Could the year 2005 be it too?

I have come to a subject that I kept back toward the end of my book and that, in truth, I never wanted to write about at all. Apart from this subject, which I published on my internet pages, none of the subjects I wrote about ever drew any reaction. And I was actually astonished. That I am against all religions, that I recount the negative things they do without making any distinction, that we human beings are so foolish as to cling to the coattails of utterly worthless persons and wait for them to carry us off into paradise—none of this, none whatsoever, drew any reaction, while only this subject that I am about to write of gave rise to reactions. In a way I even agree with all of these reactions. I dearly love to concede that the people who criticize me are right. To become aware that I have erred—at least because I have become aware of it—this makes me happy on my own account. Yet I also grieve on account of the people I have drawn into my own error. Since up to now (as far as I know, at least) no one has believed it, this fear of mine is, in a way, unwarranted too.

With the years and dates mentioned here that I will speak of, and with the historical knowledge we possess, we are still in the dark. Indeed, since in the year 2005 too the signs bound to those prophecies did not come to pass, it will—in my view—be the wisest manner of understanding, for now, to give our attention not so much to a particular date, but rather to the signs in those prophecies whose date we cannot know but which will certainly come to pass in the future.

Some said that this thing I wrote casts a shadow over all the other subjects as well. Again I concede they are right. Because this subject is not one that is being treated for the first time in our world. Whether with good or with evil intent, it has been taken up by many, and it has become a subject that has dragged thousands, tens of thousands, millions along behind them into nothingness, into non-existence, into unhappiness, into disillusionment, and even into death. And I too am one who knows all of this well. Writing this book and checking it eight times took a long time of mine. Who knows when it will even be published as a book. Perhaps it will never be published at all. In short, I did not much want to put this subject into my book. But afterward my conscience troubled me. And it troubled me greatly. For this reason I absolutely had to write it. How could I write this thing which I myself cannot call one hundred percent certain, which I regard with doubt! I believe it, I believe it, but, like many people, I too can be wrong, and I have indeed already been wrong once about this subject. Without making it any more mysterious, I want to say briefly the following:

Please do not build fantasies for yourself with the subject you are about to read. If there is an important change that needs to be made in our life, then that change is to seek out God, who personally created you and all of us, and to gain knowledge about Him. So that we may learn why God created us human beings, His purpose concerning us, His plans for the future, and so that, with a way of life carried on in accordance with these things, our life may be saved. And this is vital and obligatory, something that must be done always, in every age. This should not depend on our enthusiasm, nor on our hobbies, nor on whether we like it or not. As I said, it is obligatory and vital. And since each person is personally responsible for his own life, the decision to feel himself obligated must also be made by himself personally. Your making this obligatory change in your life will have nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with the subject I will speak of below. You yourself are personally responsible for what you do with the information you are about to read. No one but you will bear this responsibility. In the Bible, at Galatians 6:5, it is written, “For each one will carry his own load.” Neither believe what I have written here nor disbelieve it; investigate whether these things are so. (1 John 4:1; 1 Thessalonians 2:3-4) Because this is not a subject having to do with tastes and preferences; it is a subject that concerns every tongue, every race, every color, every nation living on the earth—in short, every human being. If God has made a plan, no one can say “stop” to Him. The wisest thing is to fall into step with that plan. And if we do this with joy, we will also have our reward.

While I was investigating the Holy Scriptures, I asked myself something. Was it in order to enter paradise that I wanted to serve God? After thinking it over, my answer was “no.” Well then, was it because I was afraid of dying that I was investigating about God? Again, after thinking it over, my answer to myself was “no.” Well then, was I doing these things because I was afraid of hell? This answer too was the same, namely, no. Well then, why was I reading these books, praying to God, investigating and contending with people? And as if it were not enough that I earned their hatred, I was moreover setting aside a large portion of all my time for these things. Why was I doing these things? I have asked myself many questions and put myself to the test many times. (2 Corinthians 13:5)

Because the most important thing is that a person first come to know himself. For a person who knows himself, coming to know others and weighing events will also be easier. First of all, without thinking about others or anything, I thought about why I was doing this, or why I was going to do this thing. Since I was asking this question of myself, I also wanted to know the answer myself. That is, I was not under any pressure or anything. I was not being pressed in a court of law. In that moment I had no fear as of a life-and-death matter. My age, moreover, was very young compared to now. At twenty-four, in my own world, as one alone with my responsibilities and obligations, I had no intention, none whatsoever, of deceiving myself with the answer to this question. At the beginning of my book, when I spoke of a portion of my life, I was one who, with the many disappointments I had gathered from this world, from this life, had in fact already longed for death.

