The Template of Time:
How Time Patterns Reveal

The Destiny of Nations


Tom Payne

  Revised and Expanded
EGS Publishing
Chicago, Illinois

  

The Template of Time:
How Time Patterns Reveal the Destiny of Nations
 

Copyright 2011 by Tom Payne

 All quotations of scripture are taken from the

New International Version of the Bible except where noted. 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book may be ordered through booksellers,

or by going online at www.thetemplateoftime.com.

Second Edition. Revised and Expanded. Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN 10: 1466272546

ISBN 13: 978-1466272545

Published by: EGS Publishing

An imprint of Essential Growth Solutions, LLC

Chicago, Illinois

 

To Joni, who made it possible



 
Contents

Acknowledgements                                                                         viii

Preface                                                                                            ix

Part One:  Breaking the Time Code                            1

1.       The Puzzle Pieces of Time                                                    2

2.       The Fractal Character of Time                                              16

Part Two:  History on the Template of Time                30

3.       The Conflict of the Ages                                                       31

4.       The Harvest: New Directions Fulfilled                                 46

5.       The Monastic Response to Christendom                               54

6.       The Harvest of Nations                                                         62

7.       The Holy Roman Empire                                                      77

8.       The Habsburgs End the Crisis in Christendom                      93

9.       From Crusades to Inquisitions                                               107

10.     The Spiritual Earthquake                                                      120

11.     Christendom’s Bloody Feast                                                  131



Part Three:  The Fulfillment of an Epoch                    140

12.     The Revolutionary Age Begins                                              141

13.     The Global Awakening                                                         152

14.     “Enlightenment” Leads To Revolution                                 162

15.     A Foreshadowing of the Beast                                              170

16.     Enter the Great Beast                                                           181

17.     The Destinies of America and Russia                                    194

18.     Global Outpouring, Spiritual Harvest                                   207

19.     2010 and Its Aftermath                                                         218

20.     The Arab Spring                                                                    231

21.     Terrorism Returns                                                                 240

22.     At Week’s End                                                                      252

23.     Final Thoughts                                                                      260

Appendix 1:     Miscellaneous Time Cycles                                      267

Appendix 2:     Dating the Life of Jesus                                          271

Notes                                                                                              273

Illustrations
                                                                              
1. The Patriarchs and the Squaring of Time                                    5

2. The Basic Time Pattern Begins                                                    8

3. The INC Sequence                                                                      12

4. The Jubilee Fractal                                                                      17

5. The Jubilee Fractal Is Also an INC Sequence                              19

6. The Millennial Fractal                                                                 23

7. Season One: 31 AD – 534 AD                                                    24

8. Season Two: 535 AD – 1038 AD                                               25

9. Season Three: 1039 AD – 1542 AD                                            26

10. Season Four: 1543 AD – 2046 AD                                           27

11. The Persecution of Christians                                                    36

12. 2010 AD: The Convergence of Three Sequences                       226 

13. The 1-4-7 Sequence in Millennial Time                                     258

14. Biblical Life Spans as Time Cycles                                             267

15. Time Cycles Based on the Birth of a Son                                   268

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank Dr. Dennis Hensley who helped with copyediting and valuable editorial guidance. Being a Professor of Writing at Taylor University, he has a finely tuned skill-set that I needed and gratefully utilized.
     I’d like to thank Pastor Daryle Worley whose wisdom, feedback and encouragement meant so much. Others providing encouragement and feedback include, my brother, Dr. Neill H. Payne, and Kevin Hickey, a former co-worker of mine.
     More than any other I need to thank my wife Joni, whose editorial guidance was always thoughtfully constructed and gently delivered, and whose love and support helped to keep me going.

