The Danielic Imperative, Episode 22

I do a podcast.

I'm not interested in your podcast. The anathema of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone. When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield, exposing the ear and combating the ear.

We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so the next few statements that I'm going to make, I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.

We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style.

I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing. It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible.

Jesus said, Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way, as opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

It is on. We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle.

Episode 22 Introduction and the Danielic Timeline

Okay. Welcome back to our listeners and we appreciate you very much. Thank you so much for listening and for your encouragement. We get your emails and messages and we're glad you're out there. This is episode 22 of the Danielic Imperative, a podcast dedicated to the analysis of the Danielic timeline as a foundational precept of New Testament eschatology.

Through the prophet Daniel, the Lord revealed to us a timeline of the people of God. And six centuries later, Jesus and his apostles reveal the future using explicitly and implicitly Danielic language from the timeline revealed to Daniel.

And it is imperative that Christians understand that timeline in order to understand God's plan for his people. Much of what Daniel, Jesus, and John foretold has already come to pass. But that does not mean that I'm advancing a preterist eschatology here.

Some of what Daniel, Jesus, and John foretold is yet future. But that does not mean I am advancing a futurist eschatology here. If we were to speak of this podcast in terms of the taxonomic hierarchy, that is, family, genus, and species, we could say that this podcast began as a summary of an approach to eschatology that is in the family of Christian eschatology, but neither of the genus of preterism that places the rise of the Beast of Revelation 13 prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, nor of the genus of futurism that places the rise of the Beast of Revelation 13 in our distant or near future.

The eschatology we espouse here is of the genus of historicism, in which the empires of Daniel's visions rise and fall in succession. Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek, Roman, followed by Roman Catholicism, the fifth empire of Daniel's visions.

However, while we are of the family of Christian eschatology and of the genus of historicism, we are a unique species in that we place the rise of the Beast of Revelation 13 much earlier than others. Seventh-day Adventists, among others, identify Roman Catholicism as the Beast of Revelation 13 and place its rise in 532 AD, a date loosely related to the decree of Justinian declaring the bishop of Rome to be chief bishop of all the churches, indicating the Pope's rise to ecclesiastical power.

Some of our Reformed brethren identify Roman Catholicism as the Beast of Revelation 13 and place his rise in 800 AD with the crowning of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III, indicating the civil power of the Pope.

We, too, identify Roman Catholicism as the Beast of Revelation 13, but instead place his rise in the latter part of the 4th century, that is, in the late 300s AD, almost 150 years earlier than even the Seventh-day Adventists do and more than 400 years prior to other Reformed eschatologists.

The significance of the historicist school is that it identifies properly Roman Catholicism as the Beast of Revelation 13, but the weakness of the other species within the genus of historicism is that by placing the rise of the Beast as late as 532 AD and 800 AD, they legitimize many of the demonic doctrines that arose well in advance of that.

As our listeners have learned in our podcasts, we identify the flood of air that came from the mouth of the devil in Revelation 12 -15 as the sudden and stepwise eruption of Roman Catholic doctrine at the end of the 4th century.

This is why the primacy of the Pope, the primacy of Rome, Mary's perpetual virginity, Mary's sinlessness, baptismal regeneration, transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the Mass, veneration of relics, veneration of the cross, votive candles, prayers for the dead, prayers to the dead, clerical celibacy, and so on, all originated in the latter part of the 4th century.

They are demonic doctrines of which we are warned, not only in Revelation 12, but also in 1 Timothy 4 -1. And remarkably, just when all these doctrines emerged, the Roman Empire fragmented into its final configuration of 13 dioceses and uprose Roman Catholicism as the successor of the Roman Empire, claiming to hold the seats of three of those dioceses, fulfilling the great apostasy prophesied by Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2 -3.

We will get into that a little more in this episode, but the point is that the Roman Catholic religion has been around since the latter part of the 4th century, and because of those historical roots, the Roman Catholic religion has been very successful in making the historical argument.

Namely, that because she can trace her roots back to the latter part of the 4th century, why not just assume that she was the dominant religion for the three preceding centuries, and therefore must be the religion established by Christ?

