History Unveiling Prophecy by H. Grattan Guinness – Part III
CHAPTER V TERMINATION OF THE 1,260 YEARS OF PAPAL DOMINION
Contents
This great prophetic period is mentioned no less than seven times in Daniel and the Apocalypse.
First as three and a half prophetic “times”in Daniel 7. The persecuting “little horn”arising among the ten horns of the divided Roman empire, and distinguished from them by his episcopal character as having “eyes”of intelligent oversight, “like the eyes of a man,”and by his proud self-exalting utterances, having, “a mouth that spoke very great things,”was to exercise tyrannical “dominion ” over the saints. They were to be “given, into his hand”until “a time, and times, and the dividing of time.”
Secondly, as the three and a half “times”of the scattering and subjugation of “the holy people in Daniel 12,””And I heard the man clothed in linen which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and swore by Him that liveth forever, that it shall be for a time, times, and a half; and when He shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished.”
Thirdly, as “forty-two months,”during which “the holy city”shall be trodden under foot, (Rev. 11:2), “The court which is without the temple leave out (or cast out) and measure it not; for it is given unto the gentiles; and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months,”
Fourthly, as the 1,260 days of the prophesying of the sackcloth clothed witnesses, (Rev. 11:3),”And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand, two hundred, and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.”
Fifthly, as the 1,260 days during which the persecuted woman is hidden and fed in the wilderness, (Rev. 12:6), “And the woman fled into the wilderness where she hath a place prepared of God that they should feed her there a thousand, two hundred, and threescore days.”
Sixthly, as “time, times, and a half”during which the woman is nourished from the persecuting dragon who had been cast down from his place of exaltation, (Rev. 12: 13, 14), “And when the dragon saw that he was cast out unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child. And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.””And the dragon was wrath with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.”
Seventhly, as “forty-two months,”during which the revived head of the ten horned wild beast power, the head which has “a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies,”exercises dominion; finally “making war”with the saints, and overcoming them, (Rev. 13:5), “And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things, and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.””And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.”
As 1,260 days are equal to forty-two months of thirty days each, and as forty-two months equal three and a half years, it is evident that one and the same period is intended. Should this period be interpreted on the day-day scale, or on the year-day scale? In other words are the 1,260 days to be taken as literal days of twentyfour hours each, or as symbolical days, representing 1,260 years?
We have shown in our chapter on Prophetic Chronology in “The Approaching End of the Age”(pp. 300-322), that the wild beasts of Daniel and the Apocalypse with their heads, and horns, and times are miniature representatives of historic events and periods. Every feature is on a reduced scale, and therefore among the rest the times of their duration. “The reduction is on as enormous a scale as when our world is represented by a globe a foot in diameter.”The fulfilment of one of these prophetic periods on the year-day scale supplies the key to all the rest. The “seventy weeks”of Daniel 9, extending from the decree of Artaxerxes to the advent and death of Messiah was ful- filled, not as seventy literal weeks, or 490 days, but as 490 years. Further both in the law and the prophets this scale is employed in relation to the times prophetically announced; in the law of Moses in the words “after the number of days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years”(Num. 14: 34); and in the prophecies of Ezekiel in the passage “I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number of the days, three hundred and ninety days, so shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel. And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shah bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: / have appointed thee each day for a year.
“Let these facts in relation to the prophetic times be duly considered, and especially the words “I have appointed thee each day for a year,”and the conclusion will be apparent that the symbolic times of Daniel and the Apocalypse should be interpreted on the year-day scale; in other words that the 1,260 days, the 1,290 days and the 1,335 days of these prophecies represent 1,260, 1,290 and 1,335 years.
An exhaustive and masterly treatise on the year-day system from the pen of the Rev. T. R. Birks (Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Professor of Moral Philosophy), appeared more than fifty years ago in his work entitled “First Elements of Sacred Prophecy”; a book now difficult to procure. The following is a brief summary of the general scope of the argument. “The year-day theory,”says Professor Birks, “may be summed up in these maxims:-
“1. That the church, after the ascension of Christ, was intended of God to be kept in the lively expectation of His speedy return in glory.
“2. That in the Divine councils a long period, of nearly two thousand years, was to intervene between the first and the second advent; and to be marked by a dispensation of grace to the Gentiles.
“3. That in order to strengthen the faith and hope of the church under the long delay, a large part of the whole interval was prophetically announced, but in such a manner that its true length might not be understood, until its close seemed to be drawing near.
“4. That in the symbolic prophecies of Daniel and St. John, other times were revealed along with this, and included under one common maxim of interpretation.
“5. That the periods thus figuratively revealed are exclusively those of Daniel and St. John, which relate to the general history of the church, between the time of the prophet and the second advent.
“6. That in these predictions each day represents a natural year, as in the vision of Ezekiel; that a month denotes thirty, and a time or year, three hundred and sixty years. The first of these maxims is plain from the statements of scripture, and the second from the actual history of the world. The third is, on a priori grounds, a natural and reasonable inference from the two former, and is the true basis of the year day theory viewed in its final cause. The three following present the theory itself under its true limits. Perhaps no simpler method could be suggested in which such a partial and half veiled revelation could be made, than that which the holy Spirit is thus supposed to adopt, resting as it does on a plain analogy of natural times.”
