years, but according to my word. II. Kings vii. 1. 16. To-morrow about this time. viii. 1. And it shall also come upon the land seven years. 11. Chron. Xxxvi. 21. To fulfil threescore and ten years. Isa. vii. 8. Within threescore and five years shall Ephraim xvi. 14. be broken. Within three years as the years of an hireling. xxi. 16. Within a year according to the years of an hireling, and all the glory of Kedar shall fail. xxiii. 15. Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years accord ing to the days of one king, after the end of seventy years shall Tyre sing as an harlot. ver. 17. xxxii. 10. Many days and years shall ye be troubled. Jer. xxv. 11, 12. And these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. And it shall come to pass when seventy years are accomplished. xxviii. 3. 11. Within the space of two full years. xxix. 10. After seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word towards you, in causing you to return to this place. Ezek. iv. 5-9. According to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days-and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days, I have appointed thee each day for a year-three hundred and ninety days. xxix. 12. 13. Cities shall be desolate forty years.— At the end of forty years will I gather, &c. xlvi. 1. The gate shall be shut the six working days, but on the sabbath it shall be opened. Dan. iv. 16. 23. 25. 32. 34. Let seven times pass over him-and at the end of the days. vii. 25. And they shall be given into his hand until a time, and times, and the dividing of time. viii. 14. And he said unto me, unto 2300 days. ix. 24-27. Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people. From the going forth of the command ment to restore and build Jerusalem, unto Messiah the prince shall be seven weeks: and threescore aud two weeks, the street shall be built again. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off. x. 2. I Daniel was mourning full three weeks. ver. 13. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days. xi. 20. But within a few days he shall be destroyed. It shall be for a time, times, and an half. ver. 11. There shall be 1290 days. Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh to the 1335 days. Jonah iii. 4. Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be over thrown. Mat. xii. 40. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. xxvi. 61. I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days. ver. 63. xxvii. 40. Thou that destroyest the temple and build- John ii. 19. Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. Acts i. 5. Ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. vii. 6. And entreat them evil four hundred years. Rev. ii. 10. Ye shall have tribulation ten days. ix. 5. That they should be tormented five months. ver. 10. And their power was to hurt men five months. ver. 15. They were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year for to slay the third part of men. xi. 2. 3. And the holy city they shall tread under foot forty and two months-my two witnesses shall prophecy a thousand two hundred and threescore days. ver. 9. 11. Shall see their dead bodies three days and an half. xii. 6. They should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days. ver. 14. Where she is nourished for a time, times, and half a time. xiii. 5. And power was given unto him to continue forty-two months. This Table contains about sixty instances of prophetic times, and by the common consent of all commentators, more than three-fourths of them are to be understood literally. Why then should the remainder be interpreted mystically, when there is three to one against it? E OBJECTIONS TO THE DAY-YEAR THEORY. I. BECAUSE the words day, and days, occur more than twenty times in prophecies, where the accomplishment has proved beyond a doubt that they were literal days: yet there are only seven passages where it is supposed that days mean years, and there is no satisfactory proof that one of them has been fulfilled. Those that suppose they have, differ so widely among themselves, that in the numbers I have cited, no two think alike. See Table III. There are also many other passages where the predictions are in months and years, which have also been fulfilled literally; but no satisfactory proof has yet been adduced, that any one of these periods has been fulfilled upon the plan of reckoning a day for a year. 2. Because there is no intimation by the sacred writers that days are put for years, as in other prophecies. Num. xiv. 34. Ezek. iv. 6. 3. Because all writers on chronological prophecy who reckon a day for a year, have had their calculations falsified by time, when ever the predicted year has arrived, although they have fixed upon very different dates for the commencement of the prophetic periods, including a range of five or six hundred years. See Tables III. and IV. 4. Because all the circumstances or events to which the prophetic numbers have been applied, have continued longer than the allotted period, even though a day is reckoned for a year. Take for example the important number 1260 and calculate to the year 1838. Dan. vii. 25. and xii. 7. is generally applied to the papacy, or mystery of iniquity, which began to work A. D. 54. II. Thes. ii. 5-7. All must allow it was risen and active A. D.* * 445 ... Rev. xi. 2. If applied to the treading down of the city ... .A. D. Rev. xi. 3. If applied to the two churches or the two Testaments, must commence when the sacred volume was completed....A. D. 95 1355 483 Rev. xii. 6. 14. If applied to the per secuted church must have com menced 445 or at latest .. A. D. 533 1793 45 Rev. xiii. 5. If applied to the Roman Empire which commenced B. C. 47 1213 625 Jerusalem was taken by the Romans A. D. 70, and has been trodden down of the Gentiles from that time to the present, which is equal to 1768 years. *The edicts of Theodosius II. and Valentinian A. D. 445 gave the saints more fully into the hands of the Pope, than any other edict. Faber's Sac. Cal. vol. I. p. 139. |