The End Times

9169 words long.

Published on 2024-07-15

Fractal Historicism

This article introduces Fractal Historicism, the system of eschatology described and developed on this website. A diagram in this article compares it to a few alternate systems. The system is similar to classical Historicism, which Wikipedia describes with these words:

Historicism is a method of interpretation in Christian eschatology which associates biblical prophecies with actual historical events and identifies symbolic beings with historical persons or societies; it has been applied to the Book of Revelation by many writers. The Historicist view follows a straight line of continuous fulfillment of prophecy which starts in Daniel's time and goes through John of Patmos' writing of the Book of Revelation all the way to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

Many in the early church proposed Historicist ideas, including Justin Martyr, Josephus, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Jerome and Athanasius. The Protestant Reformation revived interest in that approach to understanding Bible prophecy. Among those who advocated Historicism were John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Thomas, John Knox, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and John Wesley. I depart from those esteemed reformers in not identifying the Roman Catholic Pope as the anti-Christ. In fact, I make no attempt to identify the Antichrist, as I believe his identity still remains hidden.

In an important regard, my system adopts ideas from the Puritan Thomas Brightman, who was the first to propose a historicist interpretation of the Seven Churches of Revelation. He taught that each church corresponds to a different era of church history. However, I propose start and end years for the eras of the more recent churches that differ from his dates and those of his successors. (For a detailed analysis, see the chapter "Seven Churches for Seven Eras" in Peace, like Solomon Never Knew.)

The Seventh Day Adventists hold to a form of Historicism. Their traditional belief is that the first six seals of Revelation were opened prior to 1844 AD. In Fractal Historicism, only three seals had been opened by that time and a fourth was opened in the Twentieth Century. The fifth seal is set to open later in this century.

Fractal Historicism further deviates from earlier forms of Historicism by applying the patterns of prophecy like fractals. The same patterns may repeat at shorter and longer timescales.

In the above diagram, the white triangle indicates "now", the present day. From the diagram you can see one of the starkest differences between this system and most others. Fractal Historicism assumes that the Millennial Kingdom when Christ rules over the nations refers to a literal 1,000 year period unlike the amillennial systems. Then, in contrast to the remaining systems, it assumes that the millennium has already come and gone and the tribulation already begun.

After the Reformation, other theories of eschatology displaced it in many churches. Premillennial Dispensationalism is one popular system.

Approaches not shown on the diagram include Futurism, Preterism and Idealism, which are not single systems but instead categories of systems.

• Idealism goes by many names, like the spiritual approach, allegorical approach, and nonliteral approach. It sees all or most of Revelation's imagery as symbolic instead of describing real events. It is a feature of amillennialism. Adherents include Karl Barth and Jacques Ellul (whom I much enjoyed reading years ago). Concerning Amillennialism in particular, one of the earliest and most influential advocates was Augustine of Hippo, who communicated his ideas in City of God.
• Preterism holds that most or all of the events prophesied in Daniel, the Olivet Discourse and Revelation were fulfilled by AD 70 and the close of the Apostolic Age. A Jesuit, Luis de Alcasar (1554–1613), wrote the first systematic preterist exposition of prophecy Vestigatio arcani sensus in Apocalypsi. It was published during the Counter-Reformation to defend the Catholic Church against Protestant attacks that relied upon the Historicist interpretation.
• Futurism treats Revelation, Ezekiel, and Daniel as addressing future events in multiple senses: literal, physical, apocalyptic, and global. This category of belief includes premillennialism and dispensationalism. Irenaeus in the early church held views in this category. The most influential early modern proponents were the Catholic Jesuits Manuel Lacunza (1731–1801) and Francisco Ribera (1537–1591). Their motive was to take a different tack to defend the Catholic Church against Historicism. The futurist view assigns all or most prophecy to the future, shortly before the Second Coming. Some parts of the Bible that this interpretation addresses are Daniel, Isaiah 2:11–22, and 1 Thessalonians 4:15–5:11.

If you take in all of these systems, you see these poles of interpretation:

Timing:

• All or most prophesied events occurred in the past
• All or most prophesied events still lie in the future, bunched up into a short period before the end
• Events are distributed throughout history, with many having already occurred, some happening now, and others remaining for a future fulfillment

Historicity:

• Events are figurative and spiritual, not corresponding to definite events and persons
• Events are literal (though coded)

Millennium:

• The millennial reign of Christ describes the slow improvement of the world under the influence of the church, not a literal thousand years
• The millennial reign of Christ occurs as "a parallel and contemporaneous development of good and evil — God’s kingdom and Satan’s kingdom — in this world, which will continue until the second coming of Christ" (to quote Loraine Boettner in describing Amillennialism)
• The millennial reign of Christ will be a literal future kingdom lasting a literal thousand years that begins when Jesus Christ returns in his body visibly
• The millennial reign of Christ was a literal kingdom lasting a literal thousand years, but it did not include Christ returning visibly. He reigned through the church as his agents.

