September 23 is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. There are an amazing number of predictions focused on this particular date, from the plausible to the absurd. For instance….

One entertaining website managed to tie together Norad, gay marriage, the Pope), the rebuilding of the temple, China, the UN, Iran, the stock market, and some sketchy astronomy, and focus it all on mid-September.

Another even more astonishing site included aliens, the antichrist, Satan, Obama, the Pope, 1776, the atomic number of Plutonium, Mozart, astrology, the Maya (aren’t we done with them for now?), pregnancy, train crashes, plane crashes (including MH370 and Flight 93 and the other 9/11/2001 attacks), mashes it up with a bunch of arithmetic, and calls it all significant.

(It would be an interesting exercise to try doing this with any random date, such as your birthday, and seeing how many coincidences you can collect.)

A lot of sites mention the Pope because he is scheduled to arrive in the US that same day. That must be significant, right? Although no one thought his visits to other countries were apocalyptic. We’re so myopic here in the US! Unfortunately, most references to the Pope are rather negative, equating him (and often Obama) with the antichrist. I’m not sure either one exactly fits the description, but that’s what makes predictions based on Revelation and other prophetic books so interesting—they aren’t very easy to decipher and leave lots of room for our opinions.

If you’re into prophecy but haven’t read the Bible, you might believe that September 23 is the day that aliens will attack Earth. (Be sure not to miss miss the oh-so-creative “Planet X News”.) And if you’re not into astronomy, you might believe that a huge comet/meteor is going to hit the earth and either destroy it, create a huge tsunami, or disastrously change the weather, depending on your choice of prophets. (If you are into astronomy, then you know that NASA assures us that there are no comets or meteors on a collision course with Earth.)

On a more serious note, depending on how you interpret some passages in the book of Daniel, and depending on which historical event you start counting from, you can predict that September 23, 2015 is the date that some of Daniel’s prophecies will be fulfilled. Yet it’s not quite as clear-cut as some would have you believe.

When he wasn’t busy discovering the laws of physics, Sir Isaac Newton apparently studied the Biblical prophesy in Daniel and did some calculations. A few details are repeated at various websites (I thought this one was the best) and more are found in a fairly new book, Newton’s Riddle, by Neill R. Russell and Kelly Christianson .While I have not read this book (nor do I plan to do so, at least at the moment), it’s apparently a fictional thriller based on current events and Newton’s prophecy from the late 1700s, which predicts that calamitous events will take place on September 23, 2015.

While the book will probably make a lot of money for its authors, I found their claim to insider knowledge a bit dubious, especially in light of another analysis of Newton’s work that was done in the 1990s. In this article, author Jim Bramlett determined that Newton’s prophesies pointed at a fulfillment date of September 30, 2000. Or maybe not. Bramlett writes in the same article,

Newton seems to say that Christ will return in power from A.D. 2003 to 2007, after the tribulation. This is closely compatible with the Bible calculations of other astute students that place the event in this approximate time frame. Depending upon one’s understanding, this could place the rapture of the church anytime before then.

If the prediction doesn’t come to pass as stated, just revise your dates—right? At the time, Newton did not make any predictions involving specific dates. For a reasoned explanation from someone who actually went to the Library of Congress and read Newton’s work, see the article on the Isaac Newton Prophecy.

Next week: Will “Life As We Know It” End September 28?