Christianity and the End Times

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.

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Another one? The angel comes to show Daniel more detail about the events of Daniel 8.

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Yes, it is another prophecy.

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You've got the timing all wrong as usual. The prince who is to come follows the cutting off of Messiah the Prince who is Jesus Christ, but Antiochus preceded Jesus by two hundred years.

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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.

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Antiochus didn't destroy anything anyway, he desecrated the temple with a figure of Zeus and then a pig.

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He successfully attacked the city more than once before that.

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You have offered not one iota of support for the timing you keep claiming.

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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.

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Yes there is no obvious Roman Empire at the moment, but don't worry, we'll recognize it when the time comes.

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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.

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The seventieth week has not been fulfilled by any event anyone can identify between Daniel and the end of the New Testament, or any time since then. It is still future,

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By which you mean it failed to happen in the time allowed. Odd, then, how it agrees so well with the events preceding the Maccabean
Revolt.

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No. Again, your timing is totslly wrong and the character of the prince is sufficiently different from Antiochus, and there was no covenant of seven years made gby Antiochus IV and Antiochus did not destroy the temple and most of Jerusalem and so on and so forth. You have no evidence for your interpretation at all.

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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.

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It really isn't there at all.

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I have shown that it is.

You confuse your favoured interpretation with the text.

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The little horn of Daniel 7 comes up among the ten horns of the Great and Terrible Beast, which represents the Fourth Empire. The first three are Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, the lion that becomes a man, then Medo-Persia represented by the bear, and then Alexander's Greece represented by the leopard with four wings. These three are identified in the text specifically as Medo-Persia and Greece, but the fourth is not named, just referred to as the Great and Terrible Beast.

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The text of Daniel 7 doesn’t name any of the kingdoms, so I don’t know where you get that idea from.

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We know that historically the empire that followed Greece was the Roman Empire. Therefore the little horn in Daniel 7 comes out of that empire. What is your objection to this?

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That the Diadochi kingdoms are the last Empire in Daniel, from Daniel 8 and 10-12.

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The empire that followed Alexander's Greece was indeed a Great and Terrible empire and we KNOW it was the Roman Empire, because we know history, Paul. It is not contradicted by Daniel 8 and 10-12 because they simply focus in on a different subject, the Seleucids and the rise iof Antiochus Epiphanes.

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If they identify this as the final empire - and they do - they contradict the idea that Daniel refers to any later empire.

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You've got two grossly unqualified "messiahs" in place of the great Messiah the Prince,

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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.

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and apparently a minor kingdom in place of the Great and Terrible Roman Empire,

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The Seleucids - which is the minimal interpretation - were quite terrible enough.

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and you've confounded the little horn of the Seleucids of Daniel 8 with the little horn of the Roman Empire of Daniel 7.

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So I disagree with your interpretation- with evidence.

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And you can't even point to any timing from the seventy weeks prophecy that goes anywhere near the time of the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus IV.

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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.

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As for the end times of the distant future, it is foreshadowed at the end of each of those sections of Daniel, chapters 7, 8 and 9, and the final 12. This is where the little horn of Daniel 7 is meant, and Antiochus !V merges into something different in 8 and the prince who is to come morphs from Titus to a future figure in 9, and 12 points to the same future person.

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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.

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But I understand to argue that would mean mustering the relevant verses, so maybe we can do that. Or maybe not. I wanted to mention it here anyway.

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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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For now all I'm going to say is that you cannot make the four kingdoms that split up Alexander's conquered lands, the Diadochi, into the Fourth Empire of Daniel 7, they are consistently identified in the relevant prophecies as GREECE.

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In that case you are assuming a contradiction since the Diadochi are the last Empire in Daniel 8 and Daniel 10-12

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They are the four wings and four heads of the leopard in Daniel 7 and the four horns that supplant the single notable horn on the goat in Daniel 8. They are GREECE, they are not the Great and Terrible Beast Empire. That is ROME.

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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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They are the last small kingdoms, not an empire, nor any one of them an empire, MENTIONED in those chapters, but they are not the last EMPIRE revealed in Daniel: that is the Great and tTerrible Beast of Daniel 7 where the kingdoms you are talking about are identified with the THIRD empire and not the fourth.

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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.

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"Devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces." There is nothing in the four Greek kingdoms that this describes, not even the Seleucids. Their wars were confined to the area of the eastern Mediterranean and were between two antagonists, not the whole world

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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.

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The seven rulers of the Seleucids plus three who tried to take the throne do NOT represent the prophecy of the ten kings of the Great and Terrible Beast, ten actual ruling kings, THREE OF WHOM were subdued by the little horn. FACE IT, THIS IS NOT ANTIOCHUS. It is a similar type of character who has not yet appeared in history.

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Given that the prophecy does fit I think we need a little more than your say-so on that.

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And these warring kingdoms basically just disappeared from history although there are weak remnants of them in Egypt and Syria

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But they lasted well past the time of the Maccabean revolt even though Daniel 8 says that they wouldn’t (Daniel 8:23)

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And more important, they were not succeeded by the everlasting kingdom of God ruled by the saints of the most High which is how the prophecy of Daniel 7 concludes. So if we believe the prophecy, all that must be yet future

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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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That's for the simple reason that it hasn't been fulfilled, that the prophecy so far has only completed the sixty-nine weeks to Messiah the Prince

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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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If the rest succeeded and it did, then the last week will also succeed.

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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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But the Rome of the prophecy is yet future.

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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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The future Roman Empire does have to be recognizably continuous with the original for the prophecy to make sense.

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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.)

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.

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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Something to do with the fact that the Middle East was part of the Roman Empire and mostly Christian too, before Islam took it over.

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Which ought to make Islam a new empire on the list. Arguably at least two, for the Arabs and the later Turks.

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A revived Holy Roman Empire may be a good model for the continuation of the Roman Empire.

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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)

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It's too early to be sure of anything.

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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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There's continuity at least in the Roman trappings of the Roman Church, as the garb comes straight from the Romans, and the title "Pontifex Maximus." It obviously has nothing to do with Christianity.

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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.

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The title "vicar of Christ" could be directly translated "antichrist" since it means "substitute for" or "in the place of" Christ.

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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.

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I'm supposing it's the religious aspects of the Roman Empire that are likely to be the main identity of the prophesied end times Roman Empire, because its primary identity is enemy of God, and the prophecy describes it as different from other kingdoms. The pagan religious aspects would dminate, more than the institutions of government

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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)

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The Popes tend to be too old for many of the characteristics of the Antiochus type of Antichrist who is a leader of armies, so there are things that don't quite fit as well as things that do. Wait and see

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I’d look at Christians in America. It’s the best fit around today.

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Wait and see. Islam could even be united in some way with the Roman Church. Wait and see.

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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.

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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And even your comment about the Messiah coming after the first 49 years needs support. Which of your two messiahs and when did he appear?

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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.

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But since you haven't answered shall I suppose you can't relate your scenario to the seventy weeks prophecy at all?

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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.

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.