Written by Guest Author
Mark Wikander
As a person who used to believe all of the SDA theology including 1844 as the beginning of the day of atonement and the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary. I write the following article for non-SDA historicists in order to deal with SDA’s. SDA’s make many assumptions about their theology, but namely they are never wrong, because they have a prophet. This assumption lock in any error they have and it must be dealt with before the SDA will even consider a different view. There are 2 ways to do this 1. Is to go directly after the prophet. This is only effective if a person is well studied in the History and Myth surrounding her. This is how I first had doubts. The 
Second is to go after the core teaching that She endorsed, if it is not true, then she is not true, because he endorsed it. That is what I will do here. A side note. the Prophet Ellen G. White, did not actually write any of the SDA doctrine, She came along and put her/God’s endorsement of the teaching. In the SDA mind becausen Sister White, as she is called, endorsed a teaching while claiming to be in vision, the doctrine is automatically true and cannot change. It is with this in mind I will write about the 2300 days/1844 teaching and address the assumption held by SDA’s in their interpretation of the passage. It is not intended to be an interpretation of the passage.
The SDA’s assume that the 2300 day ends in 1844 and that God began to cleans the sanctuary on the anti-typically day of atonement on that day, for the following reasons
1. They assume a day-year principle in Daniel 8 & 9
2. They a connection Between 8&9
3. They assume a common start date for the prophecy between 8&9
4. They assume a universal application of the Day-year in all prophecy.
5, They assume all other methods are in harmony with day-year.
6. They Assume Daniel 9 is part of Daniel 8.
7. They assume because Ellen White Endorsed 1844 it is proof of her prophetic calling.
If you break these assumption the whole thing falls apart. In what follows is a breaking of those assumptions. We do not start in Daniel 8 with the 2300 days, as one would assume, but in Daniel 9, because Daniel 9, in the SDA Mind, is the foundation for making the leap and connection to Daniel 8. Break the foundation and the SDA cannot make the leap to Daniel 8. They have to look at each prophecy individually. Only after this has been done can an SDA question their theology.
Daniel 9 the proper understanding is as follows….
Daniel says at the beginning of chapter 9 that he understood by Jeremiah the Prophet that the temple would lay desolate for 70 years and then be rebuilt. It is after this understanding that the Angel of the Lord came to him to give him further understanding. So it should be a reasonable conclusion that we look at the information attributed to Jeremiah concerning the 70 years of desolation of the temple first.
The scriptures tell us in Jeremiah 25:10, 29:11 that the temple would lay desolate for 70 years, but it never tells us why, what caused the Lord to be angry with Israel? In 2nd Chronicles 36:21 scripture tells us exactly why, 70 years of Desolation, 1 year for each year the land did not have it rest. Did you catch that! The Chroniclers told us why. They violated the Sabbath-year rest in Leviticus 25:1-13, Leviticus 26:14-24. The land was supposed to rest once every 7 years; no work was to be done. But they did not obey this command; 70 times they neglected to give the land its rest. So God punished them by sending them to Babylon for 70 years, one for each year the land did not receive its rest.
Now let us do a simple calculation so that you can see how it applies to the second half of Daniel 9, 7 years (the time between Sabbath-year rests) times 70 (the number of times they violated the Sabbath rest = 490 the time period covered by the original time period given to observe the Sabbath-year rest, 7×70=490 years given to obey the Sabbath-year rest. Why is this important, because in the next part of the prophecy Daniel is given another 490 years as we shall see?
The next section the Angel comes to Daniel and says His prayer has been answered. He tells him the temple is going to be rebuilt and then messiah is going to come and then the desolator is going to come and desolate the temple. The prophecy starts with the temple being desolate and ends with the temple being desolate, what happens in between is what concerns us now.
The angel tells Daniel “70 Weeks of years, have been decreed for your people and the holy city” (vs. 24), this is only applying to the Jewish people and Jerusalem. He goes on to tell them that they have a job to do, to finish transgression, to make and end of sin, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting, to seal up the vision of the prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy” (vs. 24), then in vs. 25-27 he breaks down the time prophecy even further by showing a division of the prophetic weeks 7,62,1 respectively.
