Birth of a Reformation; Or, The Life and Labors of Daniel S. WarnerByers, A. L. (Andrew L.)
Religion
Birth of a Reformation; Or, The Life and Labors of Daniel S. Warner
Byers, A. L. (Andrew L.)
Church of God (Anderson, Ind.) -- History; Warner, D. S. (Daniel Sidney), 1842-1895
The "time and times and the dividing of time," marking the period
during which the elements of the papacy should have full sway and
should wear out the saints of the Most High, etc., are interpreted
as three and one half years; a time in prophetic reckoning being one
year, times two years, and the dividing of time one half year. Three
and one half years would be forty-two months, or, if reduced to days
according to the Jewish reckoning of thirty days to the month, twelve
hundred and sixty days. Taking each day for a year, which is proper
prophetic counting, we have twelve hundred and sixty years, and this
added to the year 270 brings us to the year 1530, the date of the
beginning of organized Protestantism, and the end of the universal
sway of the papacy. Following this, "the judgment shall sit, and
they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto
the end" (v. 26). Since her universal spiritual supremacy ended,
the judgment against Roman Catholicism has gradually proceeded and
her political power has waned. "And the time came when the saints
possessed the kingdom" (v. 22). The saints' possessing the kingdom
is the culminating point in this line of prophecy, and means nothing
other than the victory over human ecclesiasticism which the saints
now possess.
In the 11th chapter of Revelation we have the wearing out of
the saints expressed as treading under foot the holy city, and
the time-period of "a time and times and the dividing of time"
expressed as forty-two months (v. 2). In v. 3 the same time-period
is expressed as twelve hundred and sixty days. During this time the
two witnesses--the Word and the Spirit--prophesy in sackcloth, which
represents the low estate to which they were relegated during the
dark age of popery. It will be remembered that the twelve hundred and
sixty days (years) end with the year 1530. Following this comes three
days and a half (three centuries and a half) of Protestantism during
which the two witnesses (Word and Spirit) are, in the governmental
sense, operatively dead, the organized systems of man rule having
usurped the place of divine government and authority which these
witnesses originally held. At the end of the three days and a half,
three hundred and fifty years (which, added to 1530, brings us to the
year 1880) "the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they
stood upon their feet" (v. 11). They ascended to their place in the
ecclesiastical heaven, to the true church, and were thus victorious.
This brings us to the present reformation. This is soon followed by
the sounding of the seventh angel, which represents the end of time
when the 'kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our
Lord and his Christ; and he shall reign forever and ever' (v. 15).
The curtain drops.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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