Fractal Historicism assumes the last choice of possibilities in each of the three above categories. To my knowledge, no other system besides that of Ellis Skolfield makes an identical set of choices. The crux of the matter is our understanding of the millennium. It is essential if one is to preserve the vital character of Historicism. In the early church, Historicism was an attractive possibility because the major events all lay in the future. There was not yet a series of historical events that might match one version of Historicism but contradict another. During the Reformation, conditions were again favorable to hold a Historicist view. But in the centuries since then, the original Historicist view slowly crumbled. The reason is that one cannot easily believe in a literal millennium ruled by a visible Christ after the great apostasy begins. For a brief time, a great proportion of the world was ruled by Christian nations. No more. One by one, countries formerly Christian have abandoned their faith. That is consistent with Satan going out to deceive the nations (Revelation 20:8), an event that commences AFTER the millennium, after Satan is unbound. Only by placing the millennial kingdom in the past can we establish a theology consistent with history and so rescue Historicism. To do that, however we have to agree with the Idealists that the reign of Christ was symbolic but with the Millennialists that the time period and political existence was literal. Jesus said that he would be with us, even to the end of the age. It is only in that spiritual sense that Jesus returned to rule his kingdom; his bodily return will happen only once, at the very end. There is no need for a "secret rapture" when Christ comes halfway to meet the church but doesn't actually return. (A "secret rapture" is not ruled out. However, the only reason this idea occurred to theologians was as a means of rescuing their system from a contradiction. You can't have Jesus showing up for the rapture before the Great Tribulation if Christ is not supposed to return until after it is over!)

On another pole I have done less research. That is the binding and loosing of Satan. Amillennialists believe that Satan has been bound and cannot stop the advance of Christ's kingdom. Other systems may believe that Satan has been bound already or that it may await the supposed future coming of the Millennium. In Fractal Historicism, Satan was bound for a thousand years, but has since been loosed. This is a critical difference.

If God intended to offer the church the most guidance, He would supply information rich prophecies that could be verified against real history. Such prophecies could then be used as an apologetic tool that proves the miraculous accuracy of the Bible as well as to prepare believers for the trials and opportunities to come. Such prophecies could bolster our faith as we see them unfold over time. Such prophecies would shout that God has a plan and it is on schedule. The problem with such prophecies is that if you interpret them wrongly, unbelievers ridicule the church and the faith of many is threatened. Allegorical, idealistic views are safer. You can't prove or disprove them. Getting a Historicist scheme right requires wisdom of a level that no one in the church has ever possessed, else we would see the proof in the accuracy by which their theology matches world history. Naturally, I will be arguing that such a system is what I have discovered, led by a wisdom not my own.

I alluded to motives above, but let's bring them front and center.

• Protestant Reformers developed their brand of Historicism to attack the Roman Catholic Church and label it the Antichrist.
• Roman Catholics developed both Futurism and Preterism to defend their church against the attacks of Historicism.
• Amillennialism's slow development over a millennia from Augustine to Aquinas reflected a growing pessimism inside the church. Hope that the church could make much headway toward reforming the world grew dim. This process is outlined in Traces of Defeatism: A Critique Of Amillennialism by Kendall Lankford.

A mix of defeatism, fear, hatred, judgment, and defensiveness fueled the development of at least four of these systems of eschatology. Such feelings also attended the first few decades of my personal search for the truth about the end times. Only as God turned me from despair to hope and from anger to forgiveness was I able to come to a new understanding. That journey is essential if you are to understand God's ways.

The rest of this article will focus on what Fractal Historicism is, not on comparing it to the other systems.

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Time is Essential to Wisdom

“You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning,

and the heavens are the work of your hands;

they will perish, but you remain;

they will all wear out like a garment,

like a robe you will roll them up,

like a garment they will be changed.

But you are the same,

and your years will have no end.”

- Hebrews 1:10-12

Who does not approach the prospect of the world's end with ambivalence? The topic is dreary. Even so, post-apocalyptic movies and TV shows abound. The news is filled with warnings about climate change causing the seas to rise and deserts to spread. Strangely, these voices all take the wrong tack. They try to scare people with warnings in order to promote changes that will avert the end. Theirs is really a voice proclaiming a path to an endless future. That path is an illusion.

It is impossible for Christians to dodge the subject. The Bible devotes many words to the last days. We just don't understand them. One thing is clear: Christians expect it to be a happy ending - if you believe in Jesus. The end is set in stone by God and inescapable. Perhaps we may earn a reprieve, like when the shadow went back ten steps for King Hezekiah (2 Kings 20), but that will only delay the end a short while.

This explains why Christians must face the end, but why dilute a website on spiritual growth with musings about the apocalypse? The answer lies in Ecclesiastes. Solomon's opening chapter speaks of the many cycles of God's creation, natural and human. Then in the third chapter, he zooms in on the human cycles of life in the poem of the twenty-eight times. After revealing a little, Solomon tells us what we do not know:

He has made everything beautiful in its time.

Also, he has put eternity into man's heart,

yet so that he cannot find out what God has done

from the beginning to the end.

