The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

XI. Tillinghast Makes 70 Weeks Part of 2300 Years

JOHN TILLINGHAST (1604-1655) was born in Sussex and educated at Cambridge, from which he received his B.A. in 1624-25. By 1636 he was serving as rector of Tarring Neville. Then he was inducted as rector of Streat (1637), and about 1643 was a frequent preacher in London. In 1650 he became an Independent and joined the newly formed church in Suffolk, being rebaptized in 1651, when he was called to work in the Yarmouth church. Several Independent churches then extended calls to him to serve as pastor, and he responded to Trunch. Tillinghast came to share the millenarian views of the Fifth Monarchy. In 1655 he went to London to remonstrate with Cromwell and to visit those of like faith who filled the prisons at that time. He died while he was in London, early in June, 1655, probably of overexcitement. PFF2 570.2

Tillinghast’s millenarianism was of the spiritual rather than the militantly fanatical type. Except for his Fifth Monarchy view of the immediate coming and kingdom of Christ, he was in line with the Protestant orthodoxy of his day. Although the basis of his chronology was rather unclear, his contribution to the understanding of the prophetic periods was the principle that the 2300 years, as the longest time prophecy, included the 70 weeks, and the other year-day prophetic periods—the 1260, 1290, and 1335 years. PFF2 570.3

1. THE FOUR MONARCHIES AND THE FIFTH

In the visions of Daniel 2 and 7 Tillinghast sees the kingdoms of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, the last of which as the Little Horn includes the mixed civil-religious empire of the contemporary kingdoms of Christendom under the long domination of the papal Beast or Antichrist. ³⁶ He expects the imminent end of the dominion of this power at the close of the 42 months of treading the Holy City underfoot, of the 1260 days of the woman hiding in the wilderness, the time, times, and a half of the Beast, and the wearing of sackcloth by the Two Witnesses ³⁷ (Christ’s true “Magisterial and Ministerial” power) ³⁸ and before long the Stone—the Fifth Monarchy, the visible kingdom of Christ and the saints—is to destroy the Antichristian kingdoms and fill the whole earth. ³⁹ But there is to be an interval between this and the final destruction of the Beast and the scarlet woman (Antichrist’s ecclesiastical and civil power). ⁴⁰ PFF2 570.4

The prophecies concerning Antichrist, he contends, cannot be applied to the Turk, but to the Papacy. But he says that when the Jews again become God’s people, after the 1290 days, the term Antichrist may be equally applied to the Turks, for the Jews, restored to Palestine, become the king of the south (Daniel 11:40 ff.), and “push at the Turk and Pope both,” who combine as king of the north, and are destroyed, as they besiege Jerusalem, by the coming of Christ. ⁴¹ PFF2 571.1

2. THE 1260 AND 1290 YEARS

Tillinghast says that the days and months are not natural, but “Prophetical,” and that the 42 months are the 1260 days, “making up but one and the same number of years. ⁴² The 1260 days (also the three and a half times and the 42 months) he runs from A.D. 396, when “the Civil power of the Roman Empire began to go to decay,” to 1656. ⁴³ He begins the 1290 days in A.D. 366 (which he assigns to the emperor Julian) and ends them at the same time as the 1260, with the beginning of the Jews’ deliverance, “at the end of Antichrist’s Reign,” in 1656,” ⁴⁴ differing thus from Mede, Alsted. and Archer. PFF2 571.2

3. 1335 YEARS END WITH 2300

He begins the 1335 years, like the 1290, at A.D. 366, which he identifies as the date of “the taking away of the daily sacrifice, and setting up of the abomination”; and he ends the 1335 with the 2300 at 1701—the end of the age and the beginning of Christ’s personal reign on earth for a thousand years. ⁴⁵ PFF2 571.3

4. THE SEVENTY WEEKS INEXACT

He ends the 70 weeks at the cross, but makes the period only 486 years, disregarding the latter part of the seventieth week. ⁴⁶ Having decided, on exegetical grounds, that the going forth of the commandment was in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes Mnemon, he contends that there must be 486 years between that year and A.D. 34, although this “account will superabound the account of all Historians,” because he is “bound to account as many years betwixt time and time as Daniel doth, though Human Writers will not allow it. ⁴⁷ He frequently contends with Mede, but he does not seem to be familiar with his contemporary, Ussher, and seems to disregard the more exact chronology available in his day. PFF2 572.1

5. 2300 YEARS INCLUDE 70 WEEKS

The 2300 days cannot be literal days applied to Antiochus, but signify 2300 “years compleat,” he asserts, from “the beginning of the Persian Mon archy, viz. in that year the Scripture calls the first of Cyrus. ⁴⁸ “He extends them to 1701, ushering in Christ’s personal coming, the Jews’ redemption, the final overthrow of the Beast and the Turk, the binding up of the Dragon, the destruction of the Fourth Monarchy, the thousand-year reign of the saints on earth.” ⁴⁹ PFF2 572.2

Tillinghast proffers a new principle for the understanding of Daniel 8 and 9; namely, that the 2300 years of Daniel 8:14 are a larger period embracing the 70 weeks of years as a lesser period. PFF2 572.3

“This seventy weeks is a lesser Epock comprehended within the greater of two thousand and three hundred years, consisting of four hundred and ninety dayes; for seventy weeks being reduced into dayes, amount to the aforesaid number, which according to the Prophetical way of speaking is so many years, viz. four hundred and ninety years.” ⁵⁰ PFF2 572.4

Tillinghast thus reasserts the application of the year-day principle to the 2300 years, advanced by Nicholas of Cusa ⁵¹ two centuries earlier, but largely neglected since; and his inclusive principle marks another step toward the later interpretation of the 2300 years as beginning synchronously with the 70 weeks, a principle which plays a vital part nearly two centuries later in the renewed investigation of the prophecies in the early nineteenth century. At that time it formed an axiomatic part of the exposition on three continents. ⁵² PFF2 572.5