SRR 107 The Danielic Imperative, Episode 21 — The Days, Weeks, Months and Years of Prophecy, part 2

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TDB 10 The Conversion of Marcus Grodi part 5 (The Eucharist part 3)

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I do a podcast. I'm not interested in your podcast. The anathema of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone.
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When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield, exposing the air and combating the air.
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We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so, the next few statements that I'm going to make,
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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.
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We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style. I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing.
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It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible. Jesus said,
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Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.
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As opposed to, Blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness. It is on.
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We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle. Welcome back to the
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Danielic Imperative, a podcast that explores Daniel's eschatological timeline as the foundational precept of New Testament and times revelation.
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I know it's been quite a while since our last episode. Things have been pretty busy. This podcast is called the
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Danielic Imperative because the Lord revealed a timeline to us in Daniel. And understanding that timeline is imperative for the
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Christian in order to understand what the Lord revealed to us in the scriptures about his plan for his people. A timeline is revealed in Daniel and that timeline is used by the
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Lord in the New Testament and in his revelation to John to convey to him what the future would hold.
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Revelation will not make sense to us unless we first make sense of the timeline established in Daniel.
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And much confusion in the book of Revelation has resulted from a failure to grasp the timeline established in the
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Lord's visions to Nebuchadnezzar and to Daniel. As we discussed in our previous episode, one of the most important but almost universally overlooked components of the
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Danielic chronology and the time periods of Revelation is the Hebrew lunisolar calendar.
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The Hebrew calendar of the scriptures relies on the motion of the moon for its months and the motion of the sun for its days and years.
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It is lunar in the sense that each month is determined by the phase of the moon as it orbits the earth.
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But it is solar in the sense that each year is based on the position of the earth in its orbit around the sun.
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If you think about that, you'll realize that the two modes of timekeeping are not strictly compatible.
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And from that, you can easily derive the lunisolar calendar of the scriptures. The Lord set the sun, moon, and stars in place for seasons and for days and years, according to Genesis 1 .14,
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establishing the moon and stars for timekeeping. And the Lord set up the Jewish lunisolar calendar in Exodus 12 .2,
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when he said that the year is to be comprised of months. That is, this month shall be unto you the beginning of months.
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It shall be the first month of the year to you. And he established the lunar month by the commandment of Moses on the
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Sabbaths and on the new moons, according to 2 Chronicles 8 .13. And that is where the lunisolar calendar comes into play.
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One lunar month, according to its phases, is almost exactly 29 and a half days.
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Twelve months of 29 and a half days would yield a 354 -day calendar year.
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But since a calendar month cannot be 29 and a half days, the Hebrew calendar alternates between 29 -day months and 30 -day months.
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So on average, the month is 29 and a half days long. And thus, the basic Hebrew calendar is 12 months of 29 or 30 days for a typical year of 354 days.
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But it does not take long for such a calendar to drift from the solar year, because a literal solar year is 365 and a quarter days.
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A typical Hebrew year is 354 days. And thus, in only three years, the
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Hebrew calendar is off from the solar year by almost 34 days. It would not take very many years for such a calendar to get so far off that spring would occur in the fall and summer would occur in winter.
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That, of course, throws a monkey wrench into the Hebrew calendar, because it is nothing if not seasonal. The festivals are built around the harvest seasons and the rains.
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Because the lunar and solar modes of timekeeping are inherently incompatible, it is necessary to add an extra intercalary month every few years to keep the calendar year synchronized with the solar year.
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And thus, at least every third year, the Jews add an extra 30 -day month to get to a 13 -month year with 384 days.
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And even with that extra intercalary month, the calendar year is still almost four days shy of solar time.
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So just adding one month every three years does not prevent the calendar from drifting. And that means, eventually, you still have to add yet another month in another year just to get back on track.
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This is how the lunar -solar calendar was developed, based on the Lord's instruction that the year is made of months, and the months are based on the phase of the moon.
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Because we will continue discussing the implications of intercalation in this episode, I thought it would be appropriate to restate the three principles of the lunar -solar calendar we discussed last time, because these rules are immutable and irrefutable, and they clearly inform our eschatology since Daniel and his angelic narrators, and Jesus and John, all deferred to these laws of the lunar -solar calendar when they revealed the future to Daniel.
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The first rule is that, at least every three years, the Hebrew year has 13 months in it, and even then the lunar -solar calendar still drifts from the solar year.
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The second rule is that, every three and a half year period in the lunar -solar calendar, therefore, has at least 43 months in it.
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And that means a three and a half year period of 1 ,260 days is always at least 43 months long, not 42 months long.
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Because Jewish months can be 29 or 30 days, every 42 month period in the lunar -solar calendar is about 1 ,230 days, and it takes that 43rd intercalary month of Adar 1 to get it back to 1 ,260 days.
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There is no such thing as a 1 ,260 day period in a lunar -solar calendar that is only 42 months long.
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Again, there is no such thing as a 1 ,260 day period in a lunar -solar calendar that is only 42 months long.