- Ecclesiastes 3:11

When God set eternity in the heart of man, He instilled an irresistible longing to know what lies ahead. This can be maddening, because like Solomon said, we do not know the works of God from beginning to end. We have forgotten most of what came before and cannot see what lies ahead. Isaiah tells us what this means:

Remember this and stand firm,

recall it to mind, you transgressors,

remember the former things of old;

for I am God, and there is no other;

I am God, and there is none like me,

declaring the end from the beginning

and from ancient times things not yet done,

saying,

‘My counsel shall stand,

and I will accomplish all my purpose...’

- Isaiah 46:8-10

This knowledge of past and future is one of the essential, distinguishing marks of God. It lies at the core of God's wisdom. In Proverbs, this is what Lady Wisdom has to say for herself:

The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work,

the first of his acts of old.

Ages ago I was set up,

at the first, before the beginning of the earth.

- Proverbs 8:22-23

In place of "possessed", some use "fathered" or "created". This tells us that an essential characteristic of wisdom is that nothing precedes it, save God himself. It arrived first in time so can comprehend all time.

No account that seeks to explore wisdom can avoid time.

No account that seeks to explore time can avoid the time of the end.

My Struggles with Time

Before proceeding, I will share the progression of my attitude towards the issue of the End Times over the course of my life. The reason is that there are many motives for seeking this knowledge and not all lead to the truth. As a teen, I was fascinated by time. I loved time travel stories and fantasy stories with prophecies of the future. Isaac Asimov's idea of using mathematics to predict the future as explored in his Foundation series gripped me. Alexis de Tocqueville's book Democracy in America astonished me. Around 1840, he predicted that the two great world powers in the twentieth century would be the United States and Russia. How I longed to understand history and politics so well that I could have such a keen vision of the future.

My view turned dark in college. I entered a decade of depression. A few years before I was saved, I only picked up the Bible twice. The first time was to read Revelation. It disturbed me. Then after I found the Lord, I read The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey, Gorbachev: Is He the Antichrist? and other books. To work things out for myself, I started a journal and began to study world history, looking for connections between the Bible and human events and so accept or reject the ideas in those books. The devastating meltdown at Chernobyl in 1986 didn't help. I was told that Chernobyl is the Russian word for wormwood, making that meltdown a sign of the plague of wormwood of Revelation 8:11.

A man spoke at our church about Revelation during this time. He had ideas about the future course of world events and when they might occur. Were his ideas well supported? I wasn't sure, so I asked him, "What is purpose of the plagues named in Revelation? Why those particular plagues?" He said he didn't know. I concluded that if he didn't know why, he couldn't know when. I disregarded everything he had said. This was an early sign that I was learning discernment. I began to question what other Christians were saying and gained a critical eye.

If you fill your mind with questionable ideas, what happens? In my case, years of nightmares. Dreams of the end of the world wrecked my sleep and destabilized my life. How can you plan your future if you fear you might not have one? By God's grace, through prayer and meditation on the Psalms and Isaiah I found release from the nightmares, as described in the article Dreams.

One reason the nightmares stuck around so long was that I didn't want to let go of them. As terrifying and debilitating as they were, they made me feel powerful. I began to advise other Christians based on my dreams, fancying myself a prophet. The only kind of prophet that I was was a false prophet. To admit that and repent of it was hard. The first consequence was that the dreams stopped. The second was that I lost a part of my identity that I cherished and gave me a sense of importance.

Almost two decades passed during which I gave little thought to the end times. Then in the mid 2000's I heard Johnny Cash's song "The Man Comes Around". My interest in the end times stirred once more. On the internet I came across several books and teaching notes about Daniel and Revelation by Bible scholar Ellis Skolfield. Skolfield attempted two things in his writings. First, he proposed his own ideas about what those books mean and how many events that they prophesied have already occurred, contradicting Premillennial Dispensationalism and other competing theories that claim those events remain in our future. Second, he uncovered many contradictions within the competing theories. The most striking was that the blowing of "the last trumpet" in 1 Corinthians 15:52 and "the seventh trumpet" in Revelation 11:15 refer to the same event. If the events that will occur when one is blown happen simultaneous with those slated to unfold when the other is blown, the timelines for those other theories are wrecked. For one, it makes the return of Christ, the raising of the dead and the rapture into one event. There will be no rapture before the millennial reign of Christ. There will be no release of Satan after Christ descends.

After reading his work several times and corresponding with the author by email, this is what I concluded.

• Skolfield's criticism of all other theories of Eschatology (i.e. the study of the end times) was devastating and correct.
• His ideas for a more accurate replacement for those theories had merit.
• His theory was incomplete.
• Some of his ways of handling Bible chronology and prophetic timelines were novel and consistent but lacking in support.

