Epilogue - If the Window Slides

A book that makes specific date predictions takes on a specific risk. If the dates pass and the events do not unfold, the book joins a long and unhappy company of works that have damaged faith more than they have served it. William Miller in 1843. Edgar Whisenant in 1988. Harold Camping in 2011. The list is long, the disappointments real, and the consequences for the readers — many of whom rebuilt their lives around the predictions and then watched the predicted day slip into ordinary daylight without anything having happened — are not abstract. They are pastoral disasters in real households.

I have written this book knowing that company. I have stated specific dates anyway, because the alternative — vague spiritualising of every prophetic number Scripture took the trouble to be specific about — is a more thorough betrayal of the text than risking the wrong year. Daniel was given specific numbers. Gabriel was specific to the season. Hosea was specific to the day. The first sixty-nine weeks of Daniel landed on the precise autumn afternoon the arithmetic said they would. To refuse to reckon forward in the same register because the reckoning is risky is to refuse the kind of attention the prophet himself was given.

But the household reading these words after a predicted date has passed needs more than this defence. It needs guidance. So let me speak to two scenarios.

Scenario one: the year is 2027 or after, and Tishri 1 has passed without a covenant being made strong by overwhelming power.

If you are on this page in November or December of 2027, or in any month thereafter, with no political event having occurred at the autumn boundary that resembles the higbir berit la-rabbim of Daniel 9:27, the right response is not to throw the architecture away. It is to ask which of the calendrical assumptions in the projection may have been mis-set.

The first assumption is the placement of the start year of the seventy weeks at autumn 457 BC. If the Persian regnal-year reconstruction is off by a year, the entire window slides by a year. Appendix A defends 457; alternatives include 458 and 456. The Horn–Wood Tishri-to-Tishri argument is the strongest available, but it is not the only argument that has been made.

The second assumption is the placement of the close of the dial at year 6000 of the master clock. If the Anno Mundi total is off by a small number of years — and the genealogies of Genesis 11 do contain small ambiguities, especially around Terah and Abraham — the dial slides correspondingly.

The third assumption is the rabbinic intercalary placement that converts the Hebrew anchors to specific Gregorian dates, which the note in chapter twelve and Appendix D have already addressed.

What counts as a hit and what as a miss is fixed by the deposited protocol (The Pre-Abomination Model, chapter 13), and that is binding: near-misses are misses. If the covenant gate of October 2027 stays empty, the primary configuration of this book has fallen, with everything that follows from it. The architecture does not fall with it: the six-thousand-year framework, the 2520 + 480 + 480 + 2520 split, the chiastic mirror, the patristic–rabbinic tradition behind the day-year hermeneutic, the lexicon of zevach u-minchah, the two distinct Nagids of Daniel 9. What is then refuted is the dating.

Then it is honest to consider whether one of the load-bearing chronological anchors is wrong in a more fundamental way. Was the cross perhaps in AD 30 or AD 33 rather than AD 31? Did the seventy weeks perhaps begin in 444 BC after all, with Anderson's calculation requiring revisitation? Is the AM 6000 framework itself, perhaps, longer than six thousand years on a different chronology? These are honest questions, and the household that has worked through this book is now in a position to ask them in a disciplined way rather than to throw the entire framework over.

Scenario two: the year is 2034 or after, and Hoshana Rabbah of 2034 has passed without the return of the Goel.

If you are on this page after the autumn of 2034 with nothing eschatologically definitive having occurred in the closing months of that year, the conversation is necessarily different and harder. The book has staked its case on the dial closing at AM 6000 in autumn 2034. If 2034 passes quietly, the case has not been confirmed in the form the book projected. I will not pretend otherwise. The disappointment in that scenario will be real. The author of these words will be on the same page as the reader, and neither of us will find it easy.

What the book has not done, even in that scenario, is failed in the way Miller failed in 1843 or Camping failed in 2011. Miller and Camping made specific date predictions on weak interpretive frameworks. The framework of this book — the six-thousand-year architecture rooted in 2 Peter 3:8 and Sanhedrin 97a and Barnabas 15, the chiastic structure of Daniel 9, the patristic–rabbinic tradition stretching from Barnabas through Irenaeus through the Talmudic editors — does not stand or fall on whether the projection lands on 2034 or on a different year within a generation. It stands on whether the architecture is in Scripture and tradition. The architecture is. The projection is the application.

And now it is the pastor speaking here and not the reckoner; that distinction belongs out loud, for as a weighing the next sentence would widen the window in advance and soften the falsifier. As a weighing, what The Cornerstone says holds: if 2034 passes in silence, a sum has been refuted, and nothing more. But as comfort, this holds. If the projection is off by a generation — if the close of the dial falls in 2050 or 2070 rather than 2034 — the architecture remains, the master clock remains, the chiastic mirror remains, and the call on the household remains. To watch. To be ready. To refuse to set one's life by the calendar of the empire while keeping the calendar of the Architect open on the desk. The Bridegroom is on the road. He is not, in any reading of any honest framework, far. The exact day was always reserved. The exact season was always within a window. If the window projected here is too tight, the broader window remains, and the household stays at its post.

What the household must not do, in either scenario.

Two things.

It must not, in the disappointment of a missed date, conclude that the entire framework was a delusion. The architecture is in Scripture. The six-thousand-year framework is in 2 Peter and Sanhedrin and Barnabas. The seventy weeks of Daniel are in Daniel. The chiastic mirror is in the text of Daniel 9 itself. The disappointment of a specific projection is not a refutation of the structure that produced the projection. It is a calibration error within a structure that remains valid.

And it must not, in the disappointment of a missed date, harden into the cynicism that says no projection from Scripture can ever be made — that the only safe interpretive position is total agnosticism about timing. That position is also not biblical. The prophets made specific projections. The disciples asked Yeshua about the timing. He did not refuse the question. He gave them sign after sign. The household that watches is the household He commended. The household that refuses to watch because the watching is risky is the household He rebuked.

Watch. If the dates I have projected come to pass, you will know it on the day. If the dates slide, you will recheck the anchors and continue watching with a slightly adjusted calendar. If the dates fail to materialise within a generation, you will hand the architecture to your children and they will continue watching. The dial is the Architect's. The watching is ours. Neither is contingent on whether my arithmetic was correct to the year.

A closing word from the writer to the reader.

If you are reading this in 2034 or 2035 with the dates having held, the closing pages of this book are themselves a closing chapter of the age, and the rest of what you need is in the chapters above and the appendices below.

If you are reading this in 2028 or 2029 with Tishri 1 of 2027 having passed quietly, the dating of this book has fallen, and that ought to be said plainly. Recheck the anchors, and stay at the post.

If you are reading this in 2050 or 2070 with the framework having required substantial adjustment, the architecture remains in your hands and the call to watch is still on the page. Hand the dial to your children. Tell them what you watched for. Tell them why you were not ashamed of the watching even when the year you watched in turned out to be wrong. The Architect is not in a hurry. The Bride does not come before the Bridegroom is sent. Both are coming. The arithmetic in this book was honest. If it was incomplete on a specific year, the watching was not incomplete on its essential point.

I have done my best with the calendar. I have held nothing back from the household. The dates I have given are the dates the master clock projects. The architecture I have laid out is the architecture I believe Scripture and the older tradition have been carrying for two thousand years. If I have erred in the projection, I have not erred in the watching. The watching is what the Bridegroom asked for. The watching is what the Bride does until He comes.

The Bridegroom is on the road. The Bride is at her post. Whatever year you are reading this in, that has not changed.

Maranatha.