Introduction

ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY YEARS BEFORE the actual events came to fruition in the Middle East, two dedicated Bible scholars predicted accurately several key years in the then approaching conflict for tenure of the holy Land and Jerusalem, involving a long prophesised regathering of the Jews to their Promised Land, after nearly 2000 years of Diaspora.

Doctors Clarke and Guinness pointed well in advance to the coming years 1902, 1917, 1947-8 and 1967 AD, having based their predictions on the 2,500 year old Biblical book of Daniel.

Not only did their advance forecasts prove accurate decades later, but those key 'Signpost Years’ continue to mark events and developments in the holy Land, ever since their occurrence in modern times, that now represent the specific themes of serious contention in the struggle for Peace in that region today.

These following NOTES explain the rational behind the Clarke-Guinness thinking in as fast and concise a form as possible, and elaborations will follow. A second critical aim here is not to prove 'The Signpost Years' correct, but rather to use the scientific approach of attempting their falsification first. You can help either way by passing on any objective comments to this site.

PART 1 Is an Introduction and looks at each of the Signpost Years as they were foretold in the writings of Guinness and Clarke. It looks at many of the side issues and has a number of detailed footnotes.

PART 2 Looks at the period 1901 – 1903, and the first of the Signpost Years predicted by Clarke in 1825. This part explains the huge significance of the period and sets the scene for a further link that comes in Part 4.

PART 3 Begins to address some of the typical questions that might arise in the mind of the reader regarding the Signpost Years. Items are added to this from time to time as new considerations are brought to light. Again, feel free to contribute any comments that will add to those pages.

PART 4 Looks at the Signpost Years in the light of the last 6 months of Christ’s Ministry, and especially the last week of messages He imparted to His followers for the future. It ties directly back into PART 2.


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Click on QUICK LINKS to Parts 1 to 4 of the Signpost Notes:
Part 1: Introduction, Timelines, Conclusion.
Part 2: The SignPost Year 1902 AD and Max Nordau
Part 3: Q & A on the Signpost Years
Part 4: Jesus and the Signpost Years



Thursday 5 March 2009

ARE THE SIGNPOST YEARS QUANTIFIABLE?

There might be a number of ways of attempting to quantify the impact of the Signpost Years in history, such as scoring mention of their occurrence in secular chronological textbooks like Pears Cyclopaedia or Collins History, and so on.
This could be matched and contrasted against other events involving the Middle East and their frequency of reported representations also. We have no doubt that in such a study ‘Herzl’ and the birth of Zionism, 1917, 1947-8 and 1967 would stand out ‘statistically’ against other events and years.

Another similar way of obtaining such a Signpost frequency score might simply be to note what secular writer’s have reported. For example, the principle Middle-East Editor and BBC correspondent Jeremy Bowen, commenting recently on the turmoil there noted:

“The conflict between Jews and Arabs goes back to the establishment of the first Zionist settlements in Palestine more than a century ago. But 1967 created the cockpit in which they fight today. The conflict took on a new shape. Palestinians rather than the so-called Arab Front-Line States began to take the lead in the fight against Israel

….Palestinians and Israelis have no chance of living quiet lives if they cannot escape 1967. The only peace that is ever discussed these days is one that unwinds its legacy, by creating a Palestinian State on land that Israel captured then.* You can’t understand what is happening now without understanding the 1967 War and its consequences….”

"On the 30th of May (1967), King Hussein of Jordan, Nasser’s rival whom Cairo radio usually denounced as a traitor, had flown himself to Egypt to join an Arab-Military Alliance against Israel. But how to deal with the ‘unfinished business’ left from Israel’s violent birth in 1948 that all sides knew would happen sometime? ….It would be bad enough if the misery of the last 40 years was confined to the Israelis and the Palestinians, the vast majority of whom are decent people who want to live quiet lives. But now, at the start of the twenty-first century, their war affects all of us. It’s at the centre of the new conflict between the West and the Islamic World, which it is escalating with alarming speed



….The Holy Land, with Jerusalem at its heart, is a place where huge tectonic plates of religion, culture and nationalism come together. In the last few years, the fault lines that run between them (never quiet) have opened up again. So, for all of us, ignoring the legacy of 1967 is not an option
…The conflict between Jews and Arabs started when the first Zionist settlements were established in Palestine more than a century ago. But it took on its current shape after the Middle East War of 1967, when Israel captured large swathes of Arab land, much of which it still holds.”
- BBC Radio.


Here is a secular journalist with no religious expectations or prejudice identifying key turning points, ‘just over a century ago regarding Zionism and its settlements’ (actualised in 1901 - 3), ‘1948 and the violent birth of Israel leaving unfinished business,’ and ‘1967 leaving a critical legacy with global consequences.’

It could be argued that Bowen has witlessly pinpointed most of the Signpost Years specifically, in one historical overview, and the key ongoing issues each evoked for today. Numbers of journalists and historians can be shown to have done much the same in other books and documentaries, and it might thus be possible to demonstrate ‘a significant trend’ embedded in reported modern history, alongside the Signpost predictions.

- Bowen's quote from the BBC Radio 4 and World Service Series, ‘The Six Day War.’ Broadcast in June 2007.

* But Bowen here bypasses the Signpost Year 1917 not mentioning, therefore, that it was the British who took the holy Land in 1917 by trickery and reneging on a promise, via Lawrence of Arabia, to build a Palestinian State there for the Arabs. That favour, which never came to pass, was to be in return for Arab help in overturning the Turks. This history rightly and critically infuriates many Arabs in the region to this day.


© Karl Krysko 9jan11