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The concept of the Great Week of Time or as I have referred to it as the Great Millennial Week shows itself going back in history to the Apostle Peter where he writes in 2 Peter 3:8 “But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Here Peter is talking about scoffers in the last days scoffing at the reality of the return of the Lord. The Apostle Barnabas quotes Peter’s statement regarding a thousand years is as a day by writing; “in six thousand years the Lord shall bring all things to an end; for the day with Him signifieth a thousand years, and this He himself beareth me witness, saying Behold, the day of the Lord shall be as a thousand years.  Therefore, children, in six days, that is in six thousand years, everything shall come to an end.”  Barnabas 15:4

In the PDF file below you can read the six articles which J.N. Andrews wrote for the Adventist Review and Sabbath Herald in July and August of 1883 before his death in Switzerland. This thesis is not a new fangled idea just drummed up to excite the times but is based on the understanding that Jesus was anointed as the Messiah at His baptism in A.D. 27 which was the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar and the upcoming year of 2027 is exactly 2,000 years since. This not “time setting” the return of the Lord but observing the times in which we are living.

I had to dig deeply in the Advent Review archives to find the six articles of Andrews and was able to copy and paste them into a more readable modern font style to make his writings available for our twenty-first century generation. Click below to read his articles and observe a copy of the original Advent Review copy.

With the outbreak of the Coronavirus or COVID-19 and Social Distancing our society is on a whole new track. Prophetically speaking this matches the description spoken by Jesus found in Matthew 24:7, 8 where He said, “For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.” Obviously there have been all three of these disasters over the two millenniums since Jesus prophesied concerning them, however like labor pains on a pregnant mother which is what sorrows is referring to, these have increased exponentially over the span of time indicating that we are nearing the return of Jesus or His deliverance of His people from this earth. In John 16:19 – 22 Jesus again refers to the sorrows of labor pains; “Now Jesus knew that they desired to ask Him, and He said to them, “Are you inquiring among yourselves about what I said, ‘A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me’? ²⁰ Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. ²¹ A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. ²² Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you. ” In other words the closer a mother gets to the deliverance of her baby the closer together the birth pains will come and the closer we get to the deliverance of God’s children when the Father speaks the day and the hour of Christ’s return the closer together and more intense will come the sorrows.

This pestilence of COVID-19 seems to be spreading more rapidly than previous pestilences such as the Swine Flu or the Ebola Virus and the quarantining of people didn’t take place in those epidemic’s like what is happening with COVID-19. We need to be alert spiritually to this crisis, for as Jesus said in Matthew 24:8-10;

⁸ All these are the beginning of sorrows.

⁹ “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. ¹⁰ And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. We could be closer to the beginning of the Tribulation than we think. Stay close to Jesus.

Daniel 12 serves not as a predictor to when Jesus will return, but as a road map for God’s last day generation to follow once the Abomination of Desolation becomes a reality.  Adventists have viewed that Abomination as the National Sunday Law enacted in the United States.  Ellen White one of the Church’s founders and believed to be a prophetic messenger whom the Lord used indicates that God’s people should “read and study the twelfth chapter of Daniel. It is a warning that we shall all need to understand before the time of the end.”  (Ltr. 161, July 30, 1903)  We obviously are living in the very time of the end and it would be beneficial for us as a people to be earnestly studying this chapter of Daniel and finding it’s application for our time.  We can no longer see this elephant standing in the middle of Bible prophecy and ignore it any longer or find answers surrounding it from Adventism’s early pioneers from the 1840s.  I urge you to read through my sermon booklet with an open mind.  I have gleaned the information within it for over ten years from various sources.

The conclusions which I have come to are shared by a number of individuals I have studied with and we are open that some of the elements of discovery could be corrected, but that should not create fear in researching this passage and giving the findings in this sermon booklet an open mind.  I believe the applications discovered may indeed be present truth for this time.

Pastor D. Lynn Bryson