By the mid 2010's, where did this leave me? I had nothing. Neither my ideas nor the ideas of the most popular and respected scholars held water. I knew that believing and receiving guidance and comfort from the prophets concerning God's future plans is indispensable for a sane and productive faith. Wrong and inconsistent ideas do damage. If nature abhors a vacuum, so does my soul. I needed to find the truth. I also knew that to find the truth, I would have to research it for myself. I would have to study, compare and work out a consistent framework for history and eschatology. Skolfield said that he had studied the topic for thirty years. To accomplish this task would require time and discipline that I knew I didn't have. It would require knowledge of the Bible and history that I did not possess. The breadth of study would be huge. Taking all this in, I despaired of ever getting the answers that I craved. I surrendered. I again gave up trying. After thirty years of walking as a Christian, I felt no closer to finding an answer than when I started.

Soon after, my mother died. I turned to Job for comfort and threw myself into understanding the first book of the Bible to be written, instead of the last. Like Frost's "road not taken", that has made all the difference. By turning to the past, to the beginning, by coming to grips with mourning, I began to walk down another path. Instead of finding prophecies of the distant future, I found Job's prophecies of the coming of Christ. I saw salvation. I saw healing and growth and forgiveness and comfort. When I eventually turned my eyes to the end, I saw everything through a different lens. I saw discipleship, growth, and metamorphosis, not mere destruction. God has hidden the beauty and wonder of a message of glorious hope inside a tale of calamities. He constructed Revelation as an emotional riddle. The sheer horror blinds us to the meaning, making it nearly impossible to fit prophecy to history. However, once you see those latter days not as an aberration but as a logical extension of God's plans for all of time, the sharp discontinuity becomes a continuum and the irreconcilable can be reconciled.

That is a taste of the struggle that I passed through on the way to my current understanding. I have been humbled not once but several times along the way. To confess misusing God's gifts and His Word, to admit ignorance, weakness and inability and to accept my emptiness was torment. None of that makes my words useful. None of that proves my ideas true. However, if you seek knowledge about these matters from anyone else, make sure that they also have struggled and striven and surrendered. No one can swallow the scroll without absorbing its bitterness, not even the Apostle John:

And I took the little scroll

from the hand of the angel and ate it.

It was sweet as honey in my mouth,

but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter.

- Revelation 10:10

About thirty-five years ago I asked that man my question. He didn't know the purpose of the plagues of Revelation. I do - at least some of them. Did they judge? Yes. Did they destroy? Yes. But they also built. They also created and reformed the world. Most people who read Revelation see the death and destruction. They can't conceive that much of it describes events that have already occurred. Why? It is because history shows humanity progressing despite all the turmoil, wars, revolutions, famines and plagues. History just doesn't look bad enough to match up to what we think Revelation means. The final plagues will, but the early ones are concealed by acts of grace. When the final plagues which do match up arrive, the world will be taken by surprise. The precursors and early warnings that the inhabitants of the earth will assume have yet to arrive will have passed long before. Concertgoers awaiting the first trumpet blast will be met by the last.

Cross Section of Time

When I was a child, I had a book of colored transparencies that showed the human body. One transparency showed bones, another the muscles, another the major organs, another blood vessels, and the last showed skin and hair. The superposition of all the layers showed what a person looks like.

My books and the articles on this website detail many prophetic clocks. Those clocks are like the transparencies in that anatomy book. The articles will marshal evidence to support this novel eschatological system by sketching out that system's outline. They will cut a cross section across many clocks to shine a light on key events in history. Each clock covers many eras - often thousands of years - hence many events, but with little detail. This section will show a few events but see what is said about each across many clocks, to emphasize how firmly God settled the date of each event. The interlocking passages are like transparencies overlaid to present a complete image.

Precise. Many other eschatological systems rely upon a few passages to establish the order and timing of key events. The timing in them is usually qualitative. In Fractal Historicism, there are over forty prophetic clocks. Key events show up in dozens of clocks. The timing is much more precise, with events slotted to within a century in most cases, and within decades in many.

Comprehensive. This cross-sectional consistency of the system across a large swath of the Bible is a significant factor that favors the accuracy of Fractal Historicism and challenges the accuracy of the other systems. This system makes extensive use of Job, Ecclesiastes and Proverbs to form its scaffolding, then fits the prophetic books commonly treated by the other eschatological systems into it, like Daniel, Matthew and Revelation. Fractal Historicism has a consistent interpretation of those Bible books. The other systems make little or no reference to Job, Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. They fail to incorporate important data into their theories. How important? Revelation speaks almost entirely of the end times but Ecclesiastes speaks of ALL times. You cannot fit all prophecy into a framework that covers only part of God's plan for history; you need the whole plan. Ecclesiastes sketches out that plan and Job, Proverbs and Psalms flesh it out. As in science, the theory that provides a coherent interpretation of the greatest range of data is the strongest.

Now it is time to introduce the key events of the End Times. We shall see how they are sequenced and assigned to the proper time in history according to Fractal Historicism.

Events leading up to the End

When Christians talk about the End Times, what events are part of the conversation? Here are some prominent ones. They are divided in two groups: ones reflecting victories on God's side versus those reflecting victories on Satan's side. An attempt has been made to match like items. There are two exceptions. First is pairing "The Restoration of Israel" with "The Blowing of the Seven Trumpets". The latter is not a victory for Satan, but for God, but it does relate to Israel and is accompanied by great suffering. When Joshua led Israel into the Promised Land, the people marched around Jericho seven times blowing trumpets, then the walls came tumbling down.

