Handout - Western Christadelphian Bible School

(a) Describes the last time that Israel will be invaded by a blasphemous conqueror
(vss 10, 11) who, in this case, desecrates a Jewish temple, removes the daily
sacrifice because of transgression (vss 12, 13) and suppresses the worship of God
(vs 12).
(b) Note that this is certainly an end-time prophecy, in spite of Antiochus’ historic
model: Dan 8:17, 19, 23. See, also, Session 3 – Multiple Applications.
(c) The last days will begin with a simultaneous invasion of Israel, subjugation of
God's people and desecration of a Jewish temple (Matt. 24:15, 21; Dan. 11:31,
12:1, Joel 1:9, 13, 16, Psalm 79:1ff).
(d) The whole process, from the placing of the abomination of desolation and
suppression of the “host” of Israel (vss 13, 24) until the cleansing of the
sanctuary is to take 2300 days (vss 13, 14).
(e) These days are certainly literal:
(i) They refer to a period during which the daily sacrifice is suppressed -
Daniel 8:11, 26; 9:27; 11:31; 12:11.
(ii) The usual Hebrew word for “day” is “yom” (used 2008 times in the OT).
Basically it means “day” as opposed to “night” (eg Gen 1:5); or a day of 24
hours (eg Gen 7:17; cp Gen 7:12). Otherwise it has quite a range of special
or idiomatic meanings such as an era - as in Zechariah 4:10 – “the day of
small things”. So it is impossible to be certain about the exact meaning of
“yom” in any given context. On its own, it might even be “a day for a
year”. (However, we’ll soon see that it certainly cannot mean that in
Daniel.)
(iii) All of Daniel’s time prophecies use the word, “day”, “yom” – except for
the one time prophecy that includes all the others – Daniel 8:14.
(iv) The word translated “days” in Dan 8:14 is a contraction of two words
meaning, respectively, “evening” and “morning”. The special word is
“ereb-boqer”. This is the only place in the Bible where this contraction is
found. It refers to 2300 evening-morning periods - or 6 average solar years
and 108 days (Dan. 8:9-14).
(v) “Ereb” occurs 137 times in all and means “evening”. It’s applied in many
parts of the Old Testament in a very straight-forward way. What is of
particular note in Daniel 8:14 (which is in a context of an interrupted daily
sacrifice - Dan 8:11, 12, 13) is that “ereb” is the word used for “evening” in
the law of the continual (daily) offering – Numbers 28:4, 8.
(vi) Similarly, “boqer” (occurring 204 times) just means “morning” or
“daybreak”. Again, one of its applications is to the morning component of
the daily sacrifice – Numbers 28:4, 8.
(vii) Thus it becomes absolutely certain that the 2300 days of Daniel 8:14 are
days of 24 hours, for Daniel has chosen a way of specifying the time unit
that leaves no doubt that the period is an interval of 2300 evening-morning
(interrupted daily-sacrifice) cycles.
The Last Days: A Beginning, An End, And Three Major Events Between
6 This total period of 2300 "last" (24-hour) days has three intermediate, included
intervals, for each of the 1260, 1290, 1335 and 2300 day intervals all begin from the
same starting point – the desecration of a Jewish temple and the cutting off of the daily
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