The Twenty-three Hundred Days
By Elder Uriah Smith
MAN'S SIN AND SAVIOUR. NO. 7.
The Twenty-three Hundred Days.
To this question, then, we now turn our attention. Where do the twenty-three hundred days, the termination of which marks the cleansing of the sanctuary, 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 this important question: "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 whole 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 nine, however, the subject is again taken up. The same angel, Gabriel, appears, to give Daniel an understanding of what he did not understand at the close of chapter eight. He refers him back to the vision at the beginning (the vision of chapter eight), 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 instruction he had received, as recorded in chapter 8:16. He tells him that seventy weeks are cut off from the twenty-three hundred days, the word "determined," in verse 24, being from a word which means "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 first 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 which had 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 go up to Jerusalem and build the temple of the Lord, thus beginning a series of movements which finally resulted in the full reestablishment 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 reestablishment of the religion, polity, and policy of that people as a nation. The decree of Cyrus, which provided only for the building of the temple, was too limited to fulfill the prophecy. The Jews returned in large numbers, and began to build the temple, but, being hindered in their work by their adversaries (Ezra 4:7, 21), the decree of Cyrus was reaffirmed by a subsequent king named Darius (Ezra 6:1-12), B.C. 519; but this, like that of Cyrus, providing only for the building of the temple, not for the restoring of the nation, was too limited to meet the specifications of the prophecy. At length, in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes Longimanus, a decree was issued 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 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 Artaxerxes 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. See Hales, Prideaux, Bliss, etc. Before looking at the intermediate dates, 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 being this, 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 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 in its material aspects. Dating this period from 457 B.C., seven weeks allotted to the building of the wall, or forty-nine days, that is, forty-nine years, would reach to 408 B.C.; and in that very year (the fifteenth of Darius Nothus) the last act of reformation by Nehemiah completed the reestablishment of the Jewish society in Jerusalem. (See "Prideaux Connexion.") Then there were to be sixty-two weeks, that is, 434 years, more 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) and prefaced his message with the solemn declaration, "The time is fulfilled." Verses 14, 15. The statement of 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, thirty years; and it is expressly declared of Christ that he "began to be about thirty years of age" when he began to preach. Luke 3:23. John would commence his work six months before Christ, and Luke tells us when John began his work. It was in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar. Luke 3:1. This date is doubtless to be reckoned from the time when Tiberius was associated with his stepfather, Augustus, on the throne of the Roman empire, which was in August A.D. 12. This would bring the close of Tiberius' fifteenth year in August A.D. 27. John must have therefore 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. 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), in the following passages: John 2:13;1015:1; 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, he (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 their antitype on the cross. The crucifixion, therefore, was the middle of the last week of the seventy, three years and a half from the beginning of that last week. But we have seen that the last or seventieth week began in A.D. 27, and now we learn that it must have been in the autumn, inasmuch as the middle of the week was in the spring. From the autumn of A.D. 27 we therefore could forward six months, which would bring us to the spring of A.D. 28, when Christ attended his first passover. His second passover would be in the spring of 29, his third in the spring of 30, and his fourth and last in the spring of 31, when he was crucified, just three years and a half from the autumn of A.D. 27, when he was baptized and entered upon his ministry. The year A.D. 31, as the year of the crucifixion, has in its favor almost the whole weight of chronological authority. See Dr. Hale's Chronology, vol. 1, pages 69, 70; vol. 3, page 230. Thus we find, so far, the utmost harmony and the most satisfactory historical support for the application of the prophecy. Now to find the close of the 70 weeks we have only to go forward three and a half years (the last half of the week) from the crucifixion, in the spring of 31. We find ourselves by this calculation in the autumn of A.D. 34, as the termination of that period which was cut off for the Jewish people. And here we should look for what the prophecy indicates to take place, namely, that that people would no longer be considered the separate and peculiar people of God, but that his work would then extend to all nations. And we find events strikingly in harmony with this view. In the martyrdom of Stephen in that very year the Jewish people, in the deliberate action of the Sanhedrim which condemned him, may be said to have formally and finally rejected the gospel of Christ. This was the first of a series of events which led to the conversion of Paul the following year, the great apostle to the Gentiles. And a little later the apostles declared in a formal and deliberate manner that since the Jews put away from themselves the word of God, and judged themselves unworthy of everlasting life, they would turn to the Gentiles. Acts 13:46. But one more conclusion remains to be drawn respecting the 2,300 days; but it is one of tremendous import, and should thrill with interest every heart. It is simply this: The first 490 years of the 2,300 having ended in the autumn of A.D. 34, we inquire how many years remain to complete the whole period; 490 from 2,300 leaves 1,810, and 1,810 added to A.D. 34, autumn, where the 490 ended, brings us to the autumn of A.D. 1844. There the great period, in our own generation, reached its termination; and there the prophecy said that the sanctuary should be cleansed. What sanctuary is referred to we now know; for the days have ended far down in the gospel dispensation, and the term must therefore refer to the sanctuary of this dispensation, which is the sanctuary in heaven. And what its cleansing is we have also seen. It is the work of atonement, the closing up of Christ's mediation in behalf of the world. There the books are being examined and the investigation is going forward, beginning, of course, with the first generation, and to continue until it reaches the generation of the living, with the judgment of whom the work of Christ for the world will close. In so momentous a period in the world's history have we been living for the last forty-eight years. Alas! how few know it; and fewer still realize it.