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A three and a half year period of 1 ,260 days is always 43 months.
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The third rule is that, because one intercalary month every few years still does not synchronize the lunar -solar calendar to the solar year, every four to nine years a second intercalary month is added within a four year period.
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And that means that about 20 % of the time, a three and a half year period will contain two intercalary months, making the three and a half year period 44 months long, or 1 ,290 days.
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As we have discussed, this is why the scriptures refer both to 1 ,290 day and 1 ,260 day periods as time times and a half, or three and a half years.
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It's because you can have three and a half year periods of either duration in a lunar -solar calendar, which again is why it is so important that we understand the lunar -solar calendar as a fundamental eschatological precept.
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The Danielic timeline was revealed to us with that calendar in mind, and we need to be familiar with it.
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One of the most important implications of this fact is that Daniel's and John's prophetic references to 2 ,300 days in Daniel 8, time times and a half in Daniel 7,
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Daniel 12 and Revelation 12, the 1 ,335 days and the 1 ,290 days in Daniel 12 and the 1 ,260 days and the 42 months in Revelation 11, 12 and 13, cannot be understood without knowledge of that lunar -solar calendar.
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Yet almost all eschatological literature that has been written has been written without taking that lunar -solar calendar into account.
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Those references to 2 ,300 days and 1 ,290 days are actually implicit references to intercalation in the lunar -solar calendar, and those numbers will not make sense without knowledge of intercalation.
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And since intercalation is only necessary in the context of literal solar days and literal lunar months, those 2 ,300 days and the 1 ,290 days must therefore be actual literal days, not days of years as they have often been interpreted.
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As we have shown in several episodes, the 2 ,300 days and the 1 ,290 days are long past and occurred under the
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Greek period of Daniel's visions, between 170 and 163 BC, under the reign of Antiochus IV.
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Those were literal days and occurred during the Greek Empire, as the context clearly affirms.
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Also, by applying the lunar -solar calendar to Revelation 11, and with the knowledge that the trampling of Jerusalem underfoot by the
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Gentiles was to happen within one generation of Christ, according to Luke 21 .32, we were able to prove first that the 42 months and the 1 ,260 days in Revelation 11 are literal months and literal days.
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Second, we were able to show that the 42 months and the 1 ,260 days cannot possibly refer to the same time period, because under the lunar -solar calendar, 1 ,260 days is never 42 months, it is always 43 months.
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Therefore, the 42 months of Jerusalem's destruction and the 1 ,260 days of the prophetic ministry of the two witnesses cannot refer to the same time period.
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Additionally, because the city is not destroyed until after the prophetic ministry of the two witnesses, we were able to show that the 1 ,260 days of Revelation 11 precedes the 42 -month destruction of the city.
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And what is more, we showed that because the bodies of the witnesses lie in the streets for three and a half days, what we are really looking for in history is a definite period of 1 ,263 and a half days.
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We have indeed identified that 1 ,263 and a half day period, and we will discuss it in detail in a coming episode, and it preceded the destruction of Jerusalem, as you would have expected based on the prophetic record.
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And finally, using the lunar -solar calendar and using the scriptural knowledge that 1 ,260 literal days is always, always, always 43 months, not 42 months, we were able to show something very significant about Daniel 7 and Revelation 12 and 13.
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The time, times, and a half of Daniel 7, and the time, times, and a half, and 1 ,260 days of Revelation 12, and the 42 months of Revelation 13 can all be shown to refer to the same time period.
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And because we know that a literal 1 ,260 day period can never, ever be 42 months long, the time, times, and a half, the 42 months, and the 1 ,260 days in these cases, cannot possibly refer to 3 and a half literal years, or 42 months, or 1 ,260 literal days, since 3 and a half literal years is never 42 months, it is either 43 or 44, and 42 literal months are never 1 ,260 days.
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Therefore, to avoid a contradiction in the scriptures, we use the lunar -solar calendar to discover that the time, times, and a half must refer to 1 ,260 days of years.
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And that is where we left off last time. As you can see, those are some of the major implications of the lunar -solar calendar, and if Jesus, Daniel, and John used that lunar -solar calendar to convey prophetic information to us, it is imperative that we understand that lunar -solar calendar and all of its implications.
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Today, we are going to continue that discussion, and there are three more prophetic time periods we will need to examine in the light of the lunar -solar calendar.
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And so today, we will examine the 10 -day persecution of Revelation 2, the 5 months of torment of the 5th trumpet of Revelation 9, and the hour, day, month, and year of the 6th trumpet of the same chapter.
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Now, as a prelude to our looming discussion on the seals, trumpets, and vials of Revelation, that is, the three sets of seven apocalyptic events that are foretold in the book of Revelation, I want to introduce to our listeners something that will be relevant when we get to each individual seal, trumpet, and vial.
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Some of the seals, trumpets, and vials are textually interrelated in that the text of one provides contextual cues for another.
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For example, in the first trumpet, the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
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That's Revelation 8 -7. But in the fifth trumpet, it was commanded them, that is, the locusts, that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree.
