Book of Daniel and End Times (Part 1)

Time, what is its significance and how does it affect us in our everyday lives? Time is measured by motion. The revolutions of the earth mark days and years. The moon was created on the fourth day as a natural measure of time, it is a satellite of the earth. The Anglo-Saxon word month is derived from the Greek word moon, and from one new moon Our yearly calendar is divided into 12 parts of 29 and a half to 30 days that has a synchronous relationship between the menstrual cycle of an adult woman that takes 28 days that starts around the time of the new moon also known as a lunar rhythm. The sun was also created on the fourth day and this planet earth depends upon it and would die out very quickly if its rays didn't shine on the earth and on the moon. Monarch butterflies use the sun as a compass to navigate its migration from Canada to Mexico. The European honeybee uses sun compass orientation, birds use sun orientation to navigate the skies, lizards use it, the ants the most intelligent creatures on the earth use it, fish use it and plants depend upon it where gardens can be cultivated to act as calendars to tell the time by the opening and closing of different blooms. Man has depended upon the sun from antiquity to tell the time by using a sundial. Today the swing of a clock pendulum marks seconds. But how do we measure time today? The Royal Observatory in Greenwich in London, England plays a central role in measuring time and people travel from all over the world just to stand on this one line which has the names of all the countries from all over the world. What is the significance of this line? On a website called GreenwichMeantime.com, Greenwich Meantime GMT forms the reference point for accurate timekeeping in every location on planet earth and even in space. Every culture in the ancient world had a calendar they used to measure time. The Aztecs of Central America in Mexico had two calendars they inherited from the Mayans, a religious one which had 260 days in a year and a solar one with 365 days in a year. The Muslim calendar is dated to AD 622, known as the Mohammedan era. It is different to pre-Islamic calendars for the years are lunar consisting of 12 lunar months of 29-30 days long beginning with the new moon. The Chinese calendar reckoned their days, months and years by a sexagenary cycle formed from the combination of 10 celestial stems and 12 terrestrial branches. It is dated to around the 27th century BC. The ancient Egyptian calendar comprised of 12 months or 30 days each with 360 days and the missing 5 days were added at the end under the name of days additional to the year. The Galaical Rising of the star Sirius was the first day of the year. The Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian calendars consisted of 12 lunar months of 354 days in a year or 29-30 days in a month from one appearance of the lunar crescent to the next. The daily rising and setting of the sun provided a basic time unit of the Babylonian calendar The Babylonians dated according to the reign of the kings and other nations measured time according to events. Every four years athletes from all over the world trained to take part in the Olympics. The Olympics started in 776 BC and the Egyptian era or the Olympiads was counted every four years from that starting point. The Romans had a year numbering system used by ancient Roman historians known as AUC, an abbreviation of the Latin phrase meaning a year from the founding of the city of Rome that started in 753 BC. And historians are dependent upon the Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, the celebrated Alexandrian mathematician, who recorded the names and the length of the reigns of all the successive Chaldean, Persian, Grecian, Egyptian, and Roman kings from BC 747 to AD 137 and computed the different eclipses during their reigns. Today the majority of the world uses one set calendar known as the Gregorian calendar. But where did it originate from? This crate on the moon was named after the man who gave us the Gregorian calendar. He was a German mathematician, Bavarian-born Jesuit astronomer, Friar Christoph or Christopher Clavius who changed the intercalation of leap years and dropping ten days. The calendar was named after Pope Gregory XIII after a meeting he had with the governments of the principal states of the Holy Roman Empire who agreed to accept his alteration and that is a calendar that is the most internationally widely used civil calendar and all world standards use the Gregorian calendar to measure time. But this was the development of a previous calendar. I came, I saw, I conquered are the famous words of the Roman statesman Julius Caesar who the month July is named after. He introduced the Julian calendar when he brought the civil calendar into line with the astronomical year, for the previous Roman calendar had become so seriously out of step with the seasons that the calendar equinox had become separated from the astronomical equinox by three months. But what about the Jewish calendar? In Aldgate in the city of London is the oldest synagogue in the United Kingdom called Bevis Marks Synagogue. It was built in 1701 and as you walk into its inner court it has an inscription on it AM, an abbreviation of Anno Mundi, year after creation. It is a calendar era based on the biblical accounts of the creation of the world and subsequent history. But how were the Jews able to deal with the solar calendar and the lunar calendar? A man who was born into the London Jewish community was Fred C. Gilbert. He later migrated to the United States of America and amazingly converted to Christ. He showed that the Jewish people arranged their calendar that the 12th month, that is the month Adar, is periodically repeated and this repetition of Adar is called We Adar over again. By this calendar arrangement, the solar and lunar months are harmonised but Gilbert knew that the Hebrew calendar was the only one suitable for calculating prophetic time and he continued a trend of prophetic thought that was rooted in his homeland, Britain. He said that according to a scriptural record of time, there were 360 days in the Bible year. 30 days equals a Bible month. Satan persecuted the church for a time, times, and half a time, 40 and 2 months, for 1260 days. These days are year days, each day stood for a year. Irish-born Brit Henry Grant Guinness of the previous century said, The time, times, and a half, the 42 months, and the 1260 days, a day in the enacted prophetic type, represented a year in the subsequent history. The century before, Bishop Thomas Newton said in the 1700s, The ancient Jewish year consisted of 12 months and each month of 30 days, a time and times and a half a time, as equivalent to 40 and 2 months, or 1,203 days, a day in the style of the prophets, is a year. Philip Doddridge said, A time, or one year, and times, or two years and a half a time, 42 months, that is 1,1260 prophetic days or years. Scientist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton said, For a time, times, and a half a time, or three times and a half, that is for 1,260 solar years, wrecking a time of a calendar of 360 days, and a day for a solar year. Scottish Minister Robert Fleming said, The three grand apocalyptic numbers of 1,260 days, 42 months, and time, times, and a half, are not only synchronical, but must be interpreted prophetically, so as years must be understood by days. Welsh-born Englishman Matthew Henry said that 1,203 days, this number of prophetic days taking a day for a year. And Thomas Goodwin, the chaplain to Aldercromwell in the 1600s said, The prophetical days, as in Daniel, a day is put for a year, and so 30 days for 30 years, and 1,260 days for 1,260 years. This school of prophetic interpretation is very alien to the majority of Christians of today. But as the prophetic clock is rapidly winding down, if life is spared, even at the doors we will be doing a study on the book of Daniel in 2017. Stay tuned for further updates.