A DISSERTATION ON PROPHETIC CHRONOLOGY

WHEN we read in divine inspiration a class of texts like the following, Acts 3:20, 21, “And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you; whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began;” verse 24, “Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel, and those that follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days;”-again, in Acts 17:26, “And hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;” and 31st verse, “Because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead;” Amos 3:7, “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets;”-I say no man can read these texts, and the like, of which the Scriptures abound, without being convicted that God has set bounds, determined times, and revealed unto his prophets the events long before they were accomplished; and having thus revealed himself, has never failed in time and manner to fulfil all things which, by his prophets, have been spoken or written. He has in his word revealed the times in different ways: sometimes in plain language, by telling the exact number of years; at other times, by types, as the year of release, the jubilee, and the Sabbaths; in other places by figurative language, by calling a year a day, or a thousand years a day; again by analogy, as in Hebrews 4:10, showing, that as God created the heavens and earth, and all that are in them, in six days, and rested on the seventh, so Christ would be six thousand years creating the new heavens and earth, and would rest on the seventh millennium. I will now present a few cases where time has been revealed in the above manner, and fulfilled so far as present time will allow.MWV1 40.1