Will the final 1290 days be cut short?

Introduction

The verse in Matt. 24:22 and the corresponding verse in Mark 13:20 has always confused me because it seems to contradict that the Day of the Lord is set and immovable.  That is the conclusion that I came to in the blog, “Can we hasten the Day of God” based on the verse, 2 Peter 3:12.  We cannot speed up the final day as it is set by God and I argued that the translation of this verse is a mistranslation by most English translations except for a few including 2 Peter 3:12 (HCSB) which I believe is a better translation.  That is what I have followed in my own EDV translation of this verse.

Pre-wrath theory

So what is this verse in Matthew and parallel verse in Mark really saying?  There are many scholars who follow that this verse is saying that the final second half of the tribulation will be so intense and traumatic that God will actually shorten these days to something less than 1290 days for the sake of the elect otherwise no human being in the world would survive.  Often those following the pre-wrath view of the end times follow this thinking.  In short, I don’t believe that these days will be shortened to less than 1290 days but everything will happen according to the feasts as outlined in my “Feasts of God series” in the Book of Leviticus.  The church will be raptured on the Feast of Trumpets at the last trumpet (Jewish new Year’s Day – Rosh Hashanah) and exactly ten days later following the bowls of wrath, Christ will save the remaining Jews from disaster in Jerusalem and He will come back in glory with His newly raptured and resurrected saints and the army of angels from Heaven and He will defeat the beast and the false prophet and their army at Jerusalem.  These are exact days and are set by the moon alone.  There will be very little variation only within a day or two depending on when the first slither of the crescent moon rises and the first day of the year is announced with trumpets by the Sanhedrin.

Besides, when it talks about cutting short the days it is referring to the fact that because the conditions on earth during the Great Tribulation will be so terrible and horrible,¹ God has made those days shorter for the sake of the “elect.”  The “elect” or the “chosen” as I have translated it, are those saved Christians who are not martyred, those who have not made it to the safe place, and those who have not taken the mark of the beast.  God shortens the time for them in an act of mercy.  See my blog, “Who are the elect in the Olivet Discourse” for further clarification on this point.

The answer lies in the exegesis

So what gives here?  There must be something that we are not understanding correctly.  The answer lies in the exegesis and the grammar of the verse in Matt. 24:22.  Firstly the phrase “were cut short” in the Greek is a single word which at its core means to be “cut off” or “lopped off” like the picture above of the tree cut off or even mutilated.  The Greek verb here is in the Greek aorist tense with an indicative mood.  The aorist tense is the most common tense when referring to an action typically denoting the simple occurrence of an action without anything else complicating the matter.  Dr. Renald Showers argues that usually with the aorist tense there is no time significance but here because of the grammar the time significance is that it has to be talking about the past.²

Timeline set by the Jewish feasts

Basically what he is saying is that here in this situation it is what we call a “prophetic past tense.”  In other words, God has already decided in the past about the future.  This means that the cutting short, spoken of by our Lord in both Matthew and Mark, is something that has already taken place in the past when God’s plan for history was put forth before the creation of the world.  It was decided by God a long time before that there would only be 1290 days no longer.  So the interpretation that the days would be shorter than 1290 days is not correct.  This fully ties in with our thesis that the Jewish feasts are a rehearsal of the prophetic calendar and all major events on the prophecy calendar have to be fulfilled on certain and particular days that line up with the feast days.  For example, the Passover Lamb, Jesus, was killed, buried, and rose on the first three feasts: Passover; Feast of Unleavened Bread, and Feast of First-fruits.  The Holy Spirit came and filled believers and so the church commenced exactly to the day at the Feast of Pentecost after 50 days.  Jesus will return for the church at the Feast of Trumpets and so the church will be raptured exactly at a future Jewish New Year’s Day which is also the Day of Trumpets.  Christ’s glorious return will be exactly on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) ten days later.  The seventh and final feast (Tabernacles) of the Jewish religious calendar will be the celebration and that the harvest is finished and the entering into the Millennial Kingdom.  All seven feasts happen on specific days and so will the three future prophetic events happen on set days.  So, the interpretation of the days being cut shorter than 1260 days makes an absolute mess of this prophetic fulfillment of the “feast” calendar.  The more accurate and better interpretation is the one that the final 3 ½ years will be exact within a day or so (because of the rising of the new moon).  This gives us so much more confidence.  We know that these days were shortened by God way back when history was predetermined by God.  In other words, God back then did not allow the days to be any longer than 1290 days, that was long enough, otherwise, there would be no human who would have survived.  And He did this for the sake of the elect–the Jewish people who are on the earth at that time.  

An important decision to make as Christians

The elect here does not refer to the church because they are not exactly an intact group.  They are either secure in the wilderness (the woman), fallen away, martyred or about to be martyred, incarcerated in extermination camps all over the earth.  The woman of Revelation 12 will be safely tucked away in the place of refuge in the wilderness for time, times and half a time (1290 days) until the post-tribulation rapture occurs at the Feast of Trumpets when the eagles gather.  Think about this too: if the 1290 days were cut short to something less than 1290 days then we would also need to find another verse where the corresponding 1290 days for the woman/faithful church would also be cut short.  But we find no such verse.  The two periods would be out of sync and that seems very unlikely.  Everything was providentially set in stone by the Godhead in eternity past.  The only thing not set in stone is our decision as Christians as to which one of the four groups we will be aligned with.  Will we flee to the wilderness?  Or will we remain behind?  If we choose to remain behind either due to slackness or indecisiveness or perhaps even fear then the decision becomes, will we refuse the mark (possibly vaccine??) and be imprisoned/martyred or will we take the mark of the beast and so be condemned?

Tough decisions ahead but be assured that the prophetic calendar was set before the creation of the world.  The days will not be shorter than 1290 days.  They have already been shortened a long time ago.