Against Endless Time

Time is not neutral in Scripture. It is shaped, measured, interrupted, and ultimately brought to rest. From the first pages of Genesis to the final vision of Revelation, the Bible insists that history is moving toward a divinely appointed end; and that this movement is not endless, cyclical, or self-renewing, but purposeful and accountable. At the center of this vision stands the Sabbath.

This essay argues that the Sabbath is far more than a weekly commandment. It is a cosmic principle embedded in creation itself, a covenant written into time, and a prophetic sign that history will not run on forever. Because judgment arrives only when time reaches fullness, the Sabbath becomes a threat to every system that depends on delay, endless labor, or perpetual return. To tamper with sacred time is therefore not a minor religious adjustment, but an attempt to evade accountability.

Drawing from Jewish tradition, the Babylonian Talmud, apocalyptic literature, and the Book of Revelation, this study explores how Sabbath time resists oppression, how attempts to “change the times” function as strategies for Babylon to avoid judgment, and why biblical hope refuses to collapse into cycles of death and rebirth.

What follows is an exploration of time, rest, judgment, and endurance, and of why, in the biblical imagination, the end of time is not annihilation, but Sabbath.

Time runs out for those who built their power on oppression — no chain can hold the end forever.

In the period surrounding the first century CE, the Sabbath was not diminished but increasingly expanded in meaning. Jewish thinkers continued to observe the seventh day (Saturday), yet they also treated it as a key for understanding time itself, its structure, its purpose, and its appointed end. Reflection on the weekly Sabbath was often paired with meditation on larger sacred cycles such as the sabbatical year and the Jubilee, both already associated with release, restoration, and divine completion. The Sabbath became a way of reading history as a movement toward rest rather than an endless continuation of labor.

This expansion is especially clear in the writings of Philo of Alexandria. For Philo, the Sabbath was not confined to a recurring earthly practice but pointed beyond itself to an eternal reality: God’s own rest. That rest did not imply inactivity, but freedom from toil within a fully ordered and purposeful creation. Sabbath observance, therefore, was not mere cessation from work but a momentary participation in the completed harmony toward which creation itself was tending.

This way of thinking influenced early Christian texts without negating Jewish practice. Hebrews 3–4 presents “rest” as a future reality still open to the faithful, not a commandment rendered obsolete. John 5:17 likewise affirms divine activity without undermining Sabbath meaning. Within Jewish thought, the weekly Sabbath and its cosmic significance were held together: the day remained concrete precisely because it signaled time’s ultimate fulfillment.

Only later did some Christian interpreters press this language beyond its original framework and argue that the weekly Sabbath had been superseded. That conclusion, however, exceeds the logic of the Jewish interpretations from which the spiritual language emerged. In its earlier form, Sabbath theology did not dissolve temporal observance; it deepened it. The seventh day functioned as a recurring sign that time is not endless, that history is accountable, and that all creation is moving toward a final rest.

This expanded understanding of Sabbath time also clarifies the warning in Daniel that an oppressive power would seek to “change times and law.” In apocalyptic thought, time is not neutral; it is the framework through which judgment arrives. If history is structured to move toward rest and reckoning, then altering time becomes a way of resisting that end. To “change the times” is not simply to revise calendars or customs, but to disrupt the Sabbath rhythm that insists history has limits.

From this perspective, the manipulation of time functions as a strategy of evasion. If time can be stretched, looped, fragmented, or emptied of meaning, then judgment can be delayed indefinitely—or made to seem irrelevant. Systems built on endless production, perpetual crisis, or cyclical return dull the expectation of completion. The question Daniel raises, then, is unsettling: did oppressive powers attempt to reshape time itself in order to avoid accountability, and did they do so by normalizing patterns that keep people unaware that sacred time is being quietly displaced?

Jesus’ invitation, “Come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest,” appears just before his Sabbath controversies in Matthew, and that placement is deliberate. He is not abolishing the Sabbath but revealing what it was always meant to accomplish. As he elsewhere insists, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” But what does that actually mean? Was Sabbath meant only to stop work, or to reshape how human life exists within time itself?

In Jesus’ teaching, rest becomes more than a calendar observance. It is freedom from the burdens that distort life—unceasing striving, fear, domination, and despair. Sabbath is no longer just something you keep; it is something that keeps you. Time, rightly ordered, is meant to produce rest within the human person, not exhaust them.

