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 15 October 2009

JUDAH BEN SAMUEL and the SIGNPOST YEARS, BALFOUR and the FIG TREE, in ISRAEL TODAY


The October 2009 edition of the Journal ‘Israel Today’ repeats a most valid and astute observation. It amounts to a telling refutation of all other attempts by other religious groups to claim ‘Signpost’ thinking for their methods of biblical prophetic interpretation. We have looked at three of the principle major examples of such organizations in these Notes (the Witnesses, Bahai and Adventists), and they each succumb to the same fundamental problem noted by the magazine and ourselves; they miss the point that the Jewish nation and its peoples are intended in the prophetic end-time writings of the book of Daniel (and in much of the New Testament also).

Israel Today puts it this way:

‘Jesus alludes to the fig tree (Luke 21 etc), which is widely interpreted to mean Israel. As soon as it starts to bud and to form leaves – there is no mention of fruit at this stage – the Kingdom of God, or Messianic Kingdom, is near. This means that Israel is the only unmistakable sign of the end times that has never been revealed at any time in the past. This is why Israel is so important for us today.’

This is fundamentally why the Witnesses, Bahai and Adventists would be wrong, they leave the nation of Israel and its modern re-gathering out of their prophetic scheme.

But the
Israel Today magazine goes one notable step further in the article associated with this observation and makes a claim that ranks second only to the overall Signpost Year assertion itself; that ‘the then future years 1917 and 1967 AD were indicated by the Jewish mystic Judah ben Samuel, writing about 1200 AD, as prophetically important to the Jewish Nation in Diaspora, fully 800 years ago.’ Further, though the years are the same, the biblical method that ben Samuel used to locate these time destinations differs entirely from those employed by Clarke and Guinness to derive the Signpost Years 1917 and 1967 AD.

This correspondence, 1917 and 1967, and the prophetic matching to an associated Jewish involvment specifically, is remarkably in line with the Signpost view.

(We will be commenting on this observation and its significance in other Notes, and we must conclude a few further and final considerations in regard to the signpost-suppositions of the Witnesses, Bahai and Adventists, but continuing the theme...)


In a further parallel to the Signpost Years, the following month’s edition of Israel Today magazine in November 2009 carried two other articles on page 18 titled, ‘It Started with the Balfour Declaration’ and on page 19, ‘Please Don’t Go Straight to Your Calendars.’

In the first, which contains an original copy of Lord Balfour’s highly significant letter of 1917 AD, dated and signed, Ludwig Schneider who wrote for the previous month’s item, and both of these later two, notes that:

“On November 2nd, 1917 British Foreign Secretary Arthur J. Balfour sent a declaration to Baron W. Rothschild stating that ‘His Majesty’s government …will use their best endeavors to facilitate the establishment in Palestine for a national home for the Jewish people.’
Following this undertaking, Britain took over the patronage of Palestine that had been ruled by the Ottoman Turks from 1517 – 1917. The British mandate was officially established in 1922.
As a result, there was rapid influx of Jews to the Land of Israel. These settlers had a pioneering spirit. The homeland of the Jewish people, abandoned for 1,800 years, was desolate; at the end of their 400-year rule, the Turks had lost interest in the country between the Mediterranean sea and the Jordan River. But slowly it became a flourishing landscape, which had a positive effect for Jews and Arabs alike…”

It is evident from the article’s title alone that Israel Today regards (the Signpost Year) 1917 AD as a fundamental landmark in the modern history of the Jewish people following many centuries of homesick Diaspora.
But the second item also coincides with the position proposed elsewhere in these web-site notes; that the symbolic ‘fig tree’ referred to by Christ is a word picture for the prophetic end times nation of Israel. The caption under a photographic picture of a fig tree fruiting reads, ‘WHEN THE FIG TREE BLOSSOMS the Son of Man is near (Matthew 24:32-33)’, and Ludwig in-text notes also,

“Although the establishment of the ‘fig tree,’ State of Israel, is a sign of the end times which has already been fulfilled, it only means the countdown has begun. And again, no one knows the day or the hour of the Lord’s coming.”

The Signpost perspective would wholly agree with the magazine’s view also; 1901-3, 1917, 1947-8 and 1967 were only pointers along a pathway of increasingly convoluted and intractable dilemmas associated with serious religious conflicts and rivalries - over Jerusalem, the Land of Israel-Palestine, the wider Middle east, and globally now. They serve also as a prophetic warning and advance verification of their intended end-point, also noted in Matthew 24 at verse 30-31.


- Israel Today. ‘Which End Time Visions Apply to the True End Times?’ Oct 2009 p 18, and 'It Started with the Balfour Declaration.' p 18 with 'Please Don't Go traight for Your Calendars.' p 19. Nov 2009. - Ludwig Schneider.

(9nov)


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