Newton's Other Work

Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics, was a scientist. But he was also a Christian. As a student of the Bible, he applied the same rigor to his studies of the holy text as he did to his study of the physical world.

The papers above were recently put on display in Israel. Note that one of them is entitled: "Rules for Interpreting Words and Language in Scripture." If you continue reading you will see that he was concerned with ascertaining the original intended meaning of the author. Funny, that is exactly what I learned in seminary today. I suppose in Newton's day, there were many people twisting scripture by interpreting according to their desires instead of taking it's plain meaning, in context. The same is true today.

The second paper includes his calculations regarding the book of Daniel and the second coming of Jesus. He was apparently annoyed with so many people predicting the date of Jesus' return, and then being proven wrong, that he took it upon himself to "do the math" found in Daniel and project a date that it could not be before. In other words, his stance was this: "I don't know when Jesus is coming back, but it's not before 2060, so all you fakers, knock it off! Your bad predictions are giving us a bad name!"

Whether he was right in his calculations or not remains to be seen. What is encouraging is to see that he is a rigorous and zealous defender of the same faith we defend today. I may not be able to help him further physics (I'm not that smart), but we're working together on the Scriptures.