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That's Revelation 9 -4. That reference to grass and trees matters, and we will get to the significance of it when we get to the seals, trumpets, and vials.
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Similarly, when the second trumpet blows, the third part of the creatures which were in the sea and had life died.
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That's Revelation 8 -9. But when the second vial is poured out, every living soul died in the sea.
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That's Revelation 16 -3. Note that subtle change. In one case, some living creatures in the sea died, and in the other case, all living creatures died in the sea.
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That subtle variation matters, as we will show when we get to the trumpets and the vials. Likewise, at the sounding of the third trumpet, the star called
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Wormwood fell upon the third part of rivers and upon the fountains of waters, and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter.
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That's Revelation 8 -10 -11. But when the third vial is poured out upon the rivers and fountains of waters, and they became blood, that's
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Revelation 16 -4, that reference to rivers and fountains matters, and we will show the relevance when we get to the seals, trumpets, and vials.
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Our point here is not to exposit each seal, trumpet, and vial, but rather, for now, to show that Jesus linked them together when he revealed them to John.
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Now, the reason I mention this is that we have before us today a seal that is linked to a trumpet, and the clue again is given to us in the text.
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In this case, it is the fourth seal and the fifth trumpet, and they are linked together in a very remarkable way.
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And yes, this will help us determine how we are to understand the ten days of Revelation 2 and the five months of Revelation 9.
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So, when the fourth horse of the apocalypse rides out, that is, at the breaking of the fourth seal,
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John saw a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
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So, we are seeing Death riding on a horse, and Hell follows after him.
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And we note particularly that Death and Hell were given power over the fourth part of the earth to kill with sword and with hunger and with death and with the beasts of the earth.
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That is Revelation 6, 8. And please notice that they are given civil power, the power of the sword, to put people to death.
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But when the fifth trumpet blows, the bottomless pit is opened up, and there arose a smoke out of the pit, and there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth.
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And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree, but only those men which did not have the seal of God in their foreheads.
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And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months.
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And their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he striketh a man. And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.
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That's Revelation 9, verses 4 to 6. And notice in this case, they are not given civil power, that is, the civil power of the sword to put anyone to death.
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Okay, so in what way are the fourth seal and the fifth trumpet related? Well, the text tells us something important.
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Regarding the locusts, it says, And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the
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Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.
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That's Revelation 9, 11. Now, I will briefly say here that Jerome, who wrote the
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Roman Catholic Vulgate, which is the Latin translation of the Bible, was not satisfied with what the
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Greek text said, that is, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the
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Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon. Jerome, on the other hand, added, and in the
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Latin is destroyer. But the text does not say that. The text gives his name in Greek and in Hebrew, and there is a very simple reason for this.
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And Jerome's attempt to clarify the text by adding to it simply muddles it. We will return to that when we get to the third trumpet.
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But for now, let us focus on what the Lord has actually revealed to us, and ignore what
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Jerome tried to add. It is time now for us to do a little homework here, because Jesus has assigned it to us.
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Revelation is a book written in Greek to Greek -speaking people, and Greek -reading people.
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And yet, the Lord has given to us the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek name of the angel of the bottomless pit.
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So, to the Hebrew we must now go. Abaddon occurs in only six verses in the
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Old Testament. Let's read them. Job 26 .6 says, Hell, or Sheol, is naked before him, and destruction, that is,
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Abaddon, hath no covering. Job 28 .22 says,
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Destruction, that is, Abaddon, and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears.
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Job 31 .12 says, For it is a fire that consumeth to destruction, that is,
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Abaddon, and would root out all mine increase. Psalms 88 .11
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says, Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave, that is, Sheol, or thy faithfulness in destruction, that is,
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Abaddon? Proverbs 15 .11 says, Hell, that is, Sheol, and destruction, that is,
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Abaddon, are before the Lord how much more than the hearts of the children of men.
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Proverbs 27 .20 says, Hell, that is, Sheol, and destruction, that is,
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Abaddon, are never full, so the eyes of man are never satisfied. Now, regarding Job 31 .12,
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which refers to the destruction of the crops, Job appears to use it in the general sense of the destruction of property, but the rest of the references to Abaddon link it to Sheol.
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It seems that Sheol and Abaddon are quite a pair, answering to hell and death in the
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New Testament and in English. That is an interesting pairing because of how hell and death are linked together in the
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New Testament. Jesus has the keys to hell and death, according to Revelation 1 .18.
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Death rides the fourth horse of the apocalypse, and hell followed with him. That's Revelation 6 .8.
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Just prior to the final judgment, death and hell give up the dead that they may be judged, and then are cast into the lake of fire, along with whosoever was not found written in the book of life.
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That's Revelation 20, verses 13 -14. Paul's exclamation in 1 Corinthians 15 .55,
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O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? is actually, O death, where is thy sting?
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O hell, where is thy victory? Hell and death are frequently found together, especially in the context of Christ's people triumphing over them.
