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Author | Topic: Christianity and the End Times | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 433 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Phat writes:
The real issue is whether we can count on outside help. Clearly, we can't. So again, the real issue is whether human nature needs outside help.... The sad part of the prophecy scam is that it keeps saying, "Help is on the way, just around the corner," but it never comes. It's always just out of reach. The Bible does tell us to do it ourselves (build our own ark) but some people prefer to have empty faith that somebody will come to do it for them.And our geese will blot out the sun.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
These are the two leading interpretations - in popularity.
The Maccabean interpretation - favoured by scholars - is that Daniel is about the Maccabean revolt, predicting that God will intervene at the end to set up an eternal Jewish kingdom. The futurist interpretation - favoured by many Christians, especially conservatives - holds that the end times remain in our future more than 2000 years later. Daniel 8 clearly favours the Maccabean interpretation since it clearly refers to that period and explicitly identifies itself as a prophecy dealing with the time of the end. Daniel 10-12 is the same, even the last section of Daniel 11 deals with the wars between the Seleucids and the Ptolomies and Daniel 12:1 goes straight into the end times, when the Jews will be delivered and even the dead will rise (12:1-3) These alone make a very strong case for the Maccabean interpretation. But what if the rest? The dream of the statue is explained as a sequence of four empires, the last of which shall be destroyed by God and replaced with an eternal kingdom supplanting all four. This can easily be read to fit the Maccabean interpretation, giving a sequence of four empires, each one absorbing the previous, and each one ruling over Babylon and Judea, the regions of interest. But what if the futurist interpretation? Their reading favours Rome as the fourth. But that is clearly problematic. First, Rome did not manage to control Babylonia which went to the Parthians. Worse, Rome was destroyed by the Turks. To add to the problems there are a number of other Empires which really should have made the list.Even stating that Rome will - somehow - be recreated is problematic since there is no hint of that in the prophecy. Daniel 7 is more even, since it is less clear, especially on dates. However the fact that the little horn image is used here as in Daniel 8 - and the same person fits both to a degree that is quite surprising if it were not intended - weighs in favour of the Maccabean interpretation. Daniel 9 is the most problematic, but it is problematic to both sides. The limit of 490 years weighs heavily against futurist interpretations since Christians wish to put the death of Jesus at the 483rd year. The fit is not too bad but not exact - enough to be a good point, but not enough to overcome multiple equally good or better points. However, the remaining events did not occur to the seven year schedule, which is a significant point against, and the futurist interpretation is compelled to invent a gap between the 483rd year and the final 7. And the size of the gap is four times the entire duration of the prophecy and increasing. The only significant problem for the Maccabean interpretation is that the middle period is too short by about 60 years by my best attempt (I could have reduced but only by weakening the argument in other ways). However there are strong correspondences between the events of the last week and events that happened in the Maccabean period. In my judgement this prophecy still favours the Maccabean interpretation. But even if I were to judge it a narrow win for the futurist interpretation, on its own it could not stand against the evidence of Daniel 8 or Daniel 10-12 or Daniel 2 individually, let alone all three.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1466 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
there are holes galore in your interpretation but there is this one glaring problem: Where is the everlasting kingdom that was supposed to be the conclusion of the whole thing?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: In fact the text does not offer a clear fulfilment of the seven weeks unless it is the coming of the Anointed Prince, which is my reading, not yours.
quote: Did it ? Do you have any reputable source ?
quote: That’s your interpretation but it has problems. Titus isn’t the ruler of Rome at the time (so not a Prince). Also, the destruction came about 30 years later which seems excessive for a seven year period.
quote: Who you have just said is Titus. Are you expecting him to be resurrected ?
quote: You are confused. If there is no gap between the 483 years and the seven, the last seven years must immediately follow the 483. That is what it means for there to be no gap. You insist that there is no gap. Therefore - if the last seven years haven’t occurred - the start point must be no more than 483 years in our past. And you haven’t suggested one that fits. Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2
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That is not a hole. The prophecy failed, that’s all. It’s not a problem for me.
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jar Member (Idle past 415 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Again, you are creating an issue that only exists in the creations of a Chapter of Club Christian.
