ODLE AN ELUCIDATION OF THE PROPHECIES, BEING AN EXPOSITION OF THE BOOKS OF DANIEL AND THE REVELATION, SHEWING THAT THE SEVENTY WEEKS, THE ONE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY DAYS, AND SEVEN VIALS, HAVE NOT YET TAKEN PLACE, BUT THAT THEY WILL BE BY JOSEPH TYSO. "I will shew thee that which is noted in the Scriptures of truth. "-DAN. x. 21. LONDON: JACKSON AND WALFORD, 18, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD. 1838. 955. PREFACE. MY "INQUIRY AFTER PROPHETIC TRUTH having been well received by the public, I am encouraged to publish a second volume on the Prophecies; and I trust it will not be found less worthy of their reception than the former. I believe I have collected all the passages in the Bible in which the terms days, months, years times, &c. occur in prophecies, and placed them in Table II. in the same order as they are found in the Sacred Scriptures. And I have collected from forty-seven of the most eminent authors; the various dates they give for the commencement and termination of the important period of 1260 days, by which it will be seen no two of them fix upon the same period. Decisive time has proved that 32 of them are mistaken, and I think it is not presumption to conclude he will pass the same sentence upon the remainder when their respective periods arrive. See Table III. I have also collected the various times allotted to the Seals, Trumpets and Vials, by about forty authors no two of whom have given the same dates. I hope therefore that the exhibition of these amazing discrepancies will lead men calmly to examine the foundation of the year-day theory. I consider this error in prophecy like "the love of money" in Morals, it is "the root of all evil.” This method of reckoning prophetic time has prevailed very extensively, and obtained a strong hold on the public mind: yet these circumstances should not deter the investigators of prophecy from a scrutiny of its claims for adoption, especially as not one instance can be adduced in which there is a general agreement as to its correctness, no not even the 70 weeks, a prophecy which is said to have been fulfilled 1800 years ago. Bengellius saw the error of this system a century ago, and denounced it as unscriptural yet he embraced others not more consonant with truth. His 'Chronos,' 'nonchronos' and 'middle reckoning' have been proved by time to be equally fallacious. This reckoning of days by years was unknown to the Church before the Reformation, and therefore is comparatively a newfangled doctrine, yet many hold it more tenaciously than they do the truth itself, for when they see on the sacred page "1260 days," they put down on the page of their comment 1260 years with as much confidence of doing right, as if they had received §Introduction to his exposition of the Apocalypse p. 147 and 308 and his Gnomon on Rev. xi. 2. |