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That is an extremely important point for us in this discussion on the fourth seal and the fifth trumpet, because death and hell are present for both.
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And we know this because Jesus has given us a textual cue that links the two together. Both involve death and hell.
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And this is where it gets interesting. Remember, in the fourth seal of Revelation 6, death rides out on a pale horse and hell follows with him, and they are given civil power over one quarter of the earth to kill with the sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
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Which seems about right. This is what we expect of death and hell if they are let loose on the earth with the power of the civil sword.
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Yet we find in Revelation 9, with the blowing of the fifth trumpet, that Abaddon, or death, and locusts that follow him out of Sheol, or hell, are let loose on the earth, but they are not allowed to kill anyone.
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This time, death and hell have no civil power to kill, and they are not even allowed to touch believers, and are explicitly prohibited from killing even the unbelievers they were tormenting.
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That is, it was given that they should not kill them, in Revelation 9, 5, even though the unbelievers they were tormenting all very much wanted to die.
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In the fourth seal, death and hell are given civil power, and in the fifth trumpet they are denied civil power.
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And that leads us to something we hinted at in our previous episode, and it has to do with the civil power of the devil.
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The scriptures actually tell us of a time, just before the rise of the beast, that the devil is given civil power until the beast rises and takes over.
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And then the devil gives up that civil power to the beast, and can no longer exercise it. So let's examine that period in history.
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It is a very important transitional period in the Danielic timeline. Yes, the scriptures do actually say that before the rise of the beast to his position of civil power, the devil himself exercised the civil power of the sword when he was cast down to earth, and we will need to dive into that first.
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I will now cast myself upon the patient mercy of the listener, as we will not actually get into the details of the seals and trumpets today, and perhaps not for several more episodes.
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We will simply refer to them and discuss the important issue of how we can tell when a time period is to be interpreted literally, or as days of years.
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I promise to come back and dive into the seals, trumpets, and vials in great detail, but let us first continue with the scriptural warrant for interpreting time periods as days, or as days of years.
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As our listeners will recall, in our last podcast, we talked about the time, times, and a half of Daniel 7, the time, times, and a half in the 1 ,260 days of Revelation 12 and the 42 months of Revelation 13, and determined that they were all referring to the same time period.
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To arrive at that conclusion, we had to analyze the description of the devil being cast down to earth in Revelation 12, and the sea beast receiving his power and great authority from the devil in Revelation 13.
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That transfer of civil power from the serpent to the beast is very important in Danielic eschatology, and the scripture returns to it several times.
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And in fact, that transition is especially clear when Revelation 12 and 13 are harmonized.
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We see that the devil wields the sword when he is cast down to earth in Revelation 12, 10 -13, and persecutes the saints unto death, and then hands his civil power and authority over to the beast in Revelation 13, because, it says, the dragon gave him his power and his seat and great authority.
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That's Revelation 13, 2. At which point, the sea beast is allowed to make war with the saints, according to Revelation 13, 7, and put some in captivity and kill others with the sword,
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Revelation 13, 10. And the beast enjoys this unrestrained civil power for 42 months, according to Revelation 13, 5.
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But it is during that 42 months, or 1 ,260 days, that the devil clearly is no longer able to persecute the saints unto death, and he is very clearly limited to persecuting them doctrinally, as evidenced by Revelation 12, 6 and 12, 14.
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The woman, that is the church, is given wings to fly to a place of safety from the serpent, and he is limited to persecuting the saints with what comes out of his mouth, not with the sword.
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He can no longer put them to death. He can only try to cause them to stumble doctrinally.
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As we noted last time, the reason the shift from civil to doctrinal persecution by the devil is important to us is that for 1 ,260 days of Revelation 12, 6 and for time, times and a half of Revelation 12, 14, the devil only resorts to doctrinal persecution, that is, the flood that comes out of his mouth, and the saints are fed by God and nourished by him and are thereby protected from the face of the serpent.
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Keep that imagery in mind. The devil cannot harm you physically with what comes out of his mouth, and a physical sword cannot defend against such an attack.
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Only the Word of God can protect you. That is how the devil's war is described in Revelation 12, after the woman flees to the wilderness, and this all occurs after the devil's attempt to overcome the saints with violent civil action.
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Why is he limited to persecuting by doctrine and not by the sword? What happened to his civil power?
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Revelation 13, 2 says he gave it up to the sea beast of Revelation 13, to whom he gave his power and his seat and great authority.
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From that point forward, the sea beast of Revelation 13, which is the little horn of Daniel 7, is allowed to persecute by the civil power of the sword, while the devil is limited to persecuting by false doctrine.
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That is a very significant transition in the devil's persecution of the saints, and we must not overlook it.
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After the devil's civil persecution has ended, two persecutions are then allowed to occur simultaneously, doctrinal persecution by the devil and civil persecution by the beast.
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If we read Revelation 12 and 13 together, we come to that conclusion because we see that it is possible for the beast to prevail against the saints physically with the sword in Revelation 13, while the devil is unable to overcome the saints doctrinally with error in Revelation 12.