The second is the Resurrection of the Damned. Satan gets no benefit; this seals the fate of his allies.

This first listing of events does not give them in Chronological order according to this or any system.

Favorable to Christians	Favorable to Satan
The Second Coming of Jesus Christ	The Rise of the Antichrist (an evil world leader who serves Satan)
The Binding of Satan (when the enemy's power is curtailed)	The Loosing of Satan (after being imprisoned for a thousand years)
The Proclamation of the Gospel to the Whole World	The Great Apostasy (when many people abandon Christianity)
The Millennial Kingdom (when Jesus rules the world for a thousand years, whether literally or figuratively)	The Dragons: Behemoth and Leviathan (two empires ruled by Satan)
The Rapture (when some living Christians are supernaturally taken by Jesus, leaving this world and escaping further suffering)	The Great Tribulation (a time of suffering and persecution for Christians)
The Opening of the Seven Seals of the Lamb's Scroll (revealing God's wisdom)	A Strong Delusion (persuasive lies of Satan that convince many to worship him)
The Two Witnesses (prophets or groups who work God's miracles in the End Times)	Workers of false miracles for Satan
The Restoration of Israel	The Blowing of the Seven Trumpets
The Battle of Armageddon (the final battle between good and evil, fought when Jesus returns)	The Riding of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (symbolizing war, civil war, famine and death)
Resurrection of the Blessed	Resurrection of the Damned
Judgment Day	666: The Number of the Beast (when the Antichrist "judges" Christians)

Systems of eschatology must naturally divide this list into events that have already happened and events yet to come.

• Idealists claim most are ahistorical; they are allegorical of spiritual events. The undeniably literal events - at least for orthodox Christians - like Christ's second coming, the Judgment Day, and the Resurrection they place in the future, like all the systems.
• Preterists assign many events to the past, during the Apostolic age.
• Futurists put most or all of these events in the future.
• Fractal Historicism asserts that eleven of the above events occurred in the past or are already underway.

If a system asserts that an event already happened, it must say when and point to the historical events that fulfilled that prophecy. That is true for Fractal Historicism. Below, the above prophetic events will be arranged in chronological order. If they have already happened, the dates and matching historical events will be given. If they have not happened, predictions of when they might happen will be given, a falsifiable feature not present in most other systems.

However, it is more that setting a date on a timeline. The sequence and timing of the events tell a story. These different systems tell different stories. One of the most important stories is the meaning of the Millennial Kingdom, the time when Christ reigned or will reign over some or all of the earth.

• An optimistic system teaches that the church's influence will spread until most of the world is Christian. The Millennial Kingdom will be the outcome of the Church's success at spreading the gospel message. This kingdom arriving late in history will be the fruit of a great harvest of souls.
• A pessimistic system of eschatology will say that two worldviews will multiply. The middle ground of people who are neither hostile to Christianity nor willing to embrace it will vanish as the world becomes polarized. Thus Christ's Kingdom will grow at the same time as Satan's kingdom, the wheat growing up with the tares. The scope of the Millennial Reign of Christ will thus be limited; it will only be over the Church. Even so, like the optimistic view, this kingdom is a milestone near the culmination of God's plan for the world.
• Fractal Historicism views the Millennial Kingdom in a completely different way. That kingdom is not the culmination of God's plan for perfecting the church and maximizing its influence. On the contrary, it is a vital early stage in the gestation of the church. That kingdom does not end when the church is fully mature. It exists to allow the church to survive and thrive during an important early part of its development. After the millennium ends, the church is scheduled by God to face increasingly greater challenges on its way to full maturity. The end of the Millennial Kingdom is not the failure of the church, it is its graduation day or new birth.

To sum up the preceding, this how many prominent views (besides amillennialism) break down history:

1. A long period of church history
2. The Millennial Kingdom
3. A brief crisis
4. Christ returns and the dead are resurrected

This is how Fractal Historicism divides history:

1. A brief period of church history
2. The Millennial Kingdom
3. A long period of Church history with a steadily worsening crisis
4. An intensification of the crisis
5. Christ returns and the dead are resurrected

Now for the details. First to be shown is a timetable with all the preceding events listed in chronological order. It gives dates for those events that have already occurred, start dates for events that are underway, and predictions for those future events which the clocks provide date ranges. Since the opening of the seals and the blowing of the trumpets constitute multiple events, each is split into multiple parts. Next, since the first four seals match the horsemen of the Apocalypse, they are grouped together.

To give additional context:

• Seven ages of church history derived from the letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3 are also given. Do note that the end of one church era overlaps the beginning of the next. Thus the age of Laodicea (the complacent, lazy church) has already come upon the Western Church (e.g. Europe, USA, Canada, Australia), but other parts of the church are still in the age of Philadelphia, the faithful missionary church.
• Twenty of Solomon's times from Ecclesiastes 3 are lined up with history. This clock begins with the dedication of Solomon's Temple in 960 BC, so the first eight times are not shown (the times to be born, die, plant, uproot, kill, heal, tear down and build up).

