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Author | Topic: Christianity and the End Times | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Firstly I want to point out that my post was not a reply to you, it is a continuation of my series of posts about Daniel. Therefore your angry complaints that my points repeat things you have said earlier are completely inappropriate.
quote: Yes, it is another prophecy.
quote: The prince attacks and desecrates the city after a messiah is cut off, within the seventy weeks. Since nobody did that in the seven years after Jesus died and Antiochus did thst not so long after Onaias died this is evidence that I have the timing right, and you do not.
quote: He successfully attacked the city more than once before that.
quote: That is untrue - I’ve repeated one point above. You, on the other hand have offered no evidence for the massive gap between the 69th and 70th week or for your 360 day weeks or for the assertion that the starting point must be a command from a Persian Emperor. The actual text, therefore fits my views better than the attempts to force it into Christian doctrine. That is WHY I take those views.
quote: Even a recreated Roman Empire would be a new Empire. Besides about the only evidence of Rome you have is a problematic interpretation of Daniel 9, at odds with Daniel 8 and Daniel 10-12 both of which point to th Diadochi kingdoms.
quote: By which you mean it failed to happen in the time allowed. Odd, then, how it agrees so well with the events preceding the MaccabeanRevolt. quote: Obviously the prophecy does not envisage actual destruction of the city. Therefore, as I have argued, destroy is a poor translation. I don’t think we can assert that there was no covenant of seven years - we don’t have complete records by any means. To deal in brief with your list of points. The assertion that the little horn image refers to two different people needs more support. The evidence that the Roman Empire is intended is weak, and contradicted by Daniel 8 and Daniel 10-12. I have already pointed to serious problems with your interpretation of Daniel 9. While you sat that Daniel 10-12 morphs it continues to use the title used to identify the Seleucid rulers (King of the North), the most, then, you can argue is that it refers to a later Seleucid which still places the time before Jesus.In fact if the character is at all different from the historical Antiochus it is quite likely propaganda or the result of prejudice against him. quote: I have shown that it is.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
You confuse your favoured interpretation with the text.
quote: The text of Daniel 7 doesn’t name any of the kingdoms, so I don’t know where you get that idea from.
quote: That the Diadochi kingdoms are the last Empire in Daniel, from Daniel 8 and 10-12.
quote: If they identify this as the final empire - and they do - they contradict the idea that Daniel refers to any later empire.
quote: I have two eminently qualified messiahs. Cyrus is immensely important to the Jews, and Onaias was very important to the conflict between the Hellenisers and the more traditionalist Jews, as shown by the coverage he gets in 2 Maccabees.
quote: The Seleucids - which is the minimal interpretation - were quite terrible enough.
quote: So I disagree with your interpretation- with evidence.
quote: But your timing of the seventieth week puts it nearly 2000 years after the time it was supposed to happen. Not that you have even bothered to examine my timing at all (it’s probably better than you think). Of course I don’t invent my own calendar to try to make it fit, either, which puts me one up on the apologists.
quote: It is where the apologists have to go against the text. Daniel 8 is a prophecy of the end times and stops in the latter days of the Diadochi kingdoms. (Yet the Seleucids lasted a 100 years more and Egypt longer still). Daniel 9 has a prophecy of seventy weeks with no hint of a massive gap. Daniel 11 goes on talking about the King of the North - clearly identified as the Seleucid monarch, right to the end.
quote: Oh, certainly. I can point to Daniel 11:4 indicating that the Kings identified by the cardinal directions in the following text are the Diadochi monarchs, and 11:40 still refers to the King of the North and the King of the South. I can point to Daniel 8:17 identifying that prophecy as dealing with the time of the end. The absence of a gap in the 490 years would not, of course be identified by any verse. Only the presence of a gap should be mentioned - yet so far you have cited nothing to say that there is one.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: In that case you are assuming a contradiction since the Diadochi are the last Empire in Daniel 8 and Daniel 10-12
quote: Perhaps Daniel 7 means to split off the Seleucids as the last Empire, (or maybe you have misunderstood the symbolism). The ten horns can be reasonably read as fitting with the Seleucids.(There were seven rulers preceding Antiochus, and three who had or made claims on the throne only to be eliminated by Antiochus - the usurper Heliodorus and his two nephews) I have no disagreement with what you say about Daniel 8. I simply point out that the Diadochi are the final empire there.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: According to your interpretation. However the Seleucids were not that small a kingdom - at one point much larger than Nebuchadnezzer’s neo-Babylonian Empire, and Antiochus was giving Egypt a hard time. And, as I said there is no room for another Empire in Daniel 8 or 10-12.
quote: Even Rome didn’t manage that, and the later Mongol and British Empires did better - and still didn’t succeed. If it means the whole earth (and it may not) as we have seen in other discussions Hebrew is a bit funny about that.
quote: Given that the prophecy does fit I think we need a little more than your say-so on that.