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Read those two chapters together. It is very important. Once the devil has spent his fury trying to overcome the saints by civil persecution and fails, because they overcame him by dying, the beast takes over with the civil persecution, and the devil resorts to error as his weapon of choice.
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Don't miss it. It is one of the most important transitions in the history of the persecution of the people of God, and it explains the great success
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Roman Catholicism enjoyed when so many of its demonic doctrines emerged at the latter half of the 4th century and was enabled to enforce unity at the business end of the civil sword.
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That pretty much sums up medieval Roman Catholicism, doctrines of the devil enforced with the civil sword of Roman Catholicism, and we will show that Roman Catholicism wielded that civil sword without restraint for 1 ,260 years, but we will come back to that later.
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For now, this transition from the devil's civil persecution to his doctrinal persecution leads us to the point we will make today.
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What we will find upon examination of the scriptures is that the ten -day persecution Jesus identifies in Revelation 2 clearly occurs while the devil still has his civil power, for he bears the sword and has the power to imprison and kill.
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But the five months of Revelation 9 occur during the period when the devil does not have civil power, for he is unable to kill and is not even allowed to do anything to the people of God.
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These truths from scripture are conveyed to us not only in terms of days and months, but also in terms of when the devil does and when he does not have civil power, just like we saw in Revelation 12 and 13.
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And for this reason, we must now turn our attention to what the scriptures say about that civil power of the devil.
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Let us think about this in the history of Danielic eschatology. Under the gold period, using the
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Daniel 2 timeline, Nebuchadnezzar required the saints to bow to his statue under the threat of the death penalty.
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That is Daniel 3 verses 5 to 6. Under the silver period, the following empire exercised civil power against the saints by casting
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Daniel into the lion's den for praying to the Lord. That is Daniel 6 verses 7 to 9. Under the bronze period,
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Antiochus IV exercised civil power against the saints, as prophesied in Daniel 8 .24,
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for he shall destroy the mighty and the holy people. But then something interesting happens.
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Although we have long since entered the iron period by the time of Jesus' public ministry, Christians are not experiencing persecution from the
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Romans yet. His warning from that point forward was that his people would suffer civil persecution, first by the
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Jews, then by the Romans, then by the devil, and then by the sea beast of Revelation 13.
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Here are Jesus' warnings demonstrating the chronology of that civil persecution. First, his people would experience civil persecution by the
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Jews, as recorded in Luke 21, the first half of verse 12.
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But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and into prisons.
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You can also look at Matthew 10 .17, Mark 13 .9, John 16 .2, and particularly
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Acts 26 .10, in which Paul says, And many of the saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests.
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And when they were put to death, I gave my voice against them. That's civil persecution by the
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Jews. Second, Jesus said his people would experience civil persecution by the
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Romans. Now, citing from Matthew 10 .18, which says, And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them, that is, the
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Jews and the Gentiles. You can also look at Mark 13 .9, Luke 12 .12,
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and particularly Acts 16 .37, in which Paul complains that, as a Roman citizen, the
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Romans were treating him unfairly. Then there is an intermediary period when the saints will experience civil persecution by the devil.
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Don't miss this. It's important. Revelation 2 .10 says, Behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried.
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Be thou faithful unto death. Notice that it's the devil that casts them into prison.
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That's the important point there. See also Revelation 6 .8, which says, And behold, a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was
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Death, and hell followed it with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with the sword.
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And Revelation 12 .13, which says, And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman, which brought forth the man -child.
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And remember, it is in this context that the devil put the Christians to death. Clearly, in this timeline, there is a period when the devil is wielding the civil power of the sword and is able to prosecute and bring about capital punishment of the
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Christians, the people of God. And finally, Christ said his people would experience civil persecution by the little horn of Daniel 7 and the beast of Revelation 13.
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Revelation 13 .7 and 10 say, And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them.
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And power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity.
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He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.
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You can also see Daniel 7 verses 21 to 25, referring to the little horn who made war with the saints and shall wear out the saints to the most high.
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So there is the sequence of civil persecution as revealed to us in the scriptures. Babylonian, Medo -Persian,
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Greek, Jewish, Roman, a comparatively brief satanic civil persecution, and finally the civil persecution by the beast of Revelation 13.
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This matters to us because the transition here is so readily apparent from the scripture. The devil's civil persecution precedes the beast's civil persecution, and the beast's civil persecution does not begin until the devil gives him his power and his seat and great authority, according to Revelation 13 .2.
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We must be aware of this because the devil's civil persecution links Revelation 12 and 13 together.
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And we can show from the scriptures that the devil's civil power is described in three places. In Revelation 2 .10,
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when he has ten days of civil power to imprison the saints and put them to death. In the fourth seal of Revelation 6 .8,
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when death and hell are allowed to kill with the sword. And in Revelation 12, when the devil is cast down to earth, and he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man -child, that's verse 13.
