Segment 4 - Daniel 8
The Antichrist
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Scofield’s Understanding of the 2,300 Days

Chart 4.3

   x = December 6, 167 B.C. Antiochus IV desecrated temple.

   y = December 16, 164 B.C. Temple cleansed and services resume.

   z = March 27, 160 B.C. General Nicanor killed.  

 The 2,300 days are calculated as follows:

                           360 + 360 + 360 + 360 + 360 + 360 + 110 = 2,270

       Add 30 days per seven years for calendar adjustment            30           

                                                   Total time                              2,300 days

Here are five major problems with Scofield’s interpretation:

Problem 1: 1 Maccabees 4:52 says the temple in Jerusalem was cleansed and services restored years before General Nicanor was killed. Therefore, Nicanor’s death has nothing to do with the cleansing of the temple!

Problem 2: The calendar presented in Chart 4.3 is based on the supposition that the Jews observed a 360-day year. Advocates of this dating scheme calculate the time between December 6, 167, and March 27, 160, B.C., to be 2,270 days. Then thy add one month of 30 days for calendar adjustment because a solar year is 365.242 days in length. The total time, according to this formula, adds up to 2,300 days. This view of the 2,300 days has no merit. First, there is no historical evidence showing the Jews ever observed a 360-day year. The Jewish year is either 354 or 384 days in length depending on the cycles of the moon – never 360 days. Even if the Jews did observe a 360-day year, the adjustment of 30 days every seven years does not resolve the problem of solar alignment with the arrival of Spring requires an adjustment of 36.7 days, not 30 days if one is using a 360 day calendar. If the Jews used a 360-day calendar with a 30-day correction every seven years, their calendar would be 27 days out of alignment with the sun in 28 years. No agricultural nation could survive this kind of error in their calendar.

Problem 3: Dr. Scofield knew the time frame between the desecration of the temple and the death of General Nicanor was not precisely 2,300 days, so he declared God’s prophetic time-period to be “indeterminate” (not very precise). Scofield, commenting on the seventy weeks of Daniel 9:24, wrote these word: “In this connection it should be remembered that, in the grand sweep of prophecy, prophetic time is invariably so near as to give full warning, so indeterminate as to give no satisfaction to mere curiosity.” (See the Scofield Reference Bible, commentary on Daniel 9:24.) Does Scofield mean that once we find something “close enough” to fit within a prophetic time-period, we can declare a prophetic mystery solved? How can an omniscient God not know the actual number of days between two events? In Daniel 12, God mentions two specific time periods having 1,290 days and 1,335 days. Revelation 20 speaks of 1,000 years. Revelation 13:5 speaks of 42 months and Revelation 11:9 speaks of 3.5 days. Does God regard these time-periods as indeterminate? Of course not! Scofield “imposed” a bad interpretation onto Daniel 8:14 and then justified a poor fit for the 2,300 days by declaring God’s Word to be “indeterminate.” If God can number the hair of our heads, if God can number the stars of the sky, if God created the precise pulses of atomic energy in billionths of a second, surely He can accurately count the span of days between two events.

Problem 4: An issue affecting the 2,300 days in Daniel 8:14 exists which Scofield did not resolve. We know that the “time, times and half a time” in Daniel 7:25 represents 1,260 years. The Bible confirms this point. (See Revelation 12:6,14.) Bible history confirms that God sometimes translates a day for a year so that 1,260 days represent 1,260 years. This is not unusual. Most scholars agree that the “seventy weeks” in Daniel 9:24 have to be translated as 490 years because of the day/year principle found in the Jubilee Calendar. Because the 2,300 in Daniel 8 and the seventy weeks in Daniel 9 begin at the same time (this point will be demonstrated in our study on Daniel 9), they share the same translation. In other words, the 2,300 days represent 2,300 years because the seventy weeks represent 490 years. In fact, the seventy weeks of Daniel 9 are “cut off” from the 2,300 days in Daniel 8! The matrix is at work and the timing in Daniel and Revelation fits together like hand and glove. God measures time-periods in Daniel 7, Daniel 8 and Daniel 9 according to the day/year operation of the Jubilee Calendar. (Leviticus 25) This is why Rule Four states: “God measures apocalyptic time according to the presence or absence of the Jubilee Calendar.”  Scofield should have translated the 2,300 days as 2,300 years.

