“Having shown from both the Law the prophetic account the evidence of the Jubilee prophecy, let us state this last proof or evidence in another form, for the benefit of some still troubled, thus: The full number of Jubilee cycles which God had ordained was seventy, as shown by the plain statements relative to the reason for the seventy years desolation of their land. This was to include those that Israel had observed in an unsatisfactory manner, which we have seen were nineteen, as well as all the cycles to follow, up to the antitype. We will now reckon all these from their commencement on entering Canaan, and see where they end.
19 Cycles with Jubilees added (50 years each) 19 X 50 = 950 years
51 Cycles without Jubilees (49 years each) 51 X 49 = 2499 years
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70 Cycles, therefore would cover a period of 3449 years total.
This period of 3449 years, reckoned from the entering of Canaan, ends as the foregoing, October, A.D. 1874, thus:
006 years from entering Canaan to division of the land.
450 years covering the period of the Judges to Saul the king.
513 years covering the period of the kings.
070 years covering the period of the desolation.
536 years from the restoration to A.D.
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1575 years the total number of years before the date known as A.D.
Years since A.D., to complete above period of 3449 years, are 1874 full years, which would end (Jewish time) October 1874
3449
1575
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1874
Thus, the period of the 70 cycles, as shown above, from the beginning of the Jubilee system, on entering Canaan, until the antitype, the Great Jubilee, or Times of Restitution, began, (3449 years total) ended A.D. October 1874.
The logical conclusion, if these matters are accepted as of divine arrangement, is easily drawn. And if not divinely arranged, whence came they? We do not put them into the inspired Word: we merely find them there in all their simplicity and beauty, and, like all the other precious and rich food from the storehouse, which our Lord is now serving us according to his promise (Luke 12:37), this is nourishing "strong meat"--not especially intended for "babes in Christ," but for those more developed, "who have their senses exercised" (Heb. 5:14) to discern and appreciate this meat now in "due season."
Nevertheless, we present this prophecy just in case there are some here who have been "weaned from the breast", the "milk of the word" and able to digest "meat".
If not of divine arrangement and intended for our instruction, how and why come the double proofs, (one taken from the Law and the other from prophecy, both) matching and corroborating each other so perfectly?
To convince yourself of their divine arrangement, notice that in no other place and way can these seventy years of Sabbaths in desolation be made to harmonize with the (50 x 50) cycle of the Great Jubilee. Try it. Prove it. Suppose either a mistake, or a change of one of the nineteen Jubilees kept by Israel: Suppose that eighteen (one less) or twenty (one more) had elapsed before the seventy years desolation began.
Calculate, and you will see that these two lines of evidence, which so perfectly unite in the testimony that 1875 (beginning October, A.D. 1874) is the date of the beginning of the Times of Restitution, and the date, therefore, from which we may know that the heavens no longer retain our Lord, the great Restorer, cannot be united elsewhere, without doing violence to themselves, to the chronology, and to other prophecies yet to be examined.
If these time prophecies teach anything, it is that the Great Jubilee, the Times of Restitution of all things, has begun, and that we are already in the dawn of the Millennial age, as well as in the "harvest" of the Gospel age—which ages lap one upon the other for forty years--the "day of wrath."
*We are already fourteen years into this forty-year-day of wrath; and preparations for the struggle are progressing rapidly. The coming twenty-six years, at the present momentum, will be quite sufficient for the accomplishment of "all things written." (B193-196)
*With regards to this last statement, it was the Pastor’s initial thought based on the Jewish parallels that 40 years following the beginning of the Times of Restitution in A.D. 1874 that Armageddon would be upon the world and the Church would be complete. This date would also mark the end of the “Times of the Gentiles” (viz. A.D. 1914).
It was a reasonable, howbeit erroneous assumption for who could have doubted at the time as events were quickly moving toward the first of its kind “WORLD WAR”. Most of the world had never even imagined such a thing taking place, even amongst non-believers it was expected that “a great time of trouble” was coming upon the world. However, the Pastor later realized where his mistake was made and in his forward to the Second Volume dated October 1st, 1916 he states:
“Our mistake was evidently not in respect to the ending of the Times of the Gentiles; we drew a false conclusion, however, not authorized by the Word of the Lord. We saw in the Bible certain parallels between the Jewish Age and the Gospel Age. We should have noted that these parallels follow the NOMINAL SYSTEMS to destruction in both cases, and do not indicate the time of the glorification of the New Creation.”
We finish up with our next post.
