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- [00:00]
A
Ken, how are you doing?
- [00:01]
B
Doing well. Thank you for having me back.
- [00:03]
A
Yeah, absolutely, anytime. It's always good talking with you. I'm not really supposed to pick favorites, but you're one of my favorite people to talk to and you're welcome on the show anytime.
- [00:12]
B
Good. Good to know.
- [00:14]
A
For those who might be brand new to this topic, can you briefly explain what the Dead Sea scroll calendar is?
- [00:20]
B
Well, we have a modern Jewish calendar and it's a lunar based calendar. So you have a leap month every three years, that sort of a thing. There is a calendar in the Dead Sea Scrolls that claims to be the original biblical calendar. So we should judge all prophecies and everything by it rather than anything else. There's also a prophecy that at a certain point in history they would change the calendar. This is even talked about in Daniel about Antiochus Epiphanies changing or his group anyway, changing the times and the seasons. And so the idea is that the Pharisees then have this calendar where the holy days aren't really on the right days and everything gets confused and the years even get confused. And that we see historically has happened. So basically the way the calendar works is it's a solar year. The first month is in the spring, not the fall. So the first month of this calendar would be Nisan. 14th of Nisan is Passover, for instance. And the way that it works is it locates the spring equinox and it's more important to keep the sabbaths in sync than it is for the days. So they link it to where the New Year's is always Wednesday, Takufas are always on a Tuesday. And then the actual equinox varies and we have a leap week once every five to six years. And so that keeps the New Year's always within three days of the actual New Year's. So as it goes back and forth. So basically this coming Tuesday is the Takufa, and then the following day is the beginning of a new year.
- [02:04]
A
Yeah, that's really interesting. And I should mention too that we actually have a print version of the calendar available right now at Prophecy Watchers that has. It's our normal calendar, but it also has the Dead Sea scroll calendar both so you can look at any given day and see if it lands on a feast day or anything like that. And@procywatchers.com they have where you can just get the calendar if you just want the calendar, but they also have a couple different packages where you can get Dr. Ken Johnson's book or you can get my two volume set on the Dead Sea Scrolls. Ken, today is, for most people that are watching this, today is March 18th, a Wednesday. We're technically recording this the day before on Tuesday. But for most people it's March 18th. And on the Dead Sea scroll calendar, this is the first day of the final jubilee of our Age of Grace. Can you unpack that and what all that means for the Essenes? What's an age? What's a jubilee? And why is this final jubilee so important?
- [03:09]
B
Well, the Dead Sea scroll calendar, basically the Essenes taught that from creation, from the creation of Adam, Creation week to the creations of a new heavens and a new earth will be 7,000 years. Now I can't prove that's true or disprove it. That's just what they taught. So they have a calendar system based on that. And the calendar system is broken up into ages that are called basically 2,000 years apart. And so the first age was considered the age of creation. And it went from, and all this stuff is dated on their calendar. So it went from the creation week where Adam was created to the call of Abraham when he was 52 years old. It was exactly the year 2000 again according to their calendar. And then at that point it starts the age of Torah or teaching. So so Abraham is instructed to start the nation of Israel, so to speak, and then the Messiah comes through him and that goes up to 75 A.D. and basically that's the other 2,000. So there's a lot of latter day prophecies about each age. The destruction with Nimrod and the one world Satanic empire, an Antichrist empire at the first age, the destruction of the Jews, not the Jews, but I mean the Pharisees, Sadducees, the cult that took over the government. And then at the end of our age there's going to be an Antichrist rebuilt temple, things like that. So it's really important to see those, those are divided into. Each age is divided into four ONAs or 500 year periods. Each 500 year period has got 10 Jubilees. And so they date these things by that. A Jubilee is a 50 year period. And then in Jubilee there are seven shmitahs in a Jubilee year, much like we have 10 decades in a century, 10 centuries in a millennium. We just do everything by tens. But that's basically the way that works. So we've got a lot of prophecies about the end times. And if you're talking about the end times of the Age of Grace, that's the Antichrist, the rebuilt temple. You're talking about the Gog Magog invasion, all those kind of things. If you're talking about the end times of the age of Torah, you're talking about the first coming of the Messiah, the destruction of the temple, the establishment of the age of Grace, all the miracles and other things that happen with it. Most of the prophecies in the Dead Sea Scrolls are commentary on the Bible prophecies. So that's nice that they tell us what they think it means. Then out of the rest of it, the majority are all about their extra biblical prophecies focusing on the first coming. So we have a ton of extra information about what happened back then. And then there's a small section that are talking about the prophecies at the end of the age, at the end of the Age of Grace. And so basically the whole concept is they would consider a generation as a jubilee period. Most of the time it can also be like an unknown number. Like for instance, if I father to child when I was 15, my firstborn son, or maybe I waited till I'm 50 and then had fathered my firstborn son. So the generation could be anywhere from 15 to 50 years. So it's just a generational count. And most of the time in the scrolls though, they're talking about jubilee periods. So if we're entering according to their calendar, the last 50 year period, we're entering the last generation. And I think that's really important to understand what Jesus was talking about, about the final generation that sees all these things so we can actually put them together. We haven't seen hardly a few of those things, but not most of them. And I think we will starting the day after tomorrow, not that it's this week, but in that 50 year period.
