SRR 56 Eschatology & the Danielic Imperative

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August 24, 2017

00:02: I do a podcast. I'm not interested in your podcast. Folks, these are wolves.
00:11: Truth be told, I oftentimes lay awake at night trying to figure out how I can get rid of wolves in the church.
00:23: We are unabashedly, unashamedly, Clarkian. And so the next few statements that I'm going to make,
00:29: 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.
00:36: We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style. I would first say that to characterize what we do as fashion is itself fashion.
00:56: It's not hate. It's history. It's not fashion. It's the Bible. Jesus said,
01:06: Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way, as opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.
01:20: It is on. We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle. In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed.
01:36: Then he wrote down the dream and told the sum of the matter. Daniel declared, I saw in my vision by night and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another.
01:51: The first was like a lion and had eagle's wings. Then as I looked, its wings were plucked off and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man.
02:03: And the mind of a man was given to it. And behold, another beast, a second one, like a bear.
02:10: It was raised up on one side. It had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. And it was told, arise, devour much flesh.
02:18: After this, I looked and behold another like a leopard with four wings of a bird on its back.
02:24: And the beast had four heads and dominion was given to it. After this, I saw in the night vision and behold a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong.
02:36: It had great iron teeth. It devoured and broken pieces and stamped what was left with its feet.
02:42: It was different from all the beasts that were before it. And it had ten horns. I considered the horns and behold, there came up among them another horn, a little horn, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by its roots.
02:57: And behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth speaking great things.
03:04: Daniel chapter 7, 1 through 8. This podcast is a member of the Bible Thumping Wingnut Network.
03:10: Alright, welcome everybody to another podcast episode with Semper Reformanda Radio. Hi, welcome to Theology Gals.
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04:48: That's TractPlanet .com, coupon code BTWN. Alright everybody, so we are here with Tim Coffman again and we're so grateful for that.
05:02: And I've been bugging him for quite a while to do a series on eschatology.
05:08: Now, he has so much work put into this and you know, it's one of those things where we're not going to get through all of this in one sitting.
05:19: As a matter of fact, we're talking maybe about 20 to 30 episodes just to lay out the eschatological views.
05:27: And so, here's what we're going to do. Today we're going to get into a little bit but if you have questions about some of the stuff that we say, please feel free to email us at semper .refermanda
05:40: .radio at gmail .com and I suppose that you could put us in the camp of historic pre -mill, partial preterist, just to give everybody a, you know, kind of a framework for where we're coming from.
05:55: And I've said this before, I'm going to say it again, Tim Coffman has been extremely influential in my own outlook on eschatology.
06:04: So, there's a lot to cover and we're going to be looking at Revelation, we're going to be looking at the book of Daniel.
06:11: But Tim, before we get into the area of eschatology, there's a couple of things that I really want to lay out and one of them is this, is that this is not a salvation issue.
06:23: And we are not coming at this from a salvation issue. We want to present these views and you know, if you disagree with us, that's fine.
06:33: We can have this discussion, it's an in -house debate, we can have this talk. And the other thing is,
06:39: Tim, some of the stuff that you're going to be presenting may be new for some people to hear.
06:46: And it's not as if you are coming to us and you're saying, you know,
06:52: I had a vision or God spoke to me directly outside of scripture. That's not what we're doing at all.
06:58: So, Tim, I kind of want to spend a little bit of time here and just give you an opportunity to lay the groundwork for how you approach eschatology, how you approach the scriptures.
07:10: And I've heard all of this before and I want our listeners to be able to hear some of the things that you've said about just your approach in this area of study.
07:19: So, can you take a minute to do that for us? Oh, yeah, I'll be happy to. And again, thanks for letting me be on the show.
07:28: I guess I should say thanks for letting me be a partner because it's a joint effort. I'm happy to be part of the team.
07:35: You can't really go too very far into a study of the
07:41: New Testament before you run into some eschatological issues. And eschatology is the study of the end times.
07:49: And what I mean by that is if you just study through the Gospels, you end up with the disciples asking
07:57: Jesus about the sign of his coming and the end of the age. And it was very much on their minds.
08:05: And because of that, it's very important to be able to establish some kind of eschatology that you can defend.
08:13: And what I found early on in my life as a Christian is that I didn't have a defensible eschatology.
08:22: I actually had come to Christ in a non -denominational
08:28: Baptistic church. And I remember one Sunday morning just after the war with Iraq began back in the early 1990s.
08:39: And the preacher said that he felt inclined by the
08:45: Spirit to change the topic of his sermon to eschatology because at the end times there's supposed to be some character, some figure that rises up as an antagonist that causes strife and that sort of thing.
08:59: It just makes the world a more difficult place to live in. And he just really felt led by the Lord to study this.
09:05: And he said, yes, yes, we know that in the end there will rise up somebody who's going to be of Islamic descent who's going to be such and such.
09:14: So it went on like that. Well, the next week they had an eschatology conference. And one of the main speakers there said, and of course we know from the
09:24: Scriptures that the Antichrist is going to be Jewish. And I remember there were days when I was walking down or driving down the street looking up and saying, is this the day that Jesus comes back on the clouds?
09:35: I mean, I was led into an eschatology that was inconsistent and it was confusing.
09:41: And it seemed like everybody had a different opinion. And I understand that because everybody is trying to handle the
09:49: Scriptures with reverence. And everybody is trying to take Jesus' words and Daniel's words at face value and understand what was being communicated.
10:00: And nobody will deny to him that there was an important eschatological message for us in the
10:06: Scriptures. So it's a good conversation to have. And, in fact, the book of Revelation says that anyone who reads this book will be blessed.
