Christianity and the End Times

The End is Coming Soon is quite a cliche. There have been numerous occasions in the past where Christians have believed that the end times are almost upon us. And - certainly today - there is no shortage of people prepared to profit from it. We even see daft ideas like bar-codes being the Mark of the Beast (they aren’t).But what does the Bible really say. You won’t find out from those selling an imminent apocalypse.I intend to survey the major end-time predictions and see if they really do match the present situation.Bible Study please.

Daniel is the most important source from the Old Testament.Daniel 2 presents a sequence of four empires, the last of which will be defeated and destroyed by an eternal kingdom set up by God, which will fill the entire Earth. The fourth is commonly interpreted as the Roman Empire (despite the other chapters of Daniel pointing elsewhere).However, the Roman Empire is no more, it’s end usually identified as the fall of Constantinople in the mid-15th Century. The eternal kingdom is nowhere in sight. Arguably the Turks came closest, but I hardly think that Christians would accept that identification.Some prophecy buffs argue for a New Roman Empire but it is somewhat of a stretch to count it as the same Empire when there is no real continuity - and what of the other empires of history ? Why are none of those counted ?But if we generously accept that highly strained reading we still need a New Roman Empire and there is no sign of that since Mussolini.

But the book of Daniel has more.Daniel 7 has another prediction of four empires, ending again in an eternal Kingdom. This time the final Empire has eleven Kings, three of whom fall to the eleventh, symbolised as a little horn. The little horn is a blasphemer who seeks to persecute the saints (presumably intended to be faithful Jews) and change times and lawsIt’s pretty vague - at least to us. However, it seems reasonable to think that these are the same four empires as before - or close enough.Daniel 8 sheds some more light on the matter.Billed as dealing with the end times it tells us that the Greeks will conquer the Persians. The Greek Empire will then be divided into four. This is scene-setting and the end times will come during the latter days of those successor states. The little horn appears again, the king of one of these states. We’re even told that this ruler will end the Jews’ daily sacrifices.Again this points to the past, and it challenges the idea that the Roman Empire is the last of the four. Obviously Alexander the Great and the Diadochi states fit this prophecy very well. The last of those states, Egypt, fell shortly before Rome formally became an Empire - and more importantly Rome plays no part in this prophecy.Those who know the history - even from reading 1 and 2 Maccabees will have a good idea of just who the little horn is meant to be.Of course there is always the dodge of saying that these are future events, but then we would need a new Persian Empire, a new Greek Empire, the Greek Empire to be divided and even then the end is not likely to be that near.

I guess it has some entertainment value but...

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To perform sacrifice rituals there must also be certain items such as the table of shew bread, the golden lamp stand, and the Ark of the Covenant. The late archeologist Ron Wyatt has claimed to have found and seen all of these items and has told leading Jews where they are.

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Calling Ron Wyatt an archaeologist is a joke in itself.And from his website the book explains things including: Nope!Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Daniel 9 has the famous seventy weeks almost universally accepted as a period of 490 years. The start date is unclear, but it certainly puts a limit on things.The time is divided into 49 years, 434 years and 7 years.Christians usually choose the start date so that the end of the 434 year period corresponds - roughly - to the crucifixion because they take the messiah who will be cut off to be Jesus. The rest of the events don’t really fit, so they are ignored. It should come as no surprise to informed readers that they better fit events described in Maccabees.Given the other prophecies of Daniel I think we can safely say that the end of the 490 years was meant to be The End. Of course, even in Christian reckoning, it wasn’t

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So are you saying that all of the prophecy folks simply make up a starting date and ignore the other dates?

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I didn’t say that the date was made up, just that it was chosen (out of all the possible dates) because it works out right for their preferred interpretation. Which is very likely wrong for other reasons.Of course some do start making things up. Some insist that there is a gap between the last seven years and the rest - a gap of nearly 2000 years now. That doesn’t have any textual support at all.

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9:25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.

