Doesn't that throw off the date?
*** w51 6/15 p. 383 Questions From Readers ***
In establishing the length of the seven times of the Gentiles, a time or year of 360 days is used, to give 2,520 days, which become 2,520 years when Ezekiel 4:6 is applied. Yet when we figure from 607 B.C. down to A.D. 1914, the 2,520 years are solar years of 365 1/4 days each, and not lunar years of 360 days each. Is this proper?—N. N., New Zealand.
The Bible records ignore the solar year of 365 1/4 days as far as measuring natural time and prophetic time. The moon was used for fixing the months, and then the spring growing season for determining the beginning of the year in relation to the moon, making necessary 7 times every 19 years the addition of an intercalary month or Ve-Adar month, a thirteenth month. So since the length of the Jewish year was not stabilized to 365 days plus a leap year of 366 days, prophecy fixed a system of measurement of its time periods at 360 days for a year or time, calculating 30 full days to a month instead of the actual 29 1/2 days to a lunation. Genesis 7:11, 24; 8:3, 4 shows Noah calculated 30 days roughly to a month. Further confirmation of this unit as a prophetic norm of time is given us at Revelation 11:2, 3, where 42 months are run parallel with 1,260 days, making a year of 12 months equal 360 days. Note also that when Revelation 12:6, 14 parallels 3 1/2 years or times with 1,260 days it takes each time or symbolic year as equal to 360 days, and not 365 1/4 days by saying that the 3 1/2 times equal 1,278 and a fraction days. In 3 1/2 years or times there would be at least one and possibly two intercalary months, as explained by The Watchtower, March 15, 1948, pages 91, 92; yet Revelation ignored such intercalary months in giving the days of the 3 1/2 times. So we figure according to God’s Biblical way and are on firm foundation in saying that the symbolic seven times equal 2,520 years. And these 2,520 years should be counted as solar years, because the Jewish lunar years of 360 days, over long periods of time, kept pace with the solar years by means of the intercalary months added at set intervals, thereby always maintaining the necessary harmony between the year’s beginning and the seasons.
That this method of calculating is correctly used to bring us to A.D. 1914 from 607 B.C. is confirmed for us by the physical facts that have become manifest from that year 1914 on, in fulfillment of Matthew 24 and 25, Mark 13, Luke 21, and other prophecies concerning Christ’s second presence, in the time of the end.
