This is not the problem here. The problem is, it is not possible to be, at the same time, a preterist and a futurist, a preterist and a historicist, or a futurist and a historicist. The systems are incompatible. How can someone believe that the 3.5 years are way in the past and, at the same time, way in the future? This is what Ford tries to do (although not specifically in this case), but, as W. H. Johns says, "the apotelesmatic principle does not give any clue as to when a prophecy may have just one fulfillment, a dual fulfillment, or multiple fulfillments. This is determined arbitrarily and subjectively. It offers no internal or external controls. If one scholar offers seven interpretations for a particular prophecy, and another seventy times seven, who is to say which one has gone too far and which one has stopped short of good exegesis?"
If you try to mix historicism with futurism, which is the case here, you have no consistent pattern to interpret eschatological prophecies. Once you state an escathological prophecy can be interpreted in a day-for-a-day basis, who will believe in a year-for-a-day interpretation? If the 3.5 years of Daniel will be fulfilled by the antichrist in the future, the historicist view is automatically discarded. And, as Johns again points out, "Seventh-day Adventism laid its original foundations and has raised its superstructure upon historicism, which is antithetical to preterism [and, obviously, to futurism]. Without historicism there is no significance to the dates 538, 1755, 1798, 1833, or 1844."

Rosangela: Succinctly said here in response to your latest post above, I can see why you see that two methods of interpretation would be mutually exclusion if you have a strictly linear view of Prophetic Development. However, as seen from Christ Olivet discourse which is actually the template and summary of the Prophetic Book of Revelation, Bible prophecy can have Waves of interpretation (namely: Local/Literal, Historical and Eschatological) and when one wave does not culminate in the utter end that it could have, e.g., Jesus could have returned by 70 A.D. as the NT Church believed if conditions had been met, especially the readiness of the Church, then prophecy is effectively reset and an another “Wave” begins. It is then that Prophecies are refulfilled and now with new actors, , even “descendants” of the prior actors (E.g., Antichrist spirit in the Church in Paul’s time; Institutionalized Papacy in Church History; revived Papal Authority, temporally seconded by the Land Beast in Eschatology). Also since prophecy is to only culminate in one end, and also given the many identifying elements that also need to be accurately fulfilled, it is not realistic that someone would be advancing more than one viably applicable interpretation (i.e., ‘7 or 70X7’) in their Prophetic Wave time.

NJK,

I don't believe Jesus could have returned by 70 A.D. This can be seen through Daniel 2, Daniel 7, Daniel 8, etc. If the NT Church believed that, it was just because the book of Daniel was still sealed at that time.

From the wider applicable Biblical Perspective, the Biblical principle on conditional statements, which includes prophecy in Jer 18:1-10 is clear expressing the contrary. It indeed goes both ways. Bible Prophecy is what is uttermost likely to occur, especially given that natural tendencies will most likely be followed (e.g., the rejection of the Messiah and the resulting destruction of the Temple and City Dan 9:26, 27b). Even in the SOP, many of the prophecy that EGW made in relation to her SDA generation did not come to pass as “inclusively” expected, similar to what Paul and the Apostle were similarly, validly led by God’s Spirit to understand, believe and proclaim. EGW makes many statement along these lines of ‘the Second Coming could/should have occurred in her day.)

And by simply allowing the Four Winds to blow on the Earth, (as it will be done in/for the End) which involves allowing man to unhinderedly act according to their “passions”, God can easily cause many key elements of Bible prophecy to unravel. E.g., suddenly, during the Apostles day, make the “bishop” of Rome, having received a vision of Satan, perform mighty miracles before the leader of the World then, Roman Emperor to convince Him to make Christianity the Religion for all peoples and, also by visions of Satan corrupt the teachings of the Church and also seek to kill all those who would oppose this “inspired” move. God indeed ultimately holds the reigns by what He, even interveningly, e.g., does and allows, or what restricts and defeats.