Problem 5: Scofield claims the bitter persecution of the Jews under Antiochus IV ended with the death of General Nicanor. History says just the opposite. In fact, life for the Jews only became worse after Nicanor was killed. For example, King Demetrius killed Judas Maccabeus (1 Maccabees 9:18) about 2 months after Nicanor died. Then, about a year after the death of Nicanor in May, 159 B.C., “Alcimus ordered the wall of the inner court of the sanctuary to be torn down, thus destroying the work of the prophets.” (1 Maccabees 9:54) The book of 1 Maccabees records that many wars were inflicted on Israel after Nicanor’s death. Thus, the persecution of the Jews did not cease with the death of General Nicanor. History discredits Scofield’s explanation of the 2,300 days.

Given the evidence presented so far, advocates of Antiochus face insurmountable issues: The temple in Jerusalem was not free from threat after the death of Nicanor. The length of time between the Antiochus’ desecration of the temple and Nicanor’s death was not 2,300 days. Jewish persecution did not end after Nicanor died. The 2,300 days of Daniel 8:14 cannot begin with the conduct of Antiochus IV and end with the death of General Nicanor. Nicanor’s death does not have anything to do with the cleansing of the temple in Jerusalem. When the “interpretation” of Antiochus is closely examined, claims of fulfillment do not even come close to meeting all the specifications given in Daniel 8. Given the specifications in Daniel 8, it is amazing that millions of Christians accept Scofield’s position without question.

Section V – Heaven and Earth Linked Together with 2,300 Days

With God Timing Is Everything

God created the orbit of the electrons spinning around the nucleus of the cesium atom. This demonstrates that He is very capable of measuring time. If the cesium atom can be used to create an atomic clock that does not vary by more than one second in a hundred million years, surely God can measure time! I make this point because when it comes to timing and punctuality, no one in the universe is more precise than God! The God who said there would be 2,300 evenings and mornings before the sanctuary would be cleansed is the same God who said seventy weeks would be granted to Israel in Daniel 9. Surely, the Lord knows what He is talking about! Look at the punctuality with Israel at the Exodus: “At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the Lord’s divisions left Egypt. Because the Lord kept vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt, on this night all the Israelites are to keep vigil to honor the Lord for the generations to come.” (Exodus 12:41,42, italics mine) Consider the timing of the birth of Jesus: “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.” (Galatians 4:4, italics mine) God is never late. God is never wrong. With God, timing is everything!

Look up! The Event Is Not on Earth

The 2,300 days is placed in Daniel 8 for a very good reason, if you are aware of two prerequisites. First, you need to know about the historical matrix that the four rules produce. Second, you have to understand the essential doctrine that explains God’s use of parallel temple services. (See the study on parallel temple services in the Bible study room of this site.) When these two prerequisites are combined, we can determine when Jesus began to cleanse Heaven’s temple and why it must be cleansed. God connected the cleansing of Heaven’s temple with the ram (the kingdom of the Medes and Persians). The connection between the ram and the cleansing of Heaven’s temple is precisely 2,300 years in length. The countdown of 2,300 years began when the Persian, King Artaxerxes, issued a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem in 457 B.C. (Ezra 7) Because God tied the decree of Artaxerxes to a yardstick that was 2,300 years in length, we can easily calculate the date when the cleansing of God’s temple began in Heaven. Even though we cannot see the event-taking place in Heaven, we know it began in 1844. We will also see, when we examine the seventy weeks of Daniel 9 and the seven seals in Revelation, that the dates of 1798 and 1844 are highly important dates in Heaven’s sequence of events.

1,150 Days?

Some people have tried to divide the 2,300 evenings and mornings so that this time-period is 1,150 literal days (1,150 evenings + 1,150 mornings = 2,300 evenings and mornings), but, this time scheme does not work for several reasons. First, the Hebrew words ‘erab and boger go together to form one unit of time. They literally mean “evening and morning,” as in one day. Notice how ‘erab and boger are used on the first page of the Bible. “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening [‘erab] and the morning [boger] were the first day.” (Genesis 1:5, KJV) According to God’s method for measuring time, a “day” has an evening and a morning. A day begins at sundown (evening) and the midway point through the day is sunrise (morning). (Leviticus 23:32) Translators of the Kings James Version recognized this fact and they translated the 2,300 evenings and mornings of Daniel 8:14 as 2,300 days. New International Version translators were more literal with the text, translating it as “2,300 evenings and mornings.”

