Continuing discussion of the beasts and an examination of end times theology (Daniel 7:6)

Daniel 7 and the Opening Prayer

Yeah, they can't get the piano. Yeah, I'm on. Welcome to Kootenai Community Church Adult Sunday School.

We will be back in the book of Daniel, Daniel chapter 7.

Let's open in prayer. Father, the world today is in disarray, but only from our perspective, from the perspective of human thought. It is exactly where you want it to be right now. And for that, we are so grateful.

We know that there is nothing that escapes your strength or your ability. And so we look to you through the scripture to instruct us how to live in these times in a way that will honor and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ and that you can use to turn hearts to Christ.

This morning as we look into your word, give us clarity and an ability to understand, to be illuminated, and to obey. For we want to honor you in all we do, in Jesus' name, amen. So how many of you have friends that don't see what's going on around you today?

Yeah, I shouldn't pause. Some of you said, nope, no friends. Had one of them once, it was overrated. How many of you have friends who don't see what's going on around them, what's happening?

Yeah.

Sure, a show of hands would be fine, but I think you all know what I'm talking about. And Jim and I were talking a little bit about this morning, he has a kind of a little pithy statement that the world is, this isn't exactly how he puts it, but the world is collapsing right on schedule.

But so many don't see it. We need to remember why they don't see it, and that we are not special people for seeing.

It.

Because if we did not have our minds opened by Christ to trust the gospel, and to see the spiritual things, to see spiritually, we wouldn't see it either. It is hidden from those with darkened minds, it says in 2 Corinthians, and I am just grateful, and hopefully remain humble about the fact that I see what's going on around us.

In 2 Corinthians, verse 12, now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no man.

So we see these things going on, we connect them with the scriptures, because the Word of God, the Spirit of God has opened our hearts and our minds to the Word of God. So and I'm grateful for that, and we're going to be looking more and more into Daniel.

Today we're going to talk, we'll get probably through one verse, and then we're going to talk about eschatology. Another man I was talking to this morning, he pointed out that the interest in eschatology increases as the world collapses.

And it's something that I sadly did not study. I've been studying the Bible for 40 plus years, and it was never a real topic of study for me until recently, until the last couple of years. And I've come to realize that there's a tremendous amount there that I may never wrap my mind around, but I'm going to give it my best shot.

And so I thought that maybe there might have been others who hadn't studied it as diligently as they should have. So one of the things we're going to do, a couple of the things we're going to do as we're walking through this section of Daniel, is we're going to look at end times and eschatology and the different views and how they line up.

And we'll do some charts and it'll be fun. And you can draw on the charts if you want, put mustaches on the animals. So this morning we'll start out by reading Daniel chapter 7 verses 1 through 8.

So if you'll open to Daniel chapter 7 with me to give us our current context.

Daniel 7:1-8 and the Four Beasts

In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream and visions in his mind as he lay on his bed. Then he wrote the dream down and related the following summary of it. Daniel said, I was looking in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts were coming up from the sea, different from one another.

The first was like a lion and had the wings of an eagle. I kept looking until its wings were plucked, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man. A human mind also was given to it.

And behold, another beast, a second one, resembling a bear. And it was raised up on one side, and three ribs were in its mouth between its teeth. And thus they said to it, Arise, devour much meat. After this I kept looking, and behold, another one, like a leopard, which had on its back four wings of a bird.

The beast also had four heads, and dominion was given to it. After this I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrifying and extremely strong, and it had large iron teeth.

It devoured and crushed and trampled down the remainder with its feet. And it was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. While I was contemplating the horns, behold, another horn, a little one, came up among them.

And three of the first horns were pulled out by the roots before it. And behold, this horn possessed eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth uttering great.

Boasts.".

So last week we looked at a reintroduction, if you will, to Daniel, because the last time we had been together was in November of last year. And then we made it through verse 5, and we looked at the idea that the first beast was Babylon and corresponded, this section of Daniel corresponds well with chapter 2 and the image that Nebuchadnezzar set up.

And then we looked at the bear, which would be the second beast, and it is a representation of the Medo-Persian Empire. So today we'll be looking at the third beast, and then we'll be getting into a bit of discussion about end times and eschatology.

So Daniel chapter 7, verse 6, after this I kept looking, and behold, another one like a leopard, which had on its back four wings of a bird. The beast also had four heads, and dominion was given to it.

