Date-setting
2300 evenings and mornings of Daniel 8:14
Koot
van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD), Visiting Professor, Department of Liberal Arts
Education, Kyungpook National University, Sangju Campus, South Korea, Conjoint
lecturer of Avondale College, Australia.
Adventist Today
journalists and article contributors are doing their best to termite-eating
Adventist foundations targeting William Miller and his date-setting of the 2300
interpretation of Daniel 8:14 ending in 1843 or 1844. This is not an attack of
this journal since my own article supporting 1798 as the termination of the
1260 evidenced by Napoleon’s artist daring to sketch the CEO of the Catholic
church naked.
William
Miller is joked about, satirized, downplayed, minimized, mocked for his concept
of Christ coming in 1843 or 1844. It is not only the date of William Miller or
his method that is under attack by these contributors in our day and age, but
their own lifestyles of permissiveness, broken families and remarriage, either
smoking or drinking or other moral problems, that fills their epistemology with
negativeness viewing anything proper as fingers of God pointing at their own
conscience. Like Charles Bradford said in the Youtube sermon “Buy the land” the African Tribe queen took the only
extant mirror from the businessman, looked at herself, and with shock she threw
it on the ground, step on it and said: “Now I am still the most beautiful queen
in the land”. As he emphasized so eloquently, you do not solve the problem by
attacking or ignoring it. The Law of God contains the Sabbath rest of His day
but it also is the Torah of God which touches every fiber of our being in
literally every aspect of our brain, physical, spiritual and other levels of
existence. If one rejects the Torah of God by a skew lifestyle it is natural to
be involved in contra-engineering and R&D trying to break that which points
to the heart of one’s problem.
Date-setting.
Yes, Adventists are date-setters. Every true Adventist. They set the date for
the first Coming of Christ in the prophecies of Daniel 9:24-27. They set the
date for the rise and fall of the Papacy as persecuting Antichrist between
538-1798. They set the date for the start of the Investigative Judgment in
heaven in the High-priestly role of Christ in the Heavenly Sanctuary typified
in the Old Testament and based on Daniel 8:14. Yes, they are date-setters. Do
Adventists set a date for the coming of Christ? No. No one knows the day and hour
of his coming.
William
Miller set a date for the coming of Christ. He was one of the first Adventist
Pioneers. After 1844 when Christ did not come, Miller became apparently very
depressed and wrote a personal letter to the Hebrew scholar at the New York University,
George Bush asking him if he did the right thing to set dates for the coming of
Christ? Bush responded with a very insightful answer and it is printed in
George Butler’s book Signs of the Times
in 1886. Paraphrased from memory, Bush said “with such a long line of academic
divines in the past who all set dates like Mede, Newton, et al. [and the list
included more scholars] how could you have done otherwise? I do not think you
need to regret what you did”.
What
was Bush talking about? Who are these date-setters? What dates did they set and
how did they influence Miller so naturally?
This
is the point that Adventist Today
editorial staff and many Seventh-day Adventists around the globe are not
familiar with. Adventist today is not an official Seventh-day Adventist
mouth-piece and praise God for that. It is a private enterprise to debunk
Adventism. Unless they repent and turn around in their agenda, they are bound
to be a destructive force working on the wrong side of God’s work.
Then
I ran online into some online old books. Jewels for Adventists. In fact, these
were the Adventists before the Adventists.
Isaac
Newton was born in 1674 in the year that Galileo died. He wrote a commentary on
the book of Revelation which is in the Hebrew University in Israel. His
commentary is also online. Newton interpreted the 1260 days of Revelation or
the 3 and a half days or 42 months are the same number and insisted that the year-day principle should be used. It is
the beginning and end of the persecution time of the Antichrist. He said that
in order for primitive Christianity to be set up [if Adventist start is that
primitive Christianity or true original Christianity in my perspective] then
the only force that can bring down the Antichrist power or give it a deadly
wound, is an infidelity force [in our perspective now the French Revolution]. He
said this to dr. Clark who reported it and it was written down by Whiston in
his book in 1744.
Robert
Fleming was a Scottish pastor who lived between 1630-1716. His father was a
pastor in Rotterdam and he attended himself the University of Leyden and other
Universities in the area. While his classmates were reluctant to accept
everything that the lectures offered them, he was not the same. He went to the
library to study very diligently and sought answers for his many questions.
Online is his book Eschatological Key
of 1701 which is a jewel for Adventists. He argues for the 1260 years with the
year-day principle. He predicted that if he knows the date of the start of the
Papacy he will be able to predict its fall. He did. In fact the newspapers of
around 1793 was publishing chapters from this book to illustrate how the papacy
would fall. The editor to his book, published in the online edition in 1843 and
probably James Campbell, wrote these facts about Fleming.
Fleming insisted that the 1260 days of Revelation should be
interpreted as years (Fleming 1843: 30). He based it on the appearance of 1260
in three forms (42 months, 3 and a half years, 1260) as synchronic. Also on
biblical passages in Ezechiel 4:5-6 and Exodus 23:10-11 compared to verse 12.
Daniel 4:32, 34 where Nebuchadnezzar’s seven years madness are called days or
times. In Luke 13:32 Christ is said to talk in day for year principle. Daniel
9:24 is considered by Fleming the most remarkable evidence of the year-day
principle. Also in Numbers 14:32 God punished Israel with 40 years for the 40
days spying. The example of Christ is very fresh for modern Adventists. One
notices that when God punishes Israel it was done with a year-day principle in
mind like the case in Numbers.
“Though I confess Justinian’s conquest of Italy laid a foundation
for the Pope’s rise, and paved the way for his advancement, both by the penal
and sanguinary laws which he made against all those that dissented from the
Romish Church, and by the confusions that followed upon Narses his bringing in
the Lombards; during the struggles of them and the Exarchat, the Pope played
his game so, that the Emperor Phocas found it his interest to engage him to his
party, by giving the title of Supreme and Universal Bishop” (Fleming 1843: 37-38).
He did not select himself a date during Justinian’s reign for the start of the
1260 years but it was high on his list of options and the above citation proves
that.
Another jewel is the book of James Bicheno in Signs of the Times in 1807/1831. He explained that if the papacy
started in the time of Justinian in 529 then he would fall in 1789 and if the
year 481 BCE is selected for the beginning of the 2300 days or years, then
Christ would come in 1819 (Bicheno 1807: 88). He predicted the coming of Christ
a number of years later than writing the book. He also predicted the fall of the
papacy as early as 1793 as he explained through his memoirs of that time,
although published after the event. Date-setter for the coming of Christ? He
just did. So did Fleming and so did others before them.
It was a fashion to set a date for the fall of the papacy and also
for the coming of Christ or the end of the 2300 years. The year-day principle
was already a given.
The famous Lutheran scholar Hengstenberg interpreted in 1836 in his
commentary on Daniel the 2300 years to end in 1881 as the coming of Christ or
the cleansing of the Sanctuary.
Indeed, William Miller was in good company with his calculations
since calculations of the prophecies was done one every continent by many
scholars. Bush indeed was correct with his letter to William Miller.
These are the data that Adventist Today editorial staff are not
interested to get their hands involved with. While unfaithful forces are
brooding around us, we can accept the prophecies of the Scriptures as a save
guide to our faith and a sure word of God. Adventists set these dates of Christ’s
first coming, the rise and fall of the papacy and the start of the
Investigative Judgment because others through the centuries have done that.
Just the Second Coming, they do not set any dates and if people individually
do, it is mere unofficial guessing.