As I said, my disappointment was not of the kind belonging to those who lose their beloved, their love, their house, their car, their job, their loved ones, their family, their goods, their property, their health, their rank. When I thought about the life in this world—which we labor to turn entirely into a garbage heap—and about people’s struggles throughout a lifetime, their wars, the efforts they give merely to feed themselves, their hatreds, their joys… and about the death that comes suddenly after all of this, everything seemed meaningless to me. My disappointment sprang from these things. It was no longer worth it, to my mind, to give effort for anything. Because whatever we do, does not everything come to an end and cease to exist with death? Say I have written my name in history and made a reputation, say I have had my statue erected—what is that to me! Say I have become an owner of goods and property, and have left behind me a very large, happy family, and they remember me with gratitude. What benefit are these things to the person who has died? As Solomon said: A living dog is better than a dead lion. (Ecclesiastes 9:2-6) My problem was not death alone either. Rather, to carry on the empty and meaningless, so brief life in our world, and to carry it on moreover with many hardships, with distress and unhappiness—this is what seemed far more meaningless to me. Eat, drink, marry, have wife and children, work and work and pile up goods and property, laugh and play in a false or a genuine way… and then die! To say nothing of the pains and the ugliness endured for all of this.

So that some will not draw perverse meanings from this writing of mine on this subject, which I will write from the heart, I am setting out my feelings openly. These are questions that every person will come face to face with in his life. How anyone deceives himself, I cannot know. But I did not want to deceive myself. In my view the crux was here. It is a good thing this became a problem for me; otherwise it might never even have crossed my mind to investigate the truth, the knowledge about God. Yes, let me come back to the question I asked, “Why was I doing, or going to do, all of these things?” Because when I read those books that God had caused to be written, I had to decide something. And that decision was either that I must do these things, or that I must cast them aside. Because if I set about doing them, this now meant a lifelong way of life. It was not like a fine film or an exciting novel, to be read or watched in that moment and then pass and be over. To ask this question only then, once the chance has passed and life is over, as many do, would be a bit late. Still, this should not mean it is not to be asked. That person may, with his own capacities, his mind, and his spirit, have come face to face with this question perhaps at the age of seventy. I, differently, was twenty-four. While some people decide at much younger ages to walk on such a road, others make this decision at very advanced ages.

“If none of these things such as paradise, hell, or resurrection existed either, would I still do what God says?” I kept asking myself. Would I still want to gain knowledge about Him and walk in His ways? I thought about and weighed these thoughts a great deal. My answer was, “Yes, I would still do it.” “Even if I were never to be resurrected, even if there were no such thing as paradise or the like, even if there were no fear of hell—for there was no such feeling within me anyway—I would still do these things that God wants,” I said. But why? Would not everything end with death anyway? Yes, let us suppose that everything would end; well then, why would I still do these things?

Because they were right and beautiful things. Even if only for a short life, if the Owner of everything wants us to do these things, then I too, because I love Him, would do all of them. To live with dignity and honor, to be righteous and merciful—this, to my mind, meant happiness. These things were not necessarily to be done in order to expect something at the end afterward. The person who does these things is at that very moment already at peace and happy.