That is the approach of her historians and apologists, and I'll just say it bluntly, Preterists, Futurists, and most Historicists fall right into that trap. If you believe Revelation was largely fulfilled before the fall of Jerusalem, then the Church survived a beastly persecution in its early days and emerged, tested, and tried, as something that looked very much like Roman Catholicism until the time of the Reformation.

If you believe Revelation will be fulfilled in our future, then the Church appears to have been largely Roman Catholic through the Reformation, and has just been divided since then, and in some cases, the theory is that we will need to reunite with Roman Catholicism to fight off some future beast of Revelation 13.

And if you are a Historicist who believes Roman Catholicism is the beast of Revelation 13, and it arose either in 532 AD or 800 AD, then you place the great apostasy anywhere from 150 to 400 years after the development of the heretical doctrines I mentioned, the Primacy of the Pope, Mary's Sinlessness, Baptismal Regeneration, Transubstantiation, the Sacrifice of the Mass, and so on.

And that means by placing the rise of the beast either in 532 or 800 AD, you end up by default including those heretical doctrines in the teachings of Christ's Church prior to the apostasy. In fact, you end up making Rome's argument for her.

I have used him before and I'll return to him here to provide an example of exactly this error. E .B. Eliot is an excellent example of a Reformed eschatologist who considered the rise of the Church as a Roman political entity with the power of the civil sword to be the triumph of the Church of Christ.

In his 1846 Horae Apocalypticae, Volume 3, Eliot saw the rise of Christ's Church to rule the Roman Empire as its new leader as the fulfillment of Revelation 12 .5, a man-child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron.

In his words, the Church of Christ rose first to recognition as a body politic and then very quickly to the supremacy of the throne in the apocalyptic world, i .e., the Roman Empire, a throne which, as thenceforth Christian, might consequently thenceforth, just like Solomon's, be designated as the throne of God.

Again, that's E .B. Eliot, Horae Apocalypticae, Volume 3, from 1846. E .B. Eliot's affirmation of the Church as a Roman political entity with the power to wield the civil sword prior to the apostasy of Roman Catholicism plays right into the hands of the Roman apologist.

It makes it sound like Roman Catholicism was the nominal expression of the Church in the early centuries and the great apostasy, several centuries later, was just an aberration of that. In reality, the nominal expression of the Church of Christ was completely bereft of any trappings of Roman Catholicism and the truth is that Roman Catholicism itself is the great apostasy and we can place that apostasy with considerable precision because we can identify the rise of the Roman Catholic era in accordance with Revelation 12 along with the rise of the Little Horn of Daniel 7 in the latter part of the 4th century.

As we have shown in this podcast, Daniel's prophecy of a 13-way division of the Roman Empire foresaw that the Little Horn would claim 3 of the 13 and rise up among the remaining 10. The 13-way division of the Roman Empire occurred no later than 381 A .D., when the empire was divided into 13 dioceses and by 382 A .D., Roman Catholicism had claimed for itself Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch as the three seats of St. Peter, by then the three metropolitan cities of the three dioceses of Italy, Egypt, and the East, or Oriens.

So, to summarize, the rise of the Beast of Revelation 13 did not occur prior to the fall of Jerusalem, which is the preterist position. It will not occur in the future, which is the futurist or dispensationalist position.

And it did not occur in 532 A .D., which would be the Seventh-day Adventist historicist position, or in 800 A .D., which would be the classical historicist position. It should be placed in the latter part of the 4th century, and we have demonstrated historically why it cannot be placed anywhere else.

There is simply no other possible date for the rise of the Beast. So that brings me to the point of today's podcast. Why trust me? Why set aside the dispensationalist, preterist, futurist, and late historicist positions in exchange for this one?

I will grant that it is new, in the sense that it has not been proposed before, and I'll grant that it is unique. In fact, I don't know of any eschatologist who has ever proposed what I am proposing. But it has something none of the others have, and I'll say this as delicately as possible.

It's scriptural. And therefore, it is not really new. In fact, it is quite ancient. Trust me, I know how that sounds, but I want to take the opportunity to make the case for that claim. And in the end, anyone who proposes something like this, which would require that we abandon all other eschatologies, is obligated to prove it from the scriptures.

