fallsfromtrees wrote:In retrospect, upon thinking about it, I believe you are correct. My thinking now is tending more towards the return being someone on the command crew who thought that 750 years to wait was too long, but that at a thousand years (which also has the advantage of being a nice round significant number) is the time for a change in the direction of the Writ and the relaxation of the proscriptions - that is they hid their intentions and set up a scenario in which an oracle from the past, speaking with the authority of Langhorne (might even have used a hologram of Holy Langhorne himself) dictates a new direction for the Church. Granted this is something of a deux ex machina, but it explains the 1000 year wait for the Return, and nothing else I've been able to think of does.
I am inclined to think it is something like this, tied to the blank page in the Writ. Presumably, the 1000 year visit fills in the page. However, given that it is a single page in one book, it is not likely to make major changes to the Writ; but possibly change the interpretation of certain items.
Unless, of course, it says simply "ignore all the other pages in this book."