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Eureka

AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE
Sixth Edition, 1915
By Dr. John Thomas (first edition written 1861)

 

 

Chapter 11

Section  2-3 Subsection 5

The "Three Days and a Half"


 
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11_S 2:3_5. The "Three Days and a Half"

 

And what length of time was to elapse from the slaying of the witnessing bodies in A.D. 1685, to their resurrection? The answer of the text is in mystical terms "three days and a half." Now during all the time of their lying dead and unburied in the breadth of the Great City, no one was able rightly to conjecture what number of years was signified by this enigmatical formula. But, when they arose and "stood upon their feet," they convulsed the Great City, and made it tremble in all its ten kingdoms. There could be no mistaking the fact, that the advocates of civil and religious liberty and the rights of man, who had been so cruelly massacred by Louis XIV, were again, in the reign of Louis XVI, in intense and terrible activity. This was, therefore, a resurrection of the same class that had been slain. New life had entered into them, and they were again a power in the state.

On May 15, 1789, the States General of France, consisting of 601 deputies of the Third Estate; 285 nobles; and 308 clergy; in all 1254 representatives, opened their sitting at Versailles. The Third Estate, which was the popular element, desired that the three orders should form but one assembly. This the nobles and clergy at first refused to do. On the 17th June, however, some of the clergy having joined the Third Estate, the deputies declared their assembly to be the only legal one, and constituted themselves as THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY; which, on the 27th, was joined by all the rest.

On the 23rd of Aug. this new assembly published a decree proclaiming liberty of opinions, religious as well as political; on Oct. 1, it made a declaration of the Rights of Man in society; and on Dec. 24, issued a decree declaring all Frenchmen who are not Catholics admissible to all offices, both civil and military. Civil and religious liberty and the rights of man were the ancient testimony, both of the true believers, and of "the Earth" that helped them; and here we find the doctrine authoritatively reaffirmed by "the Earth" in its National Assembly, which restores these inestimable blessings to all non-catholic Frenchmen, who had been so mercilessly deprived of them in Oct. 1685. A Louis had taken away this liberty from his non-catholic subjects; and his grandson by the same class of people was compelled to restore it.

Here, then, are two important and signal dates -- Oct. 1685, and Oct. 1789. These decrees of the National Assembly were as "the Spirit of life from the Deity;" and on the 10th July 1790 "they stood upon their feet;" for the Earth’s Assembly on that day decreed, that the property of the expelled Houguenots unsold at date, confiscated by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, should be restored to their heirs. They called this the National Justice, which it was the providential mission of the Third Estate to execute; and with terrible fidelity did they fulfil it in vindicating the oppressed, and in punishing the oppressor.

Now, between 1685 and 1790, is a period of 105 years. This is the duration of the death state in which the witnesses were deficient of all political life; and must consequently be the sum in common years of the mystical formula "three days and a half." But, then, the enigma still remains to be solved, namely, upon what principle do "three days and a half" represent 105 years? As we have seen, two years after 1685, Peter Jurieu proclaimed to the world, truly, that the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes signalized the death of the witnesses; and three years after the decree restoring to them their unsold confiscated estates; that is, in 1793, Mr. Bicheno, pastor of a Baptist church in Newbury, England, who, though cloudy upon some points, was sufficiently sound to be regarded as one of the resurrected witnesses, proclaimed his conviction in a pamphlet styled, "The Signs of the Times," that 1789-’90, was the year of their standing again upon their feet; and that the 105 years then terminating were the full measure of the "three days and a half." But the best of his discovery was, that he was enabled to explain to the public upon what principle "three days and a half" are symbolical of 105 years. The reader will, no doubt, be gratified in perusing what he has to say about the matter; I shall, therefore, reproduce it in this place:

"What length of time," he inquires, "is intended by these three days and a half? My answer is, that days in this eleventh verse are the same with months in the second verse, or, if you please, lunar days, reckoning as the Jews did, thirty days to a month, and as is the method in calculating the above forty and two months, to make them agree with the 1260 days in the third verse.