What sacrifices we make for the people we love. Do not people go even to death in wars for kings and presidents whose faces they have never seen? And for those foolish, boorish, self-serving, self-interested kings, presidents, commanders, and the like, do not people, sacrificing everything they have and moreover letting out war cries, die with rapture? These feelings of theirs were natural feelings, but they showed them to the wrong persons. The reverence, the respect, the obedience that a person ought to show to his Creator—we showed these to human beings not worth a fig. For the sake of love one can die for other persons too, but I am speaking of true love. If a person has made a king out of a human being whose face he has never seen, who lets himself be used like a donkey, who with all his weaknesses again resembles himself, and if he has set over his own head a head of religion, a representative, saying “take me to God,” this is that person’s own fault. Again, if people willingly went to death for the sake of baseless hopes, hopes like fairy tales, then why should I not give all these things I did—my time to investigate God, my effort to come to know Him, my life to live? Just what was the hope those others had when they went to their deaths, that I of all people had to serve God in return for something? The reason I put myself to the test on this matter was perhaps most of all the subject of love that appears in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians. It was written that no matter how many sacrifices a person makes, even if he offers up his very life to be burned, if he has no love, if what he does is not founded on love, it is empty. And it was true. Perhaps this truth affected me most of all, and for this reason I put myself to the test by asking questions.

Or was it a self-interest that drew me onto this road? Or was I coveting things such as paradise, the houris, having it easy in comfort and luxury, as we were taught in childhood? No, it was none of those either. Because I had done these things in part and had not been able to be happy. And King Solomon, the son of David, did these things not in part like me but in an extremely excessive way, and was not able to be happy. In that case, the fear that I would be disappointed on this road that I walk, or that I would walk, was likewise nil. Because I had no such expectations.

Yet this should not be taken to mean belittling the everlasting life, the hope of resurrection, the paradise and the like that God gives to His servants as a reward. Because the Holy Scriptures write, “Whoever approaches God must believe that He exists and that He becomes the rewarder of those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). As many claim, this verse is meant as proof that God is not an unfeeling, uninvolved, passive, unjust being. It is a promise that God has given with the aim of giving hope to His servants. To disbelieve this is, in a way, the same as denying God. With this frame of mind I put to the test and tried not God but only myself, my interest in those things, my effort, my love. Everything not founded on love is condemned to perish and leads only to disappointment. And I also knew that love founded on self-interest would lead to a far greater disappointment. It was precisely for this reason, again, that I had put myself to the test. As I said, with the answers I gave to myself, the disappointment I might feel in the future had come down to nothing. Disappointments great and small are always with us and will be as long as we live, but to have clung to empty, baseless things in the matter of belief in God is, in my view, the most terrible of all. And the most important thing is that a person’s attachment to God must be unconditional. If a person tests himself impartially, openly, and honestly, he will also understand whether his faith is bound to conditions. Those conditions—if there are any—are generally the things that will cause us to stumble and slip from faith. In short, one does not approach God by setting conditions. For this reason, investigate yourself, put yourself to the test, but by no means deceive yourself.

Every writing revealed by God draws attention to a meaning, a reason, a warning, a piece of counsel. (2 Timothy 3:16) The numbers, prophecies, and signs in the Holy Scriptures were also certainly written for us to understand. God did not have these things written to His prophets as a sport, so that no one would understand, or so that people would derive gain from these matters. If people did obtain a gain from these writings and deceived one another—and even were taken in themselves, and afterward, out of disappointment, even denied God—this was surely an error in the expectations of their hearts’ disposition. I repeat: if we serve God for the sake of our expectations, but only and solely for the sake of our expectations, we will not be able to do it for long. But if instead we approach God unconditionally, with love, taking pleasure in it, with happiness and inner peace, and carry on a life worthy of Him, then nothing will be able to disappoint us. Because we too will take pleasure in the things He takes pleasure in.

Israel had come out of slavery in Egypt together with a great mixed multitude. (Exodus 12:38) Why did that mixed multitude come out together with them too? Yet had not Moses come only to rescue the Israelites from being slaves? Yes, even so, did this mixed multitude perhaps go along after the miracles they saw? Did not all of Egypt see those miracles? Why did not all the people of Egypt come out together, but only a portion of the people came out? Or was it because they had come to have faith that they came out? Yes, they had faith, but in what? When we read those writings in the Holy Scriptures, we see that the faith and love of most of this mixed multitude did not belong to God. We read that among those who from time to time rebelled over trifling problems and made Israel stumble, this mixed multitude was also present. (Numbers 11:4) Well then, what was the reason that brought them out of Egypt?

