THE "YEAR-DAY PRINCIPLE" ERROR

It is proposed, especially by Historicists, God used a principle in prophetic language to imply years of time as opposed to the recorded reference to actual 24-hour days of time in the writings of Revelation.  They call it the YEAR-DAY principle.  This thought is vitally important to Historicists.  In order to have Revelation span centuries of time, rather than the few short years ahead of John's day, 2000 years ago, the references to 3.5 years, or 42 months, or 1, 260 days must be translated into years.  Otherwise, historicism fails miserably in recommending we read it in view of many centuries' worth of fulfillment.

Below is a conversation I had with Bobby Boland, a historicist, who spoke in such a manner that I readily saw the flaws in his reasoning and noted them to him. 

I trust we learn through this correspondence how important it is to not assume anything, as historicists do with their year-day principle, but allow the bible to speak for itself, and not impose any "rules" upon the texts that are not noted to be necessary by the bible itself.

Before we continue, let me say I also believed in this year-day principle outside of any Historicist inklings, but later learned I was mistaken in the reference to Daniel 9:24-27 and the mention of "70 Weeks" as though they were seventh sets of seven DAYS, meant to be translated into sets of years -- a day for a year.  I realized, as you will read, the actual Hebrew text implied nothing about DAYS whatsoever in Daniel's 70 weeks. This realization came long before I understood it has bearing on the historicist position. In other words, when I saw the error of year-day, I was not trying to find error in historicism. It was only later, after I saw the error of the principle, when I realized it had bearing on showing historicism wrong.

The text in italics represents the words this brother wrote, to which I respond in normal text.

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Brother, your post containing the following quotes is filled with flawed reasoning in my estimation, and I will show you why. I think you will agree upon reconsideration. And I think you copied this information from a historicist book, because I know your logic is not that flawed.



Brother, that is misuse of the scripture. When the bible said HIS DAYS shall be 120 YEARS, it did not say 120 "days" shall be 120 "years." "DAYS" simply means duration of lifetime. Saying ALL MY DAYS ARE 120 YEARS is not at all using the thought that "days" count as "years".

I sing the hymn "All of my days, I want to praise, the wonder of his mighty hands." That does not mean I consider DAYS to be YEARS! I simply speak of my DAYS as my lifetime. And if I said my "years" I would still be speaking of my lifetime., But I could also speak of my DECADES. That does not mean years should be considered "decades" in my reference to years in other conversations, though. Yet the contrary is what you are suggesting simply because David's LIFE was spoken in terms of days.

None of these verses fall into this category you claim either. They simply mention days and years as lengths of time, without saying anything about "days" being synonymous with "YEARS".


Not at all! That is not true, brother. Read it again. To speak of "days of our years" simply refers to the 365 days of however many years one wishes to consider! I think this is stretching things, brother.


The Strong's definition simply indicates it is a space of time, which can be spoken generally in use of YEARS or DAYS, or decades if one wished. It is simply a SPACE OF TIME in general.

I do not see this as the inference whatsoever, my good brother. None of these instances indicate one is to consider so many DAYS as that many YEARS.


I see nothing above to indicate the year-day principle your are proposing. He simply says a SABBATH is indicated. And a sabbath is simply a SEVEN. But it is not restricted to seven DAYS or seven YEARS, or even seven DECADES. It can be Seven ANYTHINGS in thoughts of units of time! There can be sabbath DAYS as well as sabbath YEARS.

Are you trying to say the reference to SABBATH implies "days" and therefore implies day-year principle? If so, that is error. Please correct me if I missed your actual intention.

Brother! The above instance of God saying their forty days of spying in unbelief would be turned into forty years of wandering in the desert does NOT support your conclusion. To be consistent, and to support your thoughts, the passage would actually have to say that when Israel spied the land for forty days it was actually to be reckoned as forty years. Or it would have to say that Israel spent forty years spying the land, which is actually meant as 40 days. But it does not. Taking an example where God punished Israel and counted a year for a day in punishment is not saying anything similar to what you're trying to propose in a year-day theory. I mean, I could punish my son by saying the "ten minutes" he hesitated to obey my word would become "ten hours" of being grounded in his bedroom. Why would such a form of punishment be considered basis for a minute-hour system of thinking in my mind in other conversations I use later involving minutes? It wouldn't. And neither does this example of Israel's wandering prove anything similar to a year-day principle.

I agree Ezekiel's days were reckoned as representative of years of captivity. However, Ezekiel outrightly said so! We are not meant to take THAT and say that a reference to DAYS in Revelation should be counted as YEARS, when the text in Revelation does not say so, as it does in Ezekiel's case. Wow. I am surprised.

But here is the worst example you cite, in my opinion. (But we still love you!)


No no no.

Nothing in the text hints at a day, unless we read the text without understanding the original hebrew, and consider OUR thoughts of what weeks are. OUR understanding today deems WEEKS as seven DAYS alone. We think of WEEKS as seven days. That is not the manner in which the KJV translators understood the thought of "weeks". And therein lies your flaw. The Hebrew for "weeks" would be more correctly translated as "sevens", or HEPTADS.

H7620
שׁבעה שׁבע שׁבוּע
shâbûa‛ shâbûa‛ shebû‛âh
shaw-boo'-ah, shaw-boo'-ah, sheb-oo-aw'
Properly passive participle of H7650 as a denominative of H7651; literally sevened, that is, a week (specifically of years): - seven, week.

It is like saying a DOZEN if it meant TWELVES. Instead of SEVENS, the KJV folks put WEEKS, since that was a set of seven in their minds, but not necessarily seven DAYS as we today think of the term.

So, literally it is not involving DAYS at all! It is simply saying "70 SEVENS" . The actual correct word for a set of seven is HEPTAD. HEPTAD is for seven, as DOZEN is for twelve.

Since they wrote "WEEKS", they made us think of SEVEN DAYS from our 21st century idea when "weeks" are mentioned. Yet the hint of seven "DAYS" were nowhere to be found in the Hebrew.


There is your flaw of reasoning again. You correctly said that the Hebrew word is SEVENS, but you leaped into assumption and went into something not found in Hebrew when you said 70 WEEKS would literally be 490 "DAYS". That is not suggested at all. The actual thought is SEVENTY SEVENS are mentioned. Now, would you think of DAYS if I simply told you about seventy SEVENS? Not at all! Seventy sets of seven "whats" is not even mentioned. Just seventy sets of seven. And THAT is how the Hebrew actually reads.

Your error is similar to this illustration:

Let us say the text in Hebrew spoke of TWELVES instead of SEVENS.

That would make it 70 TWELVES, literally. And the way the King James people translated "SEVENS" into "WEEKS" would be similar to me translating "TWELVES" into "DOZENS". Nothing about DAYS or YEARS are even literally mentioned. Am I thereby telling you that there are 70 sets of TWELVE DAYS simply because I said 70 "DOZENS" as my translation of the hypothetical Hebrew "70 twelves"? Of course not! I only said DOZENS, and did not even give the units of "days" or "years" in my example! I translated TWELVES to be DOZENS. So in my example, where would you get the idea of "DAYS" if I merely said "TWELVES" could be translated as "DOZENS"? No where.

By the same token, the Hebrew was "SEVENS" in Daniel 9, and "WEEK" is simply a set of SEVEN in the translators' minds, whereas the UNITS of DAYS or YEARS is not even mentioned! You get the thought of DAYS when the text actually mentioned nothing about days nor implied it.

In reading Revelation, we are to understand 3.5 years, or 42 months, or 1,260 days as precisely that.  3.5 years.