Accuracy of the Dates

I am confident about some of the dates. Others are approximate. The themes behind the historical trends can be discerned from the prophecies, but the triggering events are not always clear. Thus the general era of some events is clearer than when it begins and ends. Here are the most certain dates:

• Binding of Satan in 380 AD. Satan's throne, the mightiest and longest lasting empire in ancient history, became a Christian empire when Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica. Jesus told us that before you can plunder a man's house, you must bind the strong man. Since control over Rome allowed the church to plunder Satan's house, this event must be the event that bound him.
• Millennial Kingdom of Christ from 380 to 1380 AD. Most Christians who believe in a literal millennium expect that Jesus must return bodily to rule over it. However, Jesus told his disciples, "I will never leave you nor forsake you" and "And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age". If he is with us, then he is ready to rule a kingdom at any time. Many prophesies tell us how he will rule the nations. "You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." (Psalm 2:9) Iron means Rome, as Daniel's prophecy makes clear. It was through Rome and the European empires that sprang from it (the ten toes) that Christianity dominated the world for a time. A similar note is taken in Revelation 2:26-27, which says, "The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. This makes it clear that this kingdom is one of delegated authority. Revelation 12:5 and 19:15 repeat this phrase. As for the end of the main millennial kingdom, that occurred when a claimant to the throne of Byzantium allied with an Ottoman faction to win a civil war. Ottoman troops entered Constantinople in 1376 AD in support of the coup, symbolically freeing Satan. Sixty-seven years years later, the Ottoman Empire besieged and captured Constantinople, ending the Eastern Roman Empire. During those intervening years, the Ottomans besieged the capital five times. Satan was unbound and his fury drove him to recapture his former throne.
• Unbinding of Satan in 1380 AD. Since Christ was to rule for a thousand years, if the start year for the millennium is certain, so is the end. The time that Satan was bound is coterminous with the age of the Millennial Kingdom.
• Opening of First Seal in 1380 AD. The first Horseman of the Apocalypse rides a white horse and carries a bow. The original Muslims were Arab, descended from Ishmael, called in Genesis 21:20 "an expert with the bow". Muslim legends claim that Mohammed rode a magical, flying white horse on his Night Journey to the farthest mosque (in Jerusalem). Thus the Ottoman Empire was the first horseman and its conquest of Byzantium, the Balkans and near victory at Vienna nearly destroyed Christendom.
• Blowing of the First Trumpet in 1453 AD. In Joshua, the Israelites marched round Jericho for seven days blowing trumpets and then the walls came tumbling down. They did this on the orders of an angel with a drawn sword. Revelation intentionally invokes this memory when speaking of God's actions as being like the blowing of trumpets. The seven trumpets of Revelation each accomplish different objectives, but to get our attention, the first involves the capture of an important city: Constantinople, by an army that blew trumpets relentlessly during the siege. God did not blow His trumpet against non-Christians. He blew it against a part of His church. This occurred during "a time to throw away". God threw away one third of Christendom.
• Opening of the Second Seal in 1517 AD. The second rider rode a red horse, wielded a sword and triggered civil war. What was the worst time of civil war that the Church ever endured? That would be the General Crisis of the 17th century when half the population of Germany died and about forty million people total worldwide. This in turn built upon the fractures caused by the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. The civil war had two causes: religious and political. Religious calamities are related to seals upon the scroll, whereas political calamities are attached to trumpets. In 1517, Martin Luther tacked his ninety-five theses upon the door of the Wittenberg Church. This was the religious cause of the conflict.
• Blowing of the Second Trumpet in 1520 AD. The same man, Martin Luther, triggered the blowing of this trumpet. In 1520, he wrote "To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation". This circular letter urged the German princes to take up arms to defend Protestant beliefs. In his letter, Luther said, "Josh. 6:20 Now God help us, and give us one of the trumpets with which the walls of Jericho were overthrown." The princes acted. The ultimate fate of Germany was to endure the Thirty Years war from 1618-1648.
• Blowing of the Fifth Trumpet in 1765 AD. The first and second trumpets overthrew the idea of a unified empire (political sphere) and a unified church (religious). This trumpet overthrew the world economic order. The four major developments were the abolition of slavery, the development of the capitalist economic system, the scientific revolution built on steam power, and the advent of a new democratic form of government to foster the unhindered progress of the first three. The era of this trumpet begins with James Watt's invention of a better steam engine in 1765 and concludes with the end of World War I, which introduced communism and totalitarianism. To establish this required solving many riddles, as reported in 153 and the Fifth Trumpet and the other articles in that series. The locusts with women's hair are there identified with the Christian queens, especially Queen Victoria of England, whose emblem was a lion.
• Opening of the Fourth Seal in 1918. The Pale Horse of Death is Communism and Fascism, the two rival totalitarian systems that brought misery and death to hundreds of millions of people. The Russian Revolution occurred in 1918, the seminal event that triggered the rest.
• Blowing of the Third Trumpet in 1922. About this trumpet it says in Revelation, "a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water, because it had been made bitter." That star was the star of Communism. The Soviet Union was formed in December 1922. That year it adopted as its banner a flag with hammer and sickle and gold-bordered red star in 1922. Communist China would later adopt a flag with a star as well. Collectively, at its peak, a third of the earth's population were subject to Communist rule, as declared in the prophecy. The poisoning of the waters was a corruption of the truth ad the suppression of Christianity. Symbolically, the poisoning was heralded in 1986 with the Chernobyl Nuclear reactor meltdown, which poisoned the region literally. Many Christians at the time claimed that Chernobyl is the Russian word for Wormwood, also named in the prophecy. It turns out that a plant spelled “chornobyl” in Ukrainian is what we call mugwort, or Artemisia vulgaris. It is not wormwood. Wormwood is Artemisia absinthium. If you look at pictures of each, you can see a resemblance, but they are not difficult to distinguish. Yet God makes parables even out of our misunderstandings. Perhaps God caused that chance similarity of two plants and a spelling close to the name of a Soviet reactor to spark enough interest to warn the world. (This draws on analysis from the chapter "Aftertaste: Donner & Blitzen" in Peace, like Solomon Never Knew.)

