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Day-year principle

From Bahaipedia

The day-year principle, year-day principle or year-for-a-day principle is a method of interpretation of Bible prophecy in which the word day in prophecy is considered to be symbolic of a year of actual time. It is used principally by the historicist school of Christian prophetic interpretation.[1] It is held by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Jehovah's Witnesses, some Pentecostals and the Christadelphians.[2] Bahá'ís also recognize the day-year principle and use it in understanding prophecy from the Bible.

Biblical basis[edit]

Proponents of the principle, such as the Seventh-day Adventists, claim that it has three primary precedents in Scripture:[3]

  1. Numbers 14:34. The Israelites will wander for 40 years in the wilderness, one year for every day spent by the spies in Canaan.
  2. Ezekiel 4:5-6. The prophet Ezekiel is commanded to lie on his left side for 390 days, followed by his right side for 40 days, to symbolize the equivalent number of years of punishment on Israel and Judah respectively.
  3. Daniel 9:24-27. This is known as the Prophecy of Seventy Weeks. The majority of scholars do understand the passage to refer to 70 "sevens" or "septets" of years—that is, a total of 490 years.

Jon Paulien has defended the principle from a systematic theology perspective, not strictly just from the Bible.[4]

Applications[edit]

1,260-day prophecy[edit]

Historicist interpreters have usually understood the "time, times and half a time" (i.e 1+2+0.5=3.5), "1,260 days" and "42 months" mentioned in Daniel and Revelation to be references to represent a period of 1260 years (based on the 360 day prophetic year multiplied by 3.5).[5]

These time periods occur seven times in scripture:

  • Daniel 7:25, "time, times and a half".
  • Daniel 12:7, "time, times and a half".
  • Revelation 11:2, "42 months".
  • Revelation 11:3, "1260 days".
  • Revelation 12:6, "1260 days".
  • Revelation 12:14, "time, times and a half".
  • Revelation 13:5, "42 months".

The year 1260 was significant in Shia Islam, independently of any Biblical reference. The Shia branch of Islam followed a series of 12 Imáms, whose authority they traced back to Muhammad. The last of these disappeared in the Islamic year 260 AH. According to a reference in the Qur'an,[6] authority was to be re-established after 1,000 years.[7] For this reason, there was widespread anticipation among Shi'ites that the 12th Imam would return in Islamic year 1260 AH. This is also the year 1844 AD in the Christian calendar.

Therefore, Baha'is understand the 1,260-day prophecies in both Daniel and in the Book of Revelation as referring to the year 1260 of the Islamic calendar [8] which corresponds to the year 1844 AD, the year the Báb pronounced himself to be a Manifestation of God and the year that the Baha'i Faith began.

1,290- and 1,335-day prophecies (Daniel 12:11–12)[edit]

In addition, Baha'is have applied the day-year principle to the two prophecies at the end of the last chapter of Daniel concerning the 1,290 days (Dan 12:11) and the 1,335 days (Dan 12:12).[9] The 1,290 days is understood as a reference to the 1,290 years from the open declaration of Muhammad to the open declaration of Bahá’u’lláh. The 1,335 days is understood to be a reference to the firm establishment of Islam in 628 AD to the firm establishment of the Baha'i Faith (the election of its Universal House of Justice) in 1963 AD.

2,300-day prophecy (Daniel 8:14)[edit]

Timeline of ‘Abdu'l-Bahá's interpretation of the 2,300-day prophecy and its relation to the 70-week prophecy

In the book Some Answered Questions, ‘Abdu'l-Bahá outlines a calculation for the 2,300-day prophecy which matches the one performed by William Miller, to determine the date of the second coming of Christ.[10]

The prophecy states "For two thousand three hundred days; then the sanctuary shall be cleansed." (Daniel 8:14)

The 2,300 days are understood to represent 2,300 years stretching from 457 BC, the calculated starting date of the 70 weeks prophecy based on the 3rd decree found in Ezra, to 1844 AD.[11][12] ‘Abdu'l-Bahá demonstrated that the fulfillment of this prophecy did in fact occur in 1844, the year of the Declaration of the Báb in Persia, an event which marks the beginning of the Bahá'í Era.[10] Baha'is thus believe that William Miller's methodologies were indeed sound. However, while Miller and his followers originally believed that the cleansing of the Sanctuary of Daniel 8:14 meant the destruction of the earth, Bahá'ís understand the "cleansing of the sanctuary" to be the restoration of religion to a state in which it is guided by authorities appointed by its Founder rather than by people who have appointed themselves as the authority.[13] (The leaders of Sunni Islam were self-appointed; the first 12 leaders of Shia Islam had been appointed through a chain of succession going back to Muhammad, but that chain ended after 260 years.)

