SRR #58 | Eschatology And The Danielic Imperative Part 3

I do a podcast.

I'm not interested in your podcast.

These are wolves. Wake at night, trying to figure out how I can get rid of wolves.

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

We are polemical and polarizing, Jesus style.

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

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

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

And now I will show you the truth. Behold, three more kings shall arise in Persia, and a fourth shall be far richer than all of them. And when he has become strong through his riches, he shall stir up all against the kingdom of Greece.

Then a mighty king shall arise, who shall rule with great dominion and do as he wills. And as soon as he is risen, his kingdom shall be broken and divided toward the four winds of heaven. But not to his posterity, nor according to the authority with which he ruled, for his kingdom shall be plucked up and go to others besides these.

Daniel 11, 2 -4.

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Revisiting Daniel 7, Revelation 17, and the Roman Division

Okay, I want to welcome everybody back to another episode of Semper Ephraim on the radio. My name is Tim Shaughnessy and I am here with Tim Coffman once again for another episode in eschatology. But before we get into that, I just want to give Tim an opportunity to say hello and welcome him to the show.

Thank you, Tim. It's good to be here. I appreciate the folks who've been listening. I hope they've been getting a lot out of it. We appreciate everybody's patience. There's a lot of detailed information to go through in each of these episodes.

We'll cover it to the best of our ability. Hopefully, people will be able to listen to these and the whole series and have a better understanding of Daniel and his timeline, which is really the focus of the entire series right now.

Well, Tim, in the intro we read a passage from Daniel chapter 11 and Daniel chapter 11 is going to be our focus for today. So, this is something that I'm certainly enjoying, but I have very little to add to it.

So, I'm just going to get out of the way and I'm going to allow you to lead us in our discussion for today. So, if you want to just go ahead and get started.

So, I want to start with just revisiting what we covered in the first two episodes. And basically, what we addressed was the harmonization of Daniel chapter 7 and Revelation chapter 17. And what happens in Daniel chapter 7 is that there are four beasts that are four kingdoms that would arise on the earth and the fourth beast had ten horns.

A little horn comes up, uproots three of the first horns and rules among the remaining horns. And typically, historically, that has been understood to mean that there were ten horns to start, the little horn took three of the ten, leaving seven total horns to reign among.

Now, the problem that creates is when we get to Revelation chapter 17. And what happens in Revelation chapter 17 is that the lamb returns, the beast is ready to make war with him and the beast has ten horns with him to make war against the lamb.

The problem is that there should have only been seven horns remaining. If little horn had come up and taken three of the ten in Daniel chapter 7, there should have only been seven horns left in Revelation chapter 17.

Instead, we find that there are still ten horns remaining. And what we concluded in our first two episodes was that either John recorded too many horns in Revelation 17 or we have understood too few horns at the end of Daniel chapter 7.

And what we showed was that Daniel had actually shown each of those four beasts in succession in its final configuration just before the next empire rose. And the series of empires actually depicts five total empires.

The Babylonian Empire, depicted as a lion. The Medo-Persian Empire, depicted as a bear. The Greek Empire, depicted as a leopard. The Roman Empire is a fierce, terrible beast with ten horns and then a little horn coming up.

And that little horn is the fifth empire in succession. But what we showed was that if we are to harmonize Daniel chapter 7 and Revelation 17, there must have been 13 horns. It's just that three of the horns were removed by the little horn before he comes up to reign as the successor and therefore the ten horn configuration is simply the final configuration of the Roman Empire after three have been removed in preparation for the little horn to come up.

So, Daniel was aware of 13 horns. The little horn removed three of the 13, came up among the remaining ten. And that little horn with those ten makes war against the lamb when he returns in Revelation chapter 17.

Thus, we should have been looking for not a ten-way division of the Roman Empire but a 13-way division of the Roman Empire. And historically, ever since people have been investigating Daniel and trying to understand the fulfillment of the prophecies, they have been awaiting a ten-way division of the Roman Empire as an indication that it was time for Antichrist to rise.

In fact, they should have been looking for a 13-way division of the Roman Empire, little horn to take three of those, and then rise up among the remaining ten. And what we showed in our last episode last week was that Roman Catholicism arose as that little horn in the latter part of the 4th century.

There was a ten-year period between 373 AD and 383 AD when we know the Roman Empire was finally divided 13 ways. And the Bishop of Rome occupied a seat in the city of Rome. And based on what we know, both from the ecclesiastical standpoint and the civil standpoint, the person in Rome only managed the city and a few adjacent suburbs to the city.

The actual metropolitan seat of the Diocese of Italy was not Rome, but rather Milan. And so what happened was that Constantinople had the temerity to suggest that the church at Constantinople was second to Rome.