Something I discovered last week. I think my eyes are getting worse. I'm going to have to start doing my lesson in 16 font or 18 font. Or maybe this table got farther away. Yeah, that could be it. So the leopard was a much less powerful beast than the lion or the bear, but far swifter.

The wings imply even greater speed, and this is evident in the speed with which Alexander subdued the ancient world. For it is Alexander's Greece that this animal is equated to. Alexander had the fastest moving army ever known at that time.

The Greeks conquered 11 ,000 miles of territory from Greece to India in eight years. They didn't just drive 11 ,000 miles, they conquered it. This beast parallels the belly and thighs of bronze in Nebuchadnezzar's dream.

Now after Alexander's death, the kingdom divided into four separate territories. Jerome and Calvin believed the four successors were Ptolemy, Seleucus, Philip, and Antigonus. Modern scholars generally hold to the view that 22 years after Alexander's death, when Antigonus was overthrown at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC, the kingdom devolved to Lysimachus, who held Thrace and Bithynia, Cassander who took over Macedonia and Greece over in the center there, Seleucus who took Syria, Babylonia, and Eteria's territories east into India, and Ptolemy who controlled Egypt, Palestine, and Arabia.

So he controlled way over on the other side there. The four heads, four wings imagery clearly lends itself to this understanding and history bears out Daniel's accuracy. Despite this however, there are some who hold different views.

One scholar holds that the four heads represent the four corners of the earth, but the historical aftermath of Alexander's Greece is too clear and bears out Daniel's prophecy as one which shows that Greece was divided into four kingdoms.

The thought that Persia was represented by this beast has no foundation at all. It is pure supposition. There is nothing in history that indicates Persia was divided into four separate kingdoms. The Medo-Persian kingdom for certain represented by the second beast, the bear.

Four Views of End Times Theology

At this point, and only because I haven't done it since or before, I thought it might be appropriate to look at the four main ways of interpreting the end times eschatology. We will not be able to address all the shades of each method.

Volumes and volumes have been written. And it's funny, I was thinking about this the other day. Sometime I'm going to count up the number of words in the book of Daniel and then I thought I might just attempt to count up some of the words that have been written about the book of Daniel.

And then I realized that's not going to happen. I'm at, so far through chapter 7, I'm at 70 ,000 words in this syllabus I'm creating. And that's because I never use a sentence when a paragraph will do.

And it's just interesting that so much has been written and in many ways we are still, we're not in the dark, but we are still at odds with each other to some degree over how all this ties up. So, and I'll say it again, the four main ways of looking at it are ways that believers have ascribed to.

There are believers who ascribe to each of these four main ways. We're not talking about non-salvation person's view of the end times. We're talking about saved people's view of the end times. And it's just like politics.

We can hold passionate differences of opinion. I would ask you to be judicious in your comments as we go through these. I'm going to try and give a clear understanding as much as I can of each of the four views.

If you think I've missed something, go ahead and speak up. So it must be said at the outset that the theology that is used to come to each of the views is not a theology that is used to come to heretical teachings.

These are not heretical teachings. There are serious, believing, saved scholars who are in each of the four camps. Actually, there's more than four, but there's four main ones. We must understand that this theology is not salvific.

Proponents of a view different than the one you might hold are not teachers of heresy necessarily. They are likely blood-brought brothers and sisters who love the Lord Jesus Christ just.

As you do.

That said, we're going to launch into this. Oh yeah, that's the division of Alexander's empire, because I'm not paying attention to my own syllabus here. As you can see, it divided up.

Okay.

There are four methods, and the four methods are, I'll just read those, the four main, dispensational premillennialism, historical premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism, also termed nunc millennialism or inaugurated millennialism, and when we get to that, I'll explain the terminology.

Dispensational Premillennialism

So dispensational, dispensational. Why does the one I belong to have to have the worst name? DPs hold that Christ will come before a seven-year period of intense tribulation. I'm going to be bouncing around on our, here we go.

There's dispensational. And if anybody wants these charts, just email me and I'll send them to you. They're on the internet, and I've left attributions so you can see it, where they came from, but I'll be glad to send them to you.

DPs hold that Christ will come before a seven-year period of intense tribulation to take his church, living and dead, into heaven. After this period of fulfillment of divine wrath, he shall then return to rule from a holy city, the New Jerusalem, over the earthly nations for 1 ,000 years.

After these 1 ,000 years, Satan, who was bound up during Christ's earthly reign, will be loosed to deceive the nations, gather an army of the deceived, and take up to battle against.

