Sir Edward Denny 
1796-1889

Sir Edward discovered what he called the "Chronology of Redemption". Leviticus chapter 25 states that the Year of Jubilee is to be celebrated every 50th year.

 

[Lev 25:9-10 KJV] 9 Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth [day] of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. 10 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout [all] the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.

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However the Jubilee Year actually started in the middle of the 49th year and finished half way through the first year of the next Jubilee cycle. Thus over a period of 490 years there would actually be 10 Jubilee years included. Sir Edward believed that 500 years in the Jubilee cycle was significant. That would be 490 years in terms of Redemptive Years. He looked for 490 year cycles in the bible. From creation to Christ there are prophetically speaking 4,000 years. There are then 2,000 years to Christ's return followed by 1,000 years of His reign on Earth. Sir Edward divided this seven thousand year period into time periods of "seventy weeks" or 490 years. Each time period represented half a millennium so there were 14 in all. Obviously half a millennium is 500 years but Sir Edward was trying to identify the 490 redemptive years recognised by God. The following chart will illustrate some of his thinking.

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To give an example of how the cycle works we will look at one 490 year period from the Exodus to the completion of Solomon's temple. 1 Kings 6:1 tells us that there were 480 years from the Exodus to the time when Solomon commenced work on the temple in Jerusalem.

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[1Ki 6:1 KJV] 1 And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which [is] the second month, that he began to build the house of the LORD.

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It then took another 3 years to complete the temple and a further 7 years to furnish it making 490 years altogether. Here we have an example of Sir Edward's 490 year redemption cycle. However if you go through the bible adding up the different years of Judges, foreign domination and Kings there are actually 621 years in this period. How do you reconcile the two. 490 years or 621 years. Well Sir Edward believed in Unreckoned Periods of human rebellion which God does not include in His prophetic timeline. During the period between the Exodus and the start of the temple there were 131 years when Israel was rebellious and under foreign domination. If you subtract 131 from 621 it brings you back to 490 years (redemption years).  Here we see that in His plan God only counts redemption years where man counts actual years. 

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In this way Sir Edward divided history into 490 year chunks of time that were recognised by God and omitted the years where God's purposes were resisted (such as the time between the birth of Ishmael and the birth of Isaac). In order to understand God's prophetic timeline we have to discount the dark period and only count those years where God's purposes are fulfilled. To quote Sir Edward himself from his chart "The Cycle of Seventy Weeks"

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"The truth is, the eye of the Lord looking away from the other dark ages of man's sorrowful history, rests only on that to which it can turn with comfort...."

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The following chart illustrates how Sir Edward split up the history of the world into what he called "The Great Divisions of Time".