Rome responded saying that no, Jesus had established his church on Peter and Peter had been established in the three Petrine Seas of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. By then, he was describing what were essentially the three metropolitan cities of the three Dioceses of Italy, Egypt, and the East, with the sole exception of the fact that Milan, rather than Rome, was the chief metropolis of the Diocese of Italy.

And that's what gets us to the point in the Danielic timeline where the angel explains that the little horn not only uproots three of the thirteen horns that emerged from the Roman Empire, but subdues three kings in the process.

And what we showed last week was that the Bishop of Rome first could not share Italy with the Bishop of Milan and in 378 AD asked the emperor to subordinate Milan to Rome, which essentially made Rome the chief metropolis of the Diocese of Italy.

When the Roman emperor declared that Roman Catholicism was the new religion of the Empire, he identified it as the religion of the Bishop of Rome and the Bishop of Alexandria. And we also know from a chronological standpoint, Peter had gone to Antioch and lived there quite a while before he ever went to Rome.

So within the Diocese of Italy, Milan had the primacy. When it came to establishing the religion of the Empire, Alexandria was on equal footing with Rome. And when it came to a chronological primacy, Antioch had the primacy ahead of Rome because Peter went there first.

And in the process, Rome subordinated those three Petrine, those three Cs. First subordinating Milan to make Rome the chief metropolis of the Diocese of Italy and then subordinating Alexandria to himself, saying that among the three, Alexandria is second, and then finally putting Antioch in third place.

And that's what historically has been known as the doctrine of the three Petrine Cs. And popes, long since then, have been claiming that a Petrine succession of the Church is established on the foundation of the three Petrine Cs, which by then, of course, were the three chief metropolis, three of the thirteen dioceses of the Roman Empire.

And as we also noted, it was at this same time that Roman Catholicism was becoming a civil power and not just ecclesiastical power. And that's the fulfillment of Daniel chapter 7, where once you harmonize Daniel chapter 7 with Revelation 17 and recognize that each of those four beasts is depicted in its final configuration just prior to the rise of the next empire, we see that what Daniel had seen was that there had been thirteen horns and the little horn came up, removed three, and then arose among the remaining ten, and eventually assumed the civil power.

And that's what Roman Catholicism did once the Roman Empire was divided thirteen ways. So where that gets us to now and what we want to cover in episode 3 is that historically, and basically, I would say for the last 2 ,000 years, it has been assumed that the little horn of Daniel 7 also does some of the things that the king of the north does in Daniel chapter 11.

And we need to understand not just the Roman Empire and how it was divided, because that's the centerpiece of Daniel chapter 7, we also have to understand the division of the Greek Empire, which is basically the framework that's established at the very beginning of Daniel chapter 11.

The reason we have to know this is because the prophecies of Daniel are completely wrapped up in the division of these two empires. Now, the problem that we face, and the problem that eschatologists have faced for a long time, is that the division of the Roman Empire at the end of the 4th century is one of the most obscure facts of the Roman Empire that really only came to light after about 1 ,200 years of obscurity.

It came to light in the middle of the 16th century. As we mentioned last week, the 12-way division of Rome under Diocletian occurred in 296 AD, and that's recorded for us in the Latriculus Veronensis, which is a Roman administrative document from about 314 AD.

And the final division into 13 occurred at the latter part of the 4th century, and that was preserved for us in the Notitia Dignitatum, also a late 4th century Roman administrative record that lay hidden in obscurity for 1 ,200 years.

It wasn't uncovered and published until the middle of the 16th century. The significance of that fact alone is profound, because what it tells us is the most ancient Christian and early Reformed and Protestant eschatologies were established without the knowledge of that final division of the Empire.

One of the most profoundly significant events in the history of the Church, in the history of Christian eschatology, was the division of the Roman Empire 13 ways at the latter part of the 4th century, and it was lost to us for more than a millennium.

The Four-Way Division of the Greek Empire After Alexander

The 4-way division of the Greek Empire is even more difficult, and this is what we're going to jump into today. The Cambridge ancient history informs us that the period is so poorly documented that we are left extracting information from coins, inscriptions, and scattered literary references, to use their words.

This is from Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 7, Part 1. The whole history of the Greek East in the 3rd century BC is very poorly documented, and this includes the Syrian wars. There are practically no detailed accounts of this period by ancient historians.

The preserved part of Diodorus' history is interrupted in the year 302 BC, and Polybius does not take up the narrative until the last few decades of the 3rd century. The gaps can be filled rather sketchily on the basis of scattered literary references, of inscriptions, and to a lesser degree, the evidence provided by coins.

Now, the reason that this has happened this way is that we have largely relied on histories of nations. There was a Greek nation, and there were Greek historians. There was a Roman nation, and there were Roman historians.