An obvious objection to the above is that this system places the blowing of the Fifth Trumpet before the blowing of the Third and Fourth Trumpets. Revelation says this:

Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying

with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead,

“Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth,

at the blasts of the other trumpets that the

three angels are about to blow!”

- Revelation 8:13

The Book of Revelation has a number of transitions where the narrative jumps back in time to add additional details. This is in line with the Recapitulation Theory of Revelation, first articulated by Irenaeus of Lyons in the 2nd century. The final three trumpets are called the three woes. They are in a special category. Thus after the fourth trumpet is blown, we jump back to the start of the Industrial Revolution. There is additional warrant for doing this. As discovered in Job Rises and reiterated in the chapter "Aftertaste: Donner & Blitzen" in Peace, like Solomon Never Knew, Job swaps the fourth and fifth day of creation to symbolically declare his fear that the savior will arrive too late. The fifth day saw the creation of the sea creatures - including Leviathan. The fourth day was when the Morning Star was created. Jesus is called the bright morning star. Thus Leviathan (Satan's minion) of Day 5 will arrive before Jesus' star of Day 4.

The Seven Cycles of Judgment

Revelation enumerates many wars, plagues, and calamities of all sorts. Some of them are grouped into sevens. Each End Times system has something to say about how these events are organized and what that means. Some have divided Revelation into seven parts, each dominated by a different seven. One example of this that I found on the Internet is:

1. 7 Letters to the churches - Rev 1-3
2. 7 Seals - Rev 4-7
3. 7 Trumpets - Rev 8-11
4. 7 Histories - Rev 12-14
5. 7 Bowls - Rev 15-16
6. 7 Messages to Babylon - Rev 17-19
7. The Great Consummation - Rev 20-22

Fractal Historicism is no exception. This system also breaks things into seven sevens, but instead of focusing of the visible effects, it shines a light on the underlying cause, the distinct animating spirit behind each series. Each phase of God's plan judgment is instigated by a different one of the Seven Spirits of God. See how that is so in this article:

Seven Cycles of Judgment

Cross Sections for Key Events: The Millennial Kingdom

It is time to show how many clocks reinforce the time periods for key events. The following article will take up a few prophetic events: the Millennial Kingdom and the binding and loosing of Satan. It will walk through several books of the Bible, showing how different clocks, with different start and end dates, periods and phrasing, all point to that event occurring in the same era. It is like having multiple lines on a planar graph intersect at the same point. With many prophetic pointers to the same event, we can often improve the accuracy of our prophecies and narrow down the event to within a decade.

The Millennial Kingdom

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Each time that the days grow dark and wars erupt, Christians wonder, "Have the four horsemen begun their ride?" Making the proper assignment is complicated. Consider these factors:

1. The horsemen will not ride out once, but many times. They define a recurring historical pattern. Partial matches to the whole pattern of Revelation make it hard to tell when the primary ride of the horsemen has begun.
2. The signature sortie of the horsemen spanned a longer period of history than expected. It occurred in the past, but many Christians are still looking for it to happen in the future and be spread over a shorter period of time.
3. Though the horsemen spread their terror and delivered their judgments, the effects were not uniformly destructive.
4. Once they rode out, none of the horsemen were ever recalled. Thus it is hard to see the pattern of the later horsemen when war and civil war persist.
5. Human passions and petty rivalries cause us to assume our enemies are God's enemies and thus the proper targets of the horsemen. When that judgment is against the church, we assume it is not God but Satan at work.

The third factor is the one that blinds us the most. These agents of God's wrath were sent out not for destruction, but for creative destruction. They were the wrecking crew that performed the site prep for the building of a new civilization - our civilization. Mixed in with all the evil effects were the good. Thus when people look back at the history of the last five hundred years, what do they see? They see the rise of political, religious and economic freedom, the end of slavery and the liberation of women. They see progress in science, agriculture, medicine, communication and a general improvement in prosperity and lengthening of life expectancy. We got those benefits in part BECAUSE the four horsemen rode out, not in spite of them. That is the genius of God's plan. It unfolds as predicted and most of us are blind to His miracles.