Some early interpretations pushed this inward emphasis even further, treating rest as a purely spiritual escape from history. But this raises a serious question: if rest is found by leaving time behind, does time still need to reach an end at all? And if history never truly ends, what happens to justice, accountability, and judgment?

The dominant biblical vision points in a different direction. Sabbath was most often understood not as an escape from history, but as its destination. Just as creation moves through six days into rest, history itself was understood to move toward a final Sabbath. Time is not endless. It is measured, purposeful, and moving toward completion.

That conviction matters because it confronts systems that rely on history never being finished. A world without a final Sabbath is a world where injustice can repeat indefinitely and oppressive power never has to answer for itself. The Sabbath refuses that logic. It declares that striving will stop, accounts will be settled, and rest will come, not as an option, but as a certainty.

The idea that history itself would one day enter a final Sabbath did not arise from foreign religions or borrowed mythology. It emerged organically from within the Hebrew Scriptures as readers reflected more deeply on creation, time, and God’s faithfulness. What began as a weekly rhythm of rest gradually opened into a much larger conviction: just as work ends in Sabbath, so history itself must come to rest.

Two biblical insights shaped this development. The first was God’s rest after the six days of creation. The second was the recognition that divine time is not measured the same way as human time—that a “day” in God’s sight can encompass vast spans of history. Read together, these ideas suggested that the creation week was not only a story about the past, but a pattern for the whole course of the world: extended periods of labor and struggle moving toward a final, decisive rest.

While the first six days of creation are marked by “evening and morning,” the seventh day is not. Many readers understood this omission to mean that the Sabbath was open-ended. It did not simply conclude an earlier work; it pointed forward. The Sabbath was no longer only something God had done—it was something creation was moving toward.

Israel’s sabbatical and Jubilee laws deepened this insight. The land itself was commanded to rest, debts were to be released, and lives restored. When these rhythms were ignored, exile followed so that rest could be enforced even against human resistance. From here it was a small step to imagine a future sabbatical age, a time when the entire world would be compelled to rest after generations of violence, exploitation, and misuse.

Different models emerged for imagining this final Sabbath. Some saw it as the restored paradise itself; others as a great pause before eternity; still others held both together. What united them was a shared conviction: history is not endless. It is moving toward completion.

Crucially, this vision did not weaken the weekly Sabbath. It strengthened it. The Sabbath was understood as a recurring sign and foretaste of what was coming. This is why Jesus could say that “the Sabbath was made for man.” He was not dismissing it, but restoring its purpose. Sabbath exists to protect human life from endless labor, endless suffering, and endless delay—because it reflects God’s intention for time itself.

Seen this way, the Sabbath is not about restriction for its own sake. It is about resisting a world in which nothing ever ends and therefore nothing is ever judged. A belief in a final Sabbath is a belief that injustice will not repeat forever, that oppression will be answered, and that history will reach its appointed end. That is why the idea proved so powerful—and so threatening. A world that accepts that time will end is a world that cannot permanently evade accountability.

Sabbath, cyclical time, and the struggle over history itself

What makes the Babylonian Talmud so important for understanding the Sabbath is that it refuses to reduce it to a single meaning. The Sabbath is never treated as merely a law, merely a ritual, or merely a future hope. All of these dimensions are allowed to exist at once—sometimes in harmony, sometimes in tension. That lack of tidy resolution is not a weakness; it reflects a conviction that the Sabbath is too foundational to be confined to one category.

Again and again, the Talmud treats the six-and-one Sabbath pattern not simply as a weekly rhythm but as the underlying architecture of reality itself. Legal discussions unexpectedly open into reflections on creation, history, and the destiny of the world. What governs human labor is assumed to govern time. Creation, history, and redemption are read through the same grammar. The implication is unavoidable: if time itself follows a Sabbath structure, then history is not endless. It is moving toward stoppage, evaluation, and rest.

Any system that depends on endless production, uninterrupted authority, or perpetual delay cannot tolerate a built-in limit.