There was a Syrian nation, and an Egyptian nation, and those nations all recorded their histories. So much of the division of the Greek Empire that took place after the death of Alexander occurred in Asia Minor.

The problem is that Asia Minor was never the home of an indigenous national demographic. It was always being invaded from the north, the south, the east, and the west, and therefore its population was never really a national entity, at least not during this time frame.

And so you don't have national historians recording the national history of this particular part of the Greek Empire. It's actually something that we can only discover in fragments, in inscriptions, and to some degree, evidence provided by coins.

I want to now turn to Roger Bagnall and Peter Darrow, who were preeminent historians of the Hellenistic era, and they explain the significance of the profound gaps in the written records and the poverty under which we labor as we try to examine the time after Alexander's death.

By poverty, I mean an historiographical poverty. The written record is so poor. In a lot of ways, we're struggling in the darkness to try to find out what actually happened. This is what Bagnall and Darrow wrote in their book, The Hellenistic Period Historical Sources in Translation.

This is Blackwell Publishing, 2004. In the intro, page 26, he says,. For the Hellenistic period, the gaps in the historical record are especially profound, and there can be few epics in the history of the ancient Greek world for which the documents are proportionally as important as they are for the period from the end of the fourth century to the Roman triumph a quarter millennium later.

For this period, we have no connected, completely preserved historical accounts, just pieces of varying size here and there. There's also a further complication. The Greek world no longer offered even the relatively unified narrative canvas that it had in earlier centuries.

History from documents is thus even more fragmentary than that offered by the fragmentary literary tradition of the Hellenistic period, and the fragments are generally of quite a different kind. So, here we are trying to dive into the division of the Greek empire after Alexander, and we're entering a period of relative darkness when it comes to the historical record, and we're forced to rely not only on fragments, but upon fragments of fragments.

In other words, two of the most important phases in Western civilization, from an historical perspective and an eschatological perspective, are the four-way split of the Greek empire after Alexander and the thirteen-way split of the Roman empire in the latter part of the fourth century.

And yet, the historical record of these two periods has been quite obscure, and yet that's what we have to sort through in order to understand the prophecies. We are directed to these prophecies to observe them, to watch them as they happen, and to understand them when they happen so that we can understand the warnings that we are given.

And so, it's very important for us to dive in and understand, and I will say that there are some parts of the Greek record that are so recent that they have been only in the last 100 to 150 years have they even discovered some of the most critical information about the division of the Greek empire and the boundaries of the four nations that arose after Alexander.

And those boundaries are critical to us, because the boundaries themselves are not identified for us in chapter 11 of Daniel, which is what we're covering today. The boundaries have to be determined by their fulfillment.

And that is what I mean is the fulfillment of the prophecies can only be understood when we understand what actually happened in this period. So, where we're going with episode 3 this week, we noted last week that the rise of Roman Catholicism as the little horn of Daniel chapter 7 is largely missed, because without harmonizing Daniel 7 with Revelation 17, we end up looking for a 10-way division of the Roman Empire instead of a 13-way division.

And what ends up compounding this mistake is that the little horn of Daniel 7 is then identified with the king of the north in Daniel chapter 11. Now, this is problematic for more than just one reason, but one big reason that it's problematic is that the centerpiece of the narrative of Daniel chapter 7 is a Roman framework.

Although four beasts are identified, the angel, explaining this to Daniel, says that there are four beasts upon the earth, but he focuses on that fourth beast. It's during the period of the fourth beast that the saints receive a heavenly kingdom, but also during the period of the fourth beast that it becomes fragmented, and the fifth empire rises up.

And that fifth empire persecutes the saints, and it's not until that fifth empire is destroyed that the saints receive an earthly kingdom under heaven. But that's in a Roman framework. There's not a lot of discussion about what happens under the Babylonian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, and the Greek Empire.

Most of the narrative in Daniel chapter 7 is about the Roman Empire and its fragments and the empire that came after that. When we turn to Daniel chapter 11, the introduction to the chapter says there are only a few kings left of the Persian Empire, and then there will be a Greek Empire, and that Greek Empire will be split four ways toward the four winds of heaven.

That's the framework of Daniel chapter 11. There's nothing in the text of Daniel chapter 11 that suggests that Daniel has shifted his focus back to Daniel chapter 7 or forward to a Roman period. He introduces a Greek period in Daniel chapter 11 and then proceeds to walk through a narrative that, for all intents and purposes, appears to be set in a Greek framework.

Nevertheless, the church has historically linked the little horn of Daniel chapter 7 to the king of the north in Daniel chapter 11. I'm going to throw this out there as our next big assumption that we need to deal with.

The first assumption, of course, being that when Daniel wrote chapter 7, he said that the little horn subdued three of the ten kings or uprooted three of the ten horns, something he never actually says.