And because the Word of God is not both yea and nay, such a person would be obligated to disprove the others from the scriptures too. So let me make the case. The listener, as always, is free to examine these matters for himself and, to put it bluntly, to decide whether my claim originates from arrogance or from passion.

So I want to walk through the scriptural case one point at a time and let the listener decide for himself whether the preterist, futurist, or late historicist position can be reconciled to the scripture.

I understand that every eschatologist who comes down the pike comes preaching that everybody else got it wrong. And, to that degree, I'm no different than any other eschatologist. But, I'll let the scriptures speak to this point.

Let me walk through 13 points in which other eschatologies fail to adhere to what the scriptures teach. Let's start with point one. The narrative of Daniel 7 points to a 13-way division of the Roman Empire, not to a 10-way division.

In our very first episode in this series, we addressed the universal assumption that informs every other biblical eschatological system, namely, that Daniel had foreseen a 10-way division of the fourth empire of his visions.

And the antagonist of Daniel 7 uprooted three of the ten horns and came up among the remaining seven to rule over the earth. That has been the universal assumption since the early church first started writing commentaries on Daniel.

And it was the position of the reformers. And it is the universal assumption of modern eschatologies. The problem, as we have noted several times since then, is that when the beast arises in Revelation 13, he still has ten horns.

And when the beast and the horns make war against the lamb, the beast still has ten horns with him. We know with certainty that the little horn removed three, Daniel 7, 8, 7, 20, and 7, 24 tell us this.

And we know with certainty that the beast still has ten horns with him after he rises, Revelation 13, 1, and still has ten horns with him even as he makes war with the lamb, Revelation 17, 12, and 16 tell us this.

Thus, because the scriptures cannot contradict, the only possible solution is that there were 13 horns to begin with, and the little horn removed three of the 13 and came up among the remaining ten. This becomes even more clear in Daniel's description of his vision, in which he says from the beginning that this is just a summary.

It is not the complete vision. And he doesn't say that about any other vision in the book. But for Daniel 7, he starts by saying, this is a summary. And if you look closely, that is what you will see.

Each successive empire is simply described in the condition it was just prior to the rise of the next empire. And we know from his other visions or experiences that each empire has a major disruptive event in it.

And each one is described after that disruptive event. The vision of the Babylonian empire is described through and after the humiliation of Nebuchadnezzar because the lion is set back on his feet like a man, and a man's heart is given to it.

That's Daniel 7, 4. The Medo-Persian empire is described as already lifted up on one side. That's Daniel 7, 5. And we know from chapter 8 that that refers to the transition to the Persian part of the Medo-Persian empire.

And the Persian part came up last, according to Daniel 8, 3. The Greek empire is described only after it has already been divided four ways. That's Daniel 7, 6. And no mention is made of Alexander. And the fourth empire is described only after it has been divided and three of the first horns have been removed.

And please note, not only does Daniel never say that the first horns were ten in number, he also never says that the little horn removed three of the ten horns. And back in Daniel 2, when the empires are described as the statue, the statue is never described as having ten toes.

And here is the sum of the matter. If your eschatology requires a ten-way division of the fourth empire of Daniel's visions, and requires that the little horn antagonist of Daniel 7 uproot three of the ten horns and come up among the remaining seven, your eschatology is inconsistent with the scriptures.

The fact is, the future Daniel had foreseen was one in which the Roman Empire would be divided into thirteen dioceses. And his summary of the visions simply describes the condition of the empire when the little horn had already claimed three of the thirteen horns, but had not yet risen to rule over the remaining ten as the successor to the Roman Empire.

The thirteen-way division occurred no later than 381 A .D., since we know the Council of Constantinople refers to the diocese in their final thirteen-way configuration, referring to Egypt as a diocese rather than as a province at the Council of Nicaea.

And in 382 A .D., Bishop Damasus of Rome claimed Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, the three metropolitan cities of the three dioceses of Italy, Egypt, and Orient, as the three seas of Peter, and rose up among the remaining ten Asia, Pontica, Thrace, Macedonia, Dacia, Pannonia, Africa, Gaul, Spain, and Britain.

