematical and historical analysis suggested that periods of 119 years fit some prophecies and those of 120 years fit others, that seemed crazy. One had to be right and the other wrong, but each had compelling reasons to be accepted. However, if both are true, it goes a long way toward explaining why these prophetic structures have not been spotted before. That was part of “the glory of God … [concealing] a matter”. Evidence for one can be taken as evidence against the other, and so each pattern perfectly hid the other.

Let’s unhide them! Let’s search out the glory of kings! Next stop: Psalm 119.

Psalm 119: More than a number, but not less

How I interacted with this psalm over the years on my path to deeper understanding offers a lesson in how to absorb wisdom from God's Word. The process is not linear. Normal rules of hermeneutics will only get you so far. The wisdom books are filled with riddles, parables and other devices designed to conceal God's intent. Only by careful study, meditation and a worshipful attitude will you pierce those mysteries. You don't believe me? The Psalmist tells us it is so!

That solving God's riddles requires meditation and worship is told here:

My mouth shall speak wisdom;

the meditation of my heart shall be understanding.

I will incline my ear to a proverb;

I will solve my riddle to the music of the lyre.

- Psalm 49:3-4

The sayings are dark. Some are dark because they speak of evil days. All are dark because you must shine light upon them to uncover their truths.

Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;

incline your ears to the words of my mouth!

I will open my mouth in a parable;

I will utter dark sayings from of old,

things that we have heard and known,

that our fathers have told us.

- Psalm 78:1-3

When I shone a light on Psalm 78, it unlocked wonderful mysteries, as recounted in the chapter "Psalm 78: Preparation of a Nation". How did I shine a light on Psalm 119? First, I was inspired by it. The first time I read it, I was a new believer. Family, MIT college friends and colleagues tried to argue me out of my faith. Most were older or smarter than I. Thus I found the courage to stand by my new convictions here:

Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,

for it is ever with me.

I have more understanding than all my teachers,

for your testimonies are my meditation.

I understand more than the aged,

for I keep your precepts.

- Psalm 119:98-100

When my heart was trapped in depression, unable to make good plans and follow through on them, these words offered hope:

I run in the path of your commandments,

for you have set my heart free.

- Psalm 119:32, WEB

When I began writing my first novel, I decided that the hero needed to travel along a mystical road to get to salvation. I called that road H Street, which stands for Holiness. It was based on Isaiah 35:8, which speaks of the Way of Holiness, a road on which no dangerous wild animals walk. That Bible passage (and other psalms) had set me free from nightmares (as recounted in Dreams ). However, Isaiah did not describe any landmarks along that road, so I came up with my own. I decided to take one image from each stanza of Psalm 119 and make it into a statue or other fixture along the road. A new landmark appeared every eight blocks of H Street, in keeping with how each stanza of the psalm has eight verses.

In my novel, a judge named Daniel eventually solved the riddle of H Street and the riddle posed by the images along its path. By solving it, he was saved. He had lived a life filled with dread and anxiety, but now his heart was free.

By spending years writing my fantasy books, the idea that Psalm 119 is a road with a destination became fixed in my mind. Thus when I began to wrestle with clock periods of 119 versus 120 years, my attention returned to Psalm 119. To me that psalm was hope and direction down a road. It was freedom and conviction and love for God's Word. It was also a number.

Pastors and professors have long told me that the Bible's chapter numbers and psalm numbers and the arrangement of the parts are not inspired. I believed them for years. I read books by people who disagreed and saw that their ideas were fanciful and unsupportable by the normal rules of Biblical scholarship. That convinced me not to read anything into those numbers. Yet when I needed to decide if the number 119 had special significance, where else could I turn but Psalm 119?

