Miller’s Works, vol. 1. Views of the Prophecies and Prophetic Chronology

I. IN PLAIN LANGUAGE, BY YEARS, MONTHS, OR DAYS, AS THE CASE MAY BE

1. Seven days before the flood began, and the forty days the rain continued, were prophesied of, and literally fulfilled. See Genesis 7:4. “For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights.” These days were literal days, and so fulfilled. Verses 10, 12: “And it came to pass after the seventh day that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.” “And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.” MWV1 41.1

2. Abraham was informed by God, that his seed should be afflicted in a strange land four hundred years, which, including his sojourn, would make 430 years. Genesis 15:13. This was literally accomplished. See Exodus 12:40, 41. MWV1 41.2

3. The butler’s and baker’s dreams were interpreted to mean three days, by Joseph, and were exactly fulfilled. See Genesis 40:12-20. MWV1 41.3

4. The dream of Pharaoh, as explained by Joseph, meaning seven years’ plenty and seven years’ famine, was literally completed. See Genesis 41:28-54. MWV1 41.4

5. The forty years in the wilderness were prophesied and fulfilled literally. See Numbers 14:34. Joshua 5:6. MWV1 41.5

6. Three years and a half Elijah prophesied that there would be no rain, and there was none until the time was finished. 1 Kings 17:1. James 5:17. MWV1 41.6

7. Isaiah prophesied that within sixty-five years Ephraim should be broken, so that they should not be a people, Isaiah 7:8; and in sixty-five years they were broken and carried away by Esarhaddon, king of Babylon, B.C. 742-677. MWV1 41.7

8. The seventy years’ captivity prophesied of by Jeremiah, Jeremiah 25:11, were fulfilled between B.C. 596 and 526. MWV1 42.1

9. Nebuchadnezzar’s seven times were foretold by Daniel, and fulfilled in seven years. See Daniel 4:25 and Josephus. MWV1 42.2

10. The seventy weeks which Gabriel informed Daniel would “finish transgression, to make an end of sin, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up the vision and prophecy,” which Daniel had before of the four kingdoms of the earth, that should finally be destroyed by the kingdom of the “stone cut out without hands,” and “to anoint the Most Holy.” Who can read this prophecy of the seventy weeks, and the history of Ezra, Nehemiah, the Jews, Romans, John and Jesus Christ, and not be convicted of its exact fulfilment in 490 years? And I would ask, how can it be possible that men who believe the Bible, and who have seen the exact fulfilment of all prophetic chronology thus far, can say with any degree of propriety these seventy weeks are indefinite? Where are their proofs? Not on the records of divine inspiration. For, here we find no sample. Here is no time given, that has not been literally fulfilled according to the true intent and meaning of the prophecy. Why not, then, settle this one point forever, among believers in the divine authority of the Scriptures: that the chronology of prophecy is to be received with an equal faith with the chronology of history? Why not believe the declarations of God concerning the future, as we do concerning the past? Who denies that God created the heavens and the earth, and all that were in them, in six days? None but the Infidel, say you. What better then is he who denies that God will accomplish what he has said he would perform in a given period? Well may the Infidel charge home upon us hypocrisy, when we refuse to believe the latter as well as the former. MWV1 42.3

All these cases which I have brought forward as proof of prophetic chronology were once prophecies; and would it have been right in Noah, the patriarchs, and prophets, to have rejected the time given, any more than the manner? I answer, it could not have been faith to have rejected either. Then let us have faith to believe the chronology of the future, as well as of the past. MWV1 43.1

The seventy weeks were evidently fulfilled in the year A.D. 33, beginning 457 years B.C., at the going forth of the commandment to Ezra to restore the law and the people to Jerusalem. See Ezra 7:10-13. I need not stop to argue this point, as very few can be found who have the hardihood to deny the seventy weeks as being a definite time. One reason, out of the many, may be here presented. Why should the man Gabriel be so particular in defining the beginning and the end of the seventy weeks, if indefinite time only is meant? And why did he name the events so particularly, as to divide the seventy into three very unequal parts, and yet in all three parts include the whole? Surely, no mortal can account for this agreement of numbers, and yet call it indefinite. There was much more ambiguity in the prophecy to Abraham, concerning his seed sojourning in a strange land four hundred years, (see Genesis 15:13, 14,) than in this of the 70 weeks. Yet that was exactly accomplished on the self-same day predicted. Exodus 12:41. And, in me, it would be the very height of folly to believe otherwise concerning these 70 weeks of years, than as an exact fulfilment, on the self-same day. God has not changed, that he will not be as particular now as in the days of Abraham. He surely will; and when men, through cowardice or unbelief, charge God with thus tampering with his word, they must, sooner or later, find it to their cost to make such a solemn charge. MWV1 43.2