Home » Table of Contents » Discussion

Time-Prophecies for the Year 1844

Time-prophecies instill meaning into the ticking away of endless eons of spiritual reality. Further, time-prophecies interpreting as precise events lets them serve as litmus tests for prophecy in general. Albert Einstein studied the vastness of time with his thought-experiments (in spite of not wanting to think about the future because it comes soon enough anyway). In one experiment, he sits on a beam of light watching centuries and millennia flash by as months and years, and asks God:
God, how long is a million years?
God replies:
For Me, Albert, it’s a Minute.
Then Einstein asks:
God, how much is a million dollars?
God replies:
For Me, Albert, it’s a Cent.
So Einstein asks:
Please God, give me a Cent.
So God replies:
OK Albert. In a Minute.
But time-prophecies need formulas to decode them. The most tried, tested, and true Old Testament formula says that each day corresponds to a year, and that there is one year for each of the 40 days.1] The 5-month time-prophecy of Revelation indirectly refines this formula further. It calls up another 5–month period that is exactly 150 days.2]  So a prophetic month equals exactly 30 days. This definition fits the Bible’s first Chaldean calendar, which had twelve months of exactly 30 days, and 5–6 holy leap-days that kept its year with the sun. Summarizing then: a prophetic day is a real year; a prophetic month is 30 real years; and a prophetic year is 360 real years. (But in addition, you will later hear how a prophetic Day can be a thousand years too.)
The day-for-a-year formula lets Revelation’s three main time-prophecies3] decode as specific year-dates on the Christian and Muslim calendars:
• 5 months decodes as 150 (5 × 30) days of Muslim years for the military reign of the Umayyad Locusts and Scorpions. These 150 days of years ran from the AD 632 (AH 11) death of Muhammad up to the Locusts and Scorpions routing Charlemagne’s forces in AD 778 (AH 161) and gaining Muslim Spain a long period of peace.4]  The Muslim calendar began in AD 622 with Anno Hijrae year AH 1. It has twelve alternating months of 29 and 30 days, 354–day years, and a leap-day every three years to keep its months with the moon.
• A day plus a month plus a year decodes as the 1 + 30 + 360 = 391 days of Christian years from the AD 1453 fall of Christian Constantinople up to AD 1844.
• 1,260 days, 42 months, and 3½ days or seasons decode as three versions of a single 1,260–day time-prophecy, because
three days and a half signify three years and a half, and three years and a half are forty and two months, and forty and two months twelve hundred and sixty days; and as each day by the text of the Holy Book signifies one year, the meaning is…twelve hundred and sixty years.[5]
In other words, both 42 months (42 × 30 days) and 3½ days or seasons (3½ × 360 years of days) also multiply to 1,260 days. These 1260 days were the years of the AH 1–1260 Muslim Era from AD 622 to 1844. Read as 1260 days the prophecy expresses joy for two witnesses and a pregnant woman. Heard as 42 months, it mourns the trampling of Jerusalem and the rise of a beast. Felt as 3½ days or seasons, it lauds the survival of the two Witnesses, their teachings, and the woman.[6]

• Ten days and about half-an-hour, lesser Revelation time-prophecies, interpret similarly in Comments 2.10 and 8.1.

 

[1] Num. 14.34, Ezek. 4.6 & ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, SAQ 11.46
[2] Rev. 7.5 & 10;Gen. 7.11, 24, 8.1–4
[3] Rev. 9.5 & 10; 9.15; 11.2, 3, 9, 11, 12.6, 14 & 13.5
[4] Bullough 57–59, Menocal, Ornament of the World 56–58
[5] ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, SAQ 11.52–53
[6] Rev. 11.3 & 12.6; 11.2 & 13.5; & 11.9, 11 & 12.14