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Author | Topic: Christianity and the End Times | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: The text does not specify THE messiah. Thus it is only necessary to be a messiah. Cyrus qualifies for that. And I don’t think that a famous monarch, called the Lord’s anointed by Isaiah, with an important place in Jewish history should be considered a nobody.
quote: It’s just one event in the prophecy, not the focus. And I think that authorising the Jews to return to Jerusalem was pretty important, don’t you ?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5
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quote: I don’t know who considers Onias to be messiah the prince. I don’t.But your hate of modern scholarship does not diminish their knowledge or the skills. quote: Yawn. Your nastiness is hardly convincing.
quote: Yawn. Which is why you have to make things up to claim fulfilment, and keep insisting that your opinions dictate the meaning. Now instead of ranting and raving why don’t you go away and find real evidence that the Jews used a 360 day calendar without any corrections to keep it in line with the solar year.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: Wrong. Cyrus is world-famous. Ever hear of the Cyrus cylinder ?
quote: Cyrus is a messiah according to the Bible. You can disagree if you like but your mere opinion isn’t going to change mine.
quote: Cyrus provided the original authorisation, as you ought to know.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: Where by attached to you mean having any role at all ? Because that seems pretty daft to me. Antiochus has a bigger part in the prophecy.
quote: The only thing about the prince messiah in the prophecy is that he will come after the first 49 years. That hardly shows that he has to be THE Messiah.
quote: The only absurdity is your idea that simply stating your opinions is any sort of convincing argument. The seventy weeks might start for instance with Jeremiah 30. Daniel 9 even starts with Daniel reading from Jeremiah. Or it might start with the presumed date of Isaiah 44. It doesn’t have to be a royal command. And again the text does not specify THE messiah. The messiahs only play a minor role in the prophecy anyway. Your assumptions are not facts. Just assumptions.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5
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Sure Faith, the Bible is just a joke to you. Thanks for letting us know.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: That’s your opinion. The text of Daniel argues against it.
quote: Without a certain start date - which you don’t have - you can’t say who did or did not come at the end of the 69 weeks. And that’s before we include the fact that you are prepared to assume massive gaps in the count. Moreover neither messiah is said to put an end to transgressions - which surely hasn’t happened anyway. I only have to deal with what the text says, not your assumptions.
quote: That’s not what you’ve been saying before. According to you the seventieth week hasn’t even started.
quote: Which is more evidence that Daniel is dealing with the period of the Maccabean revolt.
quote: You assume that there is a switch in context, but the text is a continuous narrative with no sign of it.
quote: The illumination is here. You just reject it because it doesn’t fit with your beliefs.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: Unfortunately for your argument we have strong evidence that the intended end point is in the Maccabean period. Unless you have equally strong evidence for the start point your argument fails. And you do not. It is only speculation that the word to restore Jerusalem is a command from the Persian emperor. Thus, listing them is not adequate. Note also, that Christian apologists often prefer the decree of Artaxerxes to Ezra since 458 BC gives a better date. I’m still waiting for evidence of a 360 day year without corrections - even your quote admits that there were corrections which would have made the 490 years longer than if the year was simply 360 days long.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: You mean apart from the rise of Antiochus, and his attacks on the city and ending the sacrifices and putting up pagan altars in the Temple....
quote: But it is speculation. There is no mention of the source of the command in Daniel.
quote: I have the actual text of Daniel. If you consider that worthless then that is your problem.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: Well you just go and tell the people who disagree with you that they are wrong.
quote: So you think that I wrote Daniel 8 and Daniel 9-12 and parts of Daniel 9, too. Well no, I didn’t make them up. Unlike the addition of a gap into the prophecy of seventy weeks (four times bigger than the span of the prophecy!) or the change of context in Daniel 11 you assume.
quote: Then it is very odd that the prophecy of the seventy weeks fits the Maccabean period so much better than it does the time of Jesus.
