The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4

XI. 70 Weeks Still Key to 2300 Years

One of the great issues, which has never been fairly met, said the Millerites, is that the 70 weeks are the first segment of the 2300 days. ⁴¹ And Gabriel was instructed to make plain the vision, from which the 70 weeks were determined, or cut off. No Hebrew scholar has denied it; the best scholars admit it should read “cut off”-the remaining years extending beyond the 490. The connection, therefore, between the two periods of time has not been disproved. Dr. William Hales says, “This chronological prophecy [the seventy weeks] ... was evidently designed to explain the foregoing vision, especially in its chronological part, of the 2300 days.” ⁴² PFF4 872.4

Thus, the Millerites contend, all their arguments in support of chronological data remain unmoved—with the exception of the exact timing. On the other hand, their opponents would move them from the great, prophetical and historical landmarks of the centuries. And they are “offered nothing in their stead” but a “blank and dreary uncertainty.” The applications have corresponded with the predictions in every particular. Your attempts, they say, leave out the most essential and important features. Thus even Hinton, of the opposition, was constrained to comment: PFF4 872.5

“The work of Dr. Stuart is, professedly, very incomplete; a hundred historic facts referred to in the symbols of Daniel and John, he has left unnoticed; and ve apprehend he will, in the more complete work which he intimates will come from his pen, find a more arduous task to select their ‘mates’ in the reigns of Antiochus and Nero, than his great learning and ingenuity will enable him satisfactorily to fulfill.” ⁴³ PFF4 873.1