A summary of Professor Birks’s argument will be found in “The Approaching End of the Age “(pp. 306-322). The argument is an exceeding able one, and affords a complete demonstration of the year-day theory.
STARTING POINT OF THE 1,260 YEARS OF PAPAL DOMINION
In the Prophetic calendar appended to my work on “The Approaching End of the Age,”and also in “Light for the Last Days,” have shown that the decree of the emperor Justinian, in 533, and that of the Emperor Phocas in 607, conferred on the Bishop of Rome headship over all the churches of Christendom. The latter decree is memorialized by the Pillar of Phocas in Rome, bearing inscription and date “Die prima Mensis August. Indict. Und. ac Pietatis ejus Anno quinto. Pro innumerabilibus Pietatis ejus Beneficiis.”The usurper Phocas was the murderer of the lawful Emperor Mauritius, of four of his sons, of his brother Petrus, and of the Emperor’s widow, Constantina, and her daughter. Such was the man who bestowed universal headship over the churches of Christendom on Boniface III.
JUSTINIAN STARTING POINT OF THE 1,260 YEARS
“The commencement of the twelve hundred and sixty years,” says Cunninghame, “is to be marked by the giving of the saints, and times and laws, into the hands of the little horn.”
“That the little horn is the papacy, has been established with such force of evidence by Mede, Bishop Newton, Mr. Faber, and other writers on prophecy, that I do not consider it at all necessary to enter upon the proof of it. The papacy being a spiritual power within the limits of the Roman empire, Mr. Faber argues, I think rightly, when he says that the giving the saints into the hand of the papacy, must be by some formal act of the secular power of that empire constituting the Pope to be the head of the Church. It is not, in fact, easy to conceive in what other mode the saints could be delivered into the hand of a spiritual authority, which, in its infancy at least, must have been in a great measure dependent upon the secular power for its very existence, and much more for every degree of active power which it was permitted to assume or exercise.
“Accordingly we are informed, by the unerring testimony of history, that an act of the secular government of the Empire was issued in the reign of Justinian, whereby the Roman Pontiff was solemnly acknowledged to be the head of the Church. That emperor, whose reign was marked by the publication of the volume of the Civil Law which was afterwards adopted through the whole extent of the Roman empire, by the different nations who had divided among themselves its territories, was no less ambitious of distinction as a theologian than as a legislator. At an early period of his reign, he promulgated a severe Edict against heretics, which contained a confession of his own faith, and was intended to be the common and universal standard of belief to his subjects. The severest penalties were enacted by it against all who refused implicit submission.
“A second Edict of the same nature was issued by Justinian in the month of March, 533; and on this occasion he formally wrote to the Pope, as the acknowledged head of all the churches, and all the holy priests of God, for his approbation of what he had done. The epistle which was addressed to the Pope, and another to the Patriarch of Constantinople, were inserted in the volume of the Civil Law; thus the sentiments contained in them obtained the sanction of the supreme legislative authority of the empire; and in both epistles the above titles were given to the Pope.
“The answer of the Pope to the imperial epistle was also published with the other documents; and it is equally important, inasmuch as it shows that he understood the reference that had been made to him, as being a formal recognition of the supremacy of the See of Rome.
“From the date of the imperial epistle of Justinian to Pope John, in March, 533, the saints, and times, and laws of the Church, may therefore be considered to have been formally”delivered into the hand of the papacy, and this is consequently the true era of the twelve hundred and sixty years.”
PHOCAS STARTING POINT OF THE 1,260 YEARS
It is manifest that the rise of the papacy was gradual. A second decree similar to that of Justinian was issued by the Emperor Phocas in 606 or 607, and a long list of prophetic interpreters from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries can be shown who adopted this latter decree as the proper starting point of the 1,260 years of papal domination.
From the decree of Justinian in A. D. 533 the 1,260 years’ period reached its termination in A . D. 1793, the central year of the French Revolution—that of the reign of Terror, and the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
From the decree of Phocas in A. D. 606-7, the 1,260 years, reckoned as calendar or prophetic years of 360 days each, ended in 1848-9; the year of the great European Revolution which witnessed the formal deposition of the Pope from his temporal authority, and the establishment of a Republic both in France and Italy.
Reckoned in full solar years, 1,260 years from the decree of Phocas terminated in 1866—7. The years 1866-1870 witnessed the overthrow of Papal Austria by Protestant Prussia; the Spanish Insurrection, and deposition of the Queen; the Ecumenical council at Rome, and declaration of papal infallibility; the overthrow of the Imperial power of Papal France in its conflict with Prussia ; and the rise of the Kingdom of United Italy, and of the Protestant Empire of Germany.
Thirty-four years have now elapsed since the memorable year 1870, when the Pope of Rome was decreed infallible, and lost the Temporal Sovereignty which he had held for more than a thousand years. As there is not the slightest probability that United Italy will consent to give up its dearly won position, and restore the secular dominion of the Popes, we are warranted in considering the year 1870 as that which witnessed the End of Papal Temporal Power.