Thus Bahá'ís believe that divinely-guided religion was re-established in 1844 with the revelation of the Báb, continued through the revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, and continues today through the Universal House of Justice, elected according to the method described by Bahá'u'lláh.[14]

Although Christians have generally expected their Messiah to appear somewhere in Judeo-Christian lands, Bahá'ís have noted[15] that Daniel himself was in Persia at the time the prophecy was made. He was in Shushan (modern day Susa or Shūsh, Iran), when he received his prophetic vision (Daniel 8:2). The Báb appeared 2,300 years later in Shíráz, about 300 miles away from where Daniel's vision occurred.

391-day prophecy (Revelation 9:15)[edit]

Baha'is have also applied the day-year principle to Rev. 9:15[16] which states, "And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men."

The slaying of "the third part of men" was interpreted by some Christian scholars[17][18] to refer to the fall of the Eastern Orthodox part of Christianity, centered on Constantinople in the year 1453 AD. (The other two-thirds being the Western Christian world, centered on Rome, and the southern part of the Christian world in North Africa, which was already under the dominion of Islam long before 1453.) Using the day-year principle, the formula gives 1+30+360 days = 391 days = 391 years after 1453. Adding 391 years to 1453 brings the prediction again to 1844, the same year as the 2,300-day prophecy of Daniel 8.

Theoretically, this prophecy could be taken one step further, since there are accurate records of the dates of the start and end of battle for Constantinople. If "the hour" is taken to be 1/24th of a day, then, by the day-year principle, it would equate to 1/24 of a year i.e. 15 days. Since the battle of Constantinople lasted for several weeks, it is not possible to pin down the exact starting day of this 391-1/24-year prophecy, but if the formula is followed to this degree, it suggests the prophecy's fulfillment should have occurred sometime in May or June 1844.

Notes[edit]

  1. ↑ Jerry Moon, The Year-Day Principle and the 2300 Days.
  2. ↑ Roberts, Robert, Thirteen Lectures On The Apocalypse, Lecture 10, 1921.
  3. ↑ Seventh-day Adventists Believe - An Exposition of the Fundamental Beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, 2nd edition. Ministerial Association, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. 2005. p. 48.
  4. ↑ Jon Paulien, "A New Look at the Year-Day Principle", talk at the 2008 Evangelical Theological Society meetings.
  5. ↑ Seventh-day Adventists Believe (2nd ed). Ministerial Association, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. 2005. pp. 184–185. ISBN 1-57847-041-2.
  6. ↑ Quran 32:5
  7. ↑ Dawn of Mount Hira. George Ronald, Oxford, UK. 1976. p. 58.
  8. ↑ Some Answered Questions. US Baha'i Publishing Trust. 1990. p. 46.
  9. ↑ Michael Sours, The Prophecies of Jesus, Appendix 7, pp. 201-204 (One World Publications, Oxford, UK, 1991.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Some Answered Questions. US Baha'i Publishing Trust. 1990. p. 42.
  11. ↑ Seventh-day Adventists Believe (2nd ed). Ministerial Association, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. 2005. pp. 358–359. ISBN 1-57847-041-2.
  12. ↑ William Shea, ""Supplementary Evidence in Support of 457 B.C. as the Starting Date for the 2300 Day-Years of Daniel 8:14".". Journal of the Adventist Theological Society 12:1 (Spring 2001), pp. 89–96.
  13. ↑ The Prophecies of Jesus. OneWorld Publications, Ltd, Oxford, UK. 1991. p. 82.
  14. ↑ The Covenant of Bahá’u’lláh. George Ronald Publisher, Ltd, Oxford, UK. 1992. pp. 1–441.
  15. ↑ Thief in the Night, William Sears, George Ronald Publishers, Oxford, England (1992), ch. 18, p. 73.
  16. ↑ William Sears, Thief in the Night, part 1, chap. 6, page 24, George Ronald Publisher, Oxford, UK 1961.
  17. ↑ H. Grattan Guinness, The Approaching End of the Age (1880, Hodder and Stoughton, London) at https://archive.org/stream/approachingendof00guin#page/662/mode/2up
  18. ↑ Michael Paget Baxter, The Coming Battle (W. Harbert, Philadelphia, 1860).

References[edit]


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