The only way to prove whether the Psalm numbers or any other numerical values found in Scripture have meaning or not is to try. If it leads to nonsense, heresy or a dead end, you know it doesn't work. Since the Bible doesn't tell us that those numbers are meaningless, we are free to try. I tried. I have found that some numbers have meaning, but finding that meaning requires employing many clues in addition to the numbers. Psalm 119 was the first psalm (I think) whose number guided me to fresh insight. It was solely because of the number that I searched it for a prophetic clock. I was well rewarded. I found a Generational Clock and it had a period of 119 years. This helped me decide that God employs different periods among His clocks.

However, the most remarkable discovery was that the Shepherd's Clock leads us from Creation to Christ. It points to the savior. Like H Street in my novels, it is a road that you can follow through history to find the savior. Decades before logic and analysis enabled me to see the meaning hidden in this psalm, my heart had already started walking down that road. That is how you solve a Bible riddle.

With that introduction behind us, here is that chapter and its generational clock in its entirety...

Psalm 119: The Shepherd's Clock

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The Cosmic Chiasm

• Bible book: Whole Bible
• Books defined in:
  • Job Rises: Thirteen Keys to a Resilient Life (less precise)
  • Peace, like Solomon Never Knew (improved Chronology)
• Chapters in second book that describe it: Generations Come and Go and Two Patterns in History
• Time span: 4020 BC–2280 AD
• Milestones: Creation to Second Coming of Christ
• Intervals: 42
• Period: 119 years (except Adam & Methuselah)

What is a chiasm (or chiasmus)? The Biblical Chiasm Exchange gives a good definition. It is a literary device whose name derives from the Greek letter chi, which looks like an X. If you arrange a chiasmus in two columns, with one idea per row, then the top item on the left will match the bottom item or the right and vice versa. If you draw lines to connect the matching ideas, it will look like an X.

Chiasms are a form of inverted (also called introverted) parallelism. Ideas are presented in one order, then the parallel ideas are presented in reverse order. A chiasm with an even number of steps will have a pair of matching ideas at the center, while a chiasm with an odd number of steps will have many pairs but have an unpaired idea at its center. In both cases, the core idea of the chiasm is likely at its center, not in first or last position as with the structures I was taught in school. An example given on the website above is from the story of Noah in Genesis 9:6:

• (A) Whoever sheds
• (B) the blood
• (C) of man
• (C’) by man
• (B’) shall his blood
• (A’) be shed

The Bible is rife with chiasms.

What do Chiasms have to do with Bible Prophecy? I learned the concept of chiasm from a teacher on Bible prophecy, Ellis Skolfield. He showed how they appear in many Bible passages, such as the Book of Daniel. Detecting and interpreting chiasms aids us in understanding prophecy. I took his idea and ran with it, coming up with my own chiasm, one that encompasses all of world history. But before we get to that...

Nature abhors a vacuum. We all like to know how the story ends. The Bible describes the apocalypse, but in terms that mystify and horrify. Out of confusion, rejection of Christianity or religion in general, or sheer creativity, many people have speculated about how things will turn out. How many books, graphic novels, TV shows and movies are about the end of the world? A new one pops up every month it seems. They fill a void inside. We need to have SOME story. The more fanciful and ridiculous, the better. It pushes the event far off. It helps us get on with our lives.

What if you are like me? What if you cannot settle for speculation and lies to comfort your anxious heart? It is a question that never goes away. You may suppress it, push it aside to attend to other matters, or settle for what you know is a poor answer, a placeholder until something better comes along. What happens then? It stalks your dreams. Nightmares about how your world might be destroyed come to you unbidden. What can you do to silence this voice of doom and find peace?

I will share the progression in my life as I faced this question, from childhood up to the present. My posture went from entertaining my curiosity, to terror, to searching for someone else who had a ready-made answer, to trying with inadequate tools to find my own, to finding a scholar who demolished all accepted ideas, leaving me with an intolerable vacuum of anxious ignorance. The goal here is not to prove that I am smart enough to solve the problem. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled." The goal instead is to prove the strength of my hunger to find an answer.