Thus, the thirteen-way division of the Roman Empire was completed by 381 A .D., and Roman Catholicism claimed the three seas of Peter in Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch in 382 A .D. If you listen to Roman Catholic apologists and popes, that is known as the prerogative of the three Petrine seas, or what the popes call a sea of one established by Peter in three places.

That is what Daniel had foreseen, and that means the uprooting of the three horns occurred in 382 A .D. And, in fact, Daniel had seen thirteen horns, but only described the division after three had been removed.

And that leads me to my next point. Point number two. The narrative of Daniel 11 was revealed to us in a single frame of reference. Early in this series, we pointed out that the little horn antagonist of Daniel 7, or Roman Catholicism, the Beast of Revelation 13, is not the King of the North identified in Daniel chapter 11.

We were compelled to do so because it is a widely held assumption that even though Daniel 11 is written about the fall of the Medo-Persian Empire and the rise of the Greek Empire, parts of Daniel 11 verses 21 to 39 and all of verses 40 to 45.

Appear.

Never to have been fulfilled in history and therefore must refer to a future antagonist. And the assumption generally is that that antagonist must be the little horn of Daniel chapter 7. This has resulted in an almost universal assumption that Daniel must have shifted his frame of reference in the middle of the vision, even though there is nothing in the text to suggest that he had changed it at all.

And yet that shifting frame of reference has historically governed our interpretation of the vision. The reason for the unscriptural assumption on the shifting frames of reference is pretty simple. By examining the historical records on the division of Alexander's Empire, it appears that his generals split the kingdom four ways.

Lysimachus took inland Asia Minor and Thrace to the north, Ptolemy took Egypt to the south, Seleucus took Syria to the east, and Demetrius took Macedonia to the west north, south, east, and west toward the four winds of heaven as it says in Daniel 8 .8 and 11 .4.

I call that the Alexandrian frame of reference because it is centered on Alexander's divided empire. From that point forward however, Daniel proceeds to describe a series of wars that took place between the king of the north and the king of the south, and based on the original frame of reference, we should have seen in history a series of wars between Lysimachus to the north and Ptolemy to the south.

Instead, the historical record appears to diverge immediately from the prophetic record, and we find instead a series of wars not between Lysimachus and Ptolemy, but between Seleucus and Ptolemy, that is between east and south.

And that's the problem. Instead of seeing in history a series of battles between north and south, as Daniel had prophesied, we found a series of battles between east and south, between Syria and Egypt.

Thus, to fix that glaring problem with Daniel's compass, eschatologists have traditionally assumed that Daniel changed his frame of reference in verse 5 to one centered on Jerusalem, making Syria the northern kingdom and Egypt the southern kingdom.

I call that the Judean frame of reference because it is centered on Judea. That, at least in the short term, appears to fulfill Daniel's prophecy of a series of battles between north and south after the division of Alexander's empire.

But even under that Judean frame of reference, the historical record diverges yet again from the prophetic record. And we find in verses 40 to 45 another series of wars that do not appear to have happened in the historical record.

So eschatologists have traditionally assumed that Daniel must have changed his frame of reference again, this time to one centered on the future location of the little horn of Daniel, chapter 7. I call that the eschatological frame of reference because it is centered on an unspecified location of a distant future antagonist.

So, in order to understand Daniel 11, we have traditionally started in the Alexandrian frame of reference, as clearly described in Daniel 11 .4, then switched to a Judean frame of reference in Daniel 11 .5 to keep Daniel's compass properly aligned, and then switched again to an eschatological frame of reference sometime later to accommodate the rest of the chapter.

The question is, were we authorized to add the extra frames of reference? Of course not. Daniel said nothing of them, and there is nothing in the text to suggest them at all. The additional frames of reference are unscriptural, and yet they have governed almost all eschatologies, ancient and modern.

The solution, however, is quite simple. The battles described between the King of the North and the King of the South, started in Daniel 11 .5, occurred between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, as the historical record plainly shows.

