If you have studied Bible history in the section REDEMPTIVE PLAN of OLIVE TREE STUDIES, you will already be familiar with the period of the Babylonian Exile. However, there is a prophetic aspect of that Exile that is truly fascinating, but was not mentioned in that section. It concerns the way in which the time period of the Babylonian Exile was measured, because it turns out to be the same prophetic scheme used in counting time periods within the Old Testament, between the Old and New Testaments, and many prophetic events during the 20th century. Those segments of history all involved the use of a 360 Day calendar.

The fact that the time span of the Babylonian Exile was both prophetic and related to the Sabbatic/Jubilee Calendar is evident from the following text.

Therefore in some way, the duration of this Exile was associated with God’s prophetic Sabbatic/Jubilee Calendar for the nation of Israel. It will be necessary to review when and what happened in order to understand just how.

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, first came against Jerusalem in 605 BC at the time of Jehoikim, taking Daniel and other Hebrews into captivity. This invasion marked the beginning of the end for Judah, and is recorded in (Jeremiah 46.2; Daniel 1.1).

That period of servitude continued unabated for a period of about 69 years until 536 BC. Then Babylon fell to the Persians, and Zerubbabel was permitted to lead the first group of Jews back into their Land. This first return is mentioned in (II Chronicles 36.22-23; Ezra 1.1-5).

Although Hebrew servitude began in 605 BC, the Land itself was not conquered by the Babylonians for another 16 years. In 589 BC, Nebuchadnezzar invaded Judah during the reign of Zedekiah and laid siege to the city of Jerusalem. The Bible records Tebeth 10 as the specific date in that Levitical year when the desolation of the Land began (II Kings 25.1-7; Jeremiah 52.1-4; Ezekiel 24.1-2).

This period ended in the second year of Persian king Darius I, when the Lord again began to speak through the prophet Haggai to a reformed Hebrew remnant. They had returned to the Land 16 years earlier, and the Lord was commanding them to rebuild the House of the Lord. A Persian eponym establishes that the year was 520 BC, and the Bible indicates that it was Chislev 24 of that year which the Lord emphatically designated to be the beginning of a renewed blessing for that Hebrew remnant (Haggai 2.15-19). Consequently, this desolation of the Land also spanned a period of about 69 years in our calendar.

The siege of Jerusalem continued until the 11^th year of king Zedekiah, i.e. 586 BC, at which time the famine in the city was so severe that no food was left. The walls of the city were broken through and on Ab 7, 586 BC, Solomon's Temple was burned (II Kings 25.2-10).

The Temple Mount remained in a state of ruin until the time of Haggai in 520 BC (Haggai 1.3-4), even though the returned survivors had been permitted to rebuild it 16 years earlier by Cyrus, king of Persia (Ezra 1.1-4). However, when the Lord chided them by Haggai, they finally got the message and actually began reconstruction on the Hebrew date of Elul 24, 520 BC (Hag 1.12-15). This "Second Temple" was finally completed about 3½ years later in 517 BC, ready for service (Ezra 6.15-22). Thus, the time of Temple desecration also spanned a period of about 69 years from 586 BC to 517 BC.

It is obvious that something is wrong, because each of these time periods works out to be about one year less than the time prophesied by Jeremiah. How can 69 years be "70 years"?

There would really be no way to resolve this seemingly mathematical impossibility were it not for the fact that the precise starting and ending dates pertinent to the period of desolation are both recorded. Using those dates, it is possible astronomically to convert those Levitical dates into their equivalent Gregorian ones, and to additionally count the actual number of days between them. This computation has been made and the result recorded by Sidlow Baxter in "Explore the Book", p228. It is found that,

(Tebeth 10, 589 BC) -(Chislev 24, 520 BC) = 25,200 days = (360 days/year) x 70

So the answer to the question is that they can be equal when the 69 years are measured in a solar 365¼ day/year calendar, while the "70 years" are measured in a 360 day/year calendar.

For some reason not fully understood today, the length of the Babylonian Exile was measured according to a 360 day/year calendar causing a difference very close to one year over the "70 year" Exile. Nor was this method of time-keeping an isolated aberration, for it turns out that all of the prophetic time periods following the Babylonian Exile can be reconciled with the dates of key historic events if they are so counted.

Actually this inexplicable method of time keeping apparently did not seem peculiar at all to the peoples of the ancient world. For example, there is no evidence that the ancient Hebrews ever made adjustments to the 30 days assigned to each Lunar month. In addition to this, there is positive evidence that at least Persia, Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, China, Maya, and Peru all employed 360 day/year calendars, for whatever reason. However, sometime in the 8^th century BC, those same nations began to switch to a 365¼ day/year system, continuing it right up to modern times. Although there are theories, the reasons for such a 360 Day calendar and its change to the present one after the 8^th century BC remain obscure. Nevertheless, evidence for the existence of an ancient 360 Day calendar abounds.

Even so, this whole matter could be disregarded as academic trivia were it not for the fact that the book of Daniel records a very long time period of "490 years" that establishes a critical link between the Old and New Testaments. This requires that we know what calendar was used to measure it. In the study of the "70 Weeks" of Daniel, it will be discovered that the calendar used was this 360 Day one. Furthermore, this same calendar metric was apparently employed over the entire span of ancient Israel's existence, and has also been featured during the 20th century right up to the present time. These results will be displayed in Israel's Redemptive Timeline, and the 20th Century Timeline.

COMING GLORY

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