Even your quote reinforces the the practice of dogma versus what is actually written in the stories as well as the common apologist tactic of trying to misdirect the audiences attention so they can palm the pea. Jesus said that the end times would happen before THIS generation died. By the time of 2 Peter it was obvious that jess ain't gonna happen. The author of 2 Peter needs to create an apology; a revision to what had been recorded as authoritative as the words of Jesus. And the End Times have been a marketing tool of some Chapters of Club Christianity ever since. And the Apologists have continued to revise the story because and only because they NEED to support and excuse the fact that most prophecy in the Bible stories simply failed or were forced and faked fulfillment.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1466 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined:
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PaulK writes: That is not a hole. The prophecy failed, that’s all. It’s not a problem for me. I anticipated that would be your answer, I just find it hard to believe. Since I believe prophecy is God-given I believe it cannot fail; I also apparently have higher standards for its fulfillment than you do: I have to look for exactness in interpreting the images: I can't accept "ten kings," two of whom never make it to the throne; I can't accept a prophecy of the end of the Babylonian captivity in place of a command or decree --that would have to be made by a Gentile king -- to rebuild the city of Jerusalem; I can't accept two minor "messiahs" when the text specifically counts down to the coming of "Messiah the Prince" who has been promised throughout the Old testament to save us from sin and the evil one; and I can't accept a Maccabean finale to a script that tells me the purpose of all of this is
Daniel 9:24 writes: to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy. And I certainly can't accept the failure of such a promise as this:
Daniel 2:44 writes: And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. It didn't come in the Maccabean period because that wasn't when it was prophesied to come. The seventy weeks count to Jesus' time but then the last week, which has been marked off in the prophecy from the beginning, indicating there is something special about it, the last week isn't fulfilled in that time period. When a prophecy isn't fulfilled we have to look to the future for its fulfillment. It's still future. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: That’s really your problem, not mine.
quote: You don’t have standards. Just excuses. Harsh, but sadly true. As I am sure we will see.
quote: Interesting that you consider God to be inadequate.
quote: You’re just refusing to accept an interpretation that disagrees with yours. The text just tells us that it’s an anointed Princd and Cyrus undoubtedly qualifies for that.
quote: Again, your prejudices are your problem.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1466 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
PaulK writes: ... your prejudices are your problem. My prejudices are actually essential to rightly interpreting prophecy given by God. Anyway. This thread is an opportunity I've needed to explore prophecy in more depth, but it's also an opportunity to see how complicated it is and wonder if I can grasp enough of it to argue it here. I've certainly heard presentations of end times prophecy over the years but none of it has been convincing enough to make me a believer in any particular system, often because there isn't enough exactness in the system, that at some point the correspondences between the prophecy and the interpretation really aren't very clear. In the last few days I've been finding quite a variety of interpretations even among evangelicals and even among futurist evangelicals. Unfortunately I can't spend enough time on them to really sort them out, either, because I have to keep taking breaks to rest my eyes. But all that said, I've found one expositor who is better than most and I think I'll go with his discussion of the beast with ten horns for now. That's this article by John F. Walvoord. He compares the images of the fourth empire in Daniel 2, the iron legs of the statue and its feet of iron and clay, and Daniel 7's Great and Terrible beast with iron teeth and the ten horns that are reduced to seven by the little horn that rises up among them, with the beast in Revelation 13 that has seven heads with ten horns and ten crowns, and another beast described in the same way in Revelation 17 where it is ridden by a woman. The ten kings now appear to reign simultaneously rather than successively, and references to timing in Revelation make it clear this is all happening right before the Second Coming of Christ, so it has to be yet future. If all these beast images represent the same empire, which Walvoord shows, I think we can be sure the earlier prophecies in Daniell also look to the distant future, and it isn't the kingdom of the Seleucids since the book of Revelation was written well after their time. I think I'll say just that much for now
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PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: Prejudice is never a reliable guide to the truth. That’s why you fall for silly nonsense like the stuff Alex Jones pedals.
quote: It doesn’t seem very good to me, first he claims that the identifications of the parts of the statue are in the text, which is untrue. He claims that the ten toes of the statue represent ten kings, but the toes aren’t even mentioned in Daniel 2. To assign them any importance is to go beyond the text. He claims that the ten kings from Daniel 7 are depicted as ruling simultaneously but again, that is not in the text. Obviously he is not distinguishing between the text and his preferred interpretation. That in itself disqualifies his writing as being a good analysis of the text. And of course you won’t hear from him that Daniel 2:43 likely refers to marriages between the Diadochi royal families of the failure of those marriages to bring peace.
As you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they will mingle with the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not mix with clay
(Daniel 2:43 NKJV) Revelation’s use of similar images is not relevant to me. Daniel obviously wasn’t influenced by Revelation, and I have no reason to think that the writer of Revelation had any special knowledge of what the author of Daniel intended. It seems far more likely to me that any reuse of the images is more a reinterpretation of Daniel - or perhaps no more than simple reuse of the images. So I am really not seeing anything there of value. Just a very questionable interpretation with less textual support than mine. If he is the best you can find, I’d hate to see the worst.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1466 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined:
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All the images need to be interpreted in the light of all the others.
