2300 prophetic years revisited

I decided to look at this prophecy a little closer and investigate why I feel the way I do about this prophecy.

The Millerite movement was heavily influenced by this prophecy which landed itself conveniently on the date of 1844 which apparently holds much in the way of motivation for Adventists around the world.

Being the contrary person I am, I had to check the numbers and make sure I could believe it. Well lets just say that the Millerite explanation left me hanging.

Number one: the counting of the days to reach 1844 is based off of a solar year model. The prophecy should be counted via prophetic years. So what we start with is the prophecy of 2300 days. If this translates to 2300 years of 360 days, then we need to multiply days x years to get to a total number of days of 828,000 days. Now divide 828,000 by 365.25 to get the actual number of years we should use to calculate which is 2267. Ok, the start date is 540bc because this is the date that Cyrus takes his place. Subtract 540 from 2267 and the date we land on is 1726. Now this date didn't really have any significance directly. So I had to take into consideration the greater meaning of the prophecy.

The 1700s were a period of significant enlightenment and an establishment of secular powers. One significant group that grew to back the creation of the USA were the Freemasons. This is a group that would not survive in a world of religious intolerance. Yet they promote religious freedom within their own constitution which was interestingly signed and approved of in 1723.

I have already suggested the tie in of this group with the description of the brick feet in Daniel's earlier prophecy of the immense image.

The rest of the prophecy goes on to discuss the constant feature and the Prince's sancturary being thrown down. During the period from 540bc to 1726ad, the Pharisee and Saducee systems began within Jerusalem, Jesus was killed, Jerusalem was destroyed by Rome, the Catholic system was created and gained political powers, secularism was born out of the rejection of such a relationship, religion began to play a side role while secularism grew, Freemasons become the first international non-religious group that organizes itself like a religion.

The secularization of religion is a Freemason ideal. Religion cannot be in connection with politics, yet it cannot be a significant influence among the people either. Freemasonry successfully puts their principles above the various religious thoughts that seperate fundamental relgious factions. Its a kind of humanism. It sounds good because it seems to focus on a natural human need. The only problem is that it completely dismembers the whole purpose of Jesus. It eliminates any thought that we may need spiritual help. It destroys the fact that sin reigns in a humans life and needs to be eliminated.

The 2300 year prophecy deals with the effects of this world becoming less and less conducive to the message of Christ. After 1726, the secular influence has only become stronger and taken on different forms. The religious freedom aspect of secularism is going to have to be accepted amongst devout people in order to be secularly accepted. Otherwise you will end up old, outdated, and unsupported. There are two religions I feel will have the hardest time transitioning. That is Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslims.