THE MOMENT OF GREATEST INTEREST
By Uriah Smith
From the momentous facts revealed to us in the subject of the sanctuary, it is made plain that the moment of greatest interest to the world and the Church, at the present hour, is the time when our great High Priest in the heavenly sanctuary enters upon the closing portion of His ministration in the most holy place. Then the incomparable scene of Dan. 7:9, 10, opens, and all heaven adjusts itself to the closing up of the great controversy between sin and righteousness. Men ought to know, and their first desire, it would seem, would be to know, when that period, in which are involved all the hopes and interests of mankind, begins. A question of the first magnitude then, is— Have we any means whereby we may ascertain the time when this takes place? As the question should rivet all attention, so the answer should thrill every heart. The answer is, We have the means; the time is revealed. “Whoso readeth, let him understand.” A living prophecy will bear repeating over and over again. It will never grow old till we enter upon the fruition of its promises in the kingdom of God. To this question of surpassing interest, one great line of prophecy is wholly devoted. It is stated in words with which the Bible student has long been familiar, but which still glow with the same hope as at the time of its first announcement: “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” Dan. 8:14. When the word of God states that a thing shall be done, it will be done; and the record is given that we may know the time. The sanctuary of the Bible is virtually one, existing first, as the type, in the Mosaic dispensation,—the tabernacle of Moses, in the wilderness; and, secondly, as the antitype,—the sanctuary in heaven, in the present period, or dispensation, of the gospel scheme. We have only to locate the twenty-three hundred days, ascertain when they began, and particularly when they end, to ascertain to what sanctuary, typical or antitypical, the prophecy applies, and which one is to be cleansed at that time. Finding from the time argument that the days have already ended, new interest is added to the subject. To this question, then, we now turn our attention: Where do the twenty-three hundred days, at the termination of which the cleansing of the sanctuary takes place, begin and end? The statement concerning the twenty-three hundred days is made in connection with a prophecy of paramount interest to the people of God. One angel was heard by Daniel addressing another, and asking him: “How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden underfoot? And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” The prophecy, as an examination of the chapter will show, spans the duration of three great kingdoms,—Medo-Persia, Grecia, and Rome,—which are explained in the latter part of the chapter; but nothing further is there said in regard to that important period of time, the twenty-three hundred days. In chapter 9, however, the subject is renewed. The same angel—Gabriel—appears, to give Daniel an understanding of what he did not understand at the close of chapter 8. He refers him to the vision at the beginning, the vision of chapter 8, taking up the time and devoting himself to that, as recorded in verses 20–27. In now causing Daniel to understand the vision, Gabriel was but carrying out the instructions he had received, as recorded in chapter 8:16. He tells Daniel that seventy weeks are cut off (from the twenty-three hundred days), the word “determined,” in verse 24, being from a word which means to “cut off.” Then the angel tells him where the seventy weeks were to begin: “Know therefore and understand,” he says (verse 25), “that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. And He shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week He shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease,” etc. Here we have the seventy weeks (seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks, and one week) subdivided to mark the separate events by which the application of the prophecy can be determined without danger of mistake. The seventy weeks are, therefore, the beginning part of the twenty-three hundred days; for the angel came to explain the days; and the first thing to do in explaining the period is to tell where it begins. Where the seventy weeks begin, therefore, the twenty-three hundred days begin,—from the going forth of a commandment, or decree, to restore and to build Jerusalem. The date of this vision was B. C. 538. The Jews were captives in Babylon. The dominion of that kingdom had then just passed over to the Medes and Persians; for it was in the first year of Darius that this vision was given. Dan. 9:1. Two years afterward, in the year 536 B. C., the decree of Cyrus was issued (Ezra 1:1–4), for as many of the Jews as were so disposed to return to Jerusalem and build the temple of the Lord, thus beginning a series of movements which finally resulted in the full re-establishment of the Jewish nation in their own land. The prophecy says to restore, as well as to build; and that can mean nothing less than the full re-establishment of the religious and political polity of that people as a nation. The decree of Cyrus, which provided for only the building of the temple, was too limited to fulfill the prophecy; but it began the fulfillment. The Jews being hindered in their work by their adversaries (Ezra 4:7, 21), the decree of Cyrus was re-affirmed by a subsequent king named Darius (Ezra 6:1–12), B. C. 519; but this, like that of Cyrus, was too limited to meet all the specifications of the prophecy; for this provided only for the building of the temple, not for the restoring of the nation. At length, in the seventh year of King Ataxerxes Longimanus, a decree was issued by him to Ezra the priest, as recorded in Ezra 7, as broad and ample as could be given without granting the nation entire independence. Here was the command in full, according to the record, to restore and build Jerusalem; and the seventy weeks could not begin until this point was reached; but from this point they must date; for here the specifications of the prophecy were fully met. The question now is, then, to determine in what year the seventh year of Ataxerxes Longimanus fell: and this, fortunately, can be clearly ascertained, as it is one of the best-established dates in all history. It was B. C. 457. Before looking at the intermediate dates referred to, let it be noticed that the time we are now considering is symbolical, or what is called prophetic, time; and when time is used symbolically in the Scriptures, a short period is taken to represent a longer one. The rule given is that a “day” stands for a “year.” Num. 14:34; Eze. 4:6. Aside from the eminent authorities who have adopted this method of the application of time, which is called “the year-day principle,” the events of the prophecy itself demonstrate that this is the right method of application; for the prophecy has been indisputably fulfilled on this very scale. Thus we have in the prophecy forty-nine years allotted to the building of the wall or the restoration of the city. Dating this period from 457 B. C., seven weeks, or forty-nine days, allotted to the building of the wall, that is, forty-nine years, would reach to 408 B. C.; and in that year, the fifteenth of Darius Nothus, the last act of the reformation by Nehemiah completed the re-establishment of the Jewish society in Jerusalem. See “Prideaux’s Connexions.” Then there were to be sixty-two weeks, that is, four hundred and thirty-four years, to the Messiah the Prince. The word “Messiah” means the “anointed one;” and the expression refers to Christ, and applies to Him when He was anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power to preach the gospel. This took place at His baptism. Acts 10:37, 38; Luke 4:18. This period would terminate in A. D. 27; and in that very year Christ was baptized and entered upon His ministry. Mark 1:10, margin. As He began to preach, He prefaced His message with the solemn declaration, “The time is fulfilled.” The statement in Luke 3:1 further confirms this date for the beginning of Christ’s ministry. Christ was six months younger than John. Luke 1:36. They both, of course, entered upon their ministry at the age fixed by the law of the Jewish priesthood, that is, at thirty years; and it is expressly declared of Christ that He was about thirty years of age when He began to preach. Luke 3:23. John would begin his work six months before Christ, and Luke tells us when John began his work. It was in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Cæsar. Luke 3:1. This date is doubtless to be reckoned from the time when Tiberius was associated with his stepfather, Augustus, on the Roman throne, which was in August, A. D. 12. This would bring the close of Tiberius’s fifteenth year in August, A. D. 27. John must, therefore, have begun his ministry as early as the spring of that year, which brings the beginning of Christ’s ministry, of course, six months later, in the autumn of the same year, A. D. 27. The ministry of Christ was three years and a half in length, as is indicated by John’s record of the four Passovers which He attended, and he has presumably mentioned them all. John 2:13; 5:1; 6:4; 13:1. At the last of these Passovers Christ was crucified; and this was in the spring, the time to which the Passover was fixed. But according to the prophecy, Christ was to cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease in the midst, or middle, of this week. Dan. 9:27. The terms “sacrifice” and “oblation” doubtless refer to the typical offerings and services of the Jewish system; and these Christ did cause effectually to cease, by dying as the antitype of them all. Thirteen competent authorities (see “Looking unto Jesus,” pages 191–194) place the crucifixion of Christ in the spring of A. D. 31; that being the middle of the seventieth of the seventy weeks, it is easy to find the end of the whole period of the seventy weeks, this testing division of the twenty-three hundred days. Remember that these weeks are weeks of years. The beginning12of the seventieth week was at the baptism of Christ, in A. D. 27. Three and one-half years from that point brought us to the middle of the week in the spring of A. D. 31, to the crucifixion, where Christ, by that act, caused the sacrifice and oblation to cease. Three and one-half years more bring us to A. D. 34, which was the end of the seventy weeks. And this date is sufficiently marked by the martyrdom of Stephen (Acts 8:1, margin), the conversion of Paul the next year (Acts 9:1, margin), and the turning of the apostles, soon afterward, to the Gentiles. Acts 13:46. The seventy weeks ending in A. D. 34, the remaining eighteen hundred and ten years of the twenty-three hundred would end in 1844. Then the cleansing of the sanctuary began. Thus all these dates are set like great iron pillars, immovably fixed, along our pathway, and we are now shown to be in the all-important prophetic era of the Third Angel’s Message.