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And the saints love not their lives unto death, that's verse 11. In all three cases, the civil authority of the devil is depicted, and when read together, we see the target of his persecution is the saints of God.
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The persecution lasts ten days, and it precedes the civil authority of the beast. We will examine that period in history in much more detail when we return to the seals, trumpets, and vials of Revelation.
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But for now, we are simply establishing what the scriptures plainly teach regarding the brief civil power exercised by the devil prior to the rise of the beast.
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And it lasts ten days. But in Revelation 9, death and hell do not have civil power.
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They are not even allowed to kill. And the object of their torment is not even believers.
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It's unbelievers, or those who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. There is no semblance of civil power here, and the duration of the torment is five months.
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So how shall we contemplate those ten days and those five months? Is Jesus referring to a literal ten -day period and a literal five -month period?
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Or is he referring to a ten -year period of persecution of the saints and a 150 -year torment of unbelievers, based on the year -for -a -day principle?
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The key here is to understand that Jesus is referring to a very specific time in the chronology prior to the rise of the beast to civil power, and a very specific time in the chronology after the rise of the beast to civil power.
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And those periods have already been depicted for us in chapters 12 and 13, where time periods are described in terms of days and months.
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And in those cases, days and months are not understood literally as solar days and lunar months, but rather prophetically or figuratively as days of years and months of 30 years each.
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And thus, we are talking about a ten -year period when hell and death are allowed to kill the saints, and a 150 -year period when hell and death are not allowed to kill unbelievers.
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And this is where we will wrap up our discussion on these two time periods for now. Our listeners will very justifiably observe that for those five months, shall men seek death and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them?
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That's Revelation 9 .6. How is it possible for men to seek death for 150 years and not find it?
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Nobody can go 150 years without dying. That is a very reasonable question, and our answer goes back to the discussion on how the seals and trumpets and vials are related to each other.
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The key here is to understand what kind of death is in view, and to understand that, we must understand again how the fourth seal and the fifth trumpet are related.
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In the fourth seal, death and hell are allowed to kill with the sword, and in the fifth trumpet, death and hell are not allowed to kill, even though the unbelievers very much wish they could die.
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And this is where we will give a preview of the fourth seal. In the fourth seal, it is a martyr's death that is in view.
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When you look at Revelation 2, Jesus asks his martyrs to be faithful unto death during those ten days.
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When you look at Revelation 12, it says that the believers did not love their lives even unto death.
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And when the fourth seal talks about hell and death having power over one -fourth of the earth, what we will show in a coming episode is that those methods of death, that hell and death are allowed to execute upon the people of the earth, were all targeted at Christians, and those modes of death were all the different kinds of death that the martyrs experienced.
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When that is understood, we can see that in the fifth trumpet, the death that is deeply desired by the unbelievers is a martyr's death, and it is withheld from them.
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We will get to both of these periods in much, much more detail in a future episode, but for now
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I will simply say that we can identify that precise ten -year period of the fourth seal, a remarkable period in the history of the
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Church when Christians ran freely and enthusiastically into the arms of their executioners, so eager were they to take the martyr's crown.
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And we can identify the fifth trumpet, a very specific period in the history of Roman Catholicism in which
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Roman Catholics were promised, and in fact guaranteed, a martyr's crown under certain specific conditions.
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And for 150 years people sought after that martyr's crown and could scarcely think of any higher reward on earth than that.
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But when all the dust settled, not one, not one person who died under those specified conditions was ever declared by the
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Roman Catholic Church to be a martyr. For 150 years they eagerly sought a martyr's death, and for 150 years the martyr's death was denied to them.
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They could not find it. We'll get back to that later in our series. Our only object today is to discuss how we can discern from the scriptures that the ten -day period and the five -month period are actually 10 years and 150 years long.
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But it was important for us to point out that the kind of death that is in view in both the fourth seal and the fifth trumpet is the death of a martyr.
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And the Christians received their martyr's death at the hands of death and hell, and the
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Roman Catholics were denied a martyr's death at the hands of death and hell. We will get into those in much, much more detail, but we wanted to pique the curiosity of our listeners and answer at least one objection that we can anticipate.
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Okay, let's move on to the final prophetic time period we'll discuss today, and that happens to be the very next trumpet, and also happens to be the most interesting time period of all.
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And that is the hour, day, month, and year of Revelation 9 .15. Here is
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Revelation 9 verses 14 to 16 to give you context describing the next trumpet, which is the sixth.
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Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river
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Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour and a day and a month and a year, for to slay the third part of men.
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And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand, and I heard the number of them.
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Revelation 9 .14 to 16. So what are we to do with an hour and a day and a month and a year?
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If one prophetic year is 360 actual years, and a prophetic month is 30 years, and a prophetic day is one year, and let's say a prophetic hour is one twenty -fourth of a year, which would be half a month or 15 days, then we are looking for a period of time that is exactly 391 years and 15 days.
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Right? Well, I'm not so sure we can do that. First, there is no biblical precedent for interpreting a prophetic hour as 15 days, so we cannot leap to an interpretation that makes an hour equal to 15 days in prophecy.