The Lord.

The battle will end in both the judgment of the wicked and Satan, and the entrance into the eternal state of glory by the righteous. This view is called premillennialism because it places the return of Christ before the millennium, and it is called dispensational because it is founded in the doctrines of dispensationalism.

So the favored method of interpretation is literal, strict literal. Israel and the church, this views the church and Israel as two distinct identities with two individual redemptive plans, not that they're saved differently, but the result of their salvation occurs and results in different rewards and different placements in the eternal structure.

This is not to say that they are redeemed or saved differently, but that the promises made in the Old Testament to redeemed Israel are different than the promises made to the redeemed church. The rapture of the church is the church's rapture before a seven-year tribulation, the 17th week of Daniel, which is in Daniel chapter 24 through 27, or excuse me, Daniel chapter 9.

You didn't know it had 24 chapters, did you? Daniel chapter 9, 24 through 27. This tribulational period contains the reign of the Antichrist. Regarding the millennium, Christ will return at the end of the great tribulation to institute a thousand-year rule from the holy city, New Jerusalem.

Those who come to believe in Christ during the 70th week of Daniel, including the 144 ,000 Jews, they will survive and go on to populate the earth during this time. Those who were raptured or raised previous to the tribulational period will reign with Christ over the millennial population.

Miscellaneous issues, higher degrees of interpreting present-day events in the light of end-times prophecy. The millennium will see the reestablishment of temple worship and sacrifice as a remembrance of Christ's sacrifice.

And from the millennium-ending White Throne Judgment, by which Satan and all unbelievers will be thrown into the lake of fire, Christ and all saints will proceed into eternal glory. Major proponents would be John Walvoord, Charles Ryrie, Louis Barry Schaeffer, J. Dwight Pentecost, Norman Geisler.

A strictly liberal hermeneutic is foundational to the dispensational pre-millennialist.

Viewpoint.

Interpreting scripture in this manner will, in fact, demand such perspectives unique to dispensationalism as this, an earthly kingdom of God from which Christ will reign, a future redemptive plan for national Israel, a seven-year period of great tribulation, the rejection of prophetic idiom.

Dispensational pre-millennialism will hold that a seven-year tribulation between Daniel set in 927, foreseen, I should say. See, I can't read it.

That's far away.

Foreseen in Daniel 927, that millennium will precede a thousand-year period, a seven-year tribulation will precede a thousand-year period, which is in Revelation 20, during which time Christ will reign on the throne of David, Luke chapter 1, verse 32.

Immediately previous to the time of great tribulation, all the dead saints will rise from their grave, and all the living members of the church shall be caught up with them to meet Christ in the clouds.

This is known as the rapture. During this time of tribulation, there will be three-and-a-half years of world peace under an Antichrist figure who will establish a world church, followed by three-and-a-half years of greater suffering.

At the end of this period, Christ will return, judge the world, and bind Satan for 1 ,000 years, and raise the Old Testament and tribulation saints from the dead. At this time, the millennial reign will begin, and Christ will reign politically over the earth from his capital in Jerusalem.

Throughout his reign, there will be no war, and even the natures of animals will dwell in harmony with humans. At the end of this era of peace, Satan will be released and instigate a colossal but futile rebellion against God.

After this fated battle, Satan and the wicked are cast into the lake of fire, while the righteous proceed into their eternal state in the realm of the new heaven and the new.

Earth.

So that is a basic overview of PD, premillennial dispensationalism. Any questions about that, or additions?

Jim?

It's the same in the Old Testament, but there have been premillennial dispensationalists in the history of the church who have denied that, and taught that Israel was saved by. They made that distinction between the two teachings, and there are some people who today say that the Gentiles are saying what he said is true.

And there is also a mid-tribulation.

Pre-now.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, anyway, as I mentioned earlier, this is going to be a basic overview of each of the four main views, but there are all kinds of shades, and one of the best ways to find out what someone else who believes in a different method of eschatology than you do, is to ask.

Them.

Because a lot of accusations are made over the millennia, over the years, over the centuries, that were just based on opinions, and not actually finding out what somebody taught actually taught. Some people have said that predispensational millennialism is a negative way of looking.

At things.

I think it's, personally, I have a very positive outlook at the end times. So, anything else about pre-millennial?

PD?

Historical Premillennialism

Now we're going to look at HD. Historical pre-millennialism. And if anybody wants this section of the notes, I can email it to you. It has all the scripture references for each view, so you can see where people came to these conclusions.