Daniel got visions from God which he didn't completely understand, and so did John. That they tie together is due to God's intentions and not necessarily anything to do with what John knew about the meaning of Daniel's visions. Revelation 13 describes the beast that comes out of the sea as looking like a leopard, with feet like a bear and a mouth like a lion -- one beast with the qualities of the four animals represented in Daniel 7: the leopard represented Alexander's Greece, the bear representing Medo-Persia and the lion representing Babylon, plus of course the ten horns that tie it to the fourth beast, which is tied to the ten toes of the statue. Then we've got the woman sitting on this beast in Revelation 17 where its seven heads are said to be seven hills, which certainly means Rome. So there's the fourth kingdom, basically all the former kingdoms put together under Rome. The four empires are treated as a unit in all these cases, first as a definite sequence, and then as all in one: as one mind as it were, or one system of world power in four images all wrapped into one. The inscription on the woman's forehead, MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT, MOTHER OF HARLOTS... is another link tying it all together. The timing just a few years before Jesus' second coming does make this the final empire which is clearly Rome in some form or other. It is yet future, and it is the most terrible of all the empires according to Daniel 7. Of course you don't have to treat these things as prophecy, you can just reduce it all to somebody's overheated imagination and take none of it seriously. But since the text itself describes visions that came to the writers what we are presented is not something anybody made up but something God gave them. If you don't believe that, you'll ignore all the wonderful correspondences and keep trivializing it all, but I believe it and expect the prophesied events that are yet future to appear on the scene eventually, I think pretty soon but I could be wrong, it could yet be far in the future. That one last week of the seventy in Daniel's prophecy that wasn't fulfilled in the years after Christ came, is likely to be the starting point of a seven year period of great tribulation counting down to Jesus' final return. This study we've been doing has oddly enough made me more of a believer in the pre-trib rapture because of the apparent absence of the Church in these scenarios of the end times and the resumption of imagery that is far more Old Testament in flavor than New Testament. I think it's terribly sad that so many who refuse to believe in Christ and denigrate all these things we are talking about could go through something as terrible as the prophecies seem to forecast, but on the other hand it also appears that huge numbers of people who miss out on the rapture will change their minds during the coming times and be saved. That will be the hard way to do it of course. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: It makes sense to interpret Revelation in the light of Daniel, but not the other way around. The author of Revelation very likely knew and used Daniel, but obviously the reverse cannot be true.
quote: And once again you are relying on doctrine. Since I don’t accept your doctrine it is hardly going to be persuasive. In fact it further undermines your claims. The Revelation can’t change the fact that Daniel 8 and Daniel 9-12 clearly place the end times close to the Maccabean revolt. It can’t change the fact that you don’t have a sensible interpretation of the vision of the statue. It also can’t change the fact that the source you need for this discussion is one that fairly and accurately analyses the text of Daniel and deals with the issues. Someone who can’t tell the difference between the text and the interpretation he favours is not useful at all.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1466 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
It makes sense to interpret Revelation in the light of Daniel, but not the other way around. The author of Revelation very likely knew and used Daniel, but obviously the reverse cannot be true. Oh not so. The only way we an know what the statue represents is through the beast visions that come later that also represent four empires, and also the two of Daniel 8 which are identified in the text as Medo Persia and Greece, which clearly reflect the same symbolism as the middle two in the statue and the beasts of Daniel 7, Also Christians understand the New Testament as the key to understanding the Old. God didn't reveal the meaning of many things all at once, we get more information over time to fill out the meaning of everything that came previously. Revelation's images surely cast light on Daniel's.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: Except that the beasts of Daniel 8 don’t reflect the same symbolism as the statue. There is no commonality there. There is nothing goat-like or ram-like about the sections of the statue, nor are the goat or the ram assigned metals. And let us note that references in Daniel can certainly help us understand Daniel. Such as the appearance of the little horn in the two prophecies, letting us identify the fourth beast as an offshoot of the Greeks, and the iron in it links it to the strong Diadochi kingdoms represented by the legs of the statue in Daniel 2. You may disagree with those points - so why should you expect me to accept yours when mine have a stronger foundation in the actual text? (Or is that the reason?)
quote: Which is a doctrinal issue. It’s not surprising that Christians would seek to reinterpret the older texts. It is not surprising that modern Christians would assume that the reinterpretations are valid. It is surprising that anybody would expect non-Christians to automatically accept it. It would be like a Muslim expecting a Christian to accept the use of the Quran in interpreting the Bible. Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1466 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Just the fact that the statue represents four empires, three succeeding the first which we know was babylon, and that the subsequent visions including those in Revelation always represent the same four, is really enough to explain the statue. We've got the two arms of the chest at least, and we have a rather detailed image of the iron legs and feet of the fourth empire. They are all together as one in the statue, and are also represented as one in Revelation 13, the ten horns of that beast being enough to identify the fourth image of the statue as well as the fourth beast of Daniel 7, and if just knowing the sequence of history isn't enough, we also have the fact that Jesus was born in the Roman Empire, and that the prince that destroys Jerusalem after the crucifixion was a Roman, and now in Revelation 17 we have the seven hills of Rome to identify the beast with ten horns in both Revelation 13 and 17.
Christian doctrine is just the most sensible observations preserved as to how scripture should be interpreted.
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