As a child, I was obsessed with fantasy and science fiction novels. I loved time travel stories but was particularly drawn to the idea that there were true prophets who could change the world because of their insight. My sci-fi hero was Hari Seldon, the protagonist in the Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov. He used advanced mathematics to create psycho-history, a means of predicting future events on a galactic scale. He foresaw an apocalypse, the collapse of galactic civilization. He used his insight to create the Foundation, an organization that would preserve knowledge and guide the survivors to a hopeful future and shorten the period of anarchy and barbarism to a thousand years. (How interesting! The Christian church through its monasteries preserved ancient learning for a thousand years, until Europe arose from the Dark Ages a the time of the Renaissance and Enlightenment.)

My real-life hero was Alexis de Toqueville, a 19th century political scientist who in the 1840's predicted that the two rival world powers in the 20th century would be the United States and Russia. After reading his book Democracy in America, I was astonished. How I longed to be one who could study history and politics and have the genius to foresee events a hundred years into the future! Those childhood years were when the future was to me a wonderful and hopeful prospect of unbounded possibilities.

Things changed when I reached college. I entered a decade of depression. After drifting away from the Roman Catholic Church, but before I became a Protestant, I only picked up the Bible twice. The first time was to read Revelation, which disturbed me. After I was saved, I had to contend with the influence of all the new Christians in my life, many of whom had far-fetched ideas about the End Times. I read books like Gorbachev: Is He the Anti-christ? and Hal Lindsey's The Late, Great Planet Earth. In 1986, we all were faced with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. People were saying that Chernobyl was the Russian word for wormwood which made it one of the plagues of Revelation.

In my journals, I tried to compare events in my world history text to the Bible and to the different eschatological theories. Nightmares about being savaged by wild animals, or being persecuted and in hiding, or drowned in a flood tormented me for over a year, as related in Dreams. A speaker came to our church to talk about his interpretation of Revelation. I asked him some pointed questions and concluded that he didn't know what he was talking about.

All these voices were shouting about the end and I couldn't find any that made sense, so in the 1990's I got married, had kids, and stopped looking into such things for over a decade. This didn't stop people from writing about comets hitting Jupiter or the smoke rising from burning Iraqi oil wells during the Gulf Wars. I absorbed their speculations and waited to see if anything they had to say came true. They were all wrong.

In the 2000's, two things hit me with emotional force. The first was hearing Johnny Cash sing "When the Man comes around", with its overt and haunting references to Revelation and other prophetic books. I saved it onto a CD and listened to it hundreds of times, mesmerized. The second was reading books by Ellis Skolfield. This man was different. He had studied prophecy for thirty years. He found inconsistencies in the existing End Times systems, like Dispensational Premillennialism. He systematically demolished all of them. He did not have a complete system to leave in their place, but some of his ideas seemed sound. I corresponded with him and he graciously answered my questions. I reread his study notes on Daniel and Revelation many times. During this decade I also wrote fantasy novels with apocalyptic themes. My imagination wrestled with the voice of the Seven Thunders, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the wide road that leads to destruction and the final judgment. I even dreamed up an elaborate legal system for the Courtlands of the afterlife! Still, I was not satisfied.

It was now the 2010's and in place of a coherent story about how the world would end, I had a void. I was certain of these things:

• I did not know how the world would end, how to interpret Revelation, Daniel and the other prophets.
• Nobody else alive did either, or at least they hadn't published their ideas yet.
• This state of affairs was intolerable.
• To research the problem and solve the riddle, meaning to assemble all the facts of history, theology and eschatology, resolve all the inconsistencies and form a coherent story would require an immense amount of time, theological ability and piety.
• I lacked sufficient time to devote to the endeavor, having a difficult secular job and a wife and three children who needed me.
• I lacked the training in Biblical languages and theology to succeed at the endeavor.
• I lacked funds to pay for such advanced training, and indeed had crippling debts, being often on the verge of bankruptcy.
• I lacked the emotional strength, confidence, discipline and perseverance to succeed at the endeavor.
• I lacked the piety and holiness that God might reward by granting me success through supernatural gifting.
• I lacked the cooperative personality traits that would facilitate joining with others to pursue this task jointly.