Unfortunately, most Christians do not understand the doctrine of God’s use of parallel temples. If a person does not understand the cleansing of Earth’s temple, he cannot understand the cleansing of Heaven’s temple, then the timing of this event is of no value. If God’s use of parallel temples was better understood, Christians could understand that the temple to be cleansed is not on Earth, but in Heaven! Bible students tend to interpret Bible prophecy as though Earth was the center of prophecy, but this is not the case. Daniel was directed to view a great convocation in Heaven. He saw a service when the Ancient of Days took His seat and billions of angels were in attendance. This heavenly meeting is profoundly important because it marks the beginning of the services in Heaven’s temple that lead up to the end of the world. The services in Heaven’s temple are directly linked to the final events that occur on Earth. Remember the Heaven-Earth-Linkage-Law?

Five clues in the Bible indicate the temple to be cleansed in Daniel 8:14 is in Heaven:

First, the doctrine of parallel temples teaches there were two temples. The one on earth was a shadow of the real temple in Heaven where our Jesus serves as High Priest. (Hebrews 8:1-5) We know the earthly temple was destroyed by the Romans in A.D.70. The only temple remaining is in Heaven.

Second, the cleansing of the earthy temple occurred at an appointed time every year – on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16), but the heavenly temple is cleansed only once – at the appointed time of the end! (Hebrews 9:24-26)

Third, the 2,300 evenings and mornings must be translated as 2,300 years because God uses the Jubilee Calendar to translate a day into a year. (This point and the Jubilee Calendar will be discussed at length when we examine the seventy weeks of Daniel 9.) The 2,300 years began in the Spring of 457 B.C. and they ended in the Spring of 1844.

Fourth, the cleansing of Heaven’s temple began in 1844. This date aligns with 1798 that marks the year the great convocation in Heaven’s temple began. (See Chart 4.4.) In fact, the timing of the great convocation in Daniel 7 (1798) and the cleansing of the sanctuary in Daniel 8 (1844) align with the seventy weeks in Daniel 9 (457 B.C.), and these three events align with the opening of the third seal in Revelation 6. The matrix is building!

Chart 4.4

Fifth, the remark that follows do not begin to cover the scope and breadth of the subject of parallel temples (Hebrews 8:1-5), but a few words may be necessary about the annual servive of cleansing the earthly temple, so you can understand the marvelous parallel that exists between the earthly and the heavenly temple. Again, the doctrine of parallel temples is a prerequisite doctrine for understanding Daniel 8.

The angel said, “… Unto two thousand three hundred days, then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” (Daniel 8:14, KJV) Why does the sanctuary in Heaven need cleansing? The answer to this question is found in the cleansing of the earthly temple. The cleansing of the earthly temple was an annual event that occurred in the tenth day of the seventh month. This day was called the Day of Atonement. Jews today call it Yom Kippur, which means Day of Judgment. The cleansing of the earthly temple was necessary because it was defiled by sinners bringing sin offerings to the temple. The sinner, standing at the Altar of Burnt Offering, confessed his sins over the head of the sacrifice. Then, he cut the jugular vein of the sacrificial animal with his own hands. The priest then captured some of the lamb’s blood and sprinkled this blood on the horns of the altar. This procedure shadows a divine truth. The sinner’s guilt was transferred away from himself and his family to the Altar of Burnt Offering by the blood of the Lamb.

This earthly process was a shadow or pantomime of a reality that was coming. The guilt of sinners could be transferred to Heaven’s temple through the death of Jesus (the Lamb of God). When the blood was applied to the horns of the altar, the altar became defiled because the guilt of the sinner had been transferred to it. The process of setting sinners free of the guilt of sin defiles the temple because the sinner’s guilt is transferred to the altar. Because the altars of the temple were depositories of guilt, the earthly temple was defiled until the Day of Cleansing (the Day of Atonement) arrived. For a single day, the earthly temple was restored to an undefiled state. (Leviticus 16) Then, on the following day, sacrifices resumed and the temple was defiled because the annual cycle started over.

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