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Spurred on by the bitterest anti-Roman Catholic feelings, Protestants searched the Scriptures for confirmation of their point of view. This endeavour shaped their interpretation of prophecy - especially Daniel's prophecies concerning the 2,300 and 1,260 days - from the eleventh century to the twentieth. These prophecies, along with Matthew 24:15 and Revelation 11:1-14, occupied the special attention of many expositors because it was widely believed that such verses referred to the condition of the Church, if not to the actual time of Jesus' return. (180:1) In 1701, an English Protestant, Robert Fleming, published a book that asserted that the French monarchy would soon crumble. At first this book went largely unnoticed, but eventually it provided a great deal of popular momentum to the study of prophecy. Fleming argued that the '1,260 years' referred to a period of corruption in the Church. Building upon ideas that went back as far as Joachim of Flora (c. 1135-1202), Fleming asserted that the corruption foretold was attributable to the rule of the Papacy. However, he faced the familiar difficulty of ascertaining the year in which the 1,260-year period would begin. Assuming that the rise of Papal temporal authority could be dated from AD 552, 606 or 758, he calculated that the 1,260-year period should terminate in the years 1794, 1848 or 2000. Since France was the strongest European power supporting the Pope, Fleming asserted that the monarch's fall would be included in this scenario. When the French revolution overthrew the monarch some ninety years later, it appeared to many that Fleming's interpretations were correct. (180:2) However, apart from the monarch's fall, it was difficult to see how the violent revolutionaries and their reign of terror fitted in with Fleming's 'angels' who were to overthrow religious corruption. This prompted other Christian expositors to come forward to refute Fleming's views.
(180:3)
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