A promise. Yes, the promise that was given drew them. What was that promise? A land flowing with milk and honey. (Exodus 3:17) And there, land would be given to everyone, without distinction, with equal rights. That is, there would be no distinction of Israelite or foreigner. (Leviticus 19:33-34) Sadly, the thought of these people and, at the same time, of the Israelites as well was only this. They wanted at last to get out of that wretched life they were living, to make a better and more comfortable new start in different surroundings, and to wipe out their bad past with a single stroke. Yes, this was a desire that many welcomed. Sadly, those who came out because they loved God, in order to be worthy of the purpose and the love He had shown them, were very, very few. The eyes of all of them were filled with self-interest alone. What later happened to a people with such a frame of mind and such a heart-disposition? Did it bring them salvation, happiness, or the self-interests they expected? On the contrary, not only did none of them but two enter the promised land, but the carcasses of all those numbered were spread out and perished in the wilderness. And that, down to not a single one remaining. (Numbers 14:21-30) Because God could not be pleased with a people who thought this way. In our own time the situation is no different. In order to get out of the surroundings they are in—because they are downtrodden, weary, because they have no strength left to struggle, and for a host of other reasons I have not listed—people welcome an end with longing. It is not the God who will bring that end, nor the reasons, that they want to know—only the date. And religions, since they know this situation, are very skilled at smearing this honey on the mouths of their members.

Those who criticize and accuse my writings on the internet pages have, for some reason, always likened me to the Witnesses. “What is the difference between you and them?” they said. And the matter over which they likened me was this subject of understanding prophecy that I am about to write of. To my mind the difference is very simple. And this too must be made clear: In this book I have not maintained, and do not maintain, that I am a better person by comparing myself with anyone. If I were to do such a foolish thing, then in that case I would have no difference left from the others at all. And I do not write this with a false humility either. The existence of people far more zealous, more diligent than I, who have made sacrifices for the sake of God, is certain. My aim with this book of mine is not to race myself against anyone. As it always is in the verses I write, everyone’s due reward and due punishment are with God. And God is just. For this reason no one has the right to swell up over anyone else.

The religions, nations, their doings, their manner of rule, their teachings that I write of are not a hidden thing, and yet, influenced by all of these, people fall in behind them and go to their deaths. If I said, “Do not fall in behind them, do not go where they go, do not walk in their ways, and please, at last, see their filthy doings,” this alone does not make me more righteous and upright than they. Furthermore, I am not saying, “Leave them, but fall in behind me.” If I made a scrupulous examination concerning them, they are the ones who caused it.

For instance, no one has ever written an article about me. If I were to put forth my candidacy as a member of parliament, a prime minister, or a religious leader, and shout in the public squares, “whoever chooses me and falls in behind me is saved, and in no one else is there salvation,” would not the newspapers write about me every day and take me under examination not under a magnifying glass but under a microscope? Yet I, or someone else, am still just what we were before. No one takes any interest in me or in him. But after these matters, does that same lack of interest continue? What I mean by this is that of course people ask questions of persons on account of what those persons say, do, claim, and the millions they draw in behind them. And no one wants to know the identity of the one asking this question; but they do want to know the answer to the question and to come to know those persons. And this is the normal thing. And I, with the truths in all my writings, did not sling mud at the religions or anything; I recounted what they do. If this is mud, I am only writing what I have seen, what I have lived through. Let those who do those deeds and make those promises think about it. Above all, my words apply also to those who pin their hopes on them and let them strap a saddle onto their backs. But because of a journalist’s article or report, no one investigates that journalist’s life or even wants to know his identity. Most of the time they do not know it. Whether anyone even has the right to say, over the questions he asks and the truths he brings to light, “I wonder whether this man is worthy to write these things, to see them,” I do not know. See what I have written as a news report given by a journalist. Whether I am a good or a bad journalist, again you will decide, and God too will judge. He will call to account both me and those persons about whom I have written. But if what I have written is true, then woe to them!

I wrote this book in order to warn people, to wake them up; if possible, to encourage them to investigate, to make them love God, to break all the chains of spiritual slavery, and to help and spur them on to be servants of God alone. Again, as for those who ask what my difference is from those religions: I do not show the ill breeding of saying to anyone, “You cannot be saved without me.” Among the Witnesses and in all religious organizations they will see the exact opposite of this. Furthermore, with the things I write I again do not show, and will not show, the insolence of saying to anyone, “God gave this understanding only to me, no one else can understand it, and whoever says he understands is a fraud.” Compared with the Witnesses and other religions, this is a wholly opposite situation. Again, alongside all of this, I do not ever, ever proclaim the insolence of saying, “Whoever does not have faith in the things I write is hell-bound; God will surely destroy him on the last day.”