Within this framework, judgment is not something added to history at the end; it is embedded in time itself. When the tradition imagines a seventh millennium, it is not merely a reward for righteousness but a response to injustice. Just as the land was forced to rest because it had been abused, so the world must one day rest because exploitation cannot continue indefinitely. Sabbath is the moment when excess is halted and history is held to account.

This understanding stands in sharp contrast to the dominant religious systems of the ancient world, particularly fertility cults structured around cyclical time. Across cultures, powerful female deities governed life, death, and renewal: Ishtar, Venus, Isis, and Cybele. These figures were not identical, but they shared a symbolic logic. Life is endlessly renewed through cycles of death and rebirth. Nothing finally resolves. Death is not defeated; it is ritualized. Time does not culminate; it returns.

If rebirth and renewal are promised by the system, who actually gets them, and who is quietly recycled back into servitude while the powerful start again untouched?

When the cult of Cybele was officially brought into Rome in 204 BCE, this theology of eternal return entered the heart of imperial power. History, in this vision, must never end. Judgment has no place, because nothing ever truly finishes. Renewal replaces accountability. From an apocalyptic perspective, this is not neutral religion; it is a way of structuring time so that reckoning is endlessly deferred.

Seen in this light, later struggles over sacred time take on deeper significance. In the sixteenth century, pope Gregory XIII issued the papal bull Inter gravissimas (English: Among the most serious concerns), reforming the calendar in order to realign Easter with the spring equinox. To accomplish this, ten days were literally removed from the calendar.

Astronomically, this corrected drift. But symbolically, it raises unavoidable questions.

What does it mean to delete time in order to preserve a seasonal cycle? Why was sacred time increasingly anchored to solar return while the weekly Sabbath, time’s built-in limit, was further marginalized? And if judgment arrives when time reaches fullness, who benefits when time is adjusted to maintain recurrence rather than completion?

These questions sharpen further when we remember that spring equinox festivals had long been associated with fertility religion and cyclical renewal. The English name Easter itself comes from a pagan goddess. Bede explicitly states that the term derives from Ēostre, a pre-Christian spring deity whose festival was later replaced in name, though not in timing: what vision of time is being reinforced—linear time moving toward judgment and rest, or cyclical time that endlessly renews itself without end?

Consider pope Gregory XIII, the pope who promulgated Inter gravissimas and authorized the removal of ten days from the calendar. He belonged to the Boncompagni family, whose heraldry prominently featured a dragon or serpent. In medieval and Renaissance symbolism, such imagery could represent vigilance, wisdom, or continuity of power. Yet symbols always carry inherited meanings. When an institution that claims guardianship over sacred time adopts imagery long associated with renewal without finality, knowledge without judgment, or power that perpetuates itself, what vision of time and authority is implicitly being expressed?

These questions sharpen when we turn to the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher, whose works were not marginal but enjoyed papal approval and wide circulation. Kircher devoted much of his life to the study of Egyptian hieroglyphs, convinced that they contained a primordial wisdom underlying all religions. In that symbolic universe, the serpent was not merely an evil figure but could represent logos, hidden knowledge, and continuity across ages — ideas drawn from pre-Christian philosophical and religious traditions.

Crucially, Kircher did not pursue this symbolism in isolation from political power. In his dedications and correspondence, he addressed Ferdinand III not only as emperor, but explicitly as a figure standing within chivalric and sacral authority, including reference to his status in relation to the Teutonic Order. The Teutonic Knights had long combined military power, religious identity, and claims to sacred mission. When ancient wisdom, imperial authority, chivalric orders, and Christian theology are woven together in this way, what kind of continuity is being imagined, biblical covenantal continuity, or imperial-sacral succession?

Funny how some symbols keep finding the same admirers, decades apart.

This raises a deeper theological question. When Christian scholars and institutions frame rulers as new “Caesars,” or situate themselves as inheritors of ancient wisdom traditions stretching from Egypt through Rome into the present, are they emphasizing accountability before God — or cultivating an image of authority that transcends judgment by embedding itself in timeless succession?

And that leaves the most unsettling question of all:

Is the manipulation of time merely administrative necessity —or is it the oldest temptation repeated yet again:to become like God, not through obedience, but by delaying the day when oppressive power must finally answer for itself?

