Christianity and the End Times

All it means is that you are good at finding superficial correspondences but even there you come up with a totally false idea of the ten kings and just force it on the argument by ridiculous technicalities -- two kings that never reigned, oh give me a break. No, your idea of what is true is just not true at all, it's a manipulation you somehow get away with even in your own mind, though it involves massive self-deception.To make your ridiculous claims about the Seleucid empire as the fourth beast, and the Maccabean period as the end of the Daniel prophecy, and the two messiahs nobody has heard of, you have to utterly mangle or destroy or ignore the whole seventy weeks prophecy, you have to twist the clear order of the empires that are intended to be identical, you dismiss the obvious twoness that ties together the images of the Medo-Persian empire, you pretend that the four horns of the goat aren't a part of Greece which the goat represents, you ignore the iron of the fourth beast that ties it to the legs of the statue, you try to turn it into the Seleucid empire by some kind of sophistry I can't even fully remember it's so forced and tricky. NO, YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY KIND OF TRUTH IN ANY OF THIS, it's all a concocted deviation from the clear meaning of the prophecies.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've found some good discussions of the ten horns imagery related to the Roman Empire but it's going to take me a while to get through it. As long as both images are included. I'm reading up on some interpretative views and see that at least some of yours is acknowledged, so I guess you are just getting it all from some liberal sources. As long as your ideas make a mess of the seventy weeks prophecy you cannot say you have strong support from the text.I don't see a gap. I see a prophecy of one week or seven years that was not fulfilled in the time span after Daniel. If a prophecy is not yet fulfilled, we consider it awaiting fulfilolment. There is no gap.I'm not sure I can defend the change of context to you although I believe it. As I've been reading through the passages it is pretty subtle. If I run across an explanation that make it clearer I will argue it here.We know that most of Daniel 11 is about the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, that's not at issue. Most of the prophecies are mere imagery we are left to figure out for ourselves, the text making nothing of it.However, if you are including the chest of the statue as the third element, then you have to include the neck of the bear between the shoulders as a third element and the head of the ram between the two horns as a third element. However, two arms are two arms, two shoulders are two shoulders, and two horns are two horns, and the fact that there is a difference between the two in the case of the bear and the ram adds to the correspondence that identifies Medo-Persia. And of course Daniel 8 SAYS that the ram is Medo-Persia so we know the other two are as well. They occur in the image of Greece and nowhere else, as likewise the four wings and heads of the leopard which is also Greece, but you want to separate them from Greece and make a separate kingdom out of one of them using the fourth beast and the legs of the status although that ruins the clearly intended pattern of four entirely different empires, the fourth clearly possessing completely different characteristics from Greece. Yes I got sloppy, but being wrong can be corrected.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I've already lost two answers to this post, one quite lengthy, by failing to save it in case I get the log-in page when I try to post, which unfortunately often still happens, and it happened twice now. I thought I saved it the second time but did something wrong. So now this is incredibly discouraging, but I'll try at least one more brief answer: The seventy weeks prophecy is divided into segments that each have their own fulfillment as well as pointing together to the great finale. 7 weeks plus 62 weeks plus 1 week is the total.The first 7 were the time for the rebuilding of Jerusalem after Artaxerxes' command which sent Nehemiah to the city for that purpose.; He organized the people into families to rebuild the wall, each building a section, each armed because it was in "troublous times." The rebuilding took 7 "weeks" or 49 years.The prophecy then says another 62 weeks will count to Messiah the Prince. Those were fulfilled to before the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus fulfilled the 69 weeks from the initial command to rebuild the city after Nebuchadnezzar destroyed it, and His crucifixion was followed by the Roman general Titus who destroyed the city and temple again. Titus is the "prince of the people who are to tome."All this leaves the one week of a covenant to be made by the "prince of the people who will come."Since that one week was not fulfilled we expect it in the future. And since Titus was Roman, it will be a Roman who fulfills it.That hasn't yet come but since 483 years of the prophecy have been fulfilled you can't say that there are 490 unfulfilled years.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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?