Historical pre-millennialists placed the return of Christ just before the millennium, and just after a time of great apostasy and tribulation. After the millennium, oh, boy, I really went somewhere, didn't I?

Okay, guys, you might have to help me. I've got to figure out where this other one is. And it's not working again. Oh, I was tapping it. Well, I'm going to read while they figure it out. Historical pre-millennialists placed the return of Christ just before the millennium, and just after a time of great apostasy and tribulation.

After the millennium, Satan will be loosed, and Gog and Magog will rise against the kingdom of God. This will be immediately followed by the final judgment. While similar in some respects to the dispensational variety, in that they hold to Christ's return being previous to the establishment of a thousand-year earthly reign, historical pre-millennialism differs in significant ways, notably in their method of interpreting scripture.

So the features and distinctions are the favored method is grammatico-historical. Regarding Israel and the church, the church is the fulfillment of Israel, in this particular.

View.

The kingdom of God is present through the Spirit since Pentecost to be experienced by sight during the millennium after Christ's return. Regarding the rapture, the saints living and dead shall meet the Lord in the clouds immediately preceding the millennial reign.

And regarding the millennium, Christ will return to institute a thousand-year reign.

On earth.

The millennium will see re-establishment of temple worship and sacrifice as a remembrance of Christ's sacrifice. So the major proponents of this view were George Eldon Ladd R., Walter Martin, John Warwick Montgomery, and Theodore Zahn.

A synopsis of this, the historical pre-millennialism, those guys, interprets some prophecy in scripture as having literal fulfillment while others demand a semi-symbolic fulfillment. As a case in point, the seal judgments in Revelation 6 are viewed as having fulfillment in the forces in history rather than in future power, excuse me, in future powers, by which God works out his redemptive and judicial purposes leading up to the end.

Rather than the belief of an imminent return of Christ, it is held that a number of historical events, the rise of the beast and the false prophet, must take place before Christ's second coming. This second coming will be accompanied by the resurrection and rapture of the saints.

This will inaugurate the millennial reign of Christ. The Jewish nation, while being perfectly able to join the church in the belief of a true faith in Christ, has no distinct redemptive plan as they would in the dispensational perspective.

The duration of the millennial kingdom is unsure, literal or metaphorical. So those are some of the distinctives of historic pre-millennialism. There you go. I'm going to leave it to you guys. Except I made it too big, didn't I?

That's okay. Any questions or additions or suggestions about historic?

Yes, Paul? Right.

Okay.

Everyone catch that? And again, there are all kinds of shades of each of these views. Don't you? This is a time in my life when I really appreciate the fact that 2 plus 2 really is 4. However, it's a fun study.

Postmillennialism and Preterism

Post-millennialism. Now, when I say something like, the post-millennialist believes, remember that there are shades. And some don't believe ascribed to everything I'm about to say, but to most of it.

Oops, I just hit a button.

There we go.

The post-millennialist believes that the millennium is an era, not a literal thousand years, during which Christ will reign over the earth, not from a literal and earthly throne, but through the gradual increase of the gospel and its power to change lives.

After this gradual Christianization of the world, Christ will return and immediately usher the church into their eternal state after judging the wicked. This is called post-millennialism because by its view, Christ will return after the millennium.

The features and distinctions, the favored method of interpretation is covenant historical. Israel and the church, they believe, most of them believe the church is the fulfillment of Israel. Regarding the kingdom of God, it is a spiritual entity experienced on earth through the Christianizing effect of the gospel.

Regarding the millennium, it is a golden age previous to Christ's second advent during which Christ will virtually rule over the whole earth through an unprecedented spread of the gospel. The large majority of people will be Christian.

Some miscellaneous issues in it. They use higher degrees of interpreting first century event in light of prophecy. Preterism often goes hand in hand, often goes hand in hand with post-millennialism.

Preterism, yes, some of us believe that. I'm not getting into, I'm still working on that.

This morning I'm just giving overviews of the different views.

Right.

I wouldn't disagree. But again, this morning I'm not holding judicial overview of these. I'm just giving the different views so that we all know what people hang their views on.

So, and we'll cover the other one too.

Jim.

Preterism.

A lot of it is, right, some of it is due to symbolic interpretation, which we discussed earlier on. So, yes, a lot of them are, yes.

Right.

And that's the beauty of this. There are 26 ,000 different views of post-millennialism. So, let's see, higher degrees.