Preface

I approached this subject like a child exploring a new world. I had no preconceptions to overcome. My knowledge of time patterns, prophecy, and many of the historical themes found in this book, was superficial. Prior to my investigation, I never thought, “History must follow a pattern,” because such an idea would have seemed ludicrous to me. (Then again, all revolutionary ideas seem ludicrous.)
     This open mind provided two important benefits. First, I was able to critically evaluate the possible models of time as they appeared, and modify or discard them if they failed to account for history’s facts. I was not married to any of these models, and I doubted such a model could even exist. Second, it allowed me to listen to the story history was trying to tell, not the one I wanted to hear; what it told me changed my opinion of the past, present, and even the future.
      You may wonder, “If his mind was a blank slate on this topic, then what could have initiated this journey?” The catalyst was unusual. I was reading an article on the supposed existence of seventy-year time cycles in the stock market. Don’t ask me why, but the question popped into my head, “I wonder if there are seventy-year time cycles in the Bible?” This led me to look deeper into the quirky time patterns that are scattered throughout the Bible, and this eight-year effort finally pieced together the puzzle that decodes time and shows us where the nations of this world are headed.
      Finally, this is a revised version of the book that first appeared in June 2010. Some of the primary changes are the addition of slides with tables and artwork to illustrate some of the ideas found in the template. I also removed a cumbersome notation system and added directions to make sure the template was as easy and accessible as possible. I believe it to be much improved. I invite you to visit my website www.thetemplateoftime.com. Those who are interested in receiving new forecasts and real time updates of current forecasts are invited to become followers of my blog. I will post this notice at the end of several chapters since some people do not read Prefaces.
      I hope you enjoy a book unlike any other.

 

Part One:
Breaking the Time Code

 

 
Chapter One:
The Puzzle Pieces of Time
 

There is a code holding the answers to some of life’s greatest questions, and it has been broken. It maps out the destiny of nations and the contributions of historic individuals. I call this code the Template of Time. It is a matrix of dates that history has followed for over 2,000 years.

Just as weather models enable meteorologists to predict the path of a hurricane, or the next day’s weather, this time model enables us to map out both where a nation is headed and approximately when it will get there. Had history not followed this time pattern so perfectly for over 2,000 years, or if this template had not generated predictions of future events that have since come true, I would be more cautious in my wording. But recent events provided this template with one of the most powerful validations any theory can enjoy. What the template said would happen, happened.

This book was first published in June 2010, and it predicted President Hosni Mubarak would be ousted from power around the year 2010 (hence my rush to get this book published). No one believed he was in the slightest danger at the time of publication. In fact, he seemed to be one of the safest autocrats in the entire Middle East. But the template suggested otherwise and this prediction was realized in February 2011.

You will find the Mubarak prediction in the chapter entitled “2010 and Its Aftermath” where it remains unchanged from the original publication, only bracketed comments were added. It also contains a prediction of a U.S. Army pull out from Afghanistan around the year 2014, a date NATO has since adopted.

As the predictions keep coming true, as I believe many of them will, the central, radical idea of this book becomes more difficult to refute. That idea is simply this: history follows a time pattern so closely it enables you to predict future events and their timing.

The timing part of the equation is critical, because most futurists follow a very safe formula. They predict the future but they fail to offer any dates. This way they can claim to never be wrong, because the realization of their prediction can still occur in the ever-receding future. But this seems to be the ultimate cop-out. If something is as fuzzy as the predictions of Nostradamus, which can be made to fit just about anything, then what good are they?

In this book you will see how history conforms to this pattern, and how it generates forecasts on the following subjects: 

·      A new age of terrorism is about to explode: who will be affected?

·      The U.S. and its place in the world: is America in a state of terminal decline?

·      The U.S. relationship with China: will the two be at war in the coming decades? Will they be competitive partners?

·      The rise of the European Union (EU): will the EU, so often dismissed, rise up to become a military superpower?

·      Iran, Iraq, Israel, Syria, and Egypt: where are they headed? This book will cover that and more.
Developing a predictive time model required my cracking a time code. Incredibly, the pieces of this puzzle were hidden for millennia in plain sight in the pages of the Bible. It is a simple puzzle having only three components, and in this chapter we will look at two of them.