10:16: I think that we should dive in headfirst. I think that one of the things that influenced me greatest in my study of eschatology, though, is that early in my life as a
10:31: Christian, because I was conflicted and sometimes confused about an eschatology and I was also confused about a soteriology,
10:43: I think I've mentioned to you before that early on as a Christian, I really believed that once you give
10:48: God the ball, he runs with it. And it was very shortly after that that some very kind friends of mine introduced me to the
10:55: Reformed doctrines of grace. And they explained to me that not only did
11:00: I not give the ball to God so he could run with it, he didn't give it to me either.
11:10: You would have fumbled it. That's right. And so I remember early on when
11:15: I was trying to explain, I had come out of Roman Catholicism. I was learning so much from the
11:21: Scriptures. And I was trying to explain my salvation story and how I'd come out of Roman Catholicism and how liberating it was to find the truth.
11:31: And somebody mentioned to me, recognizing that I was a little bit confused in my explanation of my salvation, especially things like once you give
11:42: God the ball, he runs with it. And they asked a very simple question that profoundly influenced me.
11:48: I don't remember the woman's name. She sent me a letter saying that she'd enjoyed my first book,
11:56: Quite Contrary, and in its earliest form it was very much
12:01: Arminian, I think. And she had sent me a letter and just said, have you considered subscribing to the
12:13: Trinity Foundation newsletter? And honestly, I hadn't really ever thought of it because I'd never heard of the
12:19: Trinity Foundation. And she was one of the first people to write back in response to my book and say, wow, this was just such a blessing to me.
12:28: But she included that very penetrating question in her letter, have you considered subscribing to the
12:34: Trinity Foundation newsletter? And I decided that I would go ahead and subscribe. I started sending in $10 a month to the
12:42: Trinity Foundation. And I understand that you're going to be having the president of the
12:49: Trinity Foundation on sometime soon. I really, really respect and admire that organization.
12:55: I've spoken at their conferences and I've written some articles for their newsletter. I really, really admire and respect them.
13:01: But what I'm about to say is an explanation of why I have such an affection for the
13:07: Trinity Foundation and the influence it had in my life. What happened was that I started subscribing to the
13:14: Trinity Foundation newsletter. And once you're a contributing, once you're a contributor, a financial contributor for the
13:24: Trinity Foundation, you get on their mailing list. And anybody on their mailing list gets a copy of every book they produce.
13:32: And those who are familiar with the Trinity Foundation know that one of the most significant parts of their ministry is to preserve and reproduce the works of Gordon Clark.
13:44: Some people have said that Gordon Clark is the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, the greatest
13:53: Christian philosopher of the 20th century. And I think he's a fantastic apologist as well. And so what happened after I subscribed to the
14:03: Trinity Foundation newsletter is that I started getting books from the Trinity Foundation.
14:08: Remember, I'm a very, very young believer. And the first two books
14:15: I get are some fantastic and very, very in -depth works by Gordon Clark.
14:22: One was called God's Hammer, The Bible and Its Critics. And it's based on a verse from Jeremiah that says that God's word is like a hammer that shatters the rocks.
14:34: And the sum of that book was just that for all the effort so many people have made to undermine and deconstruct the scriptures, the scriptures always win because they're
14:45: God's hammer. The second book that came was Reason, Religion, and Revelation.
14:53: And in that book, Gordon Clark discusses the significance of the fact that God has revealed himself to us in a way that is understandable and that is reasonable and logical.
15:06: And because it's logical, it does not contradict itself. And because it does not contradict itself, it is therefore not confusing.
15:16: And because God's purpose was to reveal himself to us so that we might have an understanding.
15:22: And the only way we can have an understanding is through non -contradictory revelation. He showed that the scriptures, because they are breathed from the mouth of God, therefore cannot contradict themselves.
15:37: And because they're non -contradictory, they are therefore understandable. And this was important as a foundation because so much of what we have heard in the realm of Christian teaching, in Bible teaching, is that, well, this doesn't make sense and we're not really meant to understand this passage.
15:59: And I've heard that said in many passages before. And one particular book that I've heard it said of is the book of Revelation.
16:06: That we weren't really meant to understand what it really means. We're to simply appreciate that it's a revelation of Jesus and about Jesus.
16:17: And that we should just focus on the parts that are about Jesus. Now, I want you to think for just a second,
16:22: Tim, the significance of saying something like that about the book of Revelation. Where Jesus sends an angel to tell
16:31: John that this is some very important stuff that you need to know about and it's going to start happening very soon.
16:40: And you need to know about it. And then reading that and saying, Oh, yeah, yeah, whatever,
16:46: Jesus. We really know that this book is about you. And so we're going to ignore the stuff you've told us about some bad guy.
16:53: And we're going to focus just on you. And imagine the response when Jesus sends something specifically to John to tell him something about what's about to happen.
17:03: And what's about to happen has everything to do with the rise of an antagonist. With what's happening in the
17:10: Roman Empire. What's going to happen with God's people. And all this information is for our edification and our knowledge.
17:19: And we turn back and say, But we know it's really about you. So we're just not going to try to understand this.
17:26: Now, I'm being a little bit facetious, but I have actually heard sermons from pastors who say,
17:33: Let's just start the study of Revelation by understanding that it's about Jesus. Well, there's a lot about Revelation that isn't about Jesus.
17:41: It's about a bad guy we're supposed to know about and avoid. And so it's really unhealthy for us to look at Revelation as if it is something that we can't understand.
17:52: Gordon Clark helped me appreciate the significance of God revealing himself to us.
17:57: In a logical, consistent, non -contradictory, understandable way. So that we could actually peer into the book of Revelation and the visions of Daniel and extract meaning from them.
