Taking the cosmic week as his basic
scheme for the duration of the world, he considers the seventh millennium as
the eternal Sabbath. He then puts forward two calculations (neither of them his
own) of how many years are left until the end of the world. Some—by adding up
1,290 days and 1,355 days in Dan. 12.11—reckon that there are 2,625 years from Daniel’s
time until the end of the world. Another possibility is to take 2 Pet. 3.5 as a
basis and t calculate that there are as many years between Christ’s coming and
the end of the world as there are between the creation of Adam and the time of
the Flood, in other words, 1,565. This hypothesis has the backing of Christ himself
who compares the Flood to the last Judgment in Luke 17.26. Moreover, notes
Chytraeus, this figure corresponds to the number of years between Christ’s Incarnation
and Resurrection, if we count in terms of Jubilee years. Christ rose form the
dead at the age of thirty-three, and he will come back to judge the quick and
the dead after thirty-three Jubilee years, in other words, 1,650 calendar
years. This means the end of the world is due to take place either in 1684
(according to the calculation of Jubilee years) or in 1695 (going by the
calculation based on 2 Pet. 3.5). The further advantage of this hypothesis is
that it takes in the forty-two months or three and a half years of the
Apocalypse, if one counts three and a half Jubilee years, that is, 175 calendar
years, from the revelation of the Antichrist until the Last Judgment. Given
that to Chytraeus there is no doubt that the Antichrist was fully revealed in
his own century, in the year 1520 (with the publication of the bull Exsurge
Domine), the world should come to an end in the year 1695. (Explicatio,
1564, 381-382) (Irena Backus, Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse:
Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg [Oxford Studies in Historical Theology;
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000], 128)