Time Cycles

The first puzzle piece is the time cycle. In the Bible some of these, like the forty-year time cycle, are obvious:

• Moses lived for forty years in Egypt under Pharaoh, then spent forty years in the wilderness, and lived his remaining forty years leading the Israelites from slavery to the threshold of the Promised Land.[1] After his death, they entered it.
• David reigned for forty years[2] and, following his death, Solomon became king and built the Temple in Jerusalem.
• Solomon was king for forty years,[3] and after his death the nation of Israel split into a northern and southern kingdom.

 
Did you spot the pattern? After every forty-year period an individual’s life was transformed, or a nation’s destiny was radically redirected. If we were to look at the forty-day time cycle, which is even more prevalent, we would notice the same phenomenon. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and nights and came down to deliver the law of God to the Israelites. This changed the destiny of the Israelites forever. The world was destroyed by forty days and nights of rain. Has the destiny of the planet ever been so radically changed before or since? There are several other forty-day time cycles. Two of them, related to Jesus, will be covered later in this chapter.

The seventy-year time cycle is another obvious one: King David lived for seventy years,[4] and the life span of a man was declared to be seventy years.[5] In these examples the time cycles mark the completion of a life. This idea of culmination is also found in the Babylonian Captivity that was prophesied to end after seventy years.[6]

At this point, I need to take a brief excursion away from the time cycles to point out an unusual feature of this prophecy that is also found in the Template of Time. Although Jeremiah said the Babylonian Captivity would last seventy years, it only lasted sixty-seven years, or sixty-eight years at most. The Israelites partially entered this captivity in 605 BC and were freed in 538 BC. Even counting the full years of 605 and 538 this still only comes to sixty-eight years. Apologists can go to extraordinary lengths to account for this variance, but do they need to? Is not the spirit of the prophecy fulfilled? In a similar manner, the Template of Time produces a time line that is remarkably accurate, but its timing of some of the major turning points in history can be off by two to three years.

Now, back to the time cycles. Many of them are not so obvious. For example, think of the ages of all of the people listed in Genesis. Did Methusaleh actually live 969 years, or does his age serve some symbolic purpose? Some of the ages given are clearly symbolic as in the case of Lamech[7] and his 777 years of life, or Enoch[8] and his 365 years. With Lamech, we see a play upon the important number “seven,” and Enoch’s life span features one year for every day of the year. I will not argue against the literal truth of these unusually long life spans, but I will argue for their symbolic significance as time cycles.

The number of years lived by other biblical figures seems to be symbolic as well. Consider the ages of the patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—and the way they are all based on squared numbers as is illustrated in the chart below. (Squared numbers, as we will see, are central to the Template of Time and will also appear later on as time cycles.) 



NOTES

[1] Stephen provides this breakdown for us in Acts 7:23, 30, 36.
[2] 2 Sm 5:4.
[3] 1 Kgs 11:42.
[4] 2 Sm 5:4
[5] Ps 90:10
[6] Jer 25:11, Dan 9:2.
[7] Gn 5:31.
[8] Gn 5:23.


NOTE ON THE NOTES: I had difficulty formatting this chapter to the website pages. For the record, the notes in the book all appear under separate chapter headings at the back of the book. 

The pattern formed by the number of years the patriarchs are said to have lived seems too structured to be the product of chance. From Abraham to Isaac to Jacob the squared numbers rise from five to six to seven. The multiplier of these squared numbers also declines in an equally orderly way from seven to five to three. Are their ages actual or symbolic? Again, I will only argue for their symbolic value, but not against their literal reality.

Finally, there are other important time cycles in the Bible, and you can find a listing of many of them in Appendix 1. Now as we move to the next puzzle piece in this template please note that the 180-year time cycle, based on the life span of Isaac, will figure prominently in several of the examples I use to illustrate the INC Sequence.

The Second Component: The INC Sequence

The template is based on a three-phase INC sequence. “INC” stands for “Initiation,” “New Direction,” “Culmination,” or “Impulse,” “New Impulse,” and “Completion.” These two variations of INC mean the same thing. It refers to the way movements in history have a beginning, or a point of initiation. Some force, idea or person impels a new movement in history. This initiating phase can also represent the birth of an important person.

