FRIDAY MORNING MANNA
July 10, 2015
Nathaniel Fajardo
Biblical Numerology: NUMBER THREE – Part XVI
THE PROPHETIC TIMETABLE FROM THE COVENANT WEEK TO 1844
The Day, Month, and Year. Many of the most eminent scholars of various faiths through the centuries believed in the great outline prophecies of the Bible. Bible scholars of different denominations agree that in prophetic time a day is equivalent to one literal year (Num.13: 34; Eze. 4: 6), the year being 360 days. The literal day is a full 24 hour-day in the primal, literary sense. According to the Bible reckoning in Genesis chapter 1, “evening-morning” designated a 24-hour period beginning at sunset (evening), hence, “Evening-Morning” and ends the following sunset, not midnight.
Thus the beginning of the dark part of the day was designated “evening” and always precedes the light part of the day, called “morning.” The fact that in Daniel 8: 14 the word for “evening” precedes “morning” undoubtedly implies the same sequence—a full 24-hour day, not half a day, as some try to reinterpret the 2300-day prophecy by rendering the 2300 days as 1150 days, etc.
Year and Month.“A year made up of 12 months will readily be conceded, but that the month has 30 days needs perhaps to be demonstrated. This can readily be seen by referring to the record of the Flood in Genesis 7 and 8. There we learn the following:
1. That the flood came on the seventeenth day of the second month (Gen. 7: 11).
2. That the waters subsided on the seventeenth day of the seventh month. (Gen. 8: 4),
3. That the flood continued for 5 months—from the second to the seventh month.
Reference to Genesis 7: 24 reveals the fact that ‘the waters prevailed upon the earth a hundred and fifty days.’ Our calculation showed 5 months. The text mentions 150 days; hence we have 5 months equaling 150 days, or 30 days to a month.
Thus we have a definite measure for calculating the prophetic periods, bearing in mind that in prophecy a days is equal to a year of ordinary time.” – Uriah Smith, “Daniel and the Revelation,” p. 533.
Only thus can time prophecy be interpreted without risk of embarrassment, contradiction, and confusion—but rather, with gratitude and joy for God’s merciful revelation of His mysteries and the future to anyone who humbly and diligently seeks for truth as for hidden treasure.
Matt. 13: 44. Such truths of the Bible (which is again being denied either blatantly or subtly as God’s Word (see on the internet)–not long-held and venerated traditions or the sayings and commandments of man and church edicts, bulls, or encyclicals, etc.), by the very nature of the great controversy between Christ and Satan and their respective special agencies on earth and the divine solution of the plan of redemption of the true gospel.
Apostle Paul describes “the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” Heb. 4: 12, 13, N.K.J.V.
Daniel 8: 14 brings all time prophecies to an end in year October 1844, the longest time prophecy in the Bible which solemnly announced to the world the beginning of judgment-hour through the message of the first angel of Revelation 14: 6-13. Attempts to repeatedly predict, despite abject failures, future time prophecies emanates from the Jesuit’s brainchild of Futurism (by Spanish priest Ribera); this is the foundation of Dispensationalism and the Rapture which counterfeit the Biblical order of Christ’s second-coming scenario and its purpose in the plan of salvation. These deny the Biblical type-and-antitype principle and are designed to confuse and lead souls away from the present, sealing truths for this very time.
The first angel’s message and its Holy-Spirit empowered movement (1840-1844) announced to the churches and to the world-at-large, and continues to do so now–the most solemn period of fallen earth’s short history of 6,000 years—the closing work of atonement and intercession of Christ as mankind’s only High Priest, Mediator, and Advocate, highlighted by the opening of the books of records of heaven for the pre-advent judgment beginning with the righteous dead from Adam and moving on to the cases of the living, we know not when, only that is near. Dan. 7: 9, 10, 13; 1 Pet. 4: 17-19; Eccl. 12: 13, 14; John 5: 22; Acts 24: 25; Rom. 14: 10, 2 Cor. 5:10; 1 Tim. 5: 24. These are immediately followed by the second and third angels’ messages.
Thus all the remaining few unfulfilled prophecies, which are the most stupendous,and final faith-shaking and hypocrisy-exposing ones, the groundwork of which has already been laid earlier, which the spiritual watchmen and shepherds failed to detect or feared to warn their congregants of, are currently unfolding before the eyes of the world, most yet oblivious to the real significance in the global movements of the papacy and the surprisingly rapid developments and changes in America’s religious, social, and political institutions and landscapes—the erstwhile “beast with lamb-like horns” who will soon “speak like a dragon” according to Revelation 13: 11-17.
All remaining prophecies will be fulfilled according to the chronology established by a God of order, not confusion, given in the general yet all-encompassing and comprehensive order of the three angels’ messages of Revelation chapters 13 to 18, including other collateral prophecies that will finally complete the whole picture of the prophetic narrative.