Those facts were a recipe for despair. There was only one way that God could life me out of it. He redirected me to pursue a greater treasure. From about 2012 to 2015, I prayed and fasted one day a week. My prayer was simple. "Lord, show me your glory." I did not know what form that glory would ultimately assume. As it turned out, it was a greater facility at seeing marvelous truths in the Bible. God gave me through prayer all that I lacked in the other areas listed above. He guided me (via the internet) to hundreds of articles on history and theology, targeted to my needs. He scheduled a pandemic in 2020, which gave me extra time for study because I did not need to waste twelve hours a week commuting as I worked from home. He got me a better job, which enabled my family to make headway on our debt. He gave me discipline and perseverance through the joy of discovery.

It was in the middle of my fast, though, when I as yet had none of these things, that the first idea appeared to me. It was not persuasive. It had flaws. I could not yet see any Biblical support for it. After coming up with it, I put it aside for about five years until I finally saw where it fit and how to remedy its flaws and justify it from God's Word. It was based on the ideas about Chiasms that I learned from Ellis Skolfield.

Where do all the other systems go wrong? They have the wrong framework, the wrong scaffolding upon which to hang the pieces. They focus on the little details but miss the big picture. The Cosmic Chiasm was my attempt to step back from history and take in the big picture. The goal was not to be precise, but to see gross features of God's plans. With that in hand, it might then be possible to slowly refine it, sharpen the details and arrive at an improved view of the End Times. Therefore this idea is not so much a theory of prophecy as a theory of history.

Once I had this gross, fuzzy, imprecise model of history, I could take the next step. I could see the good in God's plans for judgment. It is not all destruction. It is creative destruction. God first built up our world, our violent, tyrannical, oppressive civilization, like a building team builds a scaffolding around the construction site. It is ugly but it has the rough shape that is desired. Then when all is ready, the scaffolding is removed to reveal a beautiful, impressive structure.

The words of Revelation focus on the removal of the scaffolding, which is violent and destructive. We see the terrors but not the triumphs. Because we see Revelation as only terrors, we cannot conceive that its events are already underway. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have already sallied forth. They wreaked their havok over the last half a millennium, but they also did more. Religious freedom, the abolition of slavery, a freer economic and political order, relief from sexism and racism - all these things were the result of that destruction of the old world order. It was the genesis of that way of thinking that propelled me to the conclusions I have found. It is my new hope in the love of God and His plans for us that enables me to see Revelation not as an apocalyptic movie, but as a song of joy.

My void is gone. It is full of good news. What follows are the two chapters from Peace, like Solomon Never Knew that describe the single idea that changed how I look at all End Times prophecy.

• Generations Come and Go
• Two Patterns in History

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The Acrostic Clock

• Bible Book: Psalms 111 & 112
• Book defined in: Plague, Precept, Prophet, Peace
• Chapter in book that describes it: Acrostic Clock: Psalms 111 and 112
• Time span: 4020 BC–2280 AD
• Milestones: Creation to Second Coming of Christ
• Intervals: 42
• Period: 119 years (except Adam & Methuselah)

Psalms 111 and 112 are both acrostics. Each phrase (not verse) begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet, in alphabetical order. This device suggests a sequence running to completion, which is perfect for a prophetic clock. Psalm 119 has a prophetic clock, so why not these two?

These two psalms fit together like peas in a pod, with Psalm 111 spanning the history from Creation until the coming of Christ and Psalm 112 continuing from there to Christ's second coming, with a small overlap in the middle.

This clock is embedded inside a larger clock which spans the whole of the psalter. Details of that clock are found in multiple chapters in Plague, Precept, Prophet, Peace.

For the analysis of these two psalms, go here:

• The Acrostic Psalms