8:13Daniel 8:13

The question asks how long the vision about the daily and the transgression of desolation will last, while the sanctuary and God's people are left to be trampled underfoot.LS 44.2+2 Its answer is given in the next verse, that after two thousand and three hundred days the sanctuary would be cleansed.LS 44.2+1 Those days are twenty-three hundred years, which cannot be literal days because of the vast scope of the empires involved.LS 44.2+1 The word rendered daily stands alone, without the word sacrifice, which was supplied by human interpretation.ExVEGW 61.2 The identity of that daily was disputed, but the verse itself does not settle the dispute and its differing views are not to be made a test of faith.CWP 10.3–11.1+2 Prophetic time ceased to be a test in 1844, and time has not been a test since then and never will be again.ExVEGW 61.2+1

The word employed is “daily” alone, without “sacrifice,” that added word being a human interpretation supplied to the text.ExVEGW 61.2 The question asked is how long the vision concerning the daily and the transgression of desolation shall continue, while both the sanctuary and the host, God’s people, are left to be trodden underfoot.LS 44.2+2

It comes at the close of a further vision of future events, asking how long that vision shall be.PK 554.1 It belongs with the revelations of Daniel 7-12 concerning the mysteries of ages to come, reaching to the closing period of this world’s history.PK 547.1

The vision at issue concerns the empires of Persia, Greece, and Rome.LS 44.2 Its little-horn symbols and specifications apply to historical Rome, not to Antiochus Epiphanes.LS 67.3–69.3 The light of this vision, associated with the Ulai, was given especially for the last days, is now being fulfilled, and its foretold events will soon come to pass.Ms 142, 1901, par. 6

The question of how long the oppression of the vision would continue, with the sanctuary and the host trodden underfoot, introduces the answer given in the following verse of two thousand and three hundred days, after which the sanctuary would be cleansed.LS 44.2+1 Those two thousand and three hundred days mean twenty-three hundred years to elapse before the cleansing of God's sanctuary, and they cannot be literal days because the vision concerns the empires of Persia, Greece, and Rome.LS 44.2+1 The verse belongs to the prophetic time setting addressed by Daniel 8 and 9, whose prophetic periods are reckoned from 457 B.C.GC 687.4

The length of that period filled Daniel with perplexity because he could not understand its relation to the seventy years' captivity foretold through Jeremiah, and though the angel Gabriel gave him a partial interpretation, Daniel fainted and remained astonished when told the vision would be for many days.PK 554.1 Troubled by this unexplained time element, he mistakenly thought the 2,300 days ended with the seventy years of Israel's captivity, and his prayer for Jerusalem's desolate sanctuary reflects that misunderstanding.LS 45.2–3

Even Daniel himself did not fully understand all that was revealed to him, for it was not given him to understand it all, but it was to be shut up and sealed even to the time of the end, with the assurance that he would rest and stand in his lot and place at the end of the days.PK 547.1

The question in the verse belongs to a dispute over the meaning and identity of the daily, which the verse itself does not settle.CWP 10.3–11.1+2 The correct view of the daily was given by God to those who proclaimed the first angel's message and the judgment-hour message.ExVEGW 61.2+1 Before 1844 nearly all of them were united on that view, while afterward competing views arose and brought confusion and darkness.ExVEGW 61.2+1

The verse is not to be made a test of faith or treated as a vital matter of great importance, nor are the differing views about it to be made a test.CWP 10.3–11.1+2 Disputes over its interpretation have caused confusion and distracted believers from their work, so attention should instead be given to truths on which there is unity and clear understanding.CWP 10.3–11.1 Prophetic time ceased to be a test in 1844, time has not been a test since 1844, and it will never again be a test.ExVEGW 61.2+1