Against this backdrop, the biblical Sabbath emerges with startling clarity. It insists that time is not circular but purposeful, not endless but bounded. Labor stops. Power rests. History concludes. This is why attempts to “change the times,” as Daniel warns, are treated as acts of rebellion. To control time is to attempt to escape judgment.

Jewish tradition does not force a choice between the weekly Sabbath and a future, end-time Sabbath. Instead, it treats the weekly Shabbat as a concentrated expression of history’s destination. Each Sabbath is a small enactment of where time itself is moving. What later apocalyptic texts express on a cosmic scale is already present, in compressed form, within ordinary time.

This is why, in the Babylonian Talmud, the Sabbath is never reduced to a date on the calendar. It is described as an experience of sacred time, a foretaste of the world to come. When Sabbath is spoken of as rest, delight, peace, or welcomed as a queen or bride, the language is not merely poetic. It is describing the same reality that other texts place at the culmination of history. The structure remains consistent at every level: creation moves through six stages into rest, and history follows the same pattern.

Once Sabbath is understood this way, personified imagery emerges naturally. Time itself is abstract, but holiness entering time is not. When sacred presence is described as arriving, dwelling, or bringing peace, relational language becomes unavoidable. Feminine imagery appears not because of gendered theology, but because continuity, indwelling, birth, and protection require embodied symbols. Holiness is encountered as presence, not calculated as sequence.

When this Sabbath logic is extended from the week to the span of history, the imagery must expand accordingly. In Revelation, the woman is not an isolated individual but a representation of God’s people carrying divine purpose through time—laboring, threatened, and preserved. She reflects the eschatological Sabbath itself: arriving after struggle, bound to judgment and renewal, and pointing beyond herself to what follows. A cosmic Sabbath requires a cosmic covenant bearer.

Questions:

If the Sabbath was understood as a sign that time has a limit, that history is moving toward rest and judgment, then why would anyone who claims to follow Christ want that sign weakened or displaced? Why would the marker of time’s completion be treated as expendable?

If judgment is not arbitrary but arrives when time reaches its fullness, then desiring justice would mean welcoming the Sabbath’s logic, not sidelining it. Shouldn’t those who long for righteousness to be established want time to conclude rather than be endlessly extended?

And if Christ himself affirmed that “the Sabbath was made for humanity,” restoring its purpose rather than abolishing it, how did sacred time come to be restructured in ways that blur its limits? Was the shift really theological necessity—or did it serve a deeper comfort with delay?

If oppression thrives when accountability can always be postponed, then who benefits when time is reframed as endless recurrence rather than purposeful movement toward rest? And is it possible that the erosion of Sabbath consciousness made judgment feel distant, abstract, or even unwelcome?

In biblical apocalyptic thought, judgment is never portrayed as an arbitrary intrusion from outside history. It arrives when time itself reaches its appointed completion. In Daniel, judgment unfolds only after the allotted period—described as “a time, times, and half a time”—has fully run its course. Only then is oppressive authority stripped away and the kingdom entrusted to the saints. Revelation follows the same pattern. Judgment erupts not at random, but when time is declared to be short, when history has reached its fullness, and when struggle finally yields to rest. In both texts, judgment is not the interruption of time, but the consequence of time being fulfilled.

This helps explain why the control of time becomes the most effective strategy for evading judgment. Oppressive powers cannot abolish judgment outright, but they can attempt to postpone it indefinitely by reshaping how time is perceived and structured. By delaying the end, redefining fulfillment, or obscuring time’s purpose, they create the illusion that accountability will never truly arrive. This is why Daniel describes the rebellious power as one who seeks to “change times.” The aim is not merely domination of people, but resistance to the end of history itself.

Seen from this perspective, fertility cults and cyclical religious systems are not harmless alternatives but direct rivals to biblical time. In cyclical worldviews, death is normal, rebirth is repetitive, and nothing is ever finally resolved. History does not move toward fulfillment; it loops endlessly back upon itself. Judgment has no place in such a system because there is no final moment when truth is exposed. From an apocalyptic standpoint, this is not neutral cosmology, but a theology that renders judgment impossible.

Sabbath time stands in sharp opposition to this logic. Sabbath insists that work must stop, power must rest, and history must conclude. It proclaims that exploitation cannot continue indefinitely, that injustice will be exposed, and that creation will be evaluated. Sabbath is merciful to creation, but profoundly threatening to systems built on unaccountable power. When Sabbath, whether weekly or cosmic, is erased or redefined, it is not merely rest that is lost, but the very framework that makes judgment unavoidable.