This Biblical topic reveals that God is more interested in wrapping up this GC, whenever it valid/fairly can be and/or needs to be, rather than merely having all of His plans conditioned after the expected developments of human history be fully/literally fulfilled. So the key here is to be Spiritually in tune with the Will of God rather than become prophecy experts. Sadly enough the SDA Church does not understand this which is why they see no problem in ignoring many Gospel Work requirements of Christ (e.g, Matt 25:31-46), including saving the lives of the currently 65,000,000 annually aborted infants, which the SDA Church also electively contributes to (see in this thread), but instead, actually Spiritually futilely, seek to get their prophetic Final Events Charts “correct” along with all the supposedly “applicable” News Headlines. (Matt 16:1-4). Keeping the Sabbath does not supercede or offset doing and condoning/being indifferent to, murder as indeed also implied in Isa 58 which decries just letting someone in need suffer, let alone seeing them to their death.



A couple of succinct points here as I have discussed this in more details in this blog post:

-The only parts of Daniel that was sealed was the post-1844, eschatological parts. Historical parts leading up to those end time parts were more than less understood which is why Paul in 2 Thess 2:1-12 fully understood the AntiChrist and Great Apostasy prophecy.

-They were sealed because they did not have to be understood priorly and could indeed be optionally fulfilled if World History reached that point.

-The passing of 70 A.D. with indeed few righteous believers to carry on the work in the added time, even fewer understanding or doing what was required to advance God’s work in that new wave resulted in the great crisis of the sealed book related in Rev 5. When it was able to be done, this opened up the Historical Wave of Prophecy for God’s surviving People.

-The end time parts of the book of Daniel would like come to be unsealed when/as a small Remnant group of God’s People would, as precisely stated in Dan 12:4 seek “to and fro” to obtain further Biblical knowledge and insight into God’s will and ways.

Ok, let's hold on here so that we are talking about the same thing.

I asked why can't 1260 be two different time frames.

It appears you are saying that I'm saying they are the same time frame. I'm saying they are different.


How should one determine if a number used, should be a day for day or a day for year.

NJK,
Time prophecies are not conditional, nor can they be interpreted as literal time within SDA's prophetic frame.
I'm not following you. Do you think that just 40 years after Christ's death (by 70 A.D.) the Roman Empire could already have been divided into ten kingdoms, and that from among them another religious-political power would have arisen?
Do you think Christ could have been crucified 70 weeks (less than 1.5 years) after "the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem"? Do you think Jerusalem could have been rebuilt in 7 literal weeks? This does not make any sense.
Daniel 8 and 9 are tied together. If both begin at the same point in time, do you think the investigative judgment would have begun a little more than 6 years after the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem?
Or what do you think is that it is possible that none of these prophecies of Daniel would have been fulfilled? If they wouldn't, the whole book of Daniel would have been proved useles. And if there is no certainty that prophecies are going to be fulfilled, the same can happen with Revelation.

Imagine that you are trying to explain the SDA position to an outsider. What would the person think when you said that there is no pattern to interpret an escathological time prophecy - it can be fulfilled once, or twice, or x times, and it can be interpreted using a day for a day, or a year for a day, depending on... what?


There was a thread in which we discussed this. I'll see if I can find it.

As the Jer 18:1-10 principle says, I do not see that God is limited anything He says. Prophecies are just a “fashioned (counsels)/plan” (Isa 46:10, 11), and one that is conditioned on circumstances on the ground which are seen to surely be the enduring case. I think the Nineveh repentance episode is a good example of the two aspects involved here. God had said destruction would come in 40 days, seeing that these people would probably not repent, however given them 40 days and a warning, instead just raining down destruction on them left open that possibility and when they did, that time elements was useless, (cf. Jon 4:11) indeed probably from the very first day when they apparently had repented, as also was the predicted destruction. Jonah fully knew and understood from the start that this all may not happen, even if timed. Yet he camp out just outside the city to wait out the time of 40 days.

God rather intends that His word accomplishes the ultimate purpose that He desires when he gave it. (Isa 55:7-11; cf. 1-6 - Repentance and Mercy is His ultimate desire.) Indeed as seen in Nineveh’s case, His ‘timed destruction word’ was not fulfilled when He had the sudden opportunity to have compassion and mercy. (This also shows that his judgement on Pharaoh in which He did not let Pharaoh give in when Pharaoh actually wanted to (see starting in this post), was because God indeed wanted to effectuate all of the ten plagues, right down through the retributive slaying of the Egyptian first born.)