But they occurred after Seleucids had invaded inland Asia Minor and Thrace, and had taken it away from Lysimachus at the Battle of Choropedium in 281 B .C. From that point forward, for generations, the Seleucids lived, loved, and reigned in Asia Minor and Thrace, and thus became King of the North.

The subsequent battles between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies occupy much of Daniel's vision in chapter 11. And as long as the Seleucids occupied inland Asia Minor and Thrace, Daniel kept referring to them as King of the North.

But Daniel 11 .18 describes a battle in 190 B .C., when the Roman army defeated the Seleucids at Magnesia and banished them forever from Asia Minor and Thrace. From that point forward, Daniel never refers to the Seleucids as King of the North again.

He continues describing the wars between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, but after Daniel 11 .18, he stops calling the Seleucids King of the North, but continues referring to the Ptolemies as King of the South.

And this tells us something extremely important about Daniel 11. There had been no change in the frame of reference at all. Daniel's narrative on the wars between North and South does not begin until after Daniel had foreseen that the Seleucids would take the Northern Territory.

So when he described the battle between North and South, it really was fulfilled in battles between Seleucids and Ptolemies. Not because Daniel had changed his frame of reference, but rather because the Seleucids had changed their location and now occupied the Northern Territory.

And therefore, we conclude from the Scriptures that the titles King of the North and King of the South are territorial and not dynastic. The truth of Daniel 11 is not that the Seleucids are King of the North and the Ptolemies are King of the South, but rather that whoever occupied the Northern Territory is King of the North, and whoever occupied the Southern Territory is King of the South.

But eschatologists have historically interpreted Daniel 11 as if the titles were dynastic. Thus, the Seleucids have been understood incorrectly to be Kings of the North because they were North of Jerusalem, when in fact they were only Kings of the North when they occupied Asia Minor and Thrace, the Northern Territory, in an Alexandrian frame of reference.

And they stopped being called Kings of the North as soon as they were kicked out of Asia Minor and Thrace and went back to governing Syria alone. Again, there was no need for a new frame of reference, as the original frame of reference was working just fine.

And that is our second point. If your eschatology requires additional frames of reference in Daniel 11 in order to make Daniel's prophecies align with the historical record, then your eschatology is inconsistent with the Scriptures.

And that brings us to the third point, which is the boundary between North and South in Daniel 11. Point 3. The boundary between North and South in Daniel chapter 11 is the Taurus Mountains that run along the southern coast of Asia Minor.

This may seem like an insignificant point, but it is of tremendous consequence. Historically, when Daniel 11 is being read through an Alexandrian frame of reference in which North, South, East, and West are relative to Alexander's divided empire, the boundary between North and South is considered the Mediterranean Sea.

In that frame of reference, Asia Minor is North and Egypt is South. When Daniel 11 is being read through a Judean frame of reference, the boundary between North and South is Judea itself. But scripturally, the boundary between North and South is actually the Taurus Mountains.

This is evident not only from the fact that when Lysimachus was king in Asia Minor and Thrace, he controlled only the land within the Taurus Mountains, and Thrace in Europe. He did not control the land along the southern coast of Asia Minor.

That territory was controlled by the Ptolemies, the king of the South. I provided a lot more detail in my blog entry, The Bounds of Their Habitation, but the point is pretty straightforward. The Taurus Mountains form a natural and imposing boundary.

As such, when Alexander's empire was divided four ways, Lysimachus had gained control of inland Asia Minor and Thrace in the North, and the surprising evidence from history is that the Ptolemies controlled not only Egypt, but also the entire southern coast of Asia Minor.

Indeed, that makes the entire southern coast of Asia Minor part of the southern kingdom in Daniel's visions, not the North, as has been traditionally assumed. We have scriptural confirmation of this as well in Daniel 11, 15, which reads,.

So the king of the North shall come and cast up a mount and take the most fenced cities, and the arms of the South shall not withstand, neither his chosen people, neither shall there be any strength to withstand.

If we were constrained to the Judean frame of reference in Daniel 11, we might look for the Seleucids in Syria to invade a city south of Jerusalem in Egypt as the fulfillment, because it says the king of the North shall come and the arms of the South shall not withstand.