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And what is more, we have no scriptural basis for taking a year to be 360 prophetic days of years.
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There is not one case in all of scripture in which a year is so interpreted. Every time a lengthy period has been discussed in prophecy, the word year is absent.
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Whether it be 2300 days, 1290 days, 1260 days, 1335 days, 42 months, or times, times and a half, the word year has never been used at all.
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The three and a half times of Daniel 7 relate to the 42 months of Revelation 13 and to the 1260 days and three and a half times of Revelation 12.
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But there is no mention of an actual year. When Daniel uses year or years, it is in reference to literal years, and John only uses it here and in his repeated references to a thousand years.
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Year is always used to refer to a literal year. There is just no precedent for identifying a prophetic year as 360 years.
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And for similar reasons, there is no precedent for taking an hour as 124th of a year. If we were to do so, this verse would be the first and the only occasion of it.
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Lacking scriptural precedent for it, we simply cannot throw caution to the winds and move on with a guess of 391 years and 15 days.
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There must be another meaning. Now, we do have precedent in the scriptures for the meaning of a day and an hour, so let's turn to that first.
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When Jesus refers to his soon return in the Gospels, and when he spoke of the steward's return in the parables, a day and an hour is used to refer to a specific moment when something is expected to happen.
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Matthew 24, 36 says, But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my
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Father only. Matthew 24, 50 says, The Lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of.
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Matthew 25, 13 says, Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the
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Son of Man cometh. Mark 13, 32 But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the
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Son, but the Father. And Luke 12, 46 says, The Lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware.
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Now, in these passages, the day and the hour define the moment a significant event is to occur, as in Christ's return on the clouds, or in the case of the parable of the spiteful servant, his master's return.
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In the case of the sixth trumpet, the four angels that are bound in the Euphrates River appear to have been prepared for that very moment, the hour and the day.
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So let's say that the angels were prepared for the day and the hour of a certain event, namely to slay the third part of men.
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If the day and hour refer to a specific moment in time, then how are we to understand the month and year?
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Well, the short story is we can do nothing with the year than simply take it as a literal year. There is simply no scriptural precedent for taking a year prophetically to mean 360 years.
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So we take it literally as one solar year. But keep in mind we are in Revelation 9, and we just finished talking about five prophetic months during which the devil does not have civil authority, and we understood that to refer to five months of 30 years for a total of 150 years.
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So, from this context, we have just finished reading about the fifth trumpet, in which each month was understood as 30 years.
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So we will take month here to mean the same as it did only a few verses earlier in Revelation 9 .5
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and Revelation 9 .10, which is a prophetic month of 30 years. And taking year as simply a literal year for the reasons just stated, the result then is a prophetic month of 30 years plus one literal year for a total of 31 actual solar years.
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So what could possibly be the significance of 31 years? That's a good question, and we anticipate that our listeners will want to know the answer to it.
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It's a very interesting question indeed. We won't get into the sixth trumpet just yet, and we will return to it in much, much more detail, but there is something important we need to think of.
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According to the prophecy, when the angels are released at the blowing of the sixth trumpet, the number of the army of the horsemen were 200 ,000 ,000, and I heard the number of them.
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That's Revelation 9 .16. The King James says it's an army, singular, comprised of 200 million horsemen.
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That's a big army and a lot of horsemen. But we must remember that where the King James says army, the
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Greek says armies, plural, and where the English says 200 ,000 ,000 or 200 million, the
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Greek only says two myriad, myriad. In Greek, myriad can be taken for 10 ,000 or just a really large group, as in Luke 12 .1,
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which says a crowd of many thousands had gathered. Myriad, myriad is just one really, really large group, and two myriad, myriads is two really, really large groups.
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When John says the armies of the horsemen were 200 ,000 ,000, and I heard the number of them, he is referring to the number of armies, or two really large groups.
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He did not hear the number of horsemen. He heard the number of armies. Instead of saying that there would be one invasion by one army of 200 million horsemen, he was saying that there would be two invasions by two very large groups, and to our point, there would be two invasions that would occur separately, but those two invasions would occur over a 31 -year period.
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We will return to this in much, much more detail, but I will give the listeners an opportunity to think about this 31 -year time period.
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Considering that all the empires of Daniel's visions occur within the greater Mediterranean basin and the surrounding nations, and we will show that the seals, bowls, and trumpets also deal with the events within the greater
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Mediterranean basin and the surrounding nations, we will ask our listeners if they can think of two large military mobilizations that occurred in Europe over a period of exactly 31 years.
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If you think for a moment, the answer will come to you. We don't want to frustrate our listeners, so we'll give you the dates, 1914 and 1945, 31 years, two major military mobilizations, the sixth trumpet.
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We'll come back to that and discuss it in much greater detail, but we want our listeners to know where we are heading with our analysis.
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Okay, so that concludes this episode in which we have discussed the time periods in Revelation and in Daniel and how we are to use the scriptures to understand whether to take them as literal days, months, and years, or if we are to understand them in an allegorical figurative sense of days of years or months of years.
