This is the year 2000 AND 6000!
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Millennium Fever Catching As Year 6000 Approaches
from
http://www.torahvoice.org/6000.htm
for more insight,
see http://www.6001.com/springnl.htm
Millennium fever is sweeping the land. The technological world is nervous
over the chaos and confusion that might ensue when the year changes from
1999 to 1000 or 00 or remains stuck at '99 on older PCs, software and chip-based
technology. The political world is caught up in its plans for a Global World
Village and New World Order including an "orchestrated" peace in the Middle
East. But the religious world, thats where the fever is often accompanied
with symptoms of hysteria.
The time-liners, doomsayers and arm-chair prophets are having a field day
with the year 2000. And as the world prepares for its next birthday, (which
should be reckoned from the Jewish Calendar, we contend), get ready for the
Grim Reaper costumes and street walkers made up as The End Is
Here-sandwiches.
With events quickening in the Middle East and such upheavals
as the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the crash of the Berlin Wall, weather
gone weird world wide and mankind-threatening pestilence and viruses, something
out of the ordinary does appear to be going on. The question is whether this
is Apocalypse Now or later?
For a moment, lets forget about 2000. Where did 2000 come from anyway?
Most people believe 2000 commemorates the 2000th year since the birth of
Christ or the Messiah. But the best historical accounts place that landmark
in the year 4 B.C., the date that documents the death of King Herod. And
astronomers today inform us that the "Star of Bethlehem" conforms to an
astronomical occurrence in the year 7 B.C.
If Hashem (G-d) is wanting to let us in on the little secret about the End
Times, theres a better way of doing it than counting down 2000 years.
It is called the Seder Olam Rabbah, a Jewish instrument written in the year
240 C.E. (about 1,760 years ago) that records historical events from the
start of Creation according to a pre-determined 6,000-year plan.
This countdown operates on the assumption that mankind is allotted 6 (six)
one-thousand year days and then comes the Day of Hashem, which
also lasts a thousand years. What is frightening/exciting/relieving, (choose
your own adverb), about the 6,000-year calendar is how closely the last 2,000
years tie to the Gentile reckoning of years.
On its face, this would not seem to be so evident as the year from Creation
5760 according to Seder Olam Rabbah coincides with 1999-2000. That would
make it appear that mankind has another 240 years to make a mess of things
and this generation shouldnt worry too much unless some cyber-genetic
freeze technology makes it possible to go to sleep now and wake up 240 years
in the future. And the way the world is headed, who would want to do that?
But wait a second, it appears that someone forgot to wind that 6000-year
clock a few times and it may be a few seconds off, in fact, as much as
7,568,864,000 seconds (or about 240 years) according to the Encyclopedia
Judaica and other authoritative writings. Interesting that this figure "240"
keeps cropping up!
In an article headed SEDER OLAM, Encyclopedia Judaica records:
Yose b. Halafta, the presumed author of Seder Olam Rabbah, probably
had access to old traditions that also underlay the chronological computations
of the Jewish Hellenistic chronographer Demetrius (third century B.C.E.).
The most significant confusion in Yoses calculation is the compression
of the Persian period, from the rebuilding of the Temple by Zerubbabel in
516 B.C.E. to the conquest of Persia by Alexander (331 B.C.E.) to no more
than 34 years.
Students of ancient history know that the Persian period actually spanned
185 years from its start in 516 B.C.E. to the conquest by Alexander. If Seder
Olam Rabbah reckoned the Persian period as only 34 years, then the clock
is off 151 years for this interval alone.
Also, according to George Foot Moores, Judaism in the First Centuries
of the Christian Era, Volume I, page 6, Seder Olam Rabbah allotted
the period of the Medes and Persians together only 52 years. Again ancient
history records that Cyaxares I, founded the Median Empire in 625 B.C.E.
The Medes ruled 109 years before the start of the Persian empire in 516 B.C.E.
The compression of 109 years that the Median Empire reigned to just 18 years
(52 years of Mede and Persian rule minus 34 years of only Persian rule),
requires another 91 year adjustment to the 6000-year calendar.
The two adjustments taken together (151 years and 91 years) add 242 years
to the Hebrew calendar, making 2000 the year 5760 plus 242 or 6,002!!
However, there is also a mistake in our favor (assuming we want to prolong
the world-changing events of the 7th millennium) found in the reckoning of
the years from Creation.
It seems that the Seder Olam Rabbah records the destruction of the Second
Temple as occurring in the year 3828 from Creation. That translates to 68
C.E. rather than the 70 C.E. which history records. That would make the events
of the year 3828 from Creation (or 4070 when adjusted for the period of the
Medes and Persians) to have occurred two years later than Seder Olam Rabbah
reckons them. . If they occurred later, (or the year 4070 coincides with
the year 70 C.E.), then the calendar today should be adjusted two years back
to -- you guessed it, 6000! This means we are NOW in the 6000th year since
Creation, and the world officially becomes 6000 years old on the next Rosh
Hashanah. That date is September 30, 2000.
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