I expect an intelligent person to say, “You are only just starting out; let there be millions behind you, and then we will see about you too.” Yes, this means: “At the beginning, because they were alone and powerless, they too had no claws. For this reason it was not possible for them to tear and rend either.” And they are right too. But those who drew millions in behind them—their claws and talons grew, they became mighty and, by just as much, filth. If I too were to fancy myself something and set up a presidency, deputies, deputies of deputies, committees, an order—in short, a religion, an organization—I believe one hundred percent that I would be no different from them, nor could I be. With this, I hope you have understood better what I mean. What often makes a person filth is the very system he is in, the system he has set up. When we look at the prophets, they did not do this. If David reigned as king, God gave him that duty. And we read what God thinks and says about kingship. On account of this responsibility, not a few things came down upon David’s head. From creation on, God never planned nor wanted a human being to reign as king over a human being. Neither in the matter of religion nor in the matter of one human being being ruled by another. Rather, the domination of one human being over another began after sin entered the earth. (Genesis 3:16) The priesthood and the Levites were not appointed as kings or rulers over people in the matter of religion. Their duty was to act as mediators between people and God. After Jesus Christ came, there was no longer any need for such a mediator either. The duties and laws given to them were only the shadow of things to come, not the reality itself. (Hebrews 5:1-10; 8:1-6; 10:1) Humankind, though it knows these truths, is still in a frenzy to become a leader and to seek a leader. If, after this knowledge, I were to exalt myself by saying, “I will be of use to humanity as a leader, a president, a ruler,” I too would fall into the state of those accursed people whom I have written of throughout this book and whose doings, in a way, I loathe. They bring this curse upon themselves because they are slaves to the system they have set up, the system they are in. If they had walked according to the rules of God and not their own, they would have stayed clear of those stains too. Truly, I am not speaking these words only to those whose doings are filthy. I am speaking these words to those who take that filth onto their spotless backs and carry it. By this means they defile themselves too, and they have defiled themselves. And the ranks of those things they carry on their backs are very curious. With names like “the faithful and discreet slave,” “the slave class,” “ministerial servants appointed in the organization,” “your brothers in the faith,” and so on… they are outwardly clothed in sheep’s skins, but inwardly ravening wolves. (Matthew 7:15-23)

In my book I have perhaps not grown weary or tired of writing some things again and again. I hope I have helped them enter not so much your minds as your hearts. But by drawing attention to this year 2005, do not by any means suppose that I am speaking of an end or the like. Those are only the understandings and interpretations at the time of a definite end. The Witnesses proclaimed that the end would come in the year 1914. When that end did not come, they wriggled out of it and began to say, “the kingdom that God wanted was set up in the heavens.” Because the Witnesses, other religions and sects have wrung this matter dry, believe me, I must say that even so I write these things only by force. Within me there is a fear and a shame that I will resemble them even in my own eyes. Be that as it may, if it is a mistake, this will not be the first and last mistake in my life. But if my understanding and this knowledge are true… Should I hide these things for fear that, since I have doubts, I will be mocked and a stain will come to my name? Jesus Christ gave a very fine example on this matter; please open and read from the place at Matthew 25:14-30. For this reason I do not want to hide this knowledge that I possess. Even if it is a mistake—if God should set about judging us for our sincere mistakes, who could be saved? But for the evil intentions and the heart-dispositions connected with our doings, He will most certainly judge far more.

