The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3

II. Jewish Expositor Discusses Prophetic Periods and Symbols

We now turn to the second journal in which discussion of the prophecies appeared, and for the launching of which Way was responsible. Although The Jewish Expositor and Friend of Israel, published in London and edited by C. S. Hawtrey, was established primarily for other purposes, the exposition of prophecy periodically crept into its pages. Thus back in August, 1816, “B” contended that the little horn of Daniel 8 and the willful king of Daniel 11:36 refer to Mohammed and his successors. He held, further, that the 1260 and the 2300 years end together, and that these events are tied in with the drying up of the river Euphrates. ⁴⁴ PFF3 425.4

Then P. Bolton, in the November, 1819, number, after enumerating the four great empires of prophecy and the ten divisions of the fourth, interprets the little horn of Daniel 7 as the Papacy, and places the 1260 years from 533 to 1793. ⁴⁵ The “earthquake” of Revelation 11 he declares to be the French Revolution, and France the tenth part of the city Babylon. But the little horn of Daniel 8 he expounds as Mohammed, and the 1260- and 2300-year periods he strangely ends together in 1868. ⁴⁶ PFF3 426.1

1. “C. C.” DATES 2300 (457-1843); 1290 (508-1798)

In the October, 1820, issue “C. C.” impressively places the seventy weeks as from Ezra’s commission in 457 B.C. to the A.D. 33 cross, and the 2300 years from 457 B.C. to the cleansing of the sanctuary in 1843. Moreover, he advances the interesting position that the 1290 years are dated from A.D. 508 to 1798, when the French expelled the pope from Rome ⁴⁷ -about the first to suggest such a dating for this specific period. PFF3 426.2

2. “T. B.” WOULD DATE 2400 FROM 553 TO 1847

In the November, 1825, issue a report of the proceedings of the Lon don Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews speaks of the 1260 days as years, for “a day means a year,” and the three and a half times as three and a half prophetic years of 360 days, or “1260 natural years.” This is the period of the little horn that arose after the ten horns were established. ⁴⁸ Then “T. B.,” in the April, 1828, issue, citing Home, adopts the Frere and Irving dating from the alleged time of the vision, for the 2400 years, which he places as from 553 B.C. to A.D. 1847. ⁴⁹ PFF3 426.3

3. “J. G. O.” ENDS 2300, 391, AND 1290 ALL IN 1844

In volume 1 of the new series for 1831 mention is made that the term “generation” (genea) means race. ⁵⁰ And in volume 2, for 1832, the unidentified “J. G. O.” stresses 1844 as the focal point for the 2300 years, starting from 457 B.C., as well as for the 391 years of the Turkish woe, dated from the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and so reaching to 1844. Then, finally, he takes 553 or 554 for the beginning of the 1260 years of papal tyranny, and ends them similarly in 1814, with the thirty additional years, to the end of the 1290 years, likewise extending to 1844. ⁵¹ The millennium, he believed, would follow shortly thereafter. ⁵² PFF3 427.1

4. CUNINGHAME SUMMARIZES WITNESS ON FOUR EMPIRES

Considerable note is taken of several then-recent books by the Futurist S. R. Maitland, and the strictures of William Cuninghame against Frere’s positions. ⁵³ In volume 3, for 1833, Cuninghame writes concerning the virtually unanimous consent of the Jewish and Christian churches “for more than eighteen centuries,” in identifying the four empires as “Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome.” In support he cites the Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, and the Jewish writers Abarbanel, Kimchi, and David Levi. Then in the Christian category. Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Lactantius, Chrysostum, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Jerome are listed. And from more recent times he names Mede, Sir Isaac Newton, More, Brightman, Cressener, Daubuz, Whiston, Lloyd, and Bishop Newton. ⁵⁴ PFF3 427.2

5. PROPHETIC PERIODS DRAWN FROM CYCLES OF UNIVERSE

Then Cuninghame cites the unique witness of de Cheseaux, noted eighteenth-century Swiss astronomer, on the numbers 1260 and 2300, and particularly their difference-1040-as “astronomical cycles, bringing into harmony solar and diurnal time.” ⁵⁵ His argument is interesting and impressive, leading to three conclusions: 1. These prophetic numbers are mystical days, signifying years, not literal days. 2. The 1260 years are a component part of the 2300 years. 3. In order to impress the church with the unspeakable importance of these prophetic numbers, they were not only announced with a solemn oath (Daniel 12:7), but are engraved in the very system of the universe, being taken from the measures of the “great revolutions of the Diurnal and Monthly and Annual periods of the heavens.” ⁵⁶ PFF3 427.3

6. “E” DEFENDS CORRECTNESS OF 2300 NUMERAL

Finally “E” rises to a strong defense of the 2300 years, as against the suggested 2400, and observes, “There is probably no numeral in the Scriptures the correctness of which may be more entirely relied on.” ⁵⁷ But not yet certain as to the dating, he suggests the span of 480 B.C. to A.D. 1820, on the supposition that this terminus involves “the cleansing either of Christian countries or the Jewish sanctuary from the Mohammedan yoke.” ⁵⁸ Thus the 2300 years penetrates every medium employed for the discussion of prophecy. PFF3 428.1

Because of Hawtrey’s editorship, we shall here note his part in the picture. PFF3 428.2