Revelation makes this conflict explicit. The enemy’s fury intensifies precisely because he knows his time is short. He is not primarily afraid of defeat; he is afraid of time running out. Measured days, limited seasons, and fixed durations fill the text because measured time means accountability is approaching. When time ends, deception collapses, violence is revealed, and rest belongs to those who endured.

Attempts to erase the Sabbath, then, were never simply about convenience or labor regulation. They were efforts to dismantle time’s capacity to end. The Sabbath places a boundary on power by declaring that authority is temporary and history has a goal. Remove that boundary, and oppression normalizes itself, suffering becomes permanent, and hope withers.

Fertility cults are especially revealing here because they replace Sabbath time with eternal recurrence. Death is endlessly recycled, power perpetually renews itself, and nothing is ever finally judged. Such systems are judgment-proof by design. Sabbath, by contrast, insists on stoppage, exposure, evaluation, and completion. This is why the prophets consistently link Sabbath violation with injustice. To deny Sabbath is to declare that nothing must ever come to rest—and therefore nothing must ever be judged.

The conclusion is simple and stark: oppressive powers attempt to avoid judgment by manipulating time, because judgment arrives only when time is allowed to end. Biblical apocalyptic hope does not argue that evil is weak; it declares that evil is temporary. Sabbath—weekly, cosmic, and eternal—is the refusal to let injustice normalize itself. It is the assurance that time belongs to God, and that it will one day come to rest.

In Scripture, a covenant is described as “perpetual” not simply because it lasts a long time, but because it is anchored in something that does not itself pass away. Land can be lost, institutions dismantled, dynasties overthrown, and even temples destroyed. Time, however, cannot be erased without undoing creation itself. This is why Exodus 31:16–17 calls the Sabbath “a covenant forever” and “a sign forever,” grounding its permanence not in human obedience but in the structure of creation itself: God rested on the seventh day. The Sabbath endures because the order it reflects endures.

Unlike other covenants that depend on memory, institutions, or physical symbols, the Sabbath is sustained through recurrence. Every seventh day, time itself bears witness. Creation is remembered, liberation is remembered, and divine sovereignty is remembered, not because power enforces it, but because time repeats its testimony. For this reason, the Sabbath survives exile and catastrophe. Sacred time remains even when sacred space is lost.

This raises a difficult question for later Christian history. Jesus Christ was a Jew, lived as a Jew, and taught within the framework of Israel’s Scriptures. Messianic Jews, who confess Jesus as Messiah while remaining within Jewish covenantal identity, have consistently understood the Sabbath not as abolished, but as fulfilled and deepened. Many biblical Christians likewise recognize that the Sabbath was never presented as a disposable marker of time, but as a sign of where history is headed.

If this is so, what does it mean that Jewish communities were repeatedly marginalized, confined to ghettos, or treated as obstacles rather than bearers of covenantal time? What does it suggest when the people through whom Sabbath consciousness entered the world were themselves pushed to the margins of Christian society?

These questions become even more pressing in the modern period. How should one understand the tragic irony that, while Jewish and Christian faith share the same Scriptures, the same God, and the same Messiah, Jewish existence itself became a target for erasure under regimes of racial ideology? And how should one evaluate the moral weight of institutional decisions; such as the signing of the Reichskonkordat between the Vatican and Nazi Germany; that sought diplomatic stability while leaving deeper questions of justice unresolved? Why were postwar efforts to confront responsibility often slow, cautious, or incomplete?

These questions do not require sweeping accusations to be disturbing. They arise naturally once the Sabbath is taken seriously as the covenant with time itself. Judgment, in biblical thought, becomes possible only when time reaches fullness. By structuring time around the movement from six to seven, the Sabbath embeds accountability into creation’s rhythm. It guarantees that evil will be assessed, labor will cease, and unrestrained power will be exposed. A covenant that ensures such reckoning cannot be comfortably maintained by systems that benefit from delay.