Then, as these movements mature, they are transformed, or move in a new direction. A new impulse enters the flow of history and redirects the course of the initial movement.

This new direction typically appears to be small, fragile and insignificant, until it matures and bears fruit, or achieves its culmination.

To recap: a movement in history begins, moves in a new direction, and this new direction grows until it achieves it culmination. If you understand this, you understand the Template of Time. Everything is based on this simple formula.

Each of the three phases in the INC sequence is timed. A historical movement begins and then about thirty-two years later it moves in a new direction. This new direction may seem insignificant at the time. However, about four years later this new direction has grown dramatically and achieves its culmination, and the impact of this new direction is now obvious.

Here is an example: Apple, the wildly successful technology company, was established in 1976. This marked the initiation of a historical movement that unfolded on the Template of Time. For thirty years it was called Apple Computer, Inc.

About thirty-two years later, in 2007, it announced the launch of the iPhone and that its name was changing from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. This reflected its transformation from a computer company into a technology company offering music playing devices and now phones. This was clearly a new direction for Apple.

Four years later Apple, Inc. was, in revenue terms, an iPhone company. In April, 2011 50% of its revenue came from the iPhone. This is an example of how a new direction matures and bears fruit in the final culmination phase. Additionally, the iPhone morphed into a larger version called the iPad. This tablet computer now rocks the personal computing world that Apple launched. And recently, the ultimate culmination occurred on August 24, 2011, when its founder, the brilliant Steve Jobs, announced he was stepping down as CEO.

So now we have the timing of the new direction phase and the culmination phase accounted for. They occur approximately thirty-two years and thirty-six years after the initiation phase. The question becomes, “How do we know the timing of the initiation phase?”

The answer requires extending the time cycles, our first puzzle piece, from a common starting date. In the template, every time cycle is extended from 6 BC. (Why that date was chosen will be covered in a moment.)

When we extend the 180-year time cycle from 6 BC we arrive at 174 AD. This is because 6 BC is on the other side of the BC/AD timeline. It requires us to subtract six years from every time cycle to arrive at the starting point of the sequence (therefore, 180 years – 6 BC = 174 AD).

I call 174 AD a cycle-date, because it is a date produced by a time cycle. Then, the 180-year time cycle that first appeared in 174 AD, reappears 180 years later in 354 AD (180 X 2 = 360; 360 – 6 BC = 354 AD), and it keeps reappearing until it arrives at 1974, around the time of Apple’s beginning. The following picture illustrates how the 180-year time cycle extends through time.

Again, when a time cycle is extended from 6 BC it produces an initiating cycle date, the first phase of an INC sequence. These initiating cycle dates, like 1974, mark the approximate beginning of important historical movements. We’ve noted Apple’s start in 1976. A few others were: President Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to China, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Nixon’s resignation in 1974, and many other events. 

As you can see, the actual events sometimes occurred on, or within a few years of, the 1974 cycle date. This approximation in the timing resembles Jeremiah’s prophecy that the exile of the Jews would last seventy years when it actually lasted sixty-seven or sixty-eight years.

The second phase of the INC sequence appeared thirty-two years later around the 2006 cycle date. Let’s look at the important historical movement of the U.S. relationship with China to see if it moved in a new direction around this date.

President Nixon, a fierce anti-communist, did not make his historic trip to China because he had come to admire Chairman Mao. No, it was taken for economic reasons. China was, and is, a gigantic market. Then, when the 2006 new direction cycle date appeared, the U.S.-China economic relationship changed. In that year the two countries signed the Strategic Economic Agreement (SEA). It established a process wherein top-ranked officials from both nations would meet twice a year to discuss ways to work together to further their interests. Some have likened this to a G-2 Summit, a meeting wherein the world’s two greatest powers decide upon issues affecting the world.

Note how the new direction didn’t reverse the first phase movement; it simply changed it into something new and different.