- [06:59]
A
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And so speaking of the words of Jesus, because he says that, you know, this generation not passing away till all these things are fulfilled and then especially like the budding of the fig tre what does all that mean? And how does that play into what's happening today, say in like Israel and in the Middle East?
- [07:19]
B
Yeah, it's interesting. I just did last, we do broadcasts on YouTube with a Q and A afterwards. So I just did one last night on that exact thing. The budding of the fig tree. A lot of people have always asked me, excuse me, what is the budding of the fig tree? Because that looks like would be 1948, when Israel came back. So if that's the case, it's been more than 50 years. It's been more than 80 years, 70 or 80 years. It's like, do we date that or do we date the taking of the Temple Mount, 1967? How does that work? And so I think it's pretty obvious that when you plant a tree, that's when it's planted. Unless it dies, you know it's going to grow up and be a healthy tree. So the planting of Israel was in 1948, not the budding. And then the tree grows and becomes a mature tree. And that takes, depending on the tree, months or years or whatever. But the growth process, I think we saw that in 1967 with the taking back of the Temple Mount, the expansion of the territory. So now we have the budding of the fig tree. The budding of the fig tree is actually, if you think about it, when a tree or a bush or the plant creates buds, well, what happens? The buds drop. And now all of a sudden next year you have 20 trees, it begins to grow a forest. So we're talking about the expansion. So the expansion of the nation of Israel has never happened yet. So whenever that happens, when we see the expansion of Israel, that generation will not pass until all these things are fulfilled. And so we see it beginning actually with the war in Gaza. Eventually, according to Obadiah, they will take back the southern Lebanon up to the Latani river, they'll take Gilead, they'll expand in different ways. They expanded and took the Golan Heights a long time ago. And it's permanently Israeli territory. So it's going to continue going that way. But the wars have to be finished first. And there's actually a Dead Sea scroll prophecy, I believe, that points to the Gaza war ending in 26 or 27. So that's the first. Even if it ended like in the next five minutes and it was all done well, not five minutes, say two days from now. If it ends in two days or anytime thereafter, it's actually in that last 50 year period according to the calendar. So it's interesting that Jesus said the generation that sees this pass, if you translate that, the jubilee that sees this take place, will not pass until everything is fulfilled. So we're in that 50 year period. It doesn't mean everything has to go 50 years from now. Everything has to be done before the end of 50 years. You've got the Gog Magog war, the rebuilding of the Temple, the rise of the 10 nations after the complete fall of the Roman Empire, a lot of little pieces to happen. The Rapture could be around that anytime before all of it, we don't know. It's just a series of prophecies, but they all have to be done before the end of that last age or that last Jubilee.
- [10:30]
A
Yeah, I'm really glad that you brought that up because. And just to bring it up again so people don't misunderstand, because I get this comment a lot. Seemingly no matter how many times I try to explain it, there's always some, you know, some people that kind of miss it. And so according to the Dead Sea scrolls, we have 50 years until basically the first day of the millennial reign of Christ. So does that mean that we have to wait to 50 years for the return of Christ or the Rapture or anything like that? There's different ways that this could all pan out. Right?
