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1. Time in prophecies.

What calendar should we use to count the time in Bible prophecies?
There are 3 kind of calendars: lunar (354 days per year), solar (365 days per year) and lunisolar (uses moon phases to count months and uses sun positions to indicate seasons). For religious purposes Jews today are using the lunisolar calendar and every 2-3 years they have an additional – thirteen month – Adar II, in order to match with the seasons of the solar year. Should we use this calendar for counting time in the prophecies?

It would not be correct. In ancient times Jews also used lunisolar calendar, however they counted Jubilee years (every 50-th year), that modern Jews do not keep, even God never commanded to stop to do so. A Jubilee year (every 50-th year) started in the 10th day of 7th month of 49-th (Sabbath) year (Lev.25:9-11), thus 50-th year in reality was still 49-th year. That is what we know about Jubilee year.

We do not know how many additional months Jubilee year had, and how much shorter was the first year after Jubilee, if it was in fact shorter. People can make lots of theories about number of days in ancient Hebrew calendar, but truth is nobody knows. We don't have records confirming how long was Jubilee year, therefore we do not know how many days per year in average was in 50 years cycle. So why don't we look for the answer in the Bible?

For counting time in the prophecies the Bible gives us the time - 360 days per year.
How do we know that?

Because the same interval of time of 3,5 years, or half of the week in Daniel’s prophesy (Dan.9:27) is given as 42 months and as 1260 days in Revelation (Rev.12:6,14;13:5):
1260 days : 3,5 years = 360 days per year.

The dates of all Bible prophecies we need to transform from the prophetical time (360 days per year) into the solar time (365 days per year) in order to match it with historical dates given by historical encyclopedias according to solar calendar, which was in use by majority of nations.

The given method of calculation, as you will see further, successfully was used there in the presented work for calculation not only prophetical dates, but all the dates specified in the Bible. Therefore the author has a confidence to declare that average statistical Hebrew year was in fact of 360 days.

Surrounding nations used the solar calendar, which is 365 days per year. Only three prophecies in the Bible were given in solar time frame “as the years of an hireling”( Isaiah 16:14; 21:16; 23:15).

The author of this work sees serious mistakes in works of many researchers, when they try to decipher prophecies or to calculate dates of some Biblical events using the solar calendar.

2. The principle of a parallelism in Bible prophecies.

Before we will begin to decode prophecies it is necessary to understand the one very important thing, without which the decoding is impossible. All prophecies of the Bible are built on the principle of a parallelism. The base of a principle of parallelism is a parallelism or similarity of events, characteristics, features of various individuals.

Thus, for example, prophecies about the destruction of Jerusalem were true for the time of Babylonian invasion, and they will be true for future destruction of Jerusalem. Prophecies about Second coming have parallels with prophecies about coming of Jesus in 1000 years after His Second coming. Prophecies about Judgment Day after the Second coming with prophecies about the Judgment in 1000 years after that. Prophecies about the last battle before the Second coming and before the Third Jesus' coming. Prophecies about the First and the Second Resurrections and many others parallel prophecies which are laying on a top of each other, and only some little details can make it clearly what time period it is talking there about.

The same principle of the parallelism applied to the prophecies about different persons when some aspects of their actions are similar. So, the prophecy about the tree (Dan.4) is about the king Nebuchadnezzar and about the Jewish nation. The prophecy of Isaiah (14) is about the Babylonian king and about Satan. The prophecy of Ezekiel (28) is about the prince of Tire and about Satan. Ezekiel 31:16-18 about Satan and Egyptian Pharaoh; 2Sam.7:12,13 about Jesus and Solomon; Deu.31:3 about Joshua and Jesus; Isaiah 49:1-6, Hosea 11:1 are about Jesus and about Israel. Zech.6:12 is about Jesus and Joshua. Isa.:7:14-16 is about Jesus child and about the child of Isaiah (8:4). Daniel 11:23-31 is about Antiochus IV and about the antichrist. Ps.95:11 and Heb.4:1 about the promising land and about the Kingdom of Heaven. The 1260 years were applied to the little horn (Dan.7:21) as to the papacy, the 1260 days (or 42 months- Rev.13:5) will be applied to the beast - antichrist.

Jesus used the parallelism also. Thus, when Malachi prophesied about the Second coming of Jesus he said, that God will send to His people Elijah the prophet (4:5): “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD” (it's said about Second coming). Jesus said that John the Baptist was Elijah (Mat.11:14; 17:12): “this is Elijah, which was for to come”, though John the Baptist was the prophet of the Christ’s First coming.

Also when Matthew (2:15) said about Jesus: “And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son”, he had repeated Hosea's words about Israel (Hosea 11:1) : “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt”.

These two aspects: the prophetical time and the principle of parallelism, we need to take into consideration every time when we are decoding any Bible prophecy.