390 years times seven = 2730 years. The curse was complete in 2008/2009.
What is a “Time”? The Seven Prophetic Times
Now continue in Leviticus 26: “And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me,
then I will punish you seven times more for your sins” (verse 18).
It is important to understand this!
This expression “seven times” is translated into the English from a Hebrew word
which conveys a dual meaning. The original Hebrew word Moses wrote is shibah.
It is defined as “seven times,” and also as “sevenfold.” The “seven times” implies
duration or continuation of punishment. But the word also conveys the meaning
of “sevenfold,” or seven times greater intensity of punishment—as a punishment
that is sevenfold more intense.
In this sense, the meaning would be the same as in Daniel 3:19, where King
Nebuchadnezzar, in a rage, commanded that the furnace into which Daniel’s
three friends were to be thrown should be made seven times hotter.
Now understanding the “seven times”—or seven prophetic “times.”
In prophecy, a “time” is a prophetic 360-day year. And, during Israel’s punishment,
each day represented a year being fulfilled.
This “day-for-a-year principle” is explained in two other passages dealing with
the duration of Israel’s punishment.
God punished that generation of Israelites Moses had led out of Egypt
[by withholding] from them entry into the Promised Land forty years.
That Promised Land was a beginning part of the birthright.
God punished them on the principle of a year for every day
—40 years’ duration of punishment for the 40 days of transgression.
Ezekiel’s “Day for a Year”
In order to impress on the Prophet Ezekiel the seriousness of Israel’s years of rebellion
against God’s rule and God’s laws which would cause great blessings, God imposed this
very principle on him—but it was enacted in reverse.
The sins of the house of Israel had continued from their rejection of God as King
for 390 years. Naturally God could not expect this prophet, in a human lifetime,
to undergo the bearing of these years of sin on the basis of each day of sinning being
borne by him for a year. That would have required 2,000 lifetimes.
So God reversed the actual application of the principle. Ezekiel was required to bear
Israel’s sins a day for each year they had sinned. But it still was the “day-for-a-year principle”!
Ezekiel was told to lie on his left side, in an imaginary siege against Jerusalem,
pictured on a tile before him. “Lie thou also upon thy left side, and lay the iniquity
of the house of Israel upon it: according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie
upon it thou shalt bear their iniquity.
For I have laid upon thee the years of their iniquity, according to the number
of the days, three hundred and ninety days: so shalt thou bear the iniquity of
the house of Israel. And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side,
and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days:
I have appointed thee each day for a year” (Ezekiel 4:4-6).mentioned further in verse 9.
But in the other application of the “day-for-a-year principle,” previously explained,
where it applied also to a duration of punishment put on the people, the punishment
was to be borne by them on the basis of a year of punishment for each day.
Also in this case, the punishment was the number of years during which a promised
blessing was withheld. Now when we come to the expression
“then I will punish you seven times more for your sins” in Leviticus 26, it is evident
both by its manner of wording in the sentence and by the fact of actual fulfillment
that it was speaking of a duration of seven prophetic “times,” or years.
And on this “year-for-a-day principle,” it becomes seven 360-day years—
a total of 2,520 days. And when each day is a year of punishment—in this case,
as in Numbers 14:34, a withholding of a promised blessing—the punishment
becomes the withdrawing of and withholding the promised blessings for 2,520 years!
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What is a “Time”? For it is basic to several key prophecies. a prophetic “time”
is a 360-day year? Why not a year of 3651/4 days? Why not a solar year?
In ancient biblical times, a year was figured on a basis of twelve 30-day months.
Previous to the time, in Moses’s day, when God gave His people the sacred calendar,
the 30-day month was used.
Notice Genesis 7:11: “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month,
the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep
broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” Now verse 24: “And the waters
prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.”
Next, Genesis 8:3-4: “And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and
after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated. And the ark rested
in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.”
So notice—the flood started on the 17th day of the second month. At the end of 150 days,
the ark rested on Mount Ararat, on the 17th day of the 7th month. That was five months
to the day. Five 30-day months are precisely 150 days. So months, then, were 30-day months!
We find it definitely figured this way in both Daniel and Revelation. In Revelation 12:6,
a prophecy of an event which in actual history did last 1,260 solar years is spoken of as
“a thousand two hundred and threescore days.” So here, again, a prophetic day was a
year in fulfillment. In Revelation 13:5 (referring to a different event but the same amount
of time) this same period of 1,260 days being fulfilled in 1,260 solar years is spoken of as
“forty and two months.” Now 42 calendar months, according to the calendar now in use,
would not be 1,260 days, but 1,276 days—and, if a leap year occurred, 1,277. Or, if the
extra half-year happened to be the last half of the year, it would be 1,280 or 1,281 days.
But the 42 months of Revelation 13:5 is the same amount of time as the 1,260 days
of Revelation 12:6. So the 42 months were 30-day months.
The same amount of days is spoken of in still different language in Revelation 12:14
as “a time, and times, and half a time.” The “time” is one prophetic year; the “times”
is two more prophetic years; and the whole expression is 31/2 prophetic “times,”
which is a literal 1,260 days—or 31/2 years of 30-day months. Seven of these “times”
then would be 2,520 days—and on a day-for-a-year basis, 2,520 years!
Then in Daniel 12:7 the same expression “time, times, and an half [time]” is mentioned.
A prophetic “time,” then, is a 360-day year—or a plain 360 days. And during those years
of Israel’s punishment, as made plain by combining Leviticus 26:18 with Ezekiel 4:4-6,
Numbers 14:34, and Revelation 13:5 and 12:6, each day of a prophetic “time” was
one year in fulfillment. In Leviticus 26:18, and in Revelation 12:6 and 13:5, this meaning
is verified and proved by the fact that the prophecy was fulfilled in precisely the time indicated.
Birthright Withheld 2,520 Years