For this reason, the perpetual covenant does not vanish at the end of history; it expands. What was once one day within time becomes the character of all existence. Revelation expresses this by abolishing night, ending labor, and keeping the city’s gates perpetually open. The Sabbath does not conclude—it overtakes time itself. This is why m. Tamid can speak of the final reality as “all Sabbath,” and why texts such as 2 Enoch imagine a state beyond measurable time.

Why would Rome suppress the Sabbath; the covenant Scripture explicitly calls perpetual; while simultaneously insisting that salvation must be mediated through ecclesial authority? How does an institution claim to stand in continuity with Christ and the God of Israel while setting aside the very sign God declared “forever”?

The problem is not merely historical; it is theological. If the Sabbath is rooted in creation rather than custom, then it precedes empire, survives exile, and does not depend on institutional permission. To abolish it is not to reform a practice but to override a structure God himself established. As early Christian writers freely acknowledged, God’s rest on the seventh day was not a temporary arrangement. “God did not grow weary,” Augustine observed, “but rested to signify something eternal.” If rest signifies eternity, on what authority could it be declared obsolete?

The tension sharpens further when one remembers that Christ himself was a Jew who lived within the Sabbath, taught its purpose, and declared that it was made for humanity, not humanity for institutional control. The earliest followers of Jesus did not understand themselves as abandoning Israel’s covenantal framework, but as standing within its fulfillment. Even those Church Fathers who spiritualized the Sabbath did so by appealing to its permanence, not its abolition. They argued that Sabbath rest pointed beyond itself, not that it had been nullified.

So why did Rome act otherwise? Why replace a covenant embedded in time itself with a system in which grace was increasingly mediated through office, hierarchy, and decree? Why shift authority from sacred time, accessible to all, to institutional structures that required submission to Rome? One cannot help but ask whether Christianity was gradually repurposed to stabilize imperial continuity rather than preserve covenantal limits.

Ancient critics of imperial religion already saw the danger clearly. Tertullian mocked the idea that divine truth could be upheld by political power, asking how Rome could claim authority over the God it once persecuted. “Christians are made, not born,” he wrote, not appointed by empire, nor sustained by it. Yet over time, Christianity itself became a mechanism for maintaining order where Roman institutions were failing.

This raises an uncomfortable question. Was the Sabbath set aside because it truly conflicted with the gospel, or because a covenant that places limits on time, power, and history is intolerable to empire? A perpetual Sabbath declares that no authority is absolute, no system eternal, and no institution immune to judgment. Such a covenant cannot be easily absorbed into imperial logic.

If Rome claimed to follow Christ and his Father, why dismantle the one covenant Scripture insists cannot be dismantled? And if salvation truly depends on divine action rather than institutional mediation, why was access to God increasingly tied to structures that replaced time’s witness with bureaucratic control?

These questions do not require assuming bad faith. They arise simply from taking Scripture at its word. A perpetual covenant cannot be selectively suspended. If the Sabbath was abolished, one must ask whether it was theology that demanded it; or whether Christianity was reshaped to prevent an empire from collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions.

If judgment marks the moment when God alone is God, who would benefit from judgment never arriving?

If time is allowed to end, who loses the illusion of control?

If the Sabbath declares that no one rules forever, what kind of power would try to erase it?

If humans were created to reflect God, when did reflection turn into replacement?

If authority refuses limits, has it already crossed from stewardship into self-deification?

If rest belongs to God alone, what does it mean when institutions refuse to rest?

If justice exposes lies, why would power seek endless delay rather than vindication?

If history never concludes, who is spared accountability?

If sacred time is replaced with managed time, who becomes the author of reality?

If God governs time, what does it mean to claim authority over calendars, seasons, and ends?

If judgment humbles all power equally, who would fear it most?

If salvation is received, why did it become administered?

If grace is gift, why did it require control?

If apotheosis promises eternal rule, what must be silenced for that promise to hold?

If justice requires an ending, what kind of god needs history to continue forever?

And finally—If avoiding judgment is the goal, what kind of divinity is being pursued?

Disclamer

This argument does not depend on conspiracy or hidden intent. Systems can shape belief without conscious agreement. The issue is not whether individuals meant to resist judgment, but whether certain ways of organizing time function to delay it. Scripture itself treats “changing the times” as rebellion because of what it does, not because of what its architects believe they are doing.