The new direction then grows for about four years and bears fruit, or achieves its culmination. Now in the case of the China-U.S. economic relationship, this culmination has yet to occur at the time of this writing. This is where the predictive element of the template appears. According to the template this new direction will mature and bear fruit. This generates the following forecast: a major economic agreement will be reached and signed by China and the U.S. in the years 2011-2013 (with 2011-2012 being the more likely years).

The U.S. with its faltering economy clearly needs this, but what’s in it for China? Taiwan. According to the template the U.S. relationship with Taiwan is scheduled to change around the year 2010. This is because the U.S. severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1979 in order to establish them with mainland China. This historical movement should move in a new direction about thirty-two years later and that brings us to 2011-2012.

In retrospect, this will seem obvious. (When looking back in time, doesn’t 99.9% of history seem this way?) People will say, “Of course this is what had to happen. You are merely predicting the obvious. The Obama administration needed some sort of good economic news to share with the American people prior to the 2012 election campaign.” But when this prediction was made in a September 15, 2010 blog post the U.S. and China were not experiencing the friendliest of relations and even at the time of this writing (August 31, 2011), there are no murmurs about a breakthrough economic deal on the horizon for the U.S. and China.

Historical Figures On the Template

The template also maps out the destinies of historical figures. We will go back in history to look for an example because the importance of this person was confirmed by his centuries of influence. As the above illustration shows, the 180-year time cycle produced the initiating cycle date 354. As “luck” would have it, in 354 one of the most influential thinkers in the history of the western world was born. His name was Augustine of Hippo, primarily remembered as St. Augustine. His theological, philosophical and historical ideas dominated the European world for almost a thousand years.

We would expect his life to be transformed, or moved in a new direction, around the year 386, some thirty-two years later, and it was. He experienced a dramatic conversion to the Christian faith in 386. This conversion bore the following fruit about four years later: he became a priest in 391. It was within the Catholic Church that he would make his mark on the world.

We have now seen the INC sequence unfold in history, but these questions remain unanswered: why do the time cycles extend from 6 BC? Why do they move in a new direction around 32 years later and culminate about four years after that? The answer is: the time cycles don’t extend from just one hub of time, but from three, and they are based on the three dates that frame the life of Jesus.

The Three Hubs of Time

There are three dates that circumscribe the recorded life of Jesus. They are: the year he was born (6 BC), the year he was baptized by the Holy Spirit and started his ministry as the Messiah (26 AD), and the year of his crucifixion, resurrection and ascension (30 AD). I sometimes refer to the dates of these events as the “three hubs of time,” because they act like hubs from which the time cycles extend.

In the example mapping out the life of Augustine we arrive at the year of his birth by extending 360 years from 6 BC (360 – 6 BC = 354 AD. We arrive at the year of his transformative change by extending this same time cycle from 26 AD (360 + 26 AD = 386 AD). We then arrive at the culminating cycle date by extending 360 years from 30 AD (360 + 30 AD = 390 AD).

Appendix 2 gives the rationale for the dates that I chose, but the date most people will initially struggle with will be Jesus’ birth in 6 BC. It will cause many to wonder, “How can all historical dating be off by six years?” The answer: during the Dark Ages a monk chose the wrong year and most have been in the dark on this date ever since.

Consider the following: the Bible records how Herod the Great ordered the slaughter of the innocents in the Gospel of Matthew. Since Herod died in 4 BC[1] this would mean that Jesus had to be born on or before 4 BC during the years Herod was alive. I chose the 6 BC date based on two things. The work of scholars and the incredible way it fits the Template of Time.

The other problem some readers may have is with the notion that Jesus was somehow thirty-two years of age when he started his ministry as the Messiah, because Scripture clearly tells us he was thirty years old at that time, right? Actually Scripture doesn’t say that. It tells us, “Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry”[2] (emphasis added). To be thirty-two is to be about thirty years of age, and he may have been thirty-one years of age if my dates are correct. If he was born in September of 6 BC, and launched his ministry in March 26 AD, then he would have been thirty-one years old or, again, about thirty years old. 

