"forty and two months," and "a thousand two hundred and threescore days," and "a time, times, and half a time." It being impossible that the "time, times, and a half," in Daniel, xii. 6, 7., can be dated either from the year when the Prophet saw the vision, about five hundred and thirty-four years before Christ, or from the destruction of Jerusalem, between seventeen and eighteen hundred years ago; it appears clear that these twelve hundred and sixty years of Daniel, xii., are identical with those of Daniel, vii., and, therefore, also with those of the Apocalypse: especially as the Restoration of Israel and the destruction of Papal Babylon and the Roman Wild Beasts Civil and Ecclesiastical are equally foretold to take place at the time of the establishment of the kingdom of Christ over the kingdoms of the earth. Consequently, the exact knowledge, if attainable, of the time when the successful career of Papal tyranny shall have filled its twelve hundred and sixty years, would throw most important light upon the time of the Restoration of Israel. Yet, for a reason speedily to be noticed, it would not mark the time definitively. We revert to the communications of the angel. The angel "sware by Him that liveth for ever, that it shall be for a time, times, and a half," before the dispersion of Israel shall terminate: that is to say, that the period of time to elapse before the Restoration of Israel should include, should reach beyond, the already predicted term of twelve hundred and sixty years appointed for the successful duration of Papal. Babylon. This statement, however, did not reveal the length of time which might intervene between the end of the twelve hundred and sixty years and the Restoration of the people of Daniel. With the view of ascertaining the length of that interval, the Prophet requested additional information. In reply, the Angel apprised him of two other periods of years, of twelve hundred and ninety days, and of thirteen hundred and thirty-five days, respectively. Concerning any event which may mark the end of the first of these two periods, he makes no observation. The intended event, however momentous in its purpose, may be one which on its occurrence may attract no attention; one which God may design to excite no attention until its consequences shall have disclosed its prophetic and effective importance. Who, when the infant Moses was taken up from the Nile, would have regarded the incident as the first step in the counsels of the Most High for the deliverance of His people from Egypt? But concerning the termination of the second he eme phatically declares; "Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days." xii. 12. As the whole of the discourse in this chapter between the Angels and the Prophet relates to the Restoration of Israel; the blessedness which is to crown the conclusion of the thirteen hundred and thirty-five days must be that glorious Restoration. But how are the two additional periods to be calculated? Are they to be subjoined as independent numbers to the conclusion of the twelve hundred and sixty years, and together to constitute a still subsequent term of two thousand six hundred and twentyfive years? The concurrent prophecies of the Old and the New Testaments, pronouncing the universal establishment of the kingdom of Christ upon earth, comprehending the Restoration of Israel, as speedily to follow the conclusion of the twelve hundred and sixty years, exclude the intervention of any considerable number of years; and thus indicate the manner n which the two new periods are to be understood. The three periods commence from the same date. The twelve hundred and ninety years carry on the prophetic revelation by the Angel thirty years beyond the termination of the twelve hundred and sixty years; the thirteen hundred and thirty-five years prolong it forty-five years farther. And the result is, that at the end of seventy-five years after the expiration of the twelve hundred and sixty years the blessed Restoration of Israel shall be effected. The ultimate question, then, for the elucidation of the time when Israel shall be restored, is "When is the end of the twelve hundred and sixty years of Papal domination?" In other words "From what date are those twelve hundred and sixty years to be computed?" The date from which the twelve hundred and sixty years are to be reckoned is the year when by some definite act "the saints of the Most High" are "given into the hand" of that ecclesiastical Potentate who arises among the ten kingdoms into which the Roman empire is divided, and "speaks great words against the Most High, and wears out His Saints, and thinks to change times and laws." From that year He reigns triumphant during "the time, times, and a half," at the expiration of which the judgement begins to sit to consume and destroy his domination. Daniel, vii. 25, 26. The date of the same period is characterised four times in the Apocalypse by marks identically the same with that given by Daniel: namely, by the commencement of the treading down of the Holy City, the pure Church of God, under foot by the Gentiles, the apostate Christians, forty and two months*: by the prophesying of the Two Witnesses, the types of *Rev. xi. 2. the faithful preachers of the pure Gospel, in sackcloth a thousand two hundred and threescore days *: by the flight of the Woman, the true Church, from the face of the Serpent, into the wilderness, there to be nourished a thousand two hundred and threescore days, or, as it is afterwards expressly stated, a time, times, and a half†: and by the giving of power to the Roman Temporal Wild Beast, the ally of the Ecclesiastical Wild Beast, and united with him in the work of persecuting the Church, speaking great things, and blasphemies, and making war with the saints, to continue to overcome them forty and two months. Different writers on prophecy have delivered many different opinions, as on a very difficult and eminently important topic of prophetic interpretation was to be anticipated, as to the specific year from which the twelve hundred and sixty years are to be dated. Several dates proposed by our early commentators have been proved by the event erroneous: and evidently appear to have been founded on the basis of only a part of the prophetic notations from which the computation was to be made. In the present work it would be out of place to enter into discussions on these various opinions, ancient or modern. It may suffice to state, that at present the majority of our interpreters appear to favour the conclusion, that the year A.D. 533 possesses the most probable claim to the distinction. In the spring of that year, the Emperor Justinian, by an imperial edict, subjected all the churches of the East and of the West, with all their Patriarchs, Bishops, Clergy, and Laity, to the dominion of the Roman Pontiff; and annexed this Edict to the Code of Laws * Rev. xi. 3. † Rev. xii. 6. 14. which he published for the government of the whole Roman empire. Some writers prefer A.D. 606, on the assumption that the Pope then first received, by grant from the Emperor Phocas, the title of Head of all the Churches. But the original documents prove that this title was already assigned to him by Justinian; and that no additional title or power whatever was conferred by Phocas.* If A.D. 533 be the proper date, the twelve hundred and sixty years of Papal prosperous domination, a domination though continuous, yet far from uniform in potency, and much more formidable in the middle centuries of its career than either in those of early or of later times, must have come to their close about the year 1792; and "the judgement must then have begun to sit to take away the dominion of the Papal Horn, and to consume and to destroy it unto the end." In that case, the aweful visitations of war and calamity suddenly breaking forth at that time, and for more than twenty years desolating Europe, shaking it to its centre, and throwing down every Popish throne; were the commencement of that period "of trouble such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time," which shall terminate in the Restoration of Israel. It is no objection to this opinion that Europe has subsequently enjoyed twenty years of comparative repose. The intervention of a pause between the first inflictions of the period of unparalleled "trouble" and its more tremendous final convulsions is indicated in the apocalyptic predictions. And they who soberly contemplate the existing state of the European nations; the views of its different potentates; the deep and universal fermentation in * All these documents are given in detail in the second and third editions of Cuninghame's Dissertation on the 1260 Years. †The author is now revising this work in the year 1835. |