What concerns us is the term weeks and the term decreed. Weeks is a word in Hebrew for a grouping of seven, any grouping of seven, seven cars, seven people, seven animals. It is the same as the word dozen. Dozen mean a grouping of 12, 12 cars, 12 people, and 12 animals. In the context of the prophecy it means a grouping of seven years. A group of 7 years 70 times, the total which will be 490 years. Now we need to stop and take a look at that. Daniel had just understood that the prophecy concerning the desolation of Jerusalem was punishment for the 490 years or 70 times they failed to observe the Sabbath-year rest, now the angel comes and tell them they are going to get another 490 to obey God, and the prophecy will be broken down by weeks. That is the exact same time break down of the first part of the prophecy of the 70 year of the temples desolation. The conclusion is that they are talking about the same time thing. They are being reissued another set of Sabbath-years.
Now concerning the word decree or determined, depending upon which translation you use. The word mean “to cut” it comes from the same word family as words that are related to covenant or legal agreements. You see the concept of cutting in Genesis 15 when Abraham cuts up the animals and separates them making a path for God to walk through. What is happening here? Abraham is faltering in his faith and God comes to reassure him that He, God, can be trusted. God condescends and obligates himself to Abraham by making a covenant with Abraham saying in effect, if I don’t keep my promise you can do to me what you did to the animals. This was a serious vow, God guaranteed to Abraham that he would keep his vow. This is the origin of the word to decree or determine, it come from cutting a covenant, it does not come from the idea of amputation, as in separating on part of something from another part of something. In the case of the prophecy it dose not mean to amputate or separate it from the 2300 day prophecy.
Now I must address one more issue that is has been raised, namely that the day-year and the Sabbath-year are the same thing and that they can be used interchangeably. This is an error. If this premise were true we could use the day-year principle and the Sabbath-year cycles as substitutes one for another and every prophecy would divide evenly by the number 7, 7 being the number of years need to reach the Sabbath-year, stated another way the number of years needed in a weeks of years. This is not the case in every case. The Day-year, Sabbath-year swap is not universal it applies is some cases but not in other cases. For example 490 years, 1260 years, divide evenly by 7, you get 70 Sabbath years, 180 Sabbath years respectively. The interchange works in these cases. How ever it does not work in the came of the 1290 year, 1335 years and 2300 days/years, divided them by 7 and you get 184.285 Sabbath years, 190.7142 Sabbath years and 328.5714 Sabbath years. If they were interchangeable you would have an exact division, this shows that the day-year and the Sabbath year are not used universally or interchangeably as some have claimed. Those who do so, do so out of ignorance or deception.
Another thing that must be addressed are the themes in Daniel 8 and Daniel 9 they are completely different. In Daniel 8 the prophecy starts with the temple existing then it is defiled and then it is restored. In Daniel 9 you start with the temple be desolate, the temple is restored and then it is desolated again. The passages cannot be linked because they do not cover the same events. Daniel 8 is about restoring the temple, Daniel 9 is about the temple being destroyed. SDA’s ignores the context of the chapter and focus on the numbers ignoring what is actually happening in the chapter.
Which brings me to my final point the numbers. SDA assume a day year principle in Daniel 8 and in Daniel 9, when in fact the day year principle is not used in either passage. In Daniel 8 it is “evenings & mornings” a reference to Genesis 1 and the days of creation. 2300 year may be possible out of Daniel 8 but you arrive at by the yearly day of atonement, it would be 2300 days of atonement. This is independent of Daniel 9 which use the Sabbath Year principle in Lev. 25:1-7, which is the basis of the Babylonian captivity of Israel. The 2 passages are not connected based on prophetic number or events. This is how you deal with the SDA mind and how you Break 1844.
P.S. I do not believe that the SDA’s are wrong on every part of the prophecy or their teaching, the 1844 and EGW are a problem. If SDA’s could officially change this teaching it is my belief that they would grow exponentially as a Church. They have much to offer, but the Stink of Ellen G, White and the 1844 error permeate their teaching, spoiling the whole thing.
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