Christianity and the End Times

Where does this idea come from that "fundamentalists" come to the Bible text in any different way than any other person who is sincerely intent on understanding it? Some come with a bias against the supernatural, and that is NOT a sincere intent to understand it because the Bible presents itself as a supernatural text."Fundamentalists" preconceptions are that we believe prophecy is real, which is how the text presents it, we believe God doesn't err, which scripture clearly affirms, so we expect the text to make sense, we expect numbers to be precise, not allegorical, and we aren't going to settle for approximations because we know God is precise and perfect in all His ways.; If we can't work out all the calculations that's our fault, not God's, we know they do work out even if we aren't up to the computing.And really, truly, we leave the text to speak for itself. What preconceptions could we possibly have about a prophetic text anyway? The imagery is hard enough to understand without trying to impose something on it when you don't yet even understand it. The first thing you have to do is figure out what all the imagery means. At first it is just total confusion. Beast with many heads? many horns? horns fall off and others grow in their place? one horn has eyes and speaks? What the? No "fundamentalist" could impose anything on such a welter of confusing images. You have to make some kind of sense out of them first, and prophecy often entails knowing something about history apart from the biblical record. I've only very recently reached the point where I feel I understand the images in Daniel well enough to argue about them on this thread. Next I want to tackle Revelation.

I don't see the point of trying to make a case for the shift in focus in the text that alerts us that we have left the original context and are now being presented with something that is yet future, as long as PaulK insists that the two little horns of Daniel 7 and 8 are the same person.The text says that the one comes from among ten kings and the other comes out of one of four kingdoms. We agree that the second is Antiochus Epiphanes who was defeated by the Maccabees around 200 BC. He says the first is the same person.; I say the text says he's a different person. The TEXT, not me, not my interpretation, the TEXT which says he comes from an empire with ten kings while we know that Antiochus came from the kingdom of the Seleucids which was one of four of the divided Greek empire.There are other things that make the men different, and other things that make his reading of the text wrong in other ways, but just that one is enough to stop any kind of reasonable discussion in its tracks. It's a blatant denial of what the Bible says.If he can't get that simple fact straight about what the Bible actually says there's no point in trying to make a case for the subtle switch in focus that takes some of the prophecy into the future.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Prove your claim about the ten Seleucid kings.

But of course this is a sham.Here's the prophecy about the fourth beast in Daniel 7:24 Here's Wikipedia on the Seleucid Empire on the first of your list, Heliodorus: Heliodorus murdered Seleucus but was never on the throne. The little horn of Daniel 7 follows ten KINGS, Heliodorus was never a king.Then we have Demetrius, second on your list, who even you admit fell outside the relevant time period. There were a number of kings named Demetrius but they all FOLLOWED Antiochus IV, after his death. So there was no Demetrius who was a king when Antiochus IV appeared, Again, the little horn of Daniel 7 follows ten kings, but Demetrius followed Antiochus. Note the bolded first line of the Wikipedia article: As for the infant son of Seleucus IV I couldn't find anything to suggest that he was ever on the throne and if he was it would have been after Antiochus Epiphanes.Once again: the little horn of Daniel 7 follows ten kings. That didn't happen with any of your three candidates for the uprooted kings of Daniel 7.Your claim is an absolute bust.Again I say, you must rescind your claim that the little horns of Daniel 7 and 8 are the same or there is no point in continuing the discussion.

duplicateEdited by Faith, : No reason given.

A claim to be king is not being king.However, I'll accept your interpretation and go on to other ways the two horns are not the same person.