- [11:02]
B
Right. It could be that way or it could be just any time in that 50 year period. So that's what I'm saying. If the Rapture happened today, I would consider that odd. If it happened two days from now, I would consider that perfectly fine because it's in that last generation now. That's the way I'm looking at it. Based on the scrolls, I would have also thought that the Gaza war and taking back of the southern Lebanon wouldn't also be until after that last generation begins. But I was wrong on that. It's happened a year or two before. But wars take time and it's all planned out. So the ending of these things are definitely all in that 50 year period.
- [11:45]
A
Yeah, yeah. And that's important to note for people. So the Rapture isn't what begins the tribulation. The Rapture can happen anytime. The tribulation begins with the signing of the covenant with many, which is Israel. So what? One thing that I've talked about, I've talked about a couple different possibilities, but one thing I've talked about in, in my books, Forgotten Prophecies of the Dead Sea scrolls, available at prophecy watchers.com and you can get a calendar with it for those who are interested. But I talk about that there could be a gap of an indeterminate amount of time between the Rapture and the beginning of the Tribulation. So there's, there's different ways that the timing of all this could pan out. Now, speaking of speaking of ages, we don't only see the belief of ages in the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's not like we just only find this in one place. This was a widespread belief during the time of Christ and we even have after that, we even have some of the church fathers talk about it. So what, what have some of the Church fathers said about ages and specifically the time that we're living in now.
- [12:51]
B
There were about 12 or 15 early church fathers that specifically talked about the. Not so much the ages by that name, because church father lingo is different than Dead Sea scroll lingo. But they basically taught the same thing. The idea of the second coming would be in the year 6000, and the first coming was around the year 4000. So we have approximately 2000 years. And of course, the only place you would get that, because everybody in the New Testament seems like, well, Christ could come back at any time. Well, why would you think 2,000 years from now? And they're not guessing if there's a bunch of them. They're getting it from some manuscripts or something somewhere. So they're actually getting this from the Dead Sea Scrolls that would be completely available at that time. So you've got the Dead Sea Scrolls teaching the calendar system, which teaches that. You've got several early church fathers that teach that. And it's interesting now we're looking at some very old Hebrew versions of the New Testament. And so in the Greek, it usually uses the word cosmos for world. And world can mean like an age. It can mean like a world, like the planet or the, you know, or a nation, something like aretz or what are the other words? So it can be that way. But in the Greek, you've got the Greek words for the Hebrew word and you don't know for sure which Hebrew word is being used. So in the Hebrew, though, when you go through and look at that, sometimes it's clearly like, don't love the world because it's all sin. That's the world. Okay? Other places it clearly says the age. And so throughout the New Testament, in the Hebrew, we have clear indications of, like, one part it talks about. I think it's where Peter's talking about the ends are going to come with a fiery destruction, therefore we should be holy. And then he gives the list of add to your faith virtue and, you know, this kind of stuff, the virtue list. And then at the end of that, it says if you do this, you will be able to reproduce. Basically, there's no way that you can't lead people to the Lord. And that will make you ready to enter the kingdom, age rather than leave the world. So it's a little different in places. So we have that in the Hebrew version of the New Testament, we have it among the church fathers, which again makes you wonder what the church fathers were quoting, the Greek or the Hebrew, but all basically the same. And Then you got the Dead Sea Scrolls and then other rabbinic writings, which I wouldn't put a whole lot of stock in medieval stuff, but so there's, there's quite a bit of information out there.
- [15:40]
A
Yeah, that, that, that, that's fascinating. And I know for, like, the past, you know, at least 2,000 years, people have been trying to figure out the timing of everything. And it's interesting that in our, in the, in these end times, birth pains, you know, whatever we want to call them that we're living in now, we have all these scrolls that were rediscovered that, that can kind of help us. One thing that I've been wondering about is. So the end of the, this final jubilee would be in 2075, 2076, 2076 specifically, just kind of barely into that year. We have during, in Revelation and other places, Daniel, other places throughout the Bible, we have a lot of, like, day counts of when things will happen. And one thing that you've talked about a lot is, I believe it's the 1335, that if you, if you make it to that, then you're blessed because you get to enter the millennial kingdom. Would that mean that end of that 1335 is that when the millennial reign of Christ begins? And if so, would we be able to backtrack seven years and be able to say that the tribulation would have to start in 2068, 2069, somewhere around there?
