The Day-for-a-Year Principle–Is it Biblical? (Part One)
Is there a day-for-a-year principle that can be applied to prophetic interpretation? Is it possible to selectively choose when and where to apply a day-for-a-year principle respective to biblical prophecy? Can we have confidence in the prophetic outcomes and conclusions when using a day-for-a-year principle to interpret biblical prophecy? It is safe to say that Jesus never invoked or used a day-for-a-year principle when speaking of the messages delivered by the prophets. The same can be said of the apostles as well. Even the prophets themselves never discussed such a prophetic principle, and they certainly didn’t introduce the concept of “prophetic years” for the sake of believers or the church of God. Why then do some Christian church organizations continue to believe in such an idea as a day-for-a-year principle respective to prophecy? Why place trust in an appropriated methodology, that is to say, borrowed without biblical permission, to calculate the timeframe of selected prophecies to determine when such prophecies have been or will be fulfilled? Oddly enough, people will go to almost any length to defend their personal beliefs about any given subject in the Bible, even if that belief has no basis in the Bible. As a result, we find everything from sermons to scholarly dissertations being churned out in defense of the day-for-a-year principle in the context of biblical prophecy, while taking little heed to the potential problems created by this idea. Why would this be? Over time people have cultivated the notion that the Bible may be subjected to schools of thought, and so we find categorized approaches to prophecy—historicists, preterists or futurists—to name a few—all of whom create a multitude of different prophetic conclusions. Consequently, some of these approaches to prophecy only serve to create a polarization of the issues when they allow for misappropriated methods of interpretation. Proving in the end that the Bible is indeed often made subject to frivolous opinion as much as it is made subject to the currently knowable facts surrounding the book. Now, we can say that the Bible requires interpretation for the sake of application, in the sense that we understand the weight of its words—correctly defined—with their meanings placed in their intended cultural, historical, and future contexts. But when something in the Bible is removed from its context and is placed into a different one for the sake of interpretation, related to prophecy, then we have in a sense created a new paradigm. One that cannot be substantiated without shaving the facts to fit looked-for outcomes when it comes to the fulfillment of prophecy. Even if the intent has been to overthrow critics of the Bible, or to demonstrate the “accuracy” of prophecy historically, the notion of changing a day into a symbolic concept and then claiming it represents a year in prophetic fulfillment, only serves to marginalize the truth of biblical prophecy. Notably, we could say that a principle is one thing, and the application of a principle is yet another, which means that if one attempts to predict a prophetic timeframe using the day-for-a-year principle, or set some visions into an historical sequence, then one is required to demonstrate an accurate and valid starting point to begin the counting of the years. This forces one to assess the secular record and make an informed guess as to when, and how and who it was or will be that fulfills any specific prophecy. An example of this “guessing” is the erroneous assumption that Daniel was equating the “little horn” with Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Such an assumption proves that if we do not choose the correct starting point or historical event for a prophecy then the fulfillment date for any prophetic prediction is questionable at best (Dan. 7:8; 8:9). Commonly, when we see the day-for-a-year principle applied to prophecy we often witness the effort of some to rewrite history as it relates to the Bible, leading to false conclusions about secular dates in history, such as figuring the year that Herod the Great died. For there are those who use a prophetic day-for-a-year principle to supposedly affirm a c. 4 BCE date for Herod’s death, noting that this date is on shaky ground, and it is no longer considered a plausible conclusion given the available information we have today. Another example of tampering with prophetic interpretations by adopting a day-for-a-year principle is found with the seventy-weeks prophecy, which is commonly given the starting point of the seventh year of Artaxerxes I (Longimanus), which cannot be dated to the historically contestable date of c. 457 BCE (regnal dating). Seeing that it is reasonably clear from the biblical account, and from the available historical records, that Artaxerxes’ seventh year was c. 458 BCE, and Ezra was certainly in possession of the decree in question before the first day of that seventh regnal year, which places the time of Artaxerxes I’s decree into the previous regnal year—at least. (The date of c. 457 BCE is often cited based on the chronology of James Ussher.) Bringing us to say that because the biblical account doesn’t contain a complete word-for-word copy of Artaxerxes I’s decree, and the portion of the decree we have available does not mention the restoration of the city-state of Jerusalem, we cannot begin to say that Artaxerxes’ decree is indeed the one that applies to Daniel’s prophecy in the first place. Consequently, by using the prophetic day-for-a-year principle, and by reading into the decrees given by the Persian kings regarding the rebuilding of the Temple, many have reshaped the timeframe of the seventy-weeks prophecy and its starting point, which will only serve to disillusion people about prophetic events as they unfold in the future. (Some take the concept of making a 1000 “years as one day” and overlay the notion onto the seven-day week, and by doing so they try to establish a 7000-year plan of God on earth, but the proposed allotment of 6000 years of human rule has already passed (II Pt. 3:8).) In a