For people who loved the Bible, life in the early 1800s became exciting. Not one but many in different places had become convinced that the books of Daniel and Revelation contained vital truth, and the seal that had closed the book of Daniel for millennia (12:4) was now open! Highly respected scholars such as Sir Isaac Newton had discovered that in Bible prophecy a day is a symbol of a year. As a bleak wintry landscape comes to thrilling life with the awakening of spring, so serious minded youth in many places began studying those two prophetic books.
The long night of the Dark Ages had ended with the close of the “1260” years of papal oppression in 1798 (cf. Dan. 7:25, Rev. 12:6); the capture and imprisonment of the pope had inspired Thomas Carlyle to declare (mistakenly) that the papacy was dead forever. Now the chains that had bound people’s minds were broken; people could think and study and even speak! (Not the least exciting thing to happen was that 13 British colonies in North America had just won their independence!)
A Methodist pastor, Josiah Litch, recognizing that Revelation 9 was a prophecy of Islam, was moved to study into the time prophecy of the sixth “trumpet—the “an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year” allotted to the Muslim Ottoman Turks’ supremacy. Litch was concerned: the “day for a year” principle that Isaac Newton had alleged—was it really true? Would history uphold it?
That prophetic time period equaled in literal history a total of 391 years and fifteen days.
Relying on the most authentic history of that time, Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Litch took July 27, 1299 as the starting point (Gibbon had said, “The singular accuracy of the date seems to disclose some foresight of the rapid and destructive growth of the monster”). The Roman emperor in Constantinople had on that beginning date meekly surrendered its independence to the Ottoman Turks. The end of the 391 years and 15 days would be August 11, 1840.
Litch didn’t wait for the date to arrive; two years before he boldly published his prediction of what would happen, and many thousands watched anxiously. On that date, the Sultan of Turkey meekly surrendered his independence into the hands of the European powers. The year-day principle was firmly grounded in history!
Now comes a worldwide resurgence of interest in those prophecies about Islam combined with a clearer view of justification by faith that transcends both Calvinism and Arminianism. It’s a message that must lighten the earth with long-delayed glory (Rev. 18:1-4).
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