- [16:56]
B
That's a possibility, but I don't think you can actually say that for sure. Basically, what the scrolls teach is that the Messiah would come and die for our sins on a Passover, that the covenants are always designed on a Pentecost. And so, like, according to them, the covenant between God and Abraham, between God and Moses, the law between God and Noah, and also between God and the New Coming church are all going to occur on a Pentecost. So their concept was when you see the veil of the temple being ripped, and then the Messiah, who will be called Yeshua, raising the dead, healing people, it'll be obvious when you see that he'll be put to death for your sins. Resurrect. And then whenever that happens, it'll happen on a Passover. The very next Pentecost, you will be able to not enter the covenant of Moses, but enter the covenant of grace. It's a totally new thing. And then they talk about in the kingdom, it'll be a totally new thing yet again. But it will happen on a Pentecost or. Yeah, on a Pentecost. See, the thing Is though, in Daniel, it talks about the times and stuff, but it uses the word moedim, and that doesn't mean exactly three and a half years period from wherever you start to wherever it's talking about, from moedim to moedim. So like a Passover to another Passover, that kind of thing. And so we look at that and think, okay, well, where do you have exactly 1335 days between one moedim and another? Well, on the modern Jewish calendar, you don't. There is no pattern like that. The Dead Sea scroll calendar, however, there is, and it's one and only one pattern, and it ends on a Pentecost. So that makes perfect sense. What we're seeing here is there's 1260 days in the first part of the tribulation. There's a 1290 days. And that extra gap might be a gap or a overview, a crossing, or it could be a 30 days before the Tribulation, which might mean that the rapture happens 30 days before the. There's a lot of speculation, but it's obviously a seven year period, the end of which ends with these prophecies being fulfilled. And then it talks about blessed is he who makes it to the 1335. Well, if you start from that point and you go 1335, if you're using the Dead Sea scroll calendar, it comes out to be the next Pentecost. And I think that's exactly what it's saying. If you make it that far, and it might be when they laid the foundation of the Temple stone, it could be a bunch of stuff also. But if you make it that far and you're a normal human being, you will be able to enter the covenant of the Kingdom Age, just like we entered on the Day of Pentecost, our covenant, with an Age of Grace. So it's a fantastic thing. All of a sudden, these numbers make sense.
- [19:59]
A
Yeah, and that is fascinating. And it, you know, it makes sense thinking about it like that with the Pentecost too, because in the Age of Torah, that would have been years before the official end of the Age of Torah. So we got to like start a little early. And the way that I talked about it in forgotten prophecies of the Dead Sea Scrolls was it seems like these ages are almost like a relay race where as one's ending, the other one kind of starts beginning, like when the two runners both hold the baton. Because we have, you know, around 30, 32 A.D. you have that Pentecost where people were able to enter into the Age of Grace. But technically, the Age of Torah didn't end till 75, 76 A.D. so who knows, maybe we, we have something like that again to look forward to at the end.
- [20:45]
B
Yeah, that's a great example. Yeah, if you look at that. Jesus was born in 2bc he died in 32ad while he started his ministry in like 28, died in 32. The church age was born in 32. Then 40 years later you got the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. Three years later you got the shutdown of the, the Essene temple in Egypt. Two years later you got the Council of Yavneh. And that was the actual end of the age. But then they continued to fight up until the Bar kokpo rebellion, another 40 some years. So there's lots of things that overlap. And if you think about it, all the end times, the birth pangs, start with Israel coming back. That's 1948, that's two Jubilees back. So you've got a lot of overlap in this stuff. But the calendar's specific and we just know at the end and beginning of ages, things happen.
- [21:38]
A
And what a fascinating time to be alive. You know, there's another really interesting prophecy in the Book of Enoch, the 10 weeks prophecy. And this deals with splitting time up a little bit differently. Can you tell us a bit about that, how it's been fulfilled so far and where in the 10 weeks we would find ourselves today?