18:13: And so much of what we want to talk about, especially about Daniel, is that we want to look at Daniel and go into the assumption that we can understand what's being said.
18:29: Now, the reason I want to focus on Daniel first is that when
18:34: Jesus explains what's going to happen next, that is when his disciples ask him,
18:40: What's going to be the sign of your coming at the end of the age? He invokes
18:45: Daniel in his prophecies to help us understand what's going to happen next. He does that in Matthew 24 .15
18:53: and Mark 13 .14 when he discusses the abomination that Daniel foretold. Now, he makes a similar reference in Matthew 21 .44,
19:02: a reference that I believe is to the feet of the statue that Nebuchadnezzar saw in Daniel chapter 2.
19:08: And we'll explain later in the series why we think Matthew 21 .44 is actually a reference to Daniel.
19:16: But when you then turn to the book of Revelation and you find out that in Revelation chapter 12, 13, and 17, there's a serpent and a beast and a dragon, and they seem to be, in one way or another, composites of all the beasts that Daniel saw in Daniel chapter 7, you realize that there is a chronology that has been established for us in Daniel.
19:41: And when Jesus tries to explain what's going to happen next, he defaults to Daniel's chronology.
19:47: When the angel goes and tells John in Revelation what's about to happen next, he defaults to Daniel's chronology.
19:55: And that means that we need to spend a lot of time looking at a Danielic chronology because all biblical eschatology, at least that which is revealed to us by Christ in the
20:08: Gospels and by John in the book of Revelation, is tied to a
20:14: Danielic timeline. And if we don't understand that Danielic timeline, we're not going to understand what
20:20: Jesus was talking about and we're not going to understand what John was talking about. And if we can't understand that, then we can't understand one of the most critical messages delivered to us by Christ himself for our benefit and our protection, so that we are not led into deception and into fraud.
20:40: And so what I really want to start with is establishing a
20:45: Danielic chronology. And to do that, we're going to have to spend some time in Daniel. So that gives you an idea of how did
20:53: I approach this? How did Gordon Clark's approach to Scripture influence me? How did the
20:59: Trinity Foundation really bless me and minister to me as a very young Christian? And what did it mean to me that Scripture was understandable?
21:07: I began to go to Daniel and start saying, as I read it, there's something about this that is understandable, and it should not be confused to us.
21:18: So let's start there. And it's amazing what happened when I started from that assumption.
21:25: Well, I certainly appreciate everything that you've said, because I too hold the
21:30: Trinity Foundation with very high regard. And I've learned so much from Clark, and I've also adopted
21:37: Clark's view of the Scriptures. You referenced God's Hammer. That's actually one of my favorite books.
21:44: And so just a little bit about where I'm at with this, just so our listeners know,
21:50: I grew up in a Baptist church, and it wasn't a Reformed Baptist or Particular Baptist, which whatever you prefer to say, but I grew up hardcore dispensational.
22:02: And I remember as a kid, I would stay up late on Saturday nights and watch Dr. Jack Vanenpy.
22:08: I don't know if anybody's seen that show, but every week I was just, you know, what is
22:15: Russia doing? What is China doing? And everything's moving together. And then I started reading stuff off the
22:21: Trinity Foundation, and I started to take a more historical approach to eschatology.
22:27: And I remember when I became Reformed, I kind of fell into the all -millennial camp for a little bit, except I wasn't really studying it too heavily at that time.
22:41: And after reading an article by John Robbins on the Antichrist, I really began to look at this a little bit differently, and I began to look at this from more of a historical perspective.
22:56: And I then moved into the historic pre -mill camp, and then after talking to you,
23:04: I found out that there's just so much that we agreed on. And folks,
23:10: I really want to just say this, is that my personal conversations with Tim Kaufman, he's really helped me to understand this in a way that isn't contradictory.
23:26: Because there were some gaps and some holes in my views, and for me, it's been very beneficial.
23:35: Now, I know that there's hardcore dispensationalists, there's all -millennialists, there's other camps out there, and they're going to stick to their guns.
23:43: And we'll get into this probably later on in the eschatology series, but I believe that if you can identify the man of sin, and I believe that if you can identify the
23:54: Antichrist, I believe that you can do away with full preterism, and I believe that you can do away with futurism.
24:02: And that's really what led me to embrace this view. So we're not going to get into that today, but Tim, once again,
24:10: I'm just going to give you the floor. I'm just going to let you lead us into our discussion. Are we going to be going over an article that you have on your blog,
24:19: A Sea of One? Yes, yes, we're going to jump into that Sea of One in just a few minutes, but I wanted to go back to something you said.
24:27: When you introduced the topic for this series, you said it's very important to establish that I am not basing this on some vision that I have received, or that, say,
24:42: I got visited by an angel, or I have some special information that nobody else has. It's so important to establish from the outset that all of us have access to the same information.
24:55: This is not special information. There was no dream or vision, or I got struck by lightning, or I got knocked out, and I visited heaven, or something like that.
25:05: This is all based on what is described for us in the Scriptures to establish a
25:10: Danielic timeline. I know, as you said,
25:16: I know that there are folks out there in eschatology that they're holding to, and I understand that.
25:23: I understand that you could hold a different view of eschatology than I do and still be a brother or sister in Christ, and I appreciate that.
25:31: I get several funny responses to my position. After you've heard me drone on and on about the origins of the veneration of relics, or the virginity of Mary in Part II, or the historical significance of mixing water with wine, most of the listeners probably think, wow,
25:54: I bet that guy's great at parties. The fact is that I know that this can be dry and tedious sometimes, and so if folks don't want to hear it,
26:06: I don't want to bore them with my opinion. That's why I really appreciate the venue of a podcast.