If the four horsemen return again, it will be to do the same thing again - to build the final heavenly kingdom and usher in eternity. For a deeper dive into this topic, read The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The Era of the Fifth Trumpet

When the Ottomans charged Constantinople in 1453, they blew traditional trumpets but at the same time a bugle call unheard by human ears was sounded. That first trumpet was blown by an angel, as told in Revelation 8:7. Down tumbled walls of the Byzantine Empire. Up rose smaller, independent nations, accelerating the move toward greater political freedom.

When Martin Luther in 1520 published "An Open Letter to The Christian Nobility of the German Nation", he called for one of Joshua's trumpets to sound so that Protestants might rally together and be victorious over the Catholic Church. That was a spiritual and metaphorical trumpet. Again, in the heavenly realms a second angel blew his horn. Down tumbled the walls of compulsive Christian unity. Up from the ashes grew religious freedom.

He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from

the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace,

and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft.

- Revelation 9:2

The Fifth Trumpet blew in 1765 and its strains continued for the next 153 years. The final note sounded in 1918, at the close of the First World War. The essence of this era was the power of steam. James Watt invented a superior reciprocating steam engine in 1765. After that, George Stephenson patented the steam trumpet in 1833 to warn people away from oncoming locomotives. Adrian Stephens invented the steam whistle (never patented) at about the same time, for use at the iron works. Steam trumpets and steam whistles were the loud herald of a new age of industry, sounding from trains and factories around the world. These trumpets had a power far greater than shofars and bugles blown by human lips. That power was not metaphorical and those blasts of noise the opposite of unheard. Like smoke from the shaft of the bottomless pit, the burning of coal darkened the sun. The Apostle John perfectly captured the image of the blast furnaces of the Industrial Revolution. Down tumbled the world economic system built on slavery. Up rose free men and women and an explosion in prosperity, unevenly distributed.

• The derivation of the meaning of the number 153 is found in Defining 153.
• A detailed analysis of the blowing of the fifth trumpet in Revelation 9:1-11 is found in the article 153 and the Fifth Trumpet. It explains why the Fifth Trumpet era lasted 153 years and who the locusts with women's hair were.

The prophecies in Revelation are metaphorical. They speak in coded language. What is marvelous here is that the real events of the Industrial Revolution are so poetically and succinctly captured by Revelation 9. There was real smoke and a real trumpet. The sky was literally clouded by coal soot that blocked the light of the sun. However, there is also a spiritual meaning. Advances in science darkened the sun of God's glory as atheists used these new ideas to advance theories about a world created without a creator.

What the related articles about Revelation 9 do not do is look more broadly at the time period from 1765 to 1918 AD. There are many Bible prophecies fulfilled by events from that critical era in history. To learn about a few of these prophecies, read this article, which takes another cross section from many prophetic clocks:

The Fifth Trumpet and the Industrial Revolution

The Fifth Seal

By my reckoning, the Fifth Seal on the Lamb's scroll has not yet been opened. It will be opened soon. The opening of this seal is the next great event in God's plan for history. It will occur before the end of this century. My best estimate is that it will occur near 2040 AD. that year marks the beginning of "a time to hate". The hatred of that time will be directed at Christians and Jews.

The majority of my study, analysis and writing has been to identify which past events match Bible prophecy. All that is the foundation for understanding the unfolding of God's plan so far. Who can say that they know the future if they do not understand the past? Now that God's purposes in advancing civilization are clearer, it is possible to see - however dimly - into the future.

Read this article for speculation that builds upon what has been revealed about the opening of the first four seals:

The Fifth Seal

Voice of the Seven Thunders

In Revelation 10, an angel speaks with the voice of seven thunders. John is then told to seal up what has been said. It is the secret counsel of God. We are told that we are not permitted to know what that angel said. How our human pride is rankled by such words! Yet even as God with one hand takes away, he gives with the other. By telling us that there is a being who speaks with such a voice of thunder, the Lord gave us valuable information. Knowing about this angel, we can search the Word to see if he has spoken before. I did - and I found him. The Seven Thunders have spoken before and the Bible tells us what they said...

To better understand this great mystery, read Voice of the Seven Thunders.

The End

Revelation speaks of many things that happen after the opening of the Fifth Seal. Those events carry us up to the end, when Christ returns. I do not understand those things well enough to add my thoughts. With the opening of the Sixth Seal, the Spirit of Knowledge will unlock the deeper meaning of the Gospel of Matthew. God will by this act open the mind of some in the church to fathom knowledge of things beyond anything I can imagine. Those Christians will be able to advise the church about things I will never understand.

The most important thing to know is that Jesus is with us now. He promised to stay with us until the end of the age. His grace is sufficient for us. Then one day, he will descend from the sky in bodily form in the same way that the Apostles saw him leave. That is the end to which I look forward: the happy end.