Here the seventy weeks span is broken up into seven and sixty two weeks or sixty-nine weeks total, leaving out one week, the famous "seventieth week of Daniel." Some have speculated about the meaning of the splitting off of the seven weeks in historical terms, I think having to do with the timing from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem to the end of the Old Testament accounts, or the prophet Malachi, but I'm not sure I'm remembering rightly, but whatever it refers to, the following sixty-two weeks then goes on from there to Messiah the Prince. Clearly the sixty-nine weeks is meant to span the "commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince,"

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Actually it isn’t that clear.Even in your chosen translation it is possible that messiah the prince comes after the initial 49 years. From what I have read this is supported by the punctuation in the Masoretic text which makes it clear that there are two messiahs, and it does make more sense of the division. (In this reading messiah the prince is likely Cyrus, who certainly qualifies as a prince and is called a messiah in Isaiah 45:1 - the Hebrew text using the same word as Daniel 9:25)I already said that it is the start of 9:26 that Christians read as referring to the Crucifixion, and since thst is explicitly called out as occurring at the end of the second period is a better marker than the appearance even if you were correct. So arguing that 9:25 doesn’t refer to the crucifixion is pointless.

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In any case it is certainly a prophecy of the coming of Jesus Christ after a certain number of years from a particular commandment to rebuild Jerusalem after the destruction by Nebuchadnezzar, and not about the events in Maccabees as you suggest.

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So we have another case of Christianity versus the Bible.In fact since Daniel elsewhere identifies the end times as the Maccabean period (see my discussion of Daniel 7 and 8 above for a start) it’s rather unlikely that Daniel 9 will contradict that. Further - as I have already said and we will see - you run into serious problems with the final 7 years. The Maccabean interpretation does not.

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The prince that shall come cannot be Jesus because His people did not destroy the city and the sanctuary. so the best reading seems to be that it refers to the destruction by the armies under Titus in 70AD, forty years after the crucifixion.

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If you investigate the text you will see that destroy is a poor translation, at least in modern English. It is not the only possible meaning and since the city appears to be still there in the following verses...More immediately important this event occurs during the remaining 7 years. I don’t need to tell you that 70 AD is rather more than 7 years after the crucifixion.

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The ambiguity of this verse suggests that the prophecy now extends beyond the time of Jesus to some future time as a double prophecy covering two historically separated events that share some features in common. So the "prince" in Jesus' time could have been Titus, but a prince at the time of the seventieth week the final Antichrist, who will be a Roman.

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This doesn’t make a lot of sense. There is no ambiguity in the verse that leads us to think that it refers to anything other than events in the last 7 years of the 490. It just doesn’t fit Christian ideas of what the prophecy should meanAnd really are you saying there are two sets of 490 years mixed together, where some events belong to one and some to the other with no hint of which is which? Does that really make sense to you?

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And this is where that separated seventieth week comes in. There is certainly plenty of textual support for isolating it as a separate period of time beyond the time of Jesus' coming, and putting it off until the distant future makes sense because it doesn't refer to anything that has already happened.

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Please show us this textual support. Show us the reasons why the count of 490 years should be interrupted for a far longer period than the whole 490 at that time and no other.And it had better be more than it didn’t happen at the time we want so it must be the distant future. Because that isn’t textual support at all. That’s just twisting the text because it doesn’t work for you.

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But the timing doesn't lead to a messiah, it leads perhaps to the finishing of the Old Testament writings if anything

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In your opinion. However, there are many messiahs aside from the presumed Messiah. Every king of Israel, every High Priest qualifies.

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Cyrus the Persian was certainly a prince and is referred to as chosen by God, "messiah" meaning "anointed," which would refer to his being called to help the Jews in rebuilding Jerusalem. But it is probably his decree to rebuild Jerusalem that is the starting point of Daniel's prophecy in chapter 9, so he can't be a messiah who comes after the 49 weeks.

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Or you are choosing the wrong starting point. In fact the arrival of Cyrus, prince and messiah is highly significant to the rebuilding of Jerusalem and an appropriate point to make a division in the weeks. Since the starting point is highly unclear it is possible (I believe it to be the presumed date - before the Exile - of a presumed prophecy that Jerusalem would be rebuilt)

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There is no contradiction at all, Daniel 9 simply extends the revelation beyond the Maccabean period into the indefinite future.

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If it changes the time of the end - as you claim - it certainly does contradict.

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There is nothing whatever about a period of seven years in connection with the Maccabean revolt. The seventieth week remains hanging after the sixty-nine weeks that end with the crucifixion. It is not mentioned at all, the narrative ends with the sixty-nine weeks. The dangling week is picked up again as the story continues with the prince who will come who makes a covenant for seven years. But this prince cannot be Jesus since His covenant is everlasting. And again, there is no relation whatever to the period of the Maccabees. The Maccabean revolt occurred against Antiochus a couple hundred years before Jesus came, and is the culmination of Daniel's vision in chapter eight, which makes a fitting end to Old Testament Israel.