The historical fulfillment of this prophecy in Daniel is typically interpreted as the siege of Sidon. Most of the commentaries identify the siege of Sidon as the fulfillment of Daniel 11, 15, but it can hardly qualify as the fulfillment because even in a Judean frame of reference, Sidon is north of Jerusalem, not south of Jerusalem.

And as we know from our previous point, south always refers to the land that is geographically south in an Alexandrian frame of reference. But Sidon was geographically east in that frame of reference, being part of the Seleucid possessions from India to the Syrian Sea.

So what was the fulfillment of Daniel 11, 15? Well, it is surprisingly easy and consistent with what we know of the northern and southern territories at the time. The Seleucid kings controlled inland Asia Minor and Thrace, the northern territory, and came south and sailed along the southern coast of Asia Minor, the southern territory, and captured Ptolemy's fortresses that dotted the southern coastline and, in fact, cast up siege works in the effort to capture Choricesium, the fortified promontory in the Bay of Pamphylia.

And what that tells us is very significant. The boundary between north and south in Daniel 11 is neither the Mediterranean Sea, in an Alexandrian frame of reference, nor Jerusalem, in a Judean frame of reference, but is the very formidable mountain range the Lord placed along the southern coast of Asia Minor.

And not only is this established in the scriptures as the boundary between north and south by Daniel 11, 15, as well as in Daniel 11, 40, which we'll show in a moment, but also it is so obvious to the naked eye that even the Greek geographer Strabo, in his geography, takes note of it.

For the Taurus stretches in a straight course with the sea that begins at the pillars and divides all Asia lengthwise into two parts, thus making one part of it northern, the other southern. That's Strabo's Geography, Book 2, Chapter 1, Paragraph 1.

I'm not suggesting that Strabo is authoritative at all. It is in fact sufficient that the scriptures identify the Seleucid campaign along the southern coast of Asia Minor as a campaign by the northern kingdom against the southern.

Kingdom. But it is.

Significant that the most famous geographer of the Greek era also notices the same thing. The Taurus mountains separated north from south in an Alexandrian frame of reference, which leads to my next point.

Point 4. The last six verses of Daniel 11 do not refer to a future invasion of Egypt by the little horn of Daniel 7 or the Beast of Revelation 13, but in fact were fulfilled prior to the rise of the Roman Empire to succeed the Greek Empire.

Once it is understood that king of the north and king of the south in Daniel 11 are geographic rather than dynastic, belonging to the occupants of the northern and southern territories and not to a particular dynasty, and further that the boundary between north and south in Daniel 11 is the Taurus mountains, the last six verses of Daniel 11 are shown to describe an apocalyptic battle between the occupant of the northern territory north of the Taurus mountains and an occupant of the southern territory along the southern coast of Asia Minor.

By this time in the narrative, which is 67 B .C., Rome is still a republic and the fragments of Alexander's empire are still being plucked up by various people. And Rome is still a republic and has not yet risen to the stature of an empire on the world stage.

It is still the Greek period of Daniel's visions. The Roman Republic had long since gained ownership and control of inland Asia Minor and Thrace and is therefore now king of the north in chapter 11, verse 40.

And there is another kingdom firmly in control of the southern coast of Asia Minor, and their headquarters is the fortress of Choracesium in the Bay of Pamphylia. I am speaking of course of the pirate kingdom of Pamphylia which had been threatening Rome's grain shipments from Egypt and in fact had struck already on the Italian peninsula.

The Roman Republic commissioned General Pompey to put an end to the pirate menace with ships and armies and no sooner had he done so than he received news that two kings to the north in Asia Minor within the Taurus mountains and to the east were threatening Rome's interests.

He was entrusted again by the Senate to engage those two kings and conquered them just as readily as he had handled the pirates. Thence he conquered every territory from Syria to the Red Sea, except Edom, Moab, and the choiceless parts of Amman, and in his final conquest before returning to Roman triumph, he even pitched his royal tent at the Temple Mount between two seas, when the Jews made their last stand against him in Jerusalem.