quote: But they lasted well past the time of the Maccabean revolt even though Daniel 8 says that they wouldn’t (Daniel 8:23)
quote: And if you follow the evidence the prophecy failed. Since I don’t dogmatically insist on Bible prophecies succeeding, that really isn’t an issue for me.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3
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quote: In other words you put part of the prophecy off into the distant future because it failed. That may not be what you meant, but it is what you said. Again, if you can’t justify inserting a massive gap into the prophecy for any reason other than the actual events not fitting the prophecy there really isn’t much point in arguing about the timing. You’re 2000 years out, I haven’t anything that bad.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: It didn’t all succeed, as I pointed out. Moreover, the last week hasn’t occurred to any plausible schedule. Arbitrarily pushing it into the future for no other reason is hardly going to convince anyone who doesn’t assume that Bible prophecy can’t fail.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Then it certainly isn’t the Roman Empire of history which is gone. So how do you keep to a count of four Empires when you ought to be including the past Roman Empire, at least some of the Empires that came after it and your future Roman Empier ?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: How could that possibly happen ? There hasn’t been a Roman state for more than 500 years. That alone is a massive break in continuity. The institutions of the state ceased, the Turks took over and ran things their way. (And the Turks certainly ought to be on the list of Empires, since their Empire was large, long-lived and incorporated both the Holy land and the region once ruled by Babylon.)
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
The so-called Holy Roman Empire was never Roman (or even an Empire) and certainly not continuous with the original Roman Empire. And isn’t calling it the Third Reich a dead give away that continuity has been broken ?
It was Mussolini who was attempting to create a new Roman Empire, but again there was no real continuity. Modern Italy - even then - is just too different.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
That’s just nuts. Islam is not at all Roman. Lumping things together for no sound reason is not sensible and shouldn’t be believed.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: Which ought to make Islam a new empire on the list. Arguably at least two, for the Arabs and the later Turks.
quote: It is ? The Holy Roman Empire is a lousy choice and there’s a pretty big discontinuity between the original and the revival, too. A straightforward Roman revival would be better but still not continuous (not least because the Western Empire fell long before the Eastern)
quote: Unless you are going to propose daft stuff like Roman settlers hiding out in the South American rain forests it is hard to see how you could claim continuity. The institutions of the Roman state are gone. We can be sure of that. There’s no Roman government-in-exile, hanging in from the fall of Constantinople. We can be sure of that. Where is the continuity ? Seriously, for there to be real continuity the Roman Empire must somehow exist now. It doesn’t and we can be sure of that.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: That’s not really a continuation of the Empire, though. The Greek Orthodox Church is arguably closer, being the main religion of the longer-lasting Eastern Empire anyway.
quote: That would be twisting it in a very nasty way. The secular use never meant enemy it meant a subordinate appointed to act in the place of their superior.
quote: But that isn’t really continuity of the Empire. It would be a new Empire with the same religion (which really wouldn’t be the paganism of Jesus’ day - it takes a lot more than vestments and titles to preserve a religion)
quote: I’d look at Christians in America. It’s the best fit around today.
quote: Islam is incredibly disunited (the Sunni/Shi’a split is the big obvious one but there is more). The Roman Catholic Church hasn’t even managed to reunite with the Anglicans or the Orthodox churches. Then there are the basic theological disagreements between. Christianity and Islam. It’s not going to happen in the foreseeable future. You’d have to be insane to think otherwise.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
The main topic includes cases where the standard Christian interpretation doesn’t work. So the fact that you haven’t got a viable list of four Empires is a part of that. More so than my attempt to figure out what the author of Daniel meant by the seventy weeks. We know the end point has to be at the time of the Maccabean revolt - that is solid. The rest is less important
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: If you weren’t too busy ignoring what I wrote - and repeating the same obvious error even after I explained it again shows that you were - then you’d already have seen the support and know. You could even work it out yourself easily enough.
quote: Since you haven’t given any reason to think that Daniel 9 meant to use an uncorrected 360 day year, or any valid reason to suppose that there is a gap in the 490 years, or any valid reason to think that Daniel 11 suddenly changes subject or any reason to think that the actual Roman Empire could make a comeback - despite having far more time and continuing to post to this topic - may I assume that you have no answer ? Sinking to this level is only proof of your desperation.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Anyway the seventy weeks.
As I said the endpoint is the Maccabean revolt with the murder of Onaias marking the start of the last seven years. The case for this is very strong unlike the argument that there are an extra 280 sevens or more that just happened to get left out of the prophecy for no apparent reason. The dates don’t really work out whether through error in the author’s part or a schematic system that doesn’t match actual history. Since the 70 likely comes from Jeremiah’s 70 years it may be schematic (the chapter opens with a reading from Jeremiah). If the 49th year is intended to be Cyrus’ conquest of Babylon then the start date works out to be about right for a prophecy of Jeremiah (it is in the period he was active) as I have previously suggested. The end date, on the other hand ought to be about 98BC. That is obviously wrong, but given that we know the intended end date,the only alternative to assuming that the dates are wrong or schematic is to find alternative interpretations which do fit and I am not aware of any plausible options.
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