26:12: If somebody's interested, they can tie into the podcast and listen. If they're not interested, they don't have to listen to it, and it keeps me from boring people at parties with all of my opinions about various things.
26:26: I do want to say this up front, though, is that on several occasions, people have read my opinions and said, you must think you're so special and that God must be so relieved that you finally have come to reveal this to the church.
26:46: Of course, it's a silly ad hominem response to some arguments that I make in my articles, but I want people to understand that at some point, every eschatological view was new because they didn't start getting categorized until after the apostolic age, and people started having different opinions about the significance of certain passages.
27:15: At some point, every view that is held today was new, and therefore, if we want to say that we can't accept anything new, then we can't accept anything at all because at some point, every eschatological view was new.
27:36: And I hear this oftentimes, that if it's new, it isn't true, and if it's true, it isn't new.
27:44: And on the one hand, that is a deference to the authority of the scriptures, which are in fact ancient, and I appreciate that.
27:54: But sometimes that is the response I get when I'm explaining my understanding of the
28:00: Danielic chronology as it informs the end times, and as it informs the book of Revelation.
28:08: And I want to just say up front that if our opinion is that we have to choose between 5 ,000 different eschatological views because there's a basket of eschatological views, and that is fixed, and there can be no more eschatological views, and then you have to choose one of those, we're basically committing ourselves to just arguing with each other between those views forever until Jesus comes back, and then finding out what it all meant.
28:43: But the scriptures say that it was for us to understand now, and it's for us to understand now for our protection.
28:51: And I want to say that when I hear someone say, if it's true, it isn't new, if it's new, it isn't true,
28:57: I'll say, I agree. Let's go back more than 2 ,000 years to Daniel and start there.
29:05: Let's start with the oldest eschatological documents we have that involve these visions that Jesus referred to and John referred to when he was trying to explain to us what's about to happen.
29:16: Let's start there. So if we want something that isn't new, then let's ditch everything and go back to Daniel.
29:24: And that's what I want to do today. Okay, let's start with the oldest documents we've got that have to do with this eschatology.
29:33: And let's start there. Now, when it comes to establishing a
29:38: Danielic eschatology, a lot of questions come up. And I'll just throw the first one out there.
29:44: Daniel was called to Nebuchadnezzar's palace because Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that he didn't understand.
29:52: And he didn't want to tell anybody what the dream was. He wanted people to tell him what the dream was and what it meant.
29:58: And that frightened everybody. But Daniel understood that he could figure this out if God would show him, and God did show him.
30:06: And so Daniel had a dream, just like Nebuchadnezzar's, and he understood that there was a statue that was a head of gold, a chest and arms of silver, a belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, feet of iron and clay, and then toes of iron and clay.
30:25: And I don't think anybody wonders when the gold period ended and when the silver period began.
30:33: It ended with the Babylonian Empire, and the silver began with the Medo -Persian
30:38: Empire. And nobody lays awake at night wondering, struggling, trying to figure out when did the silver period end?
30:45: Because it's revealed to us the silver period ended when the
30:51: Medo -Persian Empire ended and Alexander the Great came along. Then Alexander the
30:57: Great's empire split four different ways, and at some point it ended, and then we begin with the
31:04: Caesars of Rome. And that's the iron period. But from that point forward, it gets awfully fuzzy.
31:11: And some people even think that God skipped the iron period altogether and went straight to the feet of iron and clay and toes, and that the iron period is going to come sometime in the future when the
31:27: Roman Empire is reunited. And I listened to that, and I said, is that what we would have naturally expected from what otherwise appeared to be a continuous statue?
31:40: And I think to myself, if we can figure out when the silver period ends and the bronze begins, the bronze ends and the iron begins, we ought to be able to figure out where the iron period ends and the feet begin.
31:53: And if we can find out when the feet begin, we can figure out when the toes begin. And if we can figure out when the toes begin, we're at the same point in time of the ten -horned beast of Daniel chapter 7.
32:08: And it's from that ten -horned beast that another little horn comes up, and that's the guy we're supposed to watch out for.
32:15: So we should be able to establish a chronology. And if you establish a chronology, you figure out who that little horn is.
32:21: But you have to establish the Danielic chronology, which means you have to come up with a date and a time for each transition from iron to iron and clay to iron and clay toes.
32:33: Now, I believe that we can determine that from the scriptures, from what the scriptures tell us.
32:39: And we're going to spend some time doing that. I believe that we need to be able to harmonize
32:46: Daniel chapter 2 and Daniel chapter 7. There's an article that I've written for Bible Thumping Wingnut.
32:52: It's called A Modest Eschatological Proposal. And it hypothesizes that Daniel actually had seen two strikes of the stone against the foot of that statue.
33:05: And people want to read that article that I've written for the Bible Thumping Wingnut network. I think that when you harmonize
33:10: Daniel 2 and Daniel 7, it shows that the stone must have struck twice.
33:16: And, in fact, it's written that very way. But what has happened historically is there's an understanding the stone struck the statue once.
33:25: And I think that if you take that chronology, you miss one of the most important warnings in the scriptures.
33:33: And that is the warning of an earthly empire that was going to come up right after the Roman Empire. Because the chronology, if there's a single strike, it appears that God's kingdom was the stone that came immediately after the
33:47: Roman Empire and destroyed it and took over. And yet, in hindsight, we can see that the kingdom that did that was
33:56: Roman Catholicism, not the heavenly kingdom that Jesus came announcing.
34:03: We're going to talk about that chronology a little bit later in the series. When we look at Daniel chapter 8 and we see 2300 days, we look at Daniel chapter 12 and we see 1290 days, 1335 days.
