2,300 Days of Daniel 8:14

2,300 Days of Daniel 8:14

Daniel 8:14

“For two thousand three hundred days; then the sanctuary shall be cleansed.”

In Daniel 8:16, the angel was instructed to “make this man (Daniel) understand the vision”.

By the end of the chapter, the only portion of the entire vision of Daniel 8 left unexplained (see Dan. 8:27) was the part about the 2,300 days.

Later, in Daniel 9, the angel returned to Daniel and declared, “I have now come forth to give you skill to understand” (Dan. 9:22; see also Dan. 9:23; 25–27). This was to help him understand about the 2,300 days from Dan 8:14.

We know this because, after bidding Daniel to “consider the matter, and understand the vision” (Dan. 9:23), the first words of the angel were: “Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city” (Dan. 9:24).

The word translated as “determined” literally means “cut off.”

Seventy weeks (490 years), are to be cut off. But from what?

From the vision of the 2,300 days, obviously—the only part of Daniel 8 that Daniel did not understand, and that the angel now came to explain.

And since the starting point of the 70 weeks was to be counted “from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem” (Dan. 9:25), we need to find the date when that decree was issued because in this way we will know the beginning of the 70 weeks and the 2,300-day prophecy.

Ezra 7:7–13. The decree to allow Israel’s captives in Persia to go free to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple (Ezra 7:7–13) was issued by Artaxerxes, king of Persia, in 457 BC. This decree was the last of three decrees to allow the Jews to return to rebuild Jerusalem and restore temple worship services. This third decree was the most complete and marks the beginning of the 2,300- day prophecy.

Daniel 9:25–26 (NKJV)

“Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; The street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times. And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end of it shall be with a flood, and till the end of the war desolations are determined.”

Daniel predicted that from the “going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem” to the Messiah would be 69 prophetic weeks, or 483 years.

Why it should be years instead of literal days?

Because in symbolic time prophecies, a prophetic day equals a literal year: Ezekiel 4:6 “I have appointed thee each day for a year”. The same principle is found in Numbers 14:34.

Since the decree went forth in the fall of 457 BC, 483 years extend to the fall of AD 27. The word “Messiah” signifies “the Anointed One.” In the autumn of AD 27, Christ was baptized and received the anointing of the Spirit (Acts 10:38).

In the spring of AD 31, in the middle of this last prophetic week, three and a half years after His baptism, Jesus was crucified.

The system of offerings that pointed forward to the Lamb of God ended with Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary. Type had met antitype, and eventually all the sacrifices and offerings of the ceremonial system ceased. Read Daniel 9:27. How would the 70-week prophecy end?

The 70 weeks, or 490 years, especially allotted to the Jews, ended in AD 34 with the stoning of Stephen and rejection by the Sanhedrin of the gospel message (Acts 6:8–7:60).

Subtracting 490 years from the 2,300-year prophecy leaves 1,810 years for the completion of the prophecy. This leads us to AD 1844. At that time the Christ entered the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary and the process of cleansing of the sanctuary (Daniel 8:14, Heb 9:23) and investigative judgement started.