Here there are two matters in which one could be in error. The first is that a mistake could be made in the matter of dates, that is, numbers. Because the historical numbers we have are not written in the Holy Scriptures. And in a way God wanted it to be this way. And in the past the manner in which history books were penned is very curious. When they recounted an event, they would pen it by saying either a solar eclipse or a lunar eclipse or the before/after of some other famous event that had occurred. That is, some king came to power before that event, and the other event is recounted by taking the date of his coming to power as a reference, or the reverse. For instance, it is said, “so many months or years after the eclipse of the moon that occurred such-and-such a number of days earlier, such-and-such a king came to power.” “And later, after so many weeks, months, years, there was a solar eclipse,” and methods like these were used. I am no historian, but when you read their methods, it is sadly most often not possible to say that at such-and-such a date such-and-such certainly, one hundred percent, happened. In fact this method they used in their penning is very reliable. Because the moon, the stars, the earth, and the sun are unerring measures of time. But there are still other occurrences that make us say “I wonder.” If that lunar eclipse occurred again ten or thirty years later, then the matter becomes difficult, wondering which one is correct. Even though thirty years may seem like a long time, when it is examined within thousands of years, it becomes like less than thirty seconds. The historical knowledge we have, even though it sometimes gives many clues, is still knowledge that is neither sufficient nor proven. And the records lost, burned, and destroyed in these wars make the matter more difficult still. Another reason that makes the matter difficult is the histories of opposing states, based on differing expressions. And it can never be said that these states were impartial. And one must understand their point of view, their cultures too. On the matter of historical knowledge alone, believe me, huge books and proofs could be set forth. In short, these are the numbers we have that we cannot call one hundred percent certain. They may be so, but they may not be. And I wrote the information below relying only on the most popular date I have. This is a date that seems the most credible (586 B.C., the destruction of Jerusalem), which even I can no longer believe. And since we did not live in those times, I say we are, willing or not, obliged to accept what has been given to us on this matter.

A second possible cause of error is that I may have understood all of this prophecy wrongly. Although to my mind this is an unlikely possibility, of course it can be so. The reason I say “an unlikely possibility” is the style of the narration of the prophecies in the book of Daniel. In the book of the prophet Daniel the same or a similar event is written several times, but under different prophecies. Concerning the kingdoms and powers that will arise in the world, in one place they are likened to a statue, while in another place the same kingdoms are likened to a ram and a he-goat (male goat). And in a later prophecy they are likened to beasts. (Daniel 2:36-45 and the 8th chapter) The same events are recounted each time by being looked at from a different angle. In fact it is a very wise method, because this method reduces to a minimum the wrong interpretations that could be made. In the book of Daniel there are many such comparative and figurative prophecies. Someone reading these books for the first time will understand nothing, so let him not be bewildered. As some have said, the words “If we had understood all of the Holy Scriptures the first time we read them, perhaps we would have gone mad” are sometimes not in vain.

Since an event is recounted several times, if we are making an interpretation in one place, these explanations must also be in harmony with the interpretation we make on the other side. If they do not match one another, it means we are making a mistake. As Mehmet Akif also said, “the understanding that God will give”—yes, this is the greatest requirement. And things that seem a bit difficult to prove are not so very difficult for those who investigate. Because this event, which must come to pass within a very short time, provides me no self-interest whatsoever. If I were going to tell a deliberate tall tale, I would tell it aiming at a distant date. I cannot know when this book I have written will come out, but as I correct these lines I see that the year 2005 has long since passed and that those signs did not come to pass either. Then why am I still dwelling on this subject? As I said, the dates we have may be wrong in the matter of numbers, but this does not nullify the understanding of the entire prophecy. If every researcher threw all his research into the trash because he did not reach his goal, humanity would still be forced to live in the Stone Age; we could not have advanced. Let us not necessarily expect one hundred percent correctness from everything. It may be that there are certain mistakes—and the prophets made these too. Our believing that God will bring an end must not be bound up with our knowing that date. Again, we may err in the matter of the dates in certain prophecies, but this does not require us to throw God’s purpose concerning the end into the trash. For this reason I counsel you to give your attention to the events rather than to the numbers in the understanding I have published. And I will look with gratitude on someone’s discovering the mistakes that have been made there.

We say “signs,” but even if Jesus Christ is king in the heavens, how are we to understand this?