34:21: How are these periods reconciled with the 1260 days, the 42 months that we see in Revelation 12 and Revelation 13?
34:32: Can we really say that 1290 days is the same time period as 1260 days?
34:38: A lot of eschatological opinions assume that those must be the same time period, but there's an extra 30 days added on to one for another reason.
34:50: But if we look at 1290 days of Daniel 12 being a different time period than the 1260 days of Revelation chapter 12, then we need to be able to figure out when those time periods took place and why they're described differently.
35:08: And we're going to spend some time on that as well. Another thing I want to highlight is that in Daniel 8 and 9,
35:16: Gabriel is the one who's narrating the events. But in Daniel 7, 10, and 11, it appears to be a different angel.
35:25: There ends up being a conversation in Daniel chapter 12 between the narrators that have been explaining the visions to Daniel.
35:32: And that conversation takes place between two angels standing on opposite sides of the river. I've read commentaries that say that there doesn't appear to be much significance to the fact that there are two angelic narrators, one standing on one side of the river and another standing on the other side.
35:48: And yet I think it makes all the difference in the world, and we're going to explore the significance of why some of Daniel's visions are narrated by Gabriel up to a certain point in time, and the other visions that go beyond that time are narrated by a different angel and the significance that is to the conversation that takes place in Daniel chapter 12.
36:07: And again, my approach here is to look at this as something that is understandable.
36:14: What can we get out of this from what the scriptures tell us? Now, one of the most important parts of this entire discussion is going to be the chronology of Daniel chapter 11.
36:29: And there are two things in Daniel chapter 11 that I want to focus on briefly. One is that in Daniel chapter 11, the angel walks
36:38: Daniel through a series of earthly kings in order to establish a time frame of events. And when he discusses it, these are actual kings, one after another, leading up to a change from the
36:52: Persian Empire to the Greek Empire. This is just simply a way that the angel helps
36:58: Daniel understand where he is in the timeline. And the timeline is, of course, inherently
37:05: Danielic, because the whole vision since chapter 2 has been to explain what's going to happen with this series of empires.
37:14: And in Daniel chapter 11, the angel walks Daniel through a transition from the
37:19: Persian Empire to the Greek Empire. And he does it by listing a series of kings. Well, in Revelation chapter 17,
37:28: John is counseled to understand where he is in the Danielic timeline when the angel walks him through a series of kings.
37:39: Now, there's a lot of different interpretations to what those kings mean. Could they be forms of government or could they be actual
37:47: Roman emperors? And we're going to walk through Revelation chapter 17 and see that three different times, in three different ways, the angel tries to explain to John where he is in the timeline and how important it is for us to understand that timeline because it, again, is inherently
38:05: Danielic. The second matter in Daniel chapter 11 that I think is absolutely critical, and I've written on this on the
38:13: Bible Thumping Wingnut as well, on the blog. And what
38:18: I want to extract from Daniel chapter 11 is a single frame hypothesis.
38:26: What I mean by that is that in Daniel chapter 11, he establishes a north, south, east, west frame of reference in Daniel 11 .4
38:37: where he says that the kingdom will be divided toward the four winds of heaven, north, south, east, and west.
38:44: And it sure looks from that and for the rest of the chapter, Daniel is describing events that take place between the king of the north and the king of the south and occasionally a reference to the king of the east.
39:02: Now, what typically happens, and I've read this in most commentaries about Daniel chapter 11, is that he establishes a north, south, east, west frame of reference such that the king of the north is in Asia Minor, which is modern -day
39:16: Turkey, and the king of the south is in Egypt. That's in Daniel 11 .4. But in the next verse, he switches his frame of reference such that Jerusalem is the center of the frame of reference and Syria is to the north and Egypt is to the south.
39:32: The question is, did Daniel change his frame of reference in that passage?
39:40: Or did he dictate, or was the entire chapter explained to him in a single frame of reference?
39:45: This matters because he, from 11 .5 on, describes a series of battles between the king of the north and the king of the south.
39:57: And the way we have historically interpreted it is that it was fulfilled by a series of battles between the king of the east and the king of the south.
40:06: And the hypothesis is simply that, well, he must have changed his frame of reference because, historically, we haven't been able to find a series of battles between the king of Asia Minor and the king of Egypt that fit that description.
40:21: But what happens sometime between 11 .21 and 11 .39, the prophesied events again depart from known history.
40:33: And so it's assumed that he must have changed his frame of reference again. And this time, the center of the frame of reference is on some future
40:41: Antichrist. And we now have to figure out who's north relative to Antichrist and who's south relative to Antichrist and who's east relative to Antichrist.
40:51: And yet, in a fair, objective reading of Daniel chapter 11, there's simply no evidence that Daniel ever changed his frame of reference.
40:59: And yet, that change in the frame of reference has pretty much dictated our understanding of Daniel chapter 11.
41:07: The assumption that Daniel changed his frame of reference in the middle of the chapter and maybe even changed it twice.
41:14: The question is, is that a valid assumption? And can that assumption be questioned?
41:19: And I think it absolutely can be. And what we're going to do when we get to Daniel chapter 11 is we're going to walk through the entire chapter explaining how it's possible to read the entire chapter as if there had been only one frame of reference from start to finish.
41:35: North, south, east, and west remaining the same throughout the entire chapter. Now, that is a mouthful.
41:41: It's a lot of information. But we can't understand what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 24 and what
41:50: John was talking about in Revelation if we do not understand the Danielic timeline.
41:56: And all these verses and descriptions of timelines are absolutely critical to understanding
42:06: Daniel. And Daniel is critical to understanding Jesus' prophecies and John's prophecies.