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Let's summarize our findings. The day -for -a -year principle of prophecy is found in Numbers 14 .34
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and Ezekiel 4 .6, but the day -for -a -year principle does not require that every prophetic period be so multiplied.
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Some prophetic periods are to be taken literally, as we have discussed. Context gives us the cues we need.
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The 70 weeks of Daniel 9 are prophetic weeks of years, because they are a seven -fold multiplication of the 70 -year punishment, in accordance with the
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Leviticus 26 protocol. The 2300 evenings and mornings of Daniel 8 are to be taken literally, because they use the same description of a literal solar day as that used in Genesis for the days of creation.
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Additionally, the 2300 literal days occur within the final week of Daniel's 70 -week prophecy, and therefore must be completed within a literal seven -year period.
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As we showed in our analysis in episode 14 of the Danielic Imperative, the trampling of the
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Jews and the sanctuary under Antiochus IV began on Rosh Hashanah in 170 BC and concluded on Hanukkah in 164
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BC. And when there are three intercalary months within a seven -year period, the total elapsed time between Rosh Hashanah in one year and Hanukkah six years later can be as much as 2300 days.
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And the only reason to take intercalary months into account at all is if you are talking about literal solar days in the first place.
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The time times and a half of Daniel 12 .5 and the 1290 days of 12 .11 occur within the 2300 days, which itself occurs within the final week of Daniel 9, and as such must be literal days.
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Additionally, when there are two intercalary months within a three -and -a -half -year period, the three -and -a -half years can be as much as 1290 days, as we have said.
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And the only reason to take intercalary months into account is if you are talking about literal solar days in the first place.
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Next, the 1335 days of Daniel 12 .12 is also literal, in that the 1335 days are simply a 45 -day extension of the 1290 days, which are themselves literal.
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Next, we showed that the 42 months of Revelation 11 .12 and the 1260 days of Revelation 11 .3
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must be literal because it was to take 42 months for the Gentiles to trample the city underfoot, and according to Luke 21 .32,
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that would be complete within one generation. Obviously, we cannot be talking about 1260 years here for something that was supposed to happen shortly after the lifetime of Christ on earth.
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Additionally, since 1260 literal days is always comprised of 43 months in the lunar solar calendar, the 42 -month trampling of the city and the 1260 -day ministry of the prophets cannot be concurrent, because when the prophets die, the whole city is still standing, and 10 % of it falls only after their ascension.
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The 1260 days must occur first, and the 42 months follows. Next, we showed that the time, times, and the dividing of time of Daniel 7 .25
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and the 1260 days of Revelation 12 .6 and the time, times, and half the time of Revelation 12 .14
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and the 42 months of Revelation 13 .4 must be concurrent and also cannot be literal, because 3 .5
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literal years are never 42 months. It's always 43 or 44 months, and yet this period is described as 1260 days or time, times, and a half in 42 months, which would be impossible if the days were literal.
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Next, we showed that the 10 -day period of civil persecution by the devil in Revelation 2 .10 must be prophetic days of years, because it refers to the period of civil persecution by the devil in Revelation 12, when days are also prophetic years.
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Next, we discussed the five -month period of the fifth trumpet, during which men seek a martyr's death and are denied one under the harassment of hell and death.
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Those five months must be prophetic five months of 30 years each, because of the fifth trumpet's close relationship to the fourth seal, which relates to the 10 prophetic days of years during which
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Christians sought and received a martyr's crown under the civil persecution and murder led by hell and death in Revelation 6.
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And finally, we concluded that under the sixth trumpet, lacking any scriptural precedent to take an hour as 15 days and a year as 360 years, an hour and a day must therefore refer to the moment the angels are released, and a month and a year must refer to a 31 -year period during which not one army of 200 million is released, but during which two separate large invasions occur.
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We will return to these and many more in our coming episodes, and we appreciate the attention of our listeners.
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We are not far away from beginning a fascinating excursion into the seals, trumpets, and bowls of Revelation, and the 1 ,263 -and -a -half -day prophetic ministry, death, and ascension of the two witnesses of Revelation 11, the 42 months of trampling
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Jerusalem underfoot, the 1 ,260 years of unrestrained civil power of the
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Bishop of Rome in Revelation 13, and the identification of the false prophet of Revelation 13, and, importantly, the image of the beast that the false prophet erects.
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Yes, all that is coming. But first, in our next episode, before we go on, we're going to address what is probably the most important factor in our eschatological view.
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Before we proceed, we are going to review just how many invalid assumptions we had to overcome in order to get to where we are right now.
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You will be surprised at how many invalid assumptions have formed the foundation of most modern eschatologies.
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We will recount them one by one and how we have addressed them from the scriptures. It is an interesting story, and we hope you have enjoyed it so far.
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There is much, much more to come. Again, thank you for your patience. We appreciate your attention.
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And this is Timothy F. Kaufman, your host, and you have been listening to Episode 21 of the