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There is no discontinuity in the narrative. You simply assume one. In the middle of verse 26.

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There is no particular time assigned to the fall of Jerusalem in the prophecy. The prince who shall come is to make a covenant with "many" for seven years, and that didn't happen during that whole period so it has to refer to the future. The seven-year covenant is the seventieth week, not any other historical event after the crucifixion.

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Sure there is a place in the timeline - it comes shortly after the messiah is cut off. Nobody thinks the prince is Jesus (it’s Antiochus)

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You make a bunch of confused statements after this and in fact your whole confused way of dealing with these things, plus your usual accusations of Christians for getting things wrong based on your own errors, makes this discussion with you the usual nightmare. It takes so much energy to answer you I may just have to give up and leave you to whatever mess you want to make of it.

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Let us note the usual empty attacks.

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The textual support for the separation of the seventieth week of Daniel is its being isolated in the text as a separate period of time, and its being left dangling after the sixty-nine years conclude with the crucifixion. The covenant for one week is not related to those events or to anything identifiable in that whole era.

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The seventieth week is no more isolated than the first seven weeks or the remaining sixty two weeks. It is just a division of the seventy weeks, which by all appearances are intended to be continuous.The narrative continues past the messiah being cut off and you can easily find that Antiochus stormed the city and ended the sacrifices and desecrated the Temple. I’ll look up the covenant but everything else is there. It’s not in the seven years following Jesus’ crucifixion.

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No events are ignored and the timing is perfect from one starting point although I forget which. It should be Cyrus' decree and maybe it is but I don't remember. Then too, you have to use the ancient Jewish way of counting years, which gives a year 360 days rather than 365, making up for the difference in some way I forget, and I think may also not count year 0, that is it goes from 99 to 101 skipping 100, or from 1999 to 2001, skipping 2000.

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The 360 day year seems to be an invention of Christian apologists.Aside from the fact that the Jewish calendar has a 354 day year (usually), a fixed 360 day year without corrections would see the Jewish seasonal festivals moving around the (solar year). But as soon as you add in the corrections you are back with ordinary years.

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Yes it is, it concludes with the Second Coming, and that follows the Seventieth Year of Daniel which was not fulfilled in the period up to the crucifixion or any time after that as reported in the New Testament. It must therefore be future

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So the Bible doesn’t mean what it says, because you don’t like it.

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The timeline puts the seventieth week after the crucifixion. Antiochus preceded Jesus by over two hundred years.

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That’s just an interpretation of the timeline. I interpret it as agreeing with Daniel 8 and the messiah who is cut off is the High Priest Onias III

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(Some people do think the prince who makes the covenant for seven years is Jesus. I think they are wrong).

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They certainly are. It’s the Prince of the people who are to come who does that.

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You seem to be determined to interpret things as much against the standard Christian view as possible.

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It only seems that way because the standard Christian view is based more in Christian belief than the text. Since I don’t assume Christian belief I follow the text.

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Messiah the Prince" cannot be some obscure High Priest, we are talking about THE Messiah promised from all the way back in Eden, who is carried through the Old Testament from prophecy to prophecy, and Jesus Himself says the OT testifies of Him.

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Cyrus of Persia is hardly an obscure High Priest. The rest is simply assumption. Cyrus is a messiah and a prince.

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And Messiah the Prince is not mentioned in Daniel 8 anyway. You've utterly misread Daniel 8. It refers only to events leading up to the Maccabean revolt. It's not about all four empires as the other visions are, but only the Persian and Alexander's Greece. It's about a precursor Antichrist figure who is defeated by the Maccabees. It has nothing to do with the Messiah.

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As usual you misread my points. Daniel 8 is about the end times (it says so!) and those happen to be the period of the Maccabean revolt. It is hardly surprising that Daniel 9 would also cover this period, and it fits it better than your idea that it’s about Jesus. Which is why you have to invent a massive gap between the last seven years and all the rest.

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The sixty-nine weeks of Daniel 9 doesn't count anywhere near the time of Antiochus but does count to Jesus' time. And "cut off" refers to the crucifixion, it can't refer to anything else.