42:12: And in fact, some of Paul's prophecies as well in 2 Thessalonians. So, I would say that our first focus is going to be to establish a
42:20: Danielic chronology. And for today, and we're going to just cover this very briefly because we just want to limit each podcast to about an hour, we're going to talk about the 10 horns that came out of the beast, the fourth beast, that Daniel saw in chapter 11.
42:39: So, are you with me so far, Tim? I'm sorry, I said chapter 11, I meant chapter 7.
42:44: The 10 horns that came out of the fourth beast of Daniel's vision in chapter 7. Yes, I'm with you.
42:51: And real quickly, I just want to say, so we are going to be looking at a sea of one, right?
42:58: That's the article that we're going to be looking at? Yes, yes, yes. Okay, I will post up a link of this article.
43:05: It is on Tim Coffman's blog, whitehorseblog .com. The title of the blog is
43:11: Out of His Mouth. So, let's just jump right into it. And I will link this article so that way our listeners can also participate in the discussion.
43:21: Okay, so everybody knows where we're coming from. That will serve as our introduction. We might make passing reference to the first episode in the later podcast.
43:30: But we won't have to revisit that every time. But I want to throw something out there that first occurred to me when
43:38: I began to study eschatology. Something that had never made sense to me.
43:44: And I'd heard a lot of different views of eschatology. And here it is. In Daniel chapter 7, he describes four beasts that come up out of the sea.
43:56: There's a lion that had wings that were plucked. And the lion was given a man's heart and was made to stand up on two feet like a man.
44:08: And after him was a bear that is lifted on one side. And that bear had three ribs in its mouth saying, arise, devour much flesh.
44:17: And then after that beast came up a third beast that was a leopard with four heads.
44:23: And that's the Greek empire. And then after that was a beast that came up. It was fearsome and terrible and different from all those that preceded it.
44:31: And it had ten horns. Now, what is supposed to happen with this beast with ten horns is that another horn shall rise after those ten.
44:45: And he shall subdue three kings. That's from Daniel 7, 24. That's the angelic interpretation of the passage.
44:53: And remember from Daniel, when he's actually having the vision, he's seeing it happen.
45:00: He sees ten horns. And he sees another horn coming up. And he says, that horn came up for whom three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots.
45:12: So, I want to start with what is probably the most consistent and universal assumption made in all of Danielic eschatology.
45:24: And that is that when that little horn arises, he will remove three of the ten horns, leaving seven horns.
45:33: I think that's some very basic math. It's very straightforward. And I've even heard eschatologists say that the reason the little horn removes three of the ten is so that he has seven horns.
45:48: Because the only other beast in all of scriptures that is referred to as seven horns is the
45:54: Lamb in Revelation. And that's a reference to Jesus. And so, this little horn wants to imitate
46:00: Christ by having seven horns. And that's why three are removed, because he wants to imitate the
46:08: Lord God of the universe in the flesh, Jesus Christ. So, the question that I want to ask though is, does it make sense that three of the ten horns were removed, leaving seven horns?
46:22: Because that's how many would be left if there were ten and three were removed.
46:28: Now, the reason this matters to us is because when we get to Revelation chapter 12, we see a description of a serpent.
46:37: And the serpent has seven heads and ten horns. Now, if you add up all the heads that we just described in the vision that Daniel had in chapter 7, there are seven heads.
46:48: And in that vision, there is one beast that has ten horns. And so, all combined, all the heads and all the horns together makes seven heads and ten horns.
46:59: Okay, that's pretty straightforward. We know that Revelation 12 is drawing on Danielic imagery from chapter 7 of Daniel.
47:07: We move forward to Revelation 13, and we see the beast rising up out of the sea.
47:13: And he has seven heads and ten horns. So, again, he's a compilation of the beasts of Daniel chapter 7.
47:21: Seven heads and ten horns. Now, when you make a comparison between what the little horn of Daniel chapter 7 does and what the beast of Revelation 13 does, the first beast, the one that comes up out of the sea, you can see that the beast that comes up out of the sea is, in fact, that little horn of Daniel chapter 7.
47:43: They both do the same thing. They both speak arrogant words against the
47:50: Most High. They both oppress the saints of God. And you can see that it's not only drawing on Danielic imagery in Revelation chapter 13, but it's identifying the beast with seven heads and ten horns is that little horn that came up in Daniel chapter 7 and allegedly removed three of the ten horns.
48:14: And yet there it is. The little horn has come up. It is the sea beast of Revelation chapter 13.
48:21: And how many horns does it have? It still has ten horns. And the question is, why does the beast of Revelation 13 still have ten horns when he was supposed to have removed three of the ten in order to come up?
48:37: Well, now let's fast forward to Revelation chapter 17. And what we find at the end, there is a description of the ten horns of the vision.
48:48: And those ten horns give their power and their strength to the beast.
48:53: And they are going to make war with the lamb, and the lamb will overcome them, for he is Lord of lords and king of kings.
49:00: Now, what's interesting here is that we have the Antichrist described. We have ten horns described, and the
49:08: Antichrist and ten horns together are going to make war against the lamb, and the lamb is going to overcome them.
49:14: But it's very interesting is that there are still ten horns. And the question
49:19: I want to ask, and this goes back to these passages have to be consistent and logically coherent.
49:27: And so we can't have a situation where there's ten horns to begin with in order to come up.
49:33: So Antichrist removes three, and therefore there are seven left. And yet when
49:39: Christ returns and makes war with the beast and with the horns, there are still ten horns.
49:45: I'm throwing that out there because either our interpretation of Daniel chapter 7 has too few horns, or John is seeing too many in Revelation 17, because there should only be seven left if Antichrist has removed three.