The Life of Jesus and the INC Sequence

You may have noticed how the INC sequence mirrors the life of Jesus in the following way.

Phase 1--Initiation: The “movement” that is Jesus’ life began with his birth. This was followed by years of silence, as if it were not necessary for the next thirty or so years to be recorded. A few verses in the gospel of Luke about his precociousness at the age of twelve are the lone exception. As we saw with the example of Augustine of Hippo, and will see many times, important births often occur on cycle dates associated with Jesus’ birth year.

Phase 2--New direction: his baptism, or anointing, by the Holy Spirit changed the course of his life by launching his ministry as the Christ. (The words Christ and Messiah are Greek and Hebrew for Anointed. In Israel prophets, priests and kings were anointed.) In the case of Augustine he was also baptized by the Holy Spirit, or born again, on a cycle date associated with the baptism of Jesus. We will also find many kings are anointed, or assume power, in this second phase of the sequence.

Phase 3--Culmination: According to the New Testament, this Messianic new direction culminated in his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. What is interesting is the way the forty-day time cycles mark a transformational change at both the start and end of his ministry.[3] After forty days in the desert he began his ministry, and forty days after his resurrection he ascended into the heavens.

We will now look at another INC Sequence as it extends from these three hubs of time. It also generates a prediction of a future event.

NOTES

[1] Some scholars feel that the date of Herod’s death is 1 BC. However, since the reigns of his sons are dated at 4 BC, and Herod was a murderous, paranoid, anxious to protect his power, I believe the 4 BC date is correct. Some have held that his sons were made co-regents in 4 BC, but for Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews to fail to mention the unusual circumstance of having 4-5 kings at the same time (Antipater, another son of Herod, was murdered) is a stretch.
[2] Lk 3:23
[3] Immediately after his baptism, and prior to his sharing the good news, Jesus fasted for forty days in the wilderness and then was tempted by the devil (Mt 4:1-11). Following his resurrection Jesus spent forty days with his apostles speaking to them about the kingdom of God before ascending into heaven (Acts1:3).

Israel On the Template

Let’s dig a little deeper into the above illustration, because it does not tell the entire story. In the initiation phase Israel was the invaded, but when the new direction phase came around Israel became the invader. In other words, the movement in history known as the Yom Kippur War moved in a new direction around the cycle date 2006.

Israel did not limit itself to just invading Syrian airspace during the new direction phase. In 2006 Israel also invaded Lebanon to fight Hezbollah, and then invaded Gaza in 2008 to stop Hamas from raining rockets on its citizens. These new directions have yet to achieve their culmination. Therefore, this indicates Israel will likely be involved in a two-front war during the years 2011-2013. Their war will be with Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and ultimately with Egypt as well, since Egypt was part of the 1973 initiation of this sequence. This conflict will be far larger than the skirmishes that occurred in 2006-2008.

Once you understand how the pattern works, you can roughly predict what will occur next. We’ve already generated two 2011-2013 forecasts using the template (a landmark U.S.-China Economic Agreement; and war between Israel, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and Egypt), and many more will follow. 

Scientific Discovery and the Internet

While constructing the template and testing it on historical movements I found many subjects, like science, conformed to its design. In this example we will use the Prophet Daniel’s “seventy sevens” time cycle, or 490 years.[1] The fourth appearance of this time cycle takes us to the cycle date 1954 (490 X 4 = 1960; 1960 years from 6 BC = 1954 AD).

Around 1954 the modern revolution of DNA began with the 1953 Crick and Watson discovery of its double-helical structure. Based on the template this DNA movement should have been redirected around the year 1986, or about 32 years after the 1954 cycle date. It was. In 1986 the Office of Health and Environmental Research announced the Human Genome Initiative, and budgeted more than $5 million to develop critical resources and technology.

Once the new direction appears, the possibility of being more specific in one’s forecast improves dramatically. For example, the 1986 Human Genome Initiative pointed to a culmination of this new impulse, about four years later, and this was achieved. The Human Genome Project was launched in 1990[2].