Preterism.

A view in, what preterism is, for those who may not know, is a view in Christian eschatology which holds that some or all of the biblical prophecies. Oh, I'm having trouble with every word this morning.

Post-millennialism did that to me. It is a view in Christian theology that holds that some or all of the biblical prophecies concerning the last days refer to events which took place in the first century after Christ's birth, especially associated with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A .D.

The term preterism comes from the Latin praeter, meaning past, since this view deems certain biblical prophecies as past or already fulfilled.

Not all, some, or all of them.

There will be different shades of views. Of the several versions of post-millennial eschatology, the Reconstructionist seems to be gaining the most popularity in the world today. So, Christian Reconstructionism is also known as theonomy and is generally post-millennial.

Catch my terms here. Generally post-millennial. It is a highly controversial movement within some conservative Christian circles. It maintains that the world should be brought under reconstructed lordship of Jesus Christ in all areas, social, moral, political, judicial, military, family, art, education, music, etc.

The Christian Reconstructionism advocates the restoration of Old Testament type mosaic form and that the three main areas of society, family, church, government, should all be biblically modeled, the Bible being the sole standard.

This would include severe punishments for lawbreakers. Some Christian Reconstructionists would advocate death for adulterers, abortionists, some, I did say some, idolaters, murderers, homosexuals, rapists, etc.

Major proponents, Rush Dooney, Greg Banson, Kenneth Gentry, David Children, and Gary North. Some issues with it, some other information about it. There are several different versions of post-millennialism.

But one of the views gaining the most popularity is that of the theonomist. Generally speaking, the post-millennial theonomist viewpoint holds to a partial preterist interpretation of Revelation and the various judgment prophecies in the Gospels, believing that the majority of those prophecies were fulfilled in 70 A .D. at the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

The post-millennialist sees the Millennial Kingdom as the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham that he would become a great nation and that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him, Genesis 12.

This Holy Reign will come about via gradual conversion rather than pre-millennialism's cataclysmic Christological event, Advent. Come about through that, through the spread of the Gospel. This instrumental process, this incremental process is drawn from many pictures found in Scripture, in Deuteronomy 7 and in Ezekiel 47.

Post-millennial optimism is also nurtured through many of the prophetic psalms. The psalms often speak of all nations fearing him, salvation being known among all nations, the ends of the earth fearing him, etc.

And I have a list of the psalms here. Another passage that well feeds this earthly optimism is Isaiah 2 in which the nations will stream to the righteousness of God. So, as it has been pointed out, there seem to be some clear departures from hard and fast Scripture.

Remember that many of these, several of these views spiritualize a lot of Scripture and that is where you will come up with these differences. Any other questions or comments? Okay, the last one is Amillennialism, also termed Nunc Millennialism or Inaugurated Millennialism.

Amillennialism and the Already-Not-Yet Kingdom

And when I say the Amillennialist believes, I don't mean 100 of them. The Amillennialist believes that the kingdom of God was inaugurated at Christ's resurrection, hence the term Inaugurated Millennialism, at which point he gained victory over both Satan and the curse.

Christ is even now reigning, hence this term Nunc Millennialism, Nunc means now, at the right hand of the Father over his church. After this present age has ended, Christ will return and immediately after the church, excuse me, immediately usher the church into their eternal state after judging the wicked.

The term Amillennialism is actually a misnomer for it implies that Revelation 20 is ignored. In fact, the Amillennialist hermeneutic interpts it and in fact much of apocalyptic literature non-literally.

So, some of the features and distinctions, their favored method of interpretation is redemptive historical. Regarding Israel, the church, most of them, if not all, believe that the church is the eschatological fulfillment of Israel.

Regarding the kingdom of God, it is a spiritual reality that all Christians partake in and that is seen presently by faith but will be grasped by sight at the consummation. Regarding the rapture, the saints living and dead shall meet the Lord in the clouds and immediately proceed to judge the nations with Christ and then follow him into their eternal state.

Regarding the millennium, it is inaugurated with Christ's resurrection in an already not yet sense, Christ already reigns over all and is already victorious over Satan. They have higher degrees of interpreting prophecy in light of Christ's advent, death, resurrection, and glorification.

It often relies heavily on a two-age theology. The two-age theology is one of the major contributions of reformed theology to this area of eschatology and allied areas has been the application of the two-age framework.

This New Testament paradigm looks at Christian experience in terms of the now and the not yet. Perhaps that most eloquent and well-known statement of this principle is the Apostle Paul's words to the Corinthian church, for now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.

By the way, I tried to read definitions from these folks' definitions so I wasn't imposing my own ideas on their definitions.

So...

An example of the way this framework is applied in the New Testament is in the theme of new creation. Beloved of New Testament writers, this theme is often referred to in terms of indicating that it is both a present reality and a future hope, 1 Corinthians 5 and Romans 8.

The method of the New Testament, the message of the New Testament is that the new creation is something we taste now and will, one day, know fully. Major proponents, Meredith Klein, Richard Gaffin, Robert Strimple, Gregory Beal and John Murray.

So, a final synopsis here, to kind of close this section out. And as you'll know, I didn't make any comments on each of the different methods. I was just trying to give you...

Aaron, it's J. Dennison Jr.

J. Dennison... I don't know if you can see the name.

It's right there.

So, if you go online and ask for a chart, J. Dennison Jr. This will give you a chart. It seemed to me as near as I could tell from my reading and study to, as much as possible, outline the major events in each of the different views.

Major events in each of the different views. So, eschatology is the study of the eschaton. The eschaton is equated with last things. While other views focus on the final days of humankind on earth, amillennialism sees the last things as having been initiated at Christ's resurrection.

And so, being applicable from the earliest days of the Christian church from Acts chapter 2 and 1 Corinthians 10. The amillennialist perspective sees the whole of God's redemptive revelation as two-fold, promise and fulfillment.

It also emphasizes that a strict literal interpretation of Old Testament is not necessarily the most accurate way of determining what the text means. The amillennial perspective emphasizes that the coming of the kingdom of God is a two-part event.

The first portion dawned at Christ's first advent. John the Baptist proclaimed at this time the kingdom of God is at hand in Matthew 3. At the cross, Christ won final victory over death and Satan. He then ascended to reign upon the throne of David forever.

Now because we look at things which are seen for a moment there we were all technological. I'll just leave that down there. The amillennial perspective emphasizes that the coming of the kingdom of God is a two-part event.

The first portion dawned at Christ's first advent, which John the Baptist proclaimed. At the cross, Christ won final victory over death and Satan. He then ascended to reign upon the throne of David forever.

Luke 1 and Acts 2. Now because we look at the things which are seen we look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen. Look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen for the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are seen are not.

It's 18 font next week, I'm telling you. Now because we look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen for the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are internal.

2 Corinthians 4. Because of this the amillennialist sees the final things already accomplished though not yet seen by sight but by faith. 2 Corinthians 5. An important note is the amillennialist view of the church in this world a role of suffering.

The Christian will be hated by all just as was Christ, Matthew 10. For a servant is not greater than his master. Seeing this as the church's role on earth to suffer as did Christ the amillennialist can hold no hope for an earthly exaltation and longs for the fulfillment of the second stage of the coming of the kingdom.

This second stage of the amillennial perspective is the final consummation of all the heavenly promises. The Christian will no longer see by faith alone but by sight. All the shadowy things will pass away and our eternal reign with Christ will begin.

The amillennialist expecting no earthly glory for the church places all his hope on this heavenly glory. So any corrections?

Yes, we will do that.

Originally from the apostles on it would have been pre-millennial and then about 300 AD things started changing and then with Augustine things really started changing. So it's an interesting study in history and I believe I've got that touched on in my 70 ,000 words here.

What's that? Yes. Yeah, we'll talk about some of that. Any other questions or comments? Additions, subtractions, deletions? You thought I was going to say one of those words. We don't have enough time right now to get into Daniel chapter 7 verse 7 so I would like to just reiterate Paul.

Four views, the meaning of the millennium,.

Four views. Okay, a book recommendation. Anything else? So as we are going through Daniel chapter 7 I will do my best to at least most of the time look at the different ways people view the things. I will hold to a PD view and that's just going to be how we'll go through this.

I will not look down on anybody who doesn't hold to that view. I will try to learn from you. But I will say this, I believe in a literal interpretation of scripture and it's kind of difficult for me to see the world getting better.

So some of the things that are going on today, maybe I don't have that spiritual sight that's talked about. I hope I do. I believe that it's going to get worse and worse and that even if we don't go through the tribulation it's going to get nasty for those of us who I believe will not actually go through the tribulation.

It's still not going to be fun times to live. It's not going to be leave it to beaver America. That's not lost on some of you in here. I've got to quit using some of these cultural references that are 50 plus years back.