50:02: And the answer to that is that Daniel had actually seen 13 horns.
50:08: And I want to show that from the Scriptures. But I want the significance of the statement to just rest on the ears of the listeners that Daniel had seen 13 horns.
50:20: And I know that that is not what the historical understanding is.
50:25: In fact, when you go back to the history of the church, the understanding has always been that Antichrist removes three of the ten.
50:35: And yet nowhere in Daniel chapter 7 does Daniel ever say that the number of the first horns was ten, or that when the little horn comes up, he removes three of the ten horns.
50:50: That has been assumed historically in the passage, that the little horn must have removed three of the ten.
50:56: And I don't mean to judge or criticize or belittle any of the men I'm about to quote.
51:02: I think that they were looking at it in a way that was... they were attempting to reverence the
51:07: Scriptures and understand what they meant. But included in each one of these statements from these various men is an assumption that does not bear out from the
51:15: Scriptures. Let's start with Hippolytus. And this is from the early 3rd century.
51:22: Early 3rd century, and he had a treatise called On Christ and Antichrist. And he says, in those times, he shall arise and meet them.
51:31: And when he has overmastered three out of the ten horns in the array of war, and has brought the remaining horns to suffer into subjection.
51:39: So this is Hippolytus commenting on Daniel chapter 7 and the references of Revelation.
51:47: And he says that the little horn will overmaster three of the ten. And that's actually something that Daniel doesn't actually say.
51:56: Now, Jerome, writing at the end of the 4th century, said, We should therefore concur with the traditional interpretation of all the commentators of the
52:03: Christian church, that there shall be ten kings who will partition the Roman world amongst themselves.
52:09: Then an insignificant eleventh king will arise who will overcome three of the ten. That's Jerome on his commentary on Daniel.
52:16: And, you know, if we fast forward to John Calvin, Calvin agreed. He said that whatever was thus added to the little horn was taken from the ten horns.
52:28: So Calvin is basically agreeing that he removes three of the ten horns.
52:33: But again, I want to go back to the fundamental assumption we're making going into this discussion.
52:39: If there were ten to begin with, and the little horn removes three, there should only be seven left.
52:46: And yet when Jesus returns, and the beast and the horns make war with the lamb, there are still ten horns.
52:52: When Antichrist is described, or the sea beast is described in Revelation chapter 13, he has arisen and he still has ten horns.
53:01: The question is, why does he still have ten horns? And the answer is that Daniel had seen 13.
53:10: Now I want to go and prove that from the scriptures. And so let's go back to Daniel chapter 7.
53:16: But let me pause for just a second and say I understand the significance of the claim.
53:24: And I understand the questions that people would have. I get it. But I want to just read what
53:30: Daniel said. In Daniel 7 verses 7 and 8, he said, And it had ten horns, referring to the fourth beast.
53:38: He says, I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots.
53:48: And behold, in this horn were eyes like a man, and about speaking great things.
53:54: Daniel has said that it had ten horns. And it says the little horn came up, and before it, three of the first horns plucked up by the roots.
54:03: But he never says three of the ten. He says three of the first horns. In verse 20, it says in Daniel, And of the ten horns that were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell, even of that horn that had eyes and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows.
54:23: Again, he doesn't say, before whom three of the ten fell. And then in verse 24,
54:32: Again, he doesn't say.
54:41: No point does Daniel specify what was assumed by Hippolytus, Jerome, and Calvin.
54:47: That is, three of the ten horns are removed, and that the ten horns comprise the complete set of the first horns.
54:54: These are two assumptions that have been made historically as a basis for interpreting the chapter. Both are unwarranted.
55:02: So the question is, how do we read Daniel chapter 7 to figure out what is being discussed?
55:11: And I want to go back to Daniel chapter 7 now. Daniel chapter 7 is his vision of the sea beasts.
55:19: And what I want to highlight here, and we're only going to spend a few minutes doing this, Daniel is having a vision in the first year of Belshazzar, the king of Babylon.
55:29: This is the first king after Nebuchadnezzar died. And we all remember the humiliation of Nebuchadnezzar when he refused to acknowledge that God ruled in heaven and on earth in the kingdom of man.
55:42: And he was made like an animal for seven years, and the dew of the field was on his feathers, and he had claws, and he ate the grass of the field like an ox.
55:52: And he was made to be humiliated like an animal, and then at the end of seven years, his senses were returned to him, and he looked up and realized,
56:02: God truly is the God of heaven, and he rules in the kingdom of man.
56:07: Now that's important because the first beast that Daniel saw was like a lion.
56:14: This is reading from Daniel 7 .4. The first was like a lion and had eagle's wings.
56:21: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth and made to stand on the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it.
56:30: So where we are in the kingdom of the first beast of Daniel chapter 7 is that we've long since been past Nebuchadnezzar, and the last king of the
56:43: Babylonian empire is Belshazzar, and he's the one who is currently reigning. When Daniel gets this vision, in Daniel 7 .1,
56:51: in the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream.
56:57: Now the significance here is that Daniel is seeing what the kingdom looks like at the end, just before the next kingdom comes up, and that's going to be important.
57:11: I'm going to emphasize that with every single beast. In Daniel 7 .5, we move on to the
57:17: Medo -Persian empire. In Daniel 8, just by way of a parenthetical statement, in Daniel 8, the goat is the kingdom of the
57:26: Greeks and the ram is the kingdom of the Persians, and the Persian goat has two horns, a small one and a big one, and the big one came up last.