quote: Daniel doesn’t even mention the Roman Empire and the brief mention of the Republic of Rome hardly gives it a central position (did you know that the phrase a line in the sand comes from a confrontation between a Roman commander and Antiochus?) And if you read Daniel 10-12 you will see that there is no change to talking about Rome. It still talks about the Kings of the North and the South, established as the Diadochi kingdoms in 11:4
quote: Until you come up with a better reason than it didn’t happen it only reaches seven years past a messiah being cut off. (And most if it did happen in the years after Onaias’ murder)
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: But I have offered evidence for it. And you pretend it doesn’t exist. But I’m still waiting for any evidence for a 360 day year, used without any additional corrections. Or any real evidence for a gap in the seventy weeks or for Rome playing any part beyond the minor one in Daniel 11. You don’t even admit to the evidence I pointed out in the post you are replying to.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: Daniel 9:26 has the attacks on Jerusalem. 9:27 has the ending of sacrifices and the pagan altar.
quote: So ?
quote: Daniel 9:25. Where does it say that the command comes from a Persian Emperor ?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: Nevertheless it is true. The idea that the Roman Empire is mentioned is an interpretation based on false assumptions. The mentions of the Diadochi Kingdoms in Daniel 8 and 11 are clear. But there is no such mention on the Roman Empire. Even the Roman Republic’s intervention in Antiochus’ wars isn’t obvious unless you know the history.
quote: Or, since we know that it is the Diadochi kingdoms that are the final Empire (as Daniel 8 and 10-12 make clear) Rome obviously isn’t part of it. (And isn’t it awkward for your interpretation that Rome is gone and that there have been other Empires since then?)
quote: Then why is it still talking about that Diadochi Kings in 11:40 ? Where is this change and what justifies the idea that there is a change?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: In other words you are the one relying on assertion.
quote: And you will notice how little that conclusion relies on the text of Daniel. Antiochus, of course, called himself a god Epiphanes means God Manifest. And, as I have pointed out Daniel 11:40 is still about the Diadochi monarchs (see Daniel 4)
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
Daniel 10-12 is back to how God is going to smash Antiochus and the Greeks and set up the eternal Jewish Kingdom
Daniel 10 gets angels involved. It’s another end times prophecy, and starts with the Greeks coming to defeat the Persians. Daniel 11 is the meat of this prophecy. Again Alexander’s kingdoms are divided and the successor kingdoms - named after the four cardinal directions here - are the focus. Only the North (Seleucids) and South (Ptolomies) are of real significance. There are echoes of Daniel 9 here, more evidence that the seventieth week really is about Antiochus’ dealings with the Jews. Daniel 9:25 ...And the people of the prince who is to comeShall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end of it shall be with a flood... Daniel 11:22 With the force of a flood they shall be swept away from before him and be broken, and also the prince of the covenant And this goes on, until the end of the chapter. There is no shift, just as in Daniel 8 the focus is firmly on Antiochus. Daniel 12 completes it, saying that Michael will intervene, there will be great troubles for the Jews, but they will be redeemed, even the dead who will return to life. There is more on timing, though:
11 And from the time that the daily sacrifice is taken away, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there shall be one thousand two hundred and ninety days. 12 Blessed is he who waits, and comes to the one thousand three hundred and thirty-five days.
Again this makes a mess of some futurist interpretations. If the daily sacrifice had been taken away and the abomination set up in 70AD or before, then this period should have been completed, even if the days are read as years. So, it’s back to everything being in the future. So, in conclusion Daniel places the end times in the Maccabean period, explicitly in Daniel 8 and 11. Daniel 7 and 9 link to those, (Daniel 9 referencing events of the period) and nothing says otherwise. Christian interpreters usually can’t accept this but nevertheless it is there.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
The commentary ignores all sorts of important stuff. No justification for dividing the seventy weeks, no justification for using a calendar that there is no record of the Jews ever using.
Without justification for those points it just falls apart.
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