When He begins His duty as king, the 3.5-year period that appears in Revelation, the last book of the Bible, will also have begun. Most of the events that will come to pass within these 3.5 years are not symbolic but literal in meaning. And one most important sign is that all religions will be banned on the earth. The Witnesses and some other religions understand and say it this way too, and in my view it is correct. But they suppose the end will come within a few weeks the moment religions are banned. Or within a few months at the latest. Yet this is an event that will occur after this time of three and a half, that is, after a period of 3.5 years. And at the end of those three and a half years the end will not come at once either. The Holy Scriptures state concerning the end that no one will know the day and the hour, and Jesus Christ always said this too. (Matthew 24:36) That the Quran sheds light on this subject and says, “when the time comes, God will disclose that day and hour through the servant He wills,” I have also written elsewhere in this book. (Al-A’raf, sura 7:187; Ghafir, sura 40:15)

If God had these dates written to His prophet servants, I do not want to say, as some claim, “let us not dwell on them at all, because it would be a mistake and a sin.” There is no clue whatsoever that to investigate whatever God had written, and to speak, discuss, and investigate concerning what the correct thing is, is wrong and would be a sin. (Daniel 12:4; Matthew 28:16-17; Luke 24:13-35) On the contrary, for instance, when and where the Messiah would be born was something the Jews too greatly wondered about and investigated. It is certain that many times they made mistakes too. For their curiosity on this matter God even gave some of them positive answers.

For instance, God told an aged believer, “You will not die without your eyes seeing the Messiah.” He saw Jesus Christ as an infant in swaddling clothes and glorified God. (Luke 2:25-35 and Matthew 2:4-5) Yet God could have rebuked those persons, saying, “What is it to you to know these times, why do you fix your minds on the seasons?” When Jesus Christ was being taken up into heaven after His death, they asked Him a question concerning the time of the end. And Jesus said to them, “It is not for you to know the times and the seasons.” (Acts 1:6-7) I believe it is certain that here Jesus literally meant only the apostles of that time. Because if by these words He meant all times and, moreover, us who live in the last days, then why would God have had books like this book of Daniel and the book of Revelation written? Why, in them, would He draw attention to the many events that will occur with numbers coming to pass in the future? And what meaning could prophecies that will never be understood, and are not even meant to be understood, have? Furthermore, while Jesus was alive, when the apostles said to Him, “When will the end come,” Jesus did not rebuke them either. (Matthew 24:3) On the contrary, He sat down and recounted to them the signs of those days. This is a very natural and instinctive feeling. This is not a meaningless curiosity; on the contrary, it is a truth about which we ought to be curious—of course, without overstepping the limit. As I said, our expectation should not be merely an end; that can only harm us. The first thing we must expect and must know as to time should be to say, “When will I change my way of living, my life, and myself, so as to be a human being according to God?” And this too is something that is in our own hands. After we have achieved all these things—which means a labor that will last either until paradise comes or until death. We may not be able to know the date paradise comes, but our appointed hour is possible at any moment. Only after we have possessed this frame of mind can the meaning of these writings protect us from being carried away by a wrong enthusiasm. Because then our life will not depend on an end’s coming. Rather than waiting for that end which God will bring, on the contrary, out of fear that this will be our own end too, we will hurry to put on the new personality that is created according to God as soon as possible. And for us to come to such an awareness, it is obligatory that we be experts in these matters. If you have read this book from the beginning, then you have understood what kind of expertise I am speaking of. And let us never lose sight of this truth either. For every human being who dies, the end has in any case come. One who has died will, until the day of resurrection, in any case not see nor live through all the changes after his death. And since death is, for all of us, a thing ready at any moment—is there anyone who lives knowing the day, the hour, that he will die? Jesus expresses a fine truth on this matter.

“Jesus said to them: ‘My time has not yet come; but your time is always at hand…” John 7:6

Rather than necessarily waiting for a date, let us live, act, speak, believe, love, and do the things we will not later regret, with the awareness that this can happen at any moment for us. After death, or when we come face to face with death, even if we regret it, it is impossible to turn back. Jesus told a fine story in the Bible, in the book of Luke, that supports these things I have written. Please open these verses up to Luke 16:19-31 and read them yourself.

Although I cannot say that these things I have written below are one hundred percent correct, I can say that in this world I have not found a one-hundred-percent better understanding either. Because I have not found this understanding, must the things I have written necessarily be correct? Of course not; and because I know this too, I publish below the reasons for my understanding. Read them, and make the decision yourselves.