- [21:55]
B
Yeah, that's actually, if you think about it. Well, the way that it works is we have like explained the, the different pieces of the Dead Sea scroll calendar. The Enoch calendar is basically the same. He takes the same concept of between the creation of Adam to the creation of a new heavens and a new earth is 7,000 years. But he takes the concept of weeks or sevens very seriously. And he will break it up as in a day, and a day is basically a century, so a week is 700 years. So for 7,000 years, there's 10 weeks. So what he's going to do is say in week one, this happens maybe toward the end of week one. So that's a really, really big time. Sometime in the next 700 years, there's going to be a baby born, you know, that kind of thing. And so the Dead Sea Scrolls are a little more specific. They get it down to the, at least The Jubilee, the 50 years, occasionally down to the Shmita. So that's kind of cool. But he goes through and talks about, he mentions the flood, the coming of the Messiah, the coming of a new age, the end, the millennial. All that stuff is mentioned in There, but they start sometime in this century or definitely in that 700 year period, sometimes in the last day of that week or in the middle of the week or whatever. And you can narrow it down to a couple of centuries. So right now we're in week nine. In week nine, Israel is supposed to come back as a nation and then there's going to be this massive destruction and then everything is fixed and we enter a time where everyone seeks righteousness. So that's the beginning of the millennial reign. So that's what's interesting because you can look at this and I think the, this age then on the Enoch calendar would be between 1676 to 2375. It's that 700 year period. So somewhere in the middle is the 21st century. So somewhere between, like, like we're saying now between 2026 to 2020 or 2076, that 50 year period is when everything would start. Now Israel's already come and become a powerful state. A lot of prophecies have already been fulfilled. But we're in that last two or three jubilees when all of that's going on.
- [24:21]
A
Yeah, that's so fascinating. You know, and both of us, we've both done a lot of study into this and the seventh week has always tripped us up because it seems like all the rest of them are really clear. I mean, you can even find like, I think like the Protestant Reformation in there and you can find these really specific things that have happened through church history. But the same seventh week has always been really difficult. Now last time we talked, you had mentioned that you might have found something interesting concerning the seventh week, which again so far has been the most challenging one to figure out. Can you tell us a little bit about the seventh week, why it's so challenging and what you've discovered?
- [24:58]
B
Yeah, in the seventh week it basically talks about things will be fixed to a point. The elect, which is either the church and. Or the Jews get confused. Okay. In the week prior and so that makes sense. The Jews reject Messiah and become rabbinic. The church age starts off strong and becomes somewhat corrupt in the Middle Ages. So this thing's going on and it talks about in the seventh week a sevenfold light will be found or revealed or something like that. And so that was confusing. It's like, I don't remember. And it's specifically in the last day of the week. So that's between, I think it would be 876 to 975. So between 1850-19 or 18, no 850 to 950. So somewhere in there, somebody discovers something. And history doesn't really record anybody discovering anything. And so that's what's always been confusing these others, like the rebuilding of the temple, the destruction of the Jewish nation, the coming back. Those are things that everybody knows. They're just major, major prophecies, major historical events. But we were looking at that, and there's lots of theories about what the Sevenfold Light might be. But there was a person named Timothy I who was under the patriarchate of the area of Israel at that time period. He's called Timothy I. And he wrote a series of like, 50 or so letters during the course of his ruling about what's going on in Jerusalem. And in letter 47, he mentions a really interesting thing. He says that there are people that came to look for books or treasures, you know, in the caves of Judea. And everybody knows that way back in the day, the Essenes were in that area. They were the keepers of the books and the scrolls and stuff. And so it's one of those things. And what's interesting about it is because he records somebody coming to look for this. And this is the same time that the Kazarites kind of broke from traditional Judaism and said, now this is too much junk added to stuff. We would just want to go back to scriptures. So, like the eating the milk and the cheese with the meat, they would say, now, that's not what that means. It's we're going to follow scriptures. So they did that. But if you do that, you understand the prophecies and you begin to understand things. And so they went back to their origins to see if they could find any books. So according to Timothy in his letter, they found a series of books. Now, these would be probably the first recorded group of people coming back after several centuries and finding Dead Sea Scrolls. And so they found an entire copy, a perfect copy of the Epistle of Jeremiah. And then there were several other things also that were mentioned. The interesting thing about that is just