FRIDAY MORNING MANNA December 21, 2018
Nathaniel Fajardo Email: [email protected]
Historical Details of the Prophecies Presaging the Advent Movement
QUOTABLE QUOTE
“The true symbol of the United States of America is not the Bald Eagle—it’s the pendulum. And when it goes too far in one direction, it is going to swing back.”
No, the symbol of America is neither the Bald Eagle nor a pendulum! According to Bible prophecy America was designated only one symbol filled with profound meaning: “Another beast with lamb-like horns that will speak like a dragon.” See Revelation 13: 11, 12. The quote above is by Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RGB for short), the oldest (85 years old) the three current female Associate Justices of the Supreme Court, quoting her late husband and fellow lawyer, Marty Ginsberg: interview with NPR’s Nina Totenberg following screening of RBG’s own biopic, “On the Basis of Sex,” reported by Amy Zimmerman, Daily Beast, 12-18-18.
Why this quote, among countless others? It is current news relevant to our present prophecy series for it graphically reveals how alarmingly uninformed the end-time chosen nation (like the ancient chosen nation),still is, at this eleventh hour of probation time regarding its pivotal role in the closing stages of the great controversy and in the finishing up of the gospel work contained in the three angels’ messages of Revelation 14 entrusted to the Advent movement, centrally based and emanating from America to the world!
It is gross ignorance of this nature and magnitude that explains why the real, not perceived enemies of America and its founding core values of civil and religious liberty, and the final testing truths attached to these, still elude the critical attention and proper alarm of the churches and the secular world in general. It is this solemn, singular task and mission of the Advent movement to keep these truths before the eyes and ears of the people by magnifying and amplifying them through the power of the Holy Spirit, giving them a “certain trumpet sound,” not toned down or in selected bits and pieces, which are but “unsound doctrine and fables” tailored to merely “please itching ears” (2 Pet. 4: 2-4).
The prophets warned of this damning ignorance through terse prophetic declarations: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because they have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you from being priest for Me; because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.” Hose 4: 6, N.K.J.V . “Even the stork in the heavens knows her appointed times; and the turtledove, and the swift, and the swallow observe the time of their coming. But My people do not know the judgment of the Lord.” Jer. 8: 7.
This “judgment,” in the focused context of the combined 2300-day prophecy of Daniel 8, the first, second, and third angel’s messages of Revelation 14 in connection with the doctrine, can only be the pre-advent or investigative judgment–the antitypical Day of Atonement preceding the Second Advent of Christ! Indeed, the large majority of God’s professed people and nation do not still “know this judgment!”
Now back to where we left off last issue and with a more detailed review of how the years 1843 and 1844 were correctly arrived at by the early pioneers of the Advent movement. From John Loughborough’s “Rise and Progress of the Seventh-day Adventists,” pp. 37-41:
“Thus the ‘great signs’ and ‘fearful sights’ that are predicted in the Scriptures of truth, seem to be all fulfilled, as well as those which the Savior declared should precede His coming.
“As sure as the leaving out [falling of the leaves] of the trees is an indication of summer, just so sure, on the fulfillment of these signs, are Christians to know that the coming of Christ is near, even at the doors. It is not mere permission to know it, but our Savior commands them to know it.’- ‘Exposition of the Twenty-Fourth of Matthew,’ pp. 49-60; S. Bliss, Boston, 1843.
The Basis of the Time prophecy of 1843
“The basis of the time—1843— was the 2300 days of Daniel 8. It was claimed that these ‘days’ were connected with the prophecies where beasts were chosen to represent ‘kingdoms,’ ‘days,’ must be used symbolically to represent years, according to the Lord’s interpretation of symbolic time, as given in Numbers 14: 32 and Ezekiel 4: 5, 6; that the 70 weeks—490 days—of Daniel 9 were to be the first part of the 2300 days, and that the two periods began together. The event given in Daniel 9, which marked the beginning of the 70 weeks, was the ‘going forth of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem.’ That commandment went forth in the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longimanus 457 B.C., as recorded in Ezra 7. That this was the true date for the beginning of the 70 weeks, was demonstrated by the fact that in just 69 weeks—483 years—from 457 B.C., in A.D. 27, Christ was baptized by John [the Baptist] and entered upon His ministry, saying ‘The time is fulfilled’ (Mark 1: 14, 15). [This “time” is the time prophecy of the 70 weeks]. The opening of the ministry of Christ, 27 A.D., His crucifixion three and years from that date, ‘in the midst of the [70th] week,’ and the speedy conversion of Saul, the Apostle to the Gentiles (Acts 5), proved that the 70 weeks did terminate at that date, and therefore they began B. C. 457. They figured he matter out thus: ‘From 2300 take 457, and there remains 1843. And as the 457 were before Christ [B.C.], we are brought for this close to 1843 A.D.”-
“Mr. N. Colver, preaching in Marlboro street Chapel, Boston, in 1843, in opposition to the Adventists, said: — ‘If these days are years, the world wll end in 1843; and schoolboy can see it. For if 490 terminated at the death of Christ, the 2300 days would terminate in 1843; and the world must end, unless it can be shown that some other even is to take place, and I do not see how this can be done.’