Some historical movements fit the template quite well, but would never have been noticed in advance. We return to the cycle dates of 1954-1986-1990 and apply them to the birth of a historically significant person.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee was born in 1955 and, as previously noted, important births often occur during the initiation phase of the sequence which in this case was the cycle date 1954. In 1984 he returned to work at CERN, the largest particle accelerator in the world and, at the time, the largest Internet-node in Europe. (The new direction cycle date was 1986.) Then in 1989 he published a paper that led to the creation of the World Wide Web. (The culmination cycle date was 1990.) The first web site then went on line in 1991 and the course of history has been changed by this technological achievement. 

There are several other important events that occurred on this 1954-1986-1990 timeline and I invite you to go to my website thetemplateoftime.com to look at them. I also invite you to join the email list and receive updates about new discoveries regarding where this world is headed. The website will give directions as to how to do this.

Before going further, it will be helpful if I clarify why I wrote about the prediction of Israel’s conflict with Syria-Egypt-Hezbollah-Hamas in the following way, “This indicates Israel will likely be involved….” It almost sounds as if I am trying to give myself an out, or am using weasel words to protect myself in the event I am wrong. I write this way because I firmly believe no one can know the future. If I knew the future I would state, “Mark on your calendars the following events. Bank on them. I know this is going to happen.” But instead, because I do not know the future, I write this is likely to happen.

Do not be confused by my language. I am predicting this conflict will happen, but I am compelled to state it as being likely to happen, because to do otherwise would be to assume powers no one possesses. No one knows the future and I certainly do not pretend to know it.

Predicting the Future Vs. Knowing the Future

Knowledge of the future is an exclusive attribute of God. He alone is omniscient. But there is a difference between knowledge and predictive accuracy. Consider the case of meteorologists who try to predict the future every day with their weather forecasts. They can tell

us what tomorrow’s weather will be with a fair degree of accuracy, but they do not know with certainty what it will be.

Their lack of absolute certainty, or knowledge, does not prevent them from accurately predicting the next day’s weather in most cases. This accuracy declines as you move their predictions out to three days or seven days, because over time the weather’s turbulent mix of variables is more difficult to forecast. The Template of Time is similar in that it can suggest many things that are accurate with respect to what the future holds, but these suggestions can be wrong for many reasons, including missing important variables or underestimating their importance.

How Is This Different From Divination?

The Template of Time is an inherently controversial idea. As I’ve appeared on radio programs some Christian listeners have accused me of sorcery (yikes!), but they probably meant I was guilty of practicing divination. “Divination” is partially defined as trying to predict the future. Since the template does attempt to forecast future events it appears I am guilty as charged. However, predicting the future, or attempting to, is not what makes divination bad.

The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, is constantly forecasting the economic future and making policy decisions based on this. Is he guilty of divination? No. Meteorologists make a living out of predicting the weather’s future and I never hear them being charged with divination. Therefore, predicting the future and divination cannot be the same thing or, if they are, then economists and meteorologists are very wicked people. (Those who demonize the Fed, or get rained upon, might agree with this.)

What makes “divination” bad is the way the information is gathered. Diviners of the future rely on the spirit world to gather their insights into tomorrow. Since intercourse with demonic powers is condemned by the Bible, divination is judged to be wicked. But is attempting to time a future event with a degree of specificity evil?

In the Bible we find the prophets searched earnestly and intently into “the timing and circumstances” of future events like the suffering of Jesus, and how “even angels long to look into these things” (see 1 Pt 1:10-12). Hmmm. If trying to time a future event is evil, then the prophets and holy angels of God are in trouble!

To the charge of divination I have to answer “not guilty.” My predictions are not derived from communications with spirits or angels. They are based entirely on the history that precedes the predicted outcome. In other words, the past points to the future—hardly a radical idea.

We have one puzzle-piece left. In the next chapter we will finalize the development of this model of time, and then will observe how history conforms to it.

NOTES

[1] See Dn 9:24.
[2]  Linda Rossner, Chronology of Science: From Stonehenge to the Human Genome Project (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2002), p. 332.