57:38: That is a reference to the Persian empire. The Medes were not as violent, and they were not as big and as powerful as the
57:46: Persians. When Belshazzar died, God said that his kingdom was being taken away from him and given to the
57:52: Medes and the Persians. The Medes were the first to reign, and then the Persians were the last to reign, and they were the bigger horn, and they came up last.
58:02: So now let's look at Daniel 7 .5. It says, And behold, another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised itself up on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between its teeth, and they said thus unto it,
58:16: Arise, devour much flesh. This is a description of the Medo -Persian empire after the
58:23: Medes have reigned, and now the Persians have taken over. They are the larger kingdom that came up last, just like is described in Daniel 7 .8.
58:32: The significance here is that the bear has been described in its configuration at the end of its empire before the
58:41: Greek empire came, because when Alexander the Great went to fight against the
58:47: Persian empire, he was fighting against the Persians, not the Medes. So here we have a description of what the second kingdom would look like at the end of its reign, just before the next kingdom came up.
58:58: So now let's look at Daniel 7 .6, and what do we have? We have a leopard. It says,
59:05: After this, I beheld, and another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl.
59:12: The beast also had four heads, into meaning was given to it. Now everybody would look at this and recognize that this is
59:19: Alexander's empire divided four ways, but the significance here is that we have skipped past Alexander the
59:29: Great. He hasn't even been mentioned. Notice that when we're talking about the
59:35: Babylonian empire, we skip past, it clearly describes
59:41: Nebuchadnezzar, and then shows us that where we're seeing it right now is at the end of the Babylonian empire.
59:47: Then we get to the Medo -Persian empire, and it clearly describes it in terms of what the Medo -Persian empire looked like just before it was conquered by the
59:56: Greek empire. And here we are in the Greek empire, and we ignore Alexander the
01:00:01: Great, and this empire is described the way it looked when Alexander's kingdom was divided four ways toward the four wings of heaven.
01:00:10: Now again, referring to Daniel chapter 8, in Daniel chapter 8, we see a goat with a notable horn between its eyes, and it says in Daniel chapter 8 that notable horn between the eyes of the goat is its first king, and that's
01:00:27: Alexander the Great. But that kingdom, that king is broken, and four horns come up in his place toward the four winds of heaven, north, south, east, and west.
01:00:38: And that's the way the Greek empire looked in the latter part of the kingdom just before the
01:00:43: Roman empire came up. So what I want to show here is that in these visions of Daniel chapter 7, what is different about them from the vision of Daniel chapter 8, where we see a process of two kingdoms rising and conquering, at war with one another, and then one prevailing over the other, and then rising to its position of dominance, and then itself being broken and split up four ways, we see a whole process take place.
01:01:15: But what we're seeing in Daniel chapter 7 is different. We see a series of kingdoms, and when you look at them closely, you see that every single kingdom is the way it looked just before the next kingdom came up to dominance.
01:01:30: And so we get to the fourth beast of Daniel chapter 7, and it says, After this I saw night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly, and it had great iron teeth.
01:01:42: It devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it, and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it.
01:01:48: And it had ten horns. Well, just because it had ten horns doesn't necessarily mean that that's the original configuration of the empire.
01:01:58: Just like when we looked at Daniel 7 -7, just because the leopard has four heads doesn't mean that was its initial configuration.
01:02:07: And notice the bear. It's already lifted up on one side. It's past the period of the Medes, and it's now the period of the
01:02:15: Persians. And, of course, the whole vision started when Nebuchadnezzar was long past, and what we're looking at is the
01:02:21: Babylonian Empire as a lion after the humiliation of Nebuchadnezzar, and we instead have
01:02:27: Belshazzar in his place because he's long since gone. So we're looking at these four beasts of Daniel chapter 7, and what we notice is that one after another is described the way it looks just before the next empire rises.
01:02:42: And what is the next empire that would rise after the Roman Empire? Well, that next empire that would rise is a little horn.
01:02:52: And what we're told in Daniel chapter 7 is that little horn removed three of the first horns and then came up among the ten.
01:03:02: And we know it came up among the ten because in Revelation chapter 13, that little horn is described as a seven -headed ten -horned beast that still has ten horns, and at the very end when the lamb comes back, he has to still fight against a beast and ten horns, not just seven.
01:03:22: And, Tim, when we sit and do the math, we realize that Daniel was describing what the
01:03:30: Roman Empire looked like after the little horn had removed three and then came up among the ten and was more stout than its fellows and ended up rising to rule the
01:03:45: Roman Empire after Rome was completely fragmented. And the question we have to ask, there are actually two questions.
01:03:54: One question is, when was the Roman Empire divided 13 ways and who claimed three of its 13 horns for itself and then rose up among the remaining ten?
01:04:10: And I want to start there on our next podcast because we have to establish the time frame.
01:04:19: When did the Roman Empire divide 13 ways? And it turns out there is a very precise point in time when the
01:04:28: Roman Empire was divided 13 ways. It was at the latter part of the 4th century.
01:04:34: And exactly as prophesied, a little horn rose up and claimed that three of the 13 dioceses were his.
01:04:43: And we need to figure out who said it and therefore who is the little horn of Daniel chapter 7.
01:04:51: That's great. That's an excellent place to start. And we will pick it up next week.
01:05:00: So again, if you have any questions, email us. You can also check out Tim's blog, the article.
01:05:06: He's already got the information out there. So if you want to check it out, if you can't wait until next week, go ahead and check it out.
01:05:14: But we will be back next week to explain this a little bit more. Tim will explain it a little bit more.
01:05:20: We're just going to go ahead and leave it there for today. And I want to say thank you to Tim again for coming on.
01:05:28: And we'll check everybody next week. God bless. Transcribed by https://otter .ai