“Prof. Smart said: — ‘It is a singular fact, that the great mass of interpreters in the English and American world have, for many years, been wont to understand the days designated in Daniel and in the Apocalypse as the representation, or symbols, of years. I have found it difficult to trace of the origin of this general, I might say, almost universal custom.’ (‘Illustrations of Prophecy,’ p. 77). [The precise prophetic time fulfillment helped them realize their mistake!]
“The passing of the power of the Turkish Sultan into the hands of the allied powers of Europe on the 11thd day of August, 1840, was an event that served greatly to establish the fact that in symbolic prophecy a day represents a liter year. In the year 1838, Josiah Litch of Philadelphia, published an exposition of the three woe trumpets of Revelation 9, basing his calculation of the time given under the fifth and sixth trumpets, on the ground of a day for a year. He ventured to assert, on the strength of his faith in the ‘year-day’ principle, that the Ottoman Empire would lose its independence on August 11, 1840.
“[Litch’s] argument was that the five months—150 days—of the fifth trumpet referred to the 150 years of warfare of the Turks against the Eastern empire of Rome, beginning A.D. 1299, when Othman founded the Ottoman Empire in the territory of Nicomedia. Counting from July 27, 1299, when (according to Gibbon) Othman made his first invasion of the Greek empire, the 150 days (years) would end July 27, 1449. At that time John Paleologus (who is set down in history as the last Greek emperor) died, and Constantine Deacozes (a Greek) asked permission of Amurah, the Turkish Sultan, to ascend to the Greek throne. This clearly demonstrated that the Greeks lost their independence at that date, and the Turkish rule in Constantinople prevailed. So exactly 150 years from the beginning of the Turkish invasion, this 150 years ‘torment’ of the Greeks ended, and the Turks held power in Eastern empire [of Rome].
“They were to (politically) kill those they had tormented for ‘an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year.’ In literal time this would be (1) and hour, or fifteen literal days (as an hour is a twenty-fourth part of a day), and a day symbolizes a literal years); (2) a day, or one literal year; (3) a month, thirty prophetic days, which equals thirty literal years; and (4) a year, three hundred and sixty literal years. Adding these fragments together, we have 391 years days of literal time for the accomplishment of the prophecy. Reckoning from July 27, 1499, the time when the Greek empire fell into the hands of the Turks, it brings us to August 11, 1840, the termination of the period of Turkish independence, as set forth under the sixth trumpet, or the second woe.’
“Many were thus called to watch for the termination of the difficulties that had sprung up between the armies of Mehemet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, and the Turkish Sultan. Hundreds said
‘If this affair terminates, as the Doctor has asserted, it will establish the ‘year day principle of interpreting symbolic time, and we will be Adventists.’ [This is part of the incontrovertible evidences why I am an Adventist, part of the larger Advent Movement].
“For several years, previous to 1840, the [Turkish] Sultan had been embroiled in war with Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt. In 1838 the trouble between the Sultan and his Egyptian vassal was for the time being restrained by the influence of the foreign ambassadors. In 1839, however, hostilities were again, begun, and were prosecuted until, in the general battle between the armies of the Sultan and Mehemet, the Sultan’s army was entirely cut up and destroyed, and his fleet taken by Mehemet and carried into Egypt. So completely had the Sultan been reduced, that, when the war again began in August, he had only two first-rates and three frigates as the sad remains of a once-powerful Turkish fleet. This fleet Mehemet positively refused to give up and return to the Sultan, and declared that if the powers attempted to take if from him, he would burn it. In this posture affairs stood, when in 1840, England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia interposed, and determined on a settlement of the difficulty; for it was evident that, if let alone, Mehement would soon become master of the Sultan’s throne.
“The Sultan accepted this intervention of the great powers, and this made a voluntary surrender of the question into their hands. A conference of these powers was held in London, the Sheik, Effendi Bey Ligkis, being present as Ottoman plenipotentiary. And ultimatum was drawn up, to be presented to the Pasha of Egypt, whereby the Sultan was to offer him the hereditary government of Egypt, and all that part of Syria extending from the Gulf of Suez to the Lake of Tiberias, together with the province of Acre, for life; he, on his part, to evacuate all other parts of the Sultan’s dominion then occupied by him, and to return the Ottoman fleet. In case he refused this offer from the Sultan, the four powers would take the matter into their own hands, and use such other means to bring him to terms as they should see fit.
“It was apparent that just as soon as this ultimatum should be put into the hands of Mehemet Ali, the matter would be forever be beyond the control of the former, and the disposal of his affairs would, from that moment, be in the hands of foreign powers. The Sultan dispatched Rifat Bey on a government steamer to Alexandria, to communicate the ultimatum to the Pasha. It was put into his hands, and by him taken in charge, on the eleventh day of August 1840! On that same day a note was addressed by the Sultan to the ambassadors of the four powers, inquiring what plan was to be adopted in case the Pasha should refuse to comply with the terms of the ultimatum; to which they made answer that the provision had been made, and there was no necessity of his alarming himself about any contingency that might arise. This day the period of three hundred and ninety-one years and fifteen days allotted to the continuance of the Ottoman power ended; and where was the Sultan’s independence? —Gone!” (See “Thoughts on Daniel and the Revelation,’ pp. 497, 498). (Continued next week).