By the way, (references omitted) if you do the chronological math, Israel’s punishment in the wilderness took 38 years and not the decreed 40 years, as it only necessitated 38 years for all these adults to die. Similarly the stated 400 years of Abraham/Israel’s Family took 430 years because Moses act of killing the Egyptian caused it to be delayed by 40 years. (See in this post for more on this latter example [Search for: “430”]).

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Though I do indeed go by this Biblical ‘not necessary full fulfillment’ as your last observation had seen, I’ll give you a succinct demonstration of how these events, irrespective of time, could have been fulfilled.



The division did not need to happen, but the “barbaric” tribal peoples that came to cause that division were already in existence and quite antipathetic towards the Romans. They were also militaristically quite capable as Roman History records the most devastating defeat of the history of the Roman Empire, right through their ultimate defeat in ca. 476 A.D. to have occurred in a battle against Germanic tribes during the Time of Tiberius Caesar (ca. 11 A.D.). So the Romans tried not to have unnecessary/wanton conflicts with such “uncivilized” tribal nations. God also could have raised up assisting powers in and around the Roman Empire to make such a rapid transition of the Roman Empire possible (i.e., namely Egypt, Greece, Persia, India, even China if necessary) Rome would not have been able to stand against such simultaneous wars from all sides. And God can and does indeed “stir up” foreign kingdom to accomplish His will, even when His People are not directly involved/implicated (Isa 13:17; cf. Isa 45:1; 46:11a; Dan 2:21). The “omnipotence” of God to even most rapidly accomplish whatever He wants to is absolutely unmatchable whenever he simply chooses to make use of it.

Also in regards to 70 A.D., Jesus never said that the destruction would/should take place in exactly 40 years after his death (which would actually be 71 A.D.) That is just what is commonly assumed. What Jesus said in Mark 13:30 was that the generation of people listening to him then, especially the ones (i.e., the knowledgeable adults) who were rejecting Him (cf. Luke 17:25) would not die before what He had said would be fulfilled. If that “generation” is considered to start from people aged 20, and life expectancy was ca. 70-80 years (Psa 90:10a), then Christ was here seeing ca. 81-91 A.D. as the limits. (Evidently, and most can’t accept this, Jesus also expected a return within that First Century, and it indeed could have happened.) Interestingly enough, the book of Revelation, which opened the way for the Historical Development of Biblical History was not given until ca. 90+ A.D. Perhaps God was awaiting to see if nothing would cause Him to effectuate the Second Coming by then, as expected by Christ, before giving this further and more specific Prophetic Revelation/Plan which came to confirm and complement the ones found in Daniel.



In regards to Christ mission, since it was to save the world at the most opportune time, I do not see that it would have been curtailed as that fullness of time could be allowed to naturally come to be. It is however after his completion of this plan of salvation that a “last days” notion, as NT People believed, with an imminent Second Coming end, especially by 70 A.D. could have been done. So I see that the 70 Weeks would chronologically always be fulfilled. Indeed God was supernaturally intervening to physically protect, even restore Israel (Ezek 36:22-38) when necessary so that this could “timely” be done. Indeed to serve as an incontrovertible, concrete sign for Israel then which they completely missed by foundationally being Spiritually out of tune to God’s will and ways. Case in point the Jewish leaders actually knew that this time should be fulfilled in their day, but they just could not see Jesus as the fulfillment of it.

Also Ezekiel’s Temple was to serve as the most typical representation of the Messiah’s work leading up to Christ first coming to become the anti-type, however that Divine plan was never fully, if in any way implemented as Ezekiel was widely rejected by Jewish leaders.



As I said above the time of the 70 Weeks seems non-curtailable to me for the greater plan of Salvation implementation reason, nonetheless, in my studies for my book on the 70 Weeks, (see its summary here), I do not see a substantive validation that the rebuilding of Jerusalem was being spoken of by the 7 (Prophetic) Weeks statements. That time period was apparently just to delineate the first sabbatical cycle since the restoration, especially as the ignorance of these sabbatical cycles had actually been a major concurrent reason for the 70 years of exile judgement (2 Chr 36:20, 21)



The 2300 days “appearance” in Dan 8:14 was actually part of what was sealed in the book of Daniel. Its understanding only became clear much later in the early 1800's. I see that its understanding and chronological fulfillment was all optional as they extended beyond the Cross and beyond 70 A.D.



As I said, beyond the completed GC and Redemption work on the Cross, Prophetic and World time became optional. God could have intervene at any time to end things if ever warranted. The permitted persecution of the Christians by Nero could also have been towards this prophetic fulfillment, as it gave a demonstration to the whole universe to what unfair extent Satan and also evil men would take their cause against God’s will and way. However these faithful martyrs did not die in vain when time was prolonged as their “testimony” came to actually increase and sustain the ranks of Believers from the generations living after them.



As I showed above much of the Prophecies of Daniel, i.e., the non-sealed “time of the end” parts could easily have been fulfilled. Even the “time of the end” parts would come to be fulfilled, but not in a chronological way. At least not in a ‘day for a year’ way. Notice how more specific and substantively expanded the prophecies of Revelation are compared to Daniel. I.e., there is not mention of Rev 13:11-18's “Land Beast” in the outline of Daniel. Everything ends in Pagan and Papal Rome in Daniel, both of which were in existence, or position to exist, in the First Century A.D. The Land Best (i.e., the United States of America) tangibly would become a likely scenario/case only after a First Century ending would not have become the case.

Incidentally I see Dan 11 as another example in this topic. SDA’s today only can see a historical fulfillement for it with various claimed fulfillements in Egypt, Greece, etc. However, as seen hereI see that they were only possible fulfillement towards a First Century A.D. end. After that past, that prophecy was reset, as it easily could be starting with Christ’s fulfilling actions, along with Paul, in that First Century, ands so on. With each resetting, as seen in other Bible prophecies, some elements of the prophecy do become more Spiritual than literal.



I don’t see this, especially ‘external fears’, as the proper approach to Biblical interpretation/study. It is more of an eisegetical approach. I rather let the text exegetically determine what the Truth is in all regards and align my belief with that revelation of God and His Word. The most ironic thing is that, because people will, giving in to their natural impulses, not step out to do all that they can do to finish God’s work, all of these prophecies will come to pass as timely so expected. I.e., there will be no premature warranted to wrap things up sooner. In fact, it is because of these persisted, followed natural tendencies that I see that an Eschatological Wave for prophetic understanding has come to be necessary, and in this wave many elements in both Daniel and Revelation, as well as many unfulfilled/postponed prophecies concerning Ancient Israel, will come to be fulfilled. The Spiritual casualty in all of this however is that the literal prophesying of EGW will be forced to become like the unfulfilled/postponed prophecies of the OT by now coming to have a more Spiritual application in many ways. Still EGW’s prophecies, in this Spiritual way, like OT prophecies, ‘will still [in some way] speak until the end’.

Hope this all clarifies my “Theological View” here.

My short answer here: For the book of Revelation, time elements were always to be symbolic, following the Biblical Principle in e.g., Ezek 4:6 and Num 14:34. However for the “time of the End age” God, through the SOP, not only explicitly removed this symbolic conversion, but the entire time elements themselves even if these prophecy are to be re-fulfilled during that post-1844 time. At best these time elements are only spiritually indicative as to what similar/typical historical development is to be expected, but they have no literal or symbolic chronological contribution/force.

For the book of Daniel the times may have been literal for the prophecies fulfilled in the first century e.g, the 3.5 years.

I sense we are not communicating. Which could be true, as I've been accused, though I believe incorrectly, of not being "straight forward and as clear as possible". So with that in mind, maybe I haven't been emphasizing what I need to:


Taking another approach. What if the numbers used in Daniel 12 were 1040, 1492, 872? If reading it, would you immediately assume it was referring to a time of the distant past?

Put another way, is the reason that you think it points to the distant past is because one, and only one, of the three numbers mentioned just happens to be the same as another number used somewhere else?