"Thirty multiplied by three, adding fifteen for the half day, makes 105. When this way of reckoning first occurred to my mind, I had no idea of the events which this number connected; for I did not recollect the year when the Edict of Nantes was revoked. But looking over Quick’s Synodicon, I found it to be Oct. 18, 1685, to which, if 105 be added, it brings us to 1790; take off the few months (if that should be thought necessary) for the event taking place before the half day is quite expired, and it brings us to 1789, when ‘the witnesses were to be quickened.’" This is not necessary, as the 105th year belongs partly to ’89 and partly to ’90, in both which the quickening was in process of development.

"Whether this may strike others," he continues, "as it struck me, when I first observed the coincidence, I cannot tell; but from this agreement of the number 105 with the time which elapsed between one of the greatest persecutions ever experienced by christians, and this wonderful revolution which has taken place, a thousand ideas rushed upon my mind. Is it probable, is it possible, that this can be the quickening of the witnesses? What! The Olive Trees? The Candlesticks? I have always supposed these to be all Saints!* And can that zeal which hath fired Frenchmen to combat for civil and religious liberty, be ‘the Spirit of life from God?’ Is this resurrection, in the vision, the rising of this civil and religious liberty, previous to better days? -- I will do all that I can to discover the truth."

[* "There are doubtless many characters among the French reformers who seem not to deserve the honorable title of witnesses; but was there ever a cause, however good, which agitated a nation, in which some bad characters did not mingle with the excellent? A mixture of good and evil seems inseparable from the present state of things. And let it be recollected, that as God in his providence may employ even bad men in a good work, especially if, to effect the good, it should be necessary to use them as instruments to inflict the divine judgments, as is to be the case when papal tyrannies are about to perish; so also for the part which they act as the instruments of God, and not on account of their moral character, they may be distinguished by an honorable title, like this of witnesses. Thus the idolatrous and cruel Medes and Persians, who had no pity, are denominated Jehovah’s Sanctified Ones (Isa. xiii. 3) and Cyrus, their leader, is adorned even with that title, which is one of the chief distinctions of the Son of God -- his Messiah, his Christ, or Anointed (Isai. xlv. 1). The great and leading principles for which the French Reformers have borne witness, the principles of civil and religious liberty, are no novel nostrums of philosophers, but such as were coeval with human nature, and which have been long recognized in this country, and what makes our happy constitution the boast of Englishmen, and which it is to be hoped, they will never cease to cherish.]

"I feel great satisfaction that this interpretation of a most important passage, about the publication of which I felt so much, has been approved by some of the best judges of such matters; and that some have strengthened the hypothesis by additional arguments, and those more apposite than what occurred to me. What the sensible and indefatigable author of Illustrations of Prophecy, has brought forward to show the propriety of this uncommon use of the term day, is very much to the purpose. ‘A prophecy concerning future events, is a picture or representation of the events in symbols (I quote from Dr. Lancaster), which being fetched from objects visible at one view, or cast of the eye, rather represent the events in miniature, than in full proportion. And therefore, that the duration of the events may be represented in terms suitable to the symbols of the visions, the symbols of duration must also be drawn in miniature. Thus, for instance, if a vast empire persecuting the church for 1260 years, was to be symbolically represented by a beast, the decorum of the symbol would require, that the said time of its tyranny should not be expressed by 1260 years, because it would be monstrous and indecent to represent a beast ravaging for so long a time, but by 1260 days.’ In the like manner, in the present instance, as Daubuz expresses himself: ‘The Holy Ghost was tied to the decorum of the main symbol of a dead body that will keep no longer unburied without corruption.’ From these observations, it will, I think, appear evident, why, in the prophetic scenery, it was proper to represent the body of the witnesses as having lain dead only three days and a half antecedently to their symbolical resurrection."
 
 
 

 

 

 

 


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