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 And I certainly can't accept the failure of such a promise as this: 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Why am I talking about Revelation? Because Revelation picks up where Daniel left off and carries us through the end times up to the Second Coming, which is what this thread is about.It's really very neat from many perspectives, one of which is that this last book of the Bible is even sort of similar to that last week of the seventy weeks of Daniel in that it is a small portion of the whole, it picks up an Old Testament theme even with Old Testament imagery after a long interlude of Christianity or the "times of the Gentiles" according to the Jewish frame of reference, it comes at the very end and it purports to bring the entire story of Planet Earth to a grand finale.The Bible is just chock full of such beautiful symbolisms and symmetries and correspondences. It's all part of the evidence that it's God's word and nothing human beings could have come up with.Yeah we know about Maccabees and the Seleucids and Antiochus. That all figures prominently in Daniel, but it's there partly to show us how prophecy works and how exact it can be in those wars of Daniel 11, and thereby give us a model for events to come at the very end of time, when Jesus will return and really will set up that everlasting kingdom that wasn't supposed to come in the time of the Maccabees anyway.Next I need to spend some time putting together the imagery of the little horn of Daniel 7 with the prince who is to come and the bad guy in Revelation. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Since it is hard to keep all the particulars clearly sorted out I don't think I'm ready for a full-bore argument on these things. But I can sketch out a few points even if I may have to change some things in future posts. Daniel 8 IS about the Maccabean period, nobody I've run across disputes that. And there is no shift in the text to indicate a future fulfillment either. Some commentators nevertheless argue that the portrait of Antiochus is also a portrait of the future Antichrist, probably because of the reference to the time of the end. Martin Luther was one who held that view, Calvin disagreed with him. Other passages do connect Antiochus with a future similar personality, however, so the connection is justifiable. The last section of Daniel 11, from 11:36 on, is considered by futurists to be a shift from Anticiochus to the future Antichrist. They are similar personalities, for sure, but the specific description of the one in this section was quoted by Paul in a way that specifically identifies him with a future Antichrist:Here's the passage: And here's Paul: Luther identified this passage as definitive of the papacy. In any case it takes the characteristics imputed to Antiochus and points them to a future fulfillment, another personality similar to him, which we refer to as the coming Antichrist.Somewhere I ran across the mention of a coin Antiochus had made for himself on which he gives himself the title Theos Epiphanus, which was translated "God manifest."Jesus also takes Antiochus and his time as pointing to a future fulfillment: Clearly a future abomination of desolation even if Antiochus did something similar. Yes they are very similar characters. But they come from different kingdoms so they are not the same. I also showed that Revelation identifies the same fourth kingdom as different from Greece.And I've shown above that Jesus and Paul both indicate a future fulfillment of the time of Antiochus, his character and the act of placing the abomination of desoluteon. Even if you don't recognize a shift in the text at Daniel 11:36 these two references make the point that there is to be a future Antiochus typeI'd also point out that the fourth beast/kingdom is said to be different from ALL OTHER KINGDOMS. I don't think that describes the Seleucids. It's not clear what it describes -- yet. The Seleucids also did not rule the entire world.I'll have to come back to your last paragraphs because I'm getting too tired.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Not feeling well, going to take your posts in pieces for now, starting with whichever issues I can answer most simply.============================= But I don't see how this is related specifically to the Fourth Beast which you identify with the Seleucid kingdom and futurists identify with the Roman Empire. For starters, Hellenization was a product of the spread of Greek culture to the wnole area conquered by Alexander, certainly not confined in any way to the Seleucids.The Fourth Beast is said to be different from all other, or even ALL kingdoms. There was nothing substantively different about the Greek empire, or the Seleucids in particular, but this is what the description suggests. Something that doesn't look like any other kingdom we've ever seen. Seems to me there is nothing about the Roman Empire that is specifically different in that way either, but since we look to a future Roman Empire we need to expect it to be different from all other kingdoms.This is probably indicated in the image of the statue, the iron legs being the Roman Empire we know, the feet and toes of both iron and potter's clay hinting at something different yet to come.Hellenization in any case is not a special quality of the Greek Empire itself, which is in all its basic forms and functions was like all other kingdoms. As I read the description of the fourth beast it suggests a major difference in those forms and functions, the basic operations of a kingdom or empire. Seleucia never ruled over any more of the Greek lands than the Syria and Judea it started out ruling after Alexander's death. At the very least the concept of the "whole world" has to refer to the whole area conquered by Alexander.And certainly Augustus' decree that all the world be taxed applied to the entire area under Roman rule. Not the entire planet but a substantial portion of it at that time.In any case I read the phrase in connection with the future fourth beast or empire which probably will rule the entire planet.

What are you talking about? The four are obvious in the statue and Daniel 7 and the beast in Revelation 13 -- and yes Revelation counts as does the entire New Testament, you have no justification to exclude it. FOUR DISTINCT SECTIONS OF THE STATUE, FOUR DISTINCT BEASTS IN DANIEL 7, FOUR BEASTS REPRESENTED IN THE ONE BEAST OF REVELATION 13. Your attempt to mangle the futurist point of view is even worse than the way you mangle the entire prophecy to invent your Maccabean scenario. The four kingdoms are OBVIOUS. Stop this misrepresentation.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I haven't seen a truly good point yet in all your juggling of the prophecies to make them come out over a hundred years before the coming of Jesus Christ. From the decree of Artaxerxes that sent Nehemiah to Jerusalem ti rebuild the walls, the 483 years counts to 38 AD. That is really awfully close. Not exact, no, but close enough to suggest that there is an exact way of computing it if we have the right historical perspective. In any case nothing in the seventy weeks goes anywhere near the period of the Maccabees. We don't feel "compelled" to put the seven years to the future at all, we feel it is a wonderful revelation of how God works that it was so clearly left unfulfilled so that it has to be yet future. That fact allows for a truly magnificent grand finale of Planet Earth instead of your trivial puny manipulated little excuse for a finale that applies only to the Jews and didn't happen anyway and doesn't fit any part of the seventy weeks prophecy, and has to blur the fourth beast together with the third and cram the final Antichrist into Antiochus Epiphanes and has two bogus "messiahs" in the place of Jesus Christ the Savior of all mankind, who will come at the end of those separated seven years whether you like it or not.

This must be a case of your making so little sense I haven't been able to answer, especially if there are other things I can answer.For the count to stop at four? The count of empires? But it stops at four because the prophecies stop at four, I don't have anything to do with that. Four sections of the statue, four beasts in Daniel 7. Scripture identifies four and only four. What omissions? I don't need an explanation for what the Bible says. The Bible gives four empires, period.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.