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It counts to around Jesus time with your assumed start point. And why can’t cut off refer to anything else. Why crucifixion rather than deposition, exile and murder ?

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The "end times" in Daniel 8 points to the end of the Old Testament dispensation, not to the Second Coming, but because Antiochus is a precursor of the final Antichrist it does point beyond the Maccabees and beyond the New Testament as well to the last of the Last Days.

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Daniel is absolutely not about the Second Coming because that idea wasn’t around when Daniel was written. However, even under your interpretation there’s no reason why Daniel 9 couldn’t be about the same events. Especially as Daniel 10-12 is about them, too.

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I was responding to your identification of the High Priest Onias III as the messiah, but Cyrus is also not the messiah because the seventy weeks start with a decree to build Jerusalem, and he issued one of those decrees so he can't be Messiah the Prince.

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I have been quite clear in saying that I, in agreement with the Masoretic text, interpret the verses as referring to two messiahs. Messiah the prince who comes at the end of the 49 years (Cyrus) and the messiah who was cut off at the end of the second period of 434 years (Onaias). And I have already pointed out that I disagree with the interpretation of the word to restore Jerusalem as referring to a royal decree.

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Nobody is inventing the timing of the seventy weeks to Jesus, it way overreaches the time of the Maccabees no matter which decree to rebuild Jerusalem starts the count. You can't just invent some imaginary prophecy that is not recorded in the Bible as your starting point.

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I’m not inventing an imaginary prophecy that is not recorded into the Bible. The thing I have in mind IS in the Bible. I just need to remember where.

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And there is no isolated seven years of a covenant made by "the prince of the people who is to come" related either to the Maccabean period or to the New Testament period or to any time in history since then. Therefore it has to be yet future.

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1 Maccabees refers to a covenant between Antiochus and the Hellenisers and certainly there are further deals. And I don’t see the lack of a specific record as reason to reject the timescale of 490 years when the rest fits very closely.

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The Messiah is said to be "cut off but not for himself." Jesus was sinless so He can't have died for His own sins, which clearly then refers to the crucifixion for the sake of salvation of believers. "Cut off" means killed.

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Onaias III was killed, as I said. According to 2 Maccabees he was murdered for blowing the whistle on the current High Priest for embezzling temple treasures - to pay the bribe he had promised Antiochus.

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Onias is a pretty paltry Messiah the Prince

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That’s the second time you’ve made this mistake. Onaias isn’t messiah the prince. That’s Cyrus. Onaias is the messiah who is cut off.

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Did Onias' death save anyone? No. But Jesus' death has saved millions and more to come.

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It doesn’t say that the death of the messiah who was cut off would save anyone.

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Any old covenant won't fulfill the prophecy. It has to be specifically for seven years and in the middle of it the sacrifice has to be stopped. Antiochus stopped the sacrifice but not in relation to a seven-year covenant. The final Antichrist will do that.

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Your final AntiChrist will live far longer than 490 years after any start date anyone has proposed.

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We interpret the OT in the light of the New. Even the OT prophets didn't understand many things we understand now because Jesus has come. So we can see the second coming in OT prophecy though they couldn't.

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By which you mean you try to force it to fit your beliefs by inventing convenient gaps and 360 day years and the like.

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the Masoretic text is simply the OT, so it can't say there were two messiahs, it only gives the portraits all the Bibles give and the rabbis interpret them to mean two messiahs.

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Of course you are foolishly wrong. The original text - like your translations - is unclear and can easily read as two messiahs. The Masoretic text adds punctuation which clarifies the meaning (punctuation hadn’t been invented when the original was written). Having two messiahs makes sense of the division while having one does not.

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Neither Onias nor Cyrus fits any of the criteria for Messiah the Prince, THE Messiah prophesied throughout the OT, which is what Daniel 9 is about.

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The only requirements in the text are being a messiah and a prince. Cyrus is both.Your additional requirements are simply your opinion.

The real scholars agree with me that Daniel 9 is about the period of the Maccabean revolt.If you have any real scholars - and that doesn’t mean people who make up things you like - who can show that the Jews had a 360 day year bring them on.Remember to show how they address the problem of the festivals moving around, so that Passover occurs in autumn as often as spring (for instance).