the history behind the Dead Sea Scrolls. So that was the first recorded thing, at least that we know of. So a few centuries later, somebody decided, I wonder if there's anything left. So they go in and look around, and the legend is that they find the testaments of the twelve patriarchs, of which the patriarchal guy head of Armenia or Syria or one of those guys said, ooh, we want that. So they translated into Greek, they actually put it in their canon, and then the Hebrew version disappears. Well, that's A nice story that can't be proven. And it sounds like it's fiction because the Testaments of the Patriarch are way too Christian to have been known about back then. So they thought. And so the funny thing is, though, then centuries later, Moses Shapira is given a scroll, supposedly from the Dead Sea Scrolls. It's called the Moses scroll, and it's held as a forgery because it's the kind of Hebrew that's never existed before. Nobody has any script like that. With that, every century, words change, and so that's how you date a manuscript. But they're saying this is obviously a forgery. So it was dismissed. Well, when 1948 came around and everybody through the Internet and TV saw scrolls being brought out of the dirt, no one messing with them. And then they're translated, it turns out that's the exact kind of Hebrew that was in the Shapiro Scroll. So now we know whether you agree with what it said or not, that it was a real scroll. And so the interesting thing about that is we have these records then. Oh, and in the Dead Sea Scrolls proper are parts of those same 12 patriarchs, plus other patriarchal writings that are fantastic to reveal. And we've written a book on that, did all those translations. But. So you've got the letter from Timothy I about finding those things. And then there are records of other types of manuscripts that are found. So it's really fascinating. But I'm thinking then, if this starts in the 8th to 9th century, that would fit here with Enoch, this sevenfold righteousness being. Or light being found. So my only question still is, if that's it, why don't we know about it? Why isn't it a major thing? And of course, even if that's not it, it's something else. Why don't we know about it? Why isn't it a major thing? So it's still kind of confusing, but that's a hint toward that. So so far in these manuscripts, like even Enoch and the other places, they're looked at as fiction. But now it's been many, many centuries, and it looks like it's accurate, and no one could accidentally get everything accurate.
- [31:00]
A
Yeah, it's fascinating how these things keep being proven to be true over and over and over again. And it's just. It's a blessing to again live in a time like that. What would you want most for people to take away from our conversation today in light of, you know, the new year according to the Dead Sea scroll calendar, and in light of, you know, now that by the time people are watching this, we're, we, we have just started that final jubilee, that final 50 years. What do you want most for Christians to, to take away from the, the, the conversation we've had in the time that we're living in now?
- [31:37]
B
I would say, number one, memorize as much as you possibly can the New Testament, and then what you can of the Old Testament. And by memorize, I mean just know it very, very thorough, because you can always look up a word, but believe what it says. Put your faith and trust in Jesus, the Messiah, and realize that prophecies are given by a God who knows the end from the beginning. And whether he's telling you what happens in general or what he's going to do, either way, it's a solid fact, even though it hasn't happened yet. So these prophecies tell you that he is able to save you and you can put your trust in Him. The Dead Sea Scrolls paint the same picture about the Messiah. And you guys in Israel need to know you are Jews. You're back where you're supposed to be, because that's what he decided he's given you. These scrolls, pay close attention to them, become messianic, accept the Messiah. And then as we go forward, maybe we're off a year or two on our calendar, but we're in this area. So in the next 50 years is going to be a series of wars and things. And when you see them happen, and they happen exactly as prophesied in Scripture, like in the last few years, we've seen some major prophecies, exactly as defined out of the Book of Obadiah and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Since that's happening, you know, it's all real. So as Christians that already believe in prophecy, we need to study it more, use it as a witnessing tool to make people understand how real the whole thing is. The Bible is not just a collection of fairy tales. It's actual history. And when you know a war is coming, you need to prepare. And so I would say for us then in the church, be very serious about studying scrolls. Don't add them to the canon. The canon is the canon, but they're very important historical texts, and we need to go forward with this, study these things, see what happens in the future. And if the patterns hold up, which I think they will, we're going to see in the next seven years a major revival, I think, and I would love to see that. And so take this as a serious time. This is the time. Start witnessing, Start telling your beliefs to people enter into conversations. Let's start this revival.
- [34:07]
A
Amen. I couldn't agree with you more. So with all that being said, thank you all so much for joining us. Take care and God bless.