I admit it is much better evidence than I thought possible for your claims. I have to concede that much and apologize for assuming you didn't have any.But it isn't good enough by the standards of scripture. Two of them are not reigning kings and the prophecy speaks of the little horn's arising among, or after, ten kings which certainly sound like established kings. Since in my scenario all this is yet future I can't answer it directly.To make the Seleucid empire into the fourth beast of Daneil 7 does destroy the pattern of the prophecies, which foresees four separate empires succeeding each other, and always puts the Seleucids under the images of Greece which is the third beast of Daniel 7.Also, you still haven't any reasonable timing to fit the seventy weeks prophecy of Daniel 9, and of course I continue to object that your messiahs are utterly inadequate to the tenor of the prophecies. Messiah the Prince has to be Jesus Christ, and the sixty-nine weeks does point to His time and not the time of the Maccabees.I'm still aiming to get the verses together that differentiate the two little horns and show that the prophecies continue far in the future, but that's going to take time especially since other things are interfering with my efforts.But again, I can't answer your claim about the ten kings as long as you insist on the meanings you insist on. I think they are wrong, that they don't fit the prophecy at all, but as long as you hold to those interpretations I can't answer it. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Finished. I may have to come back and do some mopping up though. Image of lion from Babylon
Biblical prophecy often includes distinctive differences and details to make it identifiable with the real situation but in this case all we got was "ten kings" with nothing to distinguish them from each other, so there is no justification for thinking they were anything but ten reigning kings. The different imagery nevertheless contains symbolism that identifies them as the same empire, which is what I want to demonstrate here:
(I'm including some biblical quotes as references to the different prophecies and their images at the bottom of the post)*

• The First Kingdom/Empire:
  1. Babylon in Daniel 2: We know the gold head of the statue in Daniel 2 is Babylon because Daniel says so to Nebuchadnezzer when he interprets his dream to him:
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  Daniel 2:38 ...Thou art this head of gold.
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  2. Babylon in Daniel 7: Daniel has a vision of four kingdoms in the form of four different beasts, the first being a lion with wings that becomes a man.
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  Daniel 7:3 writes:

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  The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it.
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  PaulK disputes the lion, certainly the winged lion, as a symbol of Babylon. I'll just claim that the following three kingdoms in the images of of Daniel 2 and 7 are clearly the same, and the two of Daniel 8 the same as the second and third of those two visions as well, and Babylon is a major image in scripture (Consider "Mystery Babylon the Great" of Revelation) besides being the empire that captured Jerusalem and under which Daniel served through at least two kings.
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  CONCLUSION: Babylon is the first kingdom/empire represented in the two prophecies: Two prophecies, two different images, first image represents Babylon in both prophetic visions.
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• The Second Kingdom/Empire is identified in Daniel 2 as merely a kingdom that will follow Babylon. It is represented in the statue of Nebuchadnezzar's dream as the chest and arms of silver.
  And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee
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  The second kingdom in Daniel 7: represented by a bear raised up on one side:
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  Daniel7:4 writes:

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  And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh.
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  Daniel 8 refers only to two kingdoms, but they are understood by evangelicalsw to represent the second and third kingdoms of the silver arms of the statue prophecy of Daniel 2 and the bear prophecy of Daniel 7: The first in this chapter is the second in the previous chapters:
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  Daniel 8:3 writes:

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  behold, there stood before the river a ram which had two horns: and the two horns were high; but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last....p
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  Dan 8:20-21 writes:

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  The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia. And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king.
  The ram is identified as the same kingdom as the bear in Daniel 7 and the silver arms of Daniel 2
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  So the ram in Daniel 8 is now identified as the kingdom of the Medes and Persians, or Medo-Persia. Daniel served not only under two kings of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, but under kings of Media and Persia, including the great Persian king Cyrus, which illustrates the same sequence as the first two images in the first two visions and focuses in on the second kingdom in Daniel 8. And besides its historical sequence, another way to identify that the second kingdom of the first two prophecies is Medo-Persia is by its twoness in each image: the two arms of the status, the bear raised up on one side, and the ram's horns one taller than the other, and in that image the taller one came up second, which reflects the historical fact that Persia was the stronger of the two kingdoms.
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  CONCLUSION: Medo-Persia is the second kingdom/empire represented in the first two prophecies, the arms of the statue and the bear raised up on one side, and is the first of the two in the third prophetic vision of Daniel 8: the ram with one horn higher than the other.
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• The Third Kingdom/Empire
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  The third kingdom is briefly represented in the four kingdoms of the statue of Daniel 2:
  Daniel2:40 writes:

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  and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.
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  The third of the four animals of the vision in Daniel 7 has four wings and four heads:
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  Daniel 7 writes:

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  lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it.
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  Daniel 8: writes:

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  And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king.
  the he goat waxed very great: and when he was strong, the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven.
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  We know from history that this first king of Greece is Alexander the Great. He was followed by his four generals who divided up his conquered lands among themselves.
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  CONCLUSION: The third kingdom/empire of Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 is not named there but is named in Daniel 8 where it is represented by the goat that defeats the ram, the ram being identified as Medo-Persia. Its four horns that replace the one horn link it to the four wings and heads of the leopard in Daniel 7, and its following and defeating Medo-Persia which is clearly the second of the empires in Daniel 2 links all three together as Alexander's Greece. Daniel 8 identifies the four horns as the four Greek kingdoms into which it broke up after Alexander.
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• The Fourth Kingdom/Empire This is represented by the legs and feet of the statue in Daniel 2, the legs being of iron and the feet and toes a mixture of iron and clay, identified as a mixture of weakness and strength.
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  In Daniel 7 the fourth beast is called Great and Terrible and has teeth of iron, which links it to the iron of the legs of the statue, identifying it as the same empire. It does not appear again in the prophecies. Daniel 8 and 11-12 focus on two of the kingdoms that were formed after Alexander died.
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  CONCLUSION The fourth kingdoms of Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 are the same because of the iron in both images.

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* BIBICAL REFERENCES (These are from Blue Letter Bible):1. Daniel 2: The statue in Nebechadnezzar's dream 2. Daniel 7: Daniel's vision of the four beasts during the reign of the Babylonian king Belshazzar: 3. Daneil 8 Daneil "in the third year of the reign of Belshazzar" now has a vision of two beasts Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I got the image from a Google Image page for Lion Image of Babylon. Most of the images don't have wings but a few do and they all look like the other lions except with wings. This one was identified as drecorating the gate of Babylon.Again, the lion is identical to the other Babylonian lions, unless you want to claim that all of them are really Persian.;I don't need the image for my argument, I just tnought it made a nice illustration for the theme, as well as handy to refer to.And your link doesn't go to a picture. I don't think you've proved me wrong about this.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

A little more than halfway down on this page (which I haven't read but it sounds like it might be something you'd enjoy reading, for possible ammunition in this debate), A Skeptic's Guide to Bible Prophecy, you'll find two images of winged lions with human heads with this caption: Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Go to Google Image and look for Lion Image of Babylon. I suspect that's what the writer of that page I just posted about also argues. But no, the first visions in Daniel came while Daniel was IN Babylon, first serving under Nebuchadnezzar and then under Belshazzar, so the images of Babylon would have been quite familiar to him and to all the Jews in the Babylonian Captivity.The winged lion in his own vision did, however, come AS a vision. He would have recognized it, but the point of having a recognizable image would be to serve as an anchor for the whole prophecy, to give a model for how to identify the other beasts in terms of kingdoms or empires. Of course we get lots of other help too as angels keep showing up to explain them to Daniel.Daniel lived through both the Babylonian and the Medo-Persian empires. I need to check but I don't think he lived to see Alexander's conquest, although Greece is identified by the angel as the kingdom that defeats Medo-Persia in Daniel 8. That makes it also the empire symbolized by the brass part of the status in Daniel 2 and the leopard with four wings and four heads in Daniel 7, that is, the third of the four empires in the first two visions. The fourth empire of Daniel 2 and Daniel 7, which evangelicals interpret as the Roman Empire, isn't even named by the angels as I recall, wo that one is left entirely for us to interpret.

I accept the biblical prophecy as authoritative. If it identifies it as specifically Babylonian then it is specifically Babylonian. And I feel no obligation to prove that to you. If you prefer your extrabiblical references, enjoy.

We know the first empire is Babylon. If the visions aren't enough there is the fact that Daniel identifies the time of each of his reports with the ruler he was serving under and tht includes Babylonian and Median and Persian rules, in that order.And clearly the lion image is associated with Babylon enough to have a whole Google Image page on it.That's enough. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Historically the Babylonian empire preceded the Persian empire. Its symbolism even if similar would have preceded Persia's. And the order of empires in the vision has to have Babylon preceding Persia.

The two empires of Daniel 8 are not an assumption, the ram is Medo Persia, I proved it, the shared symbolism is quite clear. and the goat is Alexander's Greece, and the four horns of the goat are still Greece.I'll trust the Bible about Darius the Mede. Historians thought for a long time that no such people as the Hittites existed, then they finally discovered them.You are engaged in destroying known interpretations of the book of Daniel for no good reason. There's no reason to take anything you say seriously.