But alas, such a great man who had conquered most of the known world was assassinated without a fight. As we noted in our series, that is the fulfillment of the last six verses of Daniel 11, and they were fulfilled in the period between 67 and 48 BC.

Julius Caesar became the first emperor of Rome shortly thereafter. Daniel 11, in fact, is related solely to the period immediately following the fall of the Medo-Persian Empire and records the future rise of the Greek Empire under Alexander, the divided Greek Empire under his successors, and the wars that plagued the remnants of the Greek Empire until the rise of the next empire in succession.

As I have noted here, Daniel 11 is narrated in a single frame of reference in which North, South, East, and West are fixed relative to Alexander's divided empire. The titles King of the North and King of the South refer not to any particular dynasty, but instead only to those who occupy land that was either North or South in an Alexandrian frame of reference, and the boundary between North and South is the Taurus Mountains, as demonstrated by both Daniel 11 .15 and Daniel 11 .40.

And on that note, I'll simply say that if your eschatology requires a shifting frame of reference in Daniel chapter 11 in order to understand his vision, then your eschatology is unscriptural because it involves a change of reference frame that Daniel does not give to us in the scriptures.

And that leads us to our next point. Point 5. Daniel 11, 21 -39, refers to Antiochus IV, a Seleucid king, and his evil persecution against the Jews from 175 -163 BC. Now, as simple as that sounds, it is going to lead us to what is probably the most bitter eschatological pill that any of our brethren will ever have to swallow regarding our early historicist position.

But there is no way around it, and the matter presents itself rather succinctly. If the whole chapter of Daniel 11 was written in a single frame of reference, and it was, and Daniel 11 verses 1 -20 has already been fulfilled in the fall of the Medo-Persian empire, the rise and fall of Alexander the Great, and the four-way division of his empire, and the succeeding wars between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies until the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC, and it has been, and Daniel 11 verses 40 -45 has already been fulfilled in the period from 67 -48 BC, with General Pompey's apocalyptic battle against the pirates of Panfilia Bay, and King Tigranus of Syria, and King Mithridates of Pontus, and it has been, then everything in between, that is, Daniel 11 verses 21 -39, has already been fulfilled too.

That seems like a rather innocuous statement, until you realize that Daniel 11, 21 -39, has to do with Antiochus IV of the Seleucid line. Historically, some eschatologists have been unwilling to assign the entire period to Antiochus IV, and assumed some of it must refer to the little horn of Daniel 7 and the beast of Revelation 13, because first, Jesus makes reference to the abomination of desolation as a future event, that's Matthew 24 -15 and Mark 13 -14, and second, under the shifting frame of reference, parts of Daniel 11 are assumed to refer to an Antichrist Roman antagonist, rather than the Greek antagonist to whom the text plainly refers.

But once it is established that the entire chapter occurs under a single frame of reference in the Greek period of Daniel's visions, and we show that the beginning of Daniel 11, that is verses 1 -20, and the ending of Daniel 11, verses 40 -45, are already fulfilled, the middle of the chapter is a matter of simple inspection, and that simple inspection shows that it was fulfilled in its entirety, under the reign of Antiochus IV.

And that means Daniel 11, 31, which refers to Antiochus IV defiling the sanctuary, taking away the daily sacrifice and placing the abomination that make it desolate, and the Jews restoring Mosaic worship, all took place between 171 and 164 BC, and is already behind us.

That's right, it means the abomination of desolation was erected in the temple under the Greek period, and was fulfilled long before Jesus was even born, and longer still, before he even referred to that abomination in his apocalyptic discourses in Matthew and Mark.

As hard as that may be for some to believe, it is nevertheless scriptural, and I'll just say for emphasis, if your eschatology does not allow for Daniel 11, 21 -39, to occur under the Greek empire, as the plain reading of it obviously requires, then your eschatology is not scriptural.

But it gets worse, as we show in our next point. That is point six. The 70 weeks of Daniel 9 is not a messianic prophecy. So here's the challenge. Most eschatologies, and I mean Preterist, Futurist, and Historicist, in some way, take the 70 weeks of Daniel 9 to be a messianic prophecy fulfilled in some way by Christ.