Israel losing its star power. This should help explain why global attention, largely through the controlled traditional press and media which used to be so focused and hyped over the existentialist threat of ethnicIsrael, proclaimed a state on May 14, 1948 by the U.N, not the Bible, and recognized by the U.S. that same day, under the Zionistic agenda, is rapidly shifting to Rome, the Romish Church, and the Pope as its visible head.
That’s according to the prophecy of Revelation 13. Zionism, who considers Herzl Theodore as its founder, is the Jewish national aspiration to re-establish the Jewish State in Palestine . The Christian church, whose Cornerstone and Rock is Christ—not Peter, one of the Twelve—is spiritual Israel. The spiritual Jew is “one whose circumcision is of the heart, not the flesh” – literal circumcision was a sign of the Abrahamic covenant, part of the ceremonial law of the Mosaic ordinances which were all “nailed to the cross.” Rom. 2: 23-29; Eph. 2; 11-22; Gal.1: 7; 2: 3-20; 3; 4: 1-10; 5: 1-13.
The Seventy-Week Prophecy of Daniel 9: 24-27. During the prophetic 70 weeks (490 literal years) the first 49 years would see the fulfillment of the prophecy of the repatriation of the Jews and the rebuilding of the walls, streets, and temple desolated by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon seventy years prior. The repatriation and rebuilding process, which would take three progressive stages until fully completed, would be carried out under the leadership of six men chosen by God, three from His own people and three from Medo-Persia. The former were Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah; the latter, the Persian kings Cyrus, Darius Codomannus, and Artaxeres I Longimanus.
Uriah Smith says that there are four events which can be taken as answering the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem (Dan. 9: 25-27). These are:
1. The decree of Cyrus for the rebuilding of the house of God, 536 B.C. (Ezra 1: 1-4).
2. The decree of Darius for the prosecution of that work which had been hindered, 519 B.C. (Ezra 6: 1-12.)
3. The decree of Artaxerxes to Ezra, 457 B.C. (Ezra 7)
4. The commission to Nehemiah of the same king in his twentieth year, 444 B.C. (Nehemiah 2). – Smith, Daniel and The Revelation, p. 208.
The Seventieth Week. The seventieth week of years of Daniel 9 follows immediately upon the end of the sixty-ninth week of years. This is in contrast to the idea introduced by Hippolytus and Appolinarius in the third and fourth centuries from which present day Christian mainstream fundamentalists now positively assert that the seventieth week is separated by a “vast gap of over nineteen centuries,” known as the Gap Theory, which, they claim, “will only be fulfilled at the end of the age in the future.”
This interpretation fails wide of the mark if only anyone closely follows the gospel accounts and the epistles as to Christ’s exclusive work with the first Twelve in Palestine, from His baptism, 27 A.D. to His crucifixion 3 ½ years later, 31 A.D. He instructed first the Twelve, and then the seventy disciples, who included Philip and Stephen (Luke 10: 1-17) before His death “not to go to the Gentiles but to the lost sheep of Israel first.” Matt 10: 5, 6.
Exactly three and half years after His crucifixion, the Jewish Sanhedrin stoned to death Stephen, the first Christian martyr—ending the covenant week, thus the Jewish nation’s chosen people status. See Acts chapters 6 and 7. Thus was fulfilled Christ’s parabolic prophecy: “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth fruits thereof.” Matt. 21: 42-45; Luke 13: 6-9. From that point on Jewish’ bitter persecution of Christ’s disciples forced them to flee from Jerusalem, where prejudice against Christ was greatest, taking with them the gospel of a risen Savior to the Gentiles. Thus the Christian church grew out from Judaism.
Following the day-for-a year of prophetic time, the last week (seven literal years) of the seventy-weeks (490 literal years) of the prophecy of Daniel 9: 24-27, delineates in detail all the highlights of Christ’s last merciful work primarily for His own people, to accept Him as the promised Messiah they had been waiting, in word and deed fulfilling every single Old Testament prophecy regarding His person, work, and mission; thus personally renewing His Abrahamic covenant with them as the chosen instruments for revealing to the world His purpose of salvation, as well as through them, the promised Messiah, the Christ that was to come, and was already in their midst. Yet the Old Testament makes it equally clear—a fact strangely overlooked by most in the mainstream Christianity—that this status of being the chosen people was conditional.
Sadly, as the gospels and history records for eternity, culminating in their collusion with their Roman conquerors, the prototypical New Testament apostate union of church and state powers, the chosen people, through their religious leadership, crucified the Son of God between two malefactors, legally identified as “Jesus, of Nazareth the King of the Jews,” a title ordered by Pilate written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.” The impudent high priest protested why it was written thus but Pilate silenced him with his famous line: “What I have written I have written.” John 19: 19-22.
This fearful truth is attested to in the three universal languages of that time and for eternity. It was said in prose and song, “written in red.” It is also written, “They hated Me without a cause. John 15: 25 (see 16-24). But yes, “it was at the cross, that instrument of shame and torture, which brought hope and salvation to the world.” (Continued next week)