The 2300-day Prophecy
by Larry Hallock
The “investigative judgment” is a uniquely Seventh-day Adventist doctrine that is fairly scoffed at by the rest of Christendom, and increasingly so by many within the denomination as well. Thou-sands of believers and clergy have left the church or resigned or been fired over it. But the church is sticking to its guns, for to abandon the doctrine would mean repudiation of Ellen G. White as a prophet. That’s a step the church is not willing to take, in spite of this and other problems that cast a shadow over the authenticity of this iconic figure who played a major role in the church’s founding. Her word is still considered to be as inspired by God as any Bible writer’s. (More discussion on page 5 of Christianity article.)
That, together with the fact that fundamentalists can never be wrong about anything without the whole thing falling apart (the “all-or-nothing” mind set), assures us that this doctrine will stick around for a long time to come.
One qualification for a prophecy to be genuine is that it be clear, specific and unambiguous. If it is so vague that it’s not clear exactly what is predicted in the first place, then people of reasonable intelligence won’t consider it a prophecy at all. That’s the problem with this prophecy which, despite its biblical ambiguity, was said to predict the exact date of Jesus’ return on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 1844. In the fallout of this “Great Disappointment,” a new doctrine, the Investigative Judgment, was crafted to explain how the prophecy hadn’t really failed at all. Outsiders, of course, see this as a purely face-saving measure. The doctrine asserts that the “2300-day prophecy” really did come true, but that the believers had simply been mistaken about what was predicted to happen on that day.
Instead of Jesus returning to earth, they say, what really happened in 1844 was that Jesus began getting ready for his return trip by beginning the process of determining the people’s individual rewards and punishments. As skeptics point out, the new interpre-tation of the prophecy entails its being fulfilled out-of-sight; no one can prove it didn’t happen.
Starting with Adam and Eve, it is said, every good deed and bad deed of every human being has been meticulously recorded in a literal set of books in heaven. Like a judge and defense attorney, God and Jesus literally began going over those books in 1844, name by name—starting with those who have already died and then moving on to the living. An assistant reads a name, Jesus intercedes for the person with God, and then God judges whether that person will be rewarded with heaven or tortured by fire. Those who qualify will be resurrected and given heaven; those who don’t will be resurrected in order to receive the torture. A single unconfessed sin can land a person in the “lake of fire” instead of heaven.*
For the curious, a most intriguing discussion of this doctrine and the politics surrounding it is in Wikipedia, here. That discussion notes that the heavenly process of judgment has now been going on for more than 160 years, generating increasing doubt about it. It occurred to me to calculate the enormity of the task—and I do this in all seriousness, because this judgment process is not said to be an act of omniscience; God does not employ some kind of streamlined, computer-like calculation for this task. The doctrine teaches that names are literally read from books and discussed individually. We also know this is done in real time because it is said that other “heavenly intelligences” are watching the process, as courtroom observers, to judge for themselves whether God is being fair. Therefore, it seems appropriate to me, as one part of testing whether the doctrine makes sense, to calculate whether such a task would even be possible. After all, the circumstances of this prophecy and its convenient reinterpretation understandably lend a bit of suspicion to the notion that the prophecy was fulfilled in any way at all.
In the year 2000, the world birth rate was nearly a third of a million new people per day. If God and Jesus did absolutely nothing else with their time, every second of every day and night, never resting, not even on the Sabbath or Christmas or New Year’s, they would have to process about two and a half people per second. Can one even read a name in less than half a second? If God is omniscient and omnipresent, he can easily multi-task to perform all his other godly duties at the same time; but this part of his heavenly work, as we have seen, is performed in real time. When your name comes up, wouldn’t you want the judge to spend more than a split second of discussion on your name? Even at a whole second, wouldn’t that fall in the range of an instant, computer-like, omniscient judgment—which we’re told isn’t what happens?
And who knows when the heavenly Team will even catch up to today? Imagine the backlog of billions of people already dead, whose names have to come up first. And how many births per second will there be by the time they do catch up to the present, if catching up is even possible? Perhaps by then they’ll need to read and discuss ten names per second.
Other major problems with this prophecy and the doctrine surrounding it are at the Wikipedia site. Still others are too numerous to discuss—like why God would predict or give cryptic signs of Jesus return in the first place. Seems either we should know it, or we shouldn’t. And why would it be important to give us hugely cryptic hints (in case we’re bright enough to figure it out) as to precisely when he’s beginning to judge us, starting with the dead people? If we should know this, why not just tell us? And of all the things we’d do well to know, that’s tops?
And why would God wait until 1844 to begin such an impossibly huge task? Wouldn’t it have made more sense not to have procrastinated but to have kept current rather than accumulating an unmanageable backlog?
I know this will sound facetious to most believers, but it’s not a facetious consideration if you believe your religion should make sense. If you are going to say prophecy proves your religion is authentic, then you must allow your prophecies to be scrutinized.
Fundamentalist believers do not concern themselves with the kinds of questions I raise (the larger picture), because their mind set is not to determine whether the whole thing is true and makes sense. They’ve already decided that, and they can’t go back. That’s the nature of fundamentalism. Now all they can do is work with the the smoke and mirrors required to make it look like all the pieces still fit. One option is always reliable: just say it came true out of sight.
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*This represents the SDA view, which differs from the predominate view that souls go directly to heaven or hell at death, and continue to live forever in one place or the other. SDAs teach that hell is a fire that will eventually burn out when the last person has been tortured long enough; the duration depends on how bad the person was, and so long as a tiny particle of flesh remains unconsumed, God won’t allow the person to die or lose consciousness. Thus the wages of sin aren’t just death, but torture. And the full effect of it will be made to continue unmitigated for a period certain—until the suffering has matched the crimes.
How many names per second can the heavenly court process in real time?
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