We have the great “seven times” (2,520) connected with the duration of Israel's punishment, and of the Gentiles' power. We have in Daniel and the [pg 182] Apocalypse the half of this great period presented as “days” (1,260), as “months” (42), and as “times,” or years (3-½).
Futurists believe that these “days” and “months,” etc., interpret for us the purposes and counsels of God as connected with “the time of the end,” and as meaning literal “days” and “months,” etc.
Historicists take these terms and themselves interpret the numbers, in the sense of a “day” being put for a year, and they believe that these “1,260 days” will be fulfilled as 1,260 years.
One party boldly and ungraciously charges the other with teaching “The Fallacies of Futurism”; while the other might well retort with a reference to the Heresies of Historicism.
But is there any necessity for the existence of two hostile camps? Is it not possible that there may be what we may call a long fulfilment in years? And is it not more than probable that in the time of the end, the crisis, there will also be a short and literal fulfilment in days?
We firmly believe that there will be this literal and short fulfilment. We believe that when God says “days,” He means days; and that when He says “42 months,” He means months, and not 1,260 years. In all of the passages referred to by historicists in support of what is called “the year-day theory,” the Holy Spirit uses these words “days” and “years” in the sense of days and years. In the two particular instances of Israel's wanderings (Num. xiv. 34), and Ezekiel's prophesying (Ezek. iv. 6), He chooses to [pg 183] take the number of days as denoting the same number of years; but He does not tell us that we are to do the same in other cases! He only asserts His sovereignty by thus acting, while we only show our presumption in taking His sovereign act as a general principle.
But while fully believing in the short fulfilment, we are quite prepared to admit that there may be a long fulfilment as well; and that, owing to the wondrous harmony, and marvellous correspondence, and infinite wisdom of all the works and ways of God, there may be a fulfilment, or rather a “filment,” if we may coin the word, in years, which will be only a foreshadowing of the literal ful-filment afterwards to take place in days.
If historicists will allow us this liberty as to interpretation, and permit us to believe that God means what He says, we will give them some remarkable evidence in support of their views, by way of application. In other words, if they will allow us to interpret “days” as meaning days, we will gladly allow them, and be at one with them, in applying them to years. So that while we believe the interpretation to mean “days,” and to teach a short fulfilment at the time of the end, we will thankfully admit an application which shall take these days as foreshowing a long fulfilment in years.
In applying, then, these significant numbers (42, 70, 594, 666, 1,260, and 2,520) to years, from what point or date shall we begin to reckon the “times of the Gentiles” (Luke xxi. 24)? That there are such definite “times” the words of the Lord Jesus show, [pg 184] when He says, “Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” (Luke xxi. 24). That there are “seven times” of Gentile dominion is more than intimated by the symbolic episode in the life of Nebuchadnezzar as recorded in Dan. iv.; and that there are “seven times” of Israel's punishment is clearly stated in Lev. xxvi. 18. “Seven times,” according to the Historicist school of interpreters, are equal to 2,520 years.
Instead of asking where they begin, let us first note the fact that it is duration which is emphasised in the Scriptures rather than chronology; and look at the duration of these years independently of, and before we attempt to fix, their beginning and ending.