The other assumption being that the first horns were numbered in the number of ten, and Daniel never actually says that either. Those were assumptions that are brought into the text, and so we had to deal with those assumptions, especially because we were approaching the text understanding that it cannot contradict and it must be coherent and consistent.

When we harmonized Daniel 7 with Revelation 17, we realized that there were, in fact, 13 horns. Now, we're going to look through how has the church looked at Daniel chapter 11 and turned it back into a narrative about something that was taking place in Daniel chapter 7.

I want to give two examples of that. The first is Lactantius. He is writing in the early 4th century in his Divine Institute's book 7 chapter 16. He's writing about Daniel chapter 7, and then he transitions to Daniel chapter 11 as if it was the most natural transition.

I'll just read it for you. It says, But lest anyone should think this incredible, I will show how it will come to pass. First the kingdom will be enlarged, and the chief power, dispersed among many and divided, will be diminished.

Then civil discords will perpetually be sown, nor will there be any rest from deadly wars until ten kings arise at the same time who will divide the world not to govern but to consume it. These, having increased their armies to an immense extent and having deserted the cultivation of the fields, which is the beginning of overthrow and disaster, will lay waste and break in pieces and consume all things.

Then a most powerful enemy will suddenly arise against him from the extreme boundaries of the northern region. So, for some reason, Lactantius has been looking at Daniel and he moves right from the ten kings to a northern antagonist coming.

And then he continues, he said, A most powerful enemy will suddenly arise against him from the extreme boundaries of the northern region who, having destroyed three of that number, who shall then be in possession of Asia, shall be admitted into alliance by the others and shall be constituted prince of all.

So, Lactantius is talking about the ten kings and then suddenly a northern king comes and destroys three of those ten. And that is a reference to Daniel chapter 11 because there's no reference to a northern king in Daniel chapter 7.

Lactantius has shifted to Daniel chapter 11 and has assumed that the northern antagonist in Daniel 11 must be the little horn of Daniel chapter 7. But there's nothing in the text of either chapters that would suggest that link.

My next example is Hippolytus. He's writing at the beginning of the third century and this is his work on Daniel, book 2, paragraph 52. And notice again how he switches so easily between Daniel chapter 7 and Daniel chapter 11.

He says,.

And after he has overmastered three horns out of the ten in the array of war and has rooted these out, that is Egypt and Libya and Ethiopia, and has got their spoils and trappings and has brought the remaining horns which will suffer into subjection, he will begin to be lifted up in heart and to exalt himself as a master of the whole world.

Now, notice how he has identified Egypt, Libya, and Ethiopia as the three horns of Daniel chapter 7. Egypt, Libya, and Ethiopia are identified in Daniel 11, 43. But again, when we look at Daniel chapter 7, we're looking at it in a Roman framework.

When we look at Daniel chapter 11, we're looking at it in a Greek framework. And there's nothing in the text of Daniel chapter 11 that suggests that Daniel has shifted his focus back to Daniel chapter 7 and is now talking about that little horn again.

So Daniel 11 begins, as we've said, with a prelude to the Greek Empire, but both Lactantius and Hippolytus interpret Daniel 11 as if at some point Daniel stopped talking about the Greek Empire and started prophesying again about the little horn of Daniel 7, a horn that is supposed to emerge from the Roman Empire.

And these two examples, I think, are a fair summary of how the church has historically understood Daniel 11 and 7, trying to harmonize them by making the antagonist of Daniel 11, which is the northern king, equal to the antagonist of Daniel chapter 7, which is the little horn.

And as we asked at the beginning of the series, this is one of the assumptions that we identified that needs to be challenged. Are we to assume that Daniel 11, at some point, simply stops talking, without any notice at all, stops talking about the Greek Empire and now is shifting back to a discussion on the little horn of Daniel 7?

I do not believe it's a valid assumption, but what I really want to address is why the church ended up assuming that identification, that identification of the little horn of Daniel 7 with the northern antagonist of Daniel 11.

And there are two main reasons that we're going to address today. We're going to address most of this today, and we're going to pick up with this in the next episode. First, expositors and commentaries have historically struggled with Daniel 11 because it appears to diverge from known history after only four verses.

We're going to examine how the typical attempt to solve the problem geographically actually compounds the problem even further, rather than solving it. And we're going to provide a solution that is actually surprisingly simple, and that solution is right there in the text.

We're just going to show you where it is. And second, the boundary that separates north from south in Daniel 11 is assumed, historically, to be the Mediterranean Sea, an assumption that is largely grounded on extremely limited historical evidence.

Today we're going to explain why that evidence is so limited and how late discoveries in just the last 100 years show where the real boundary between north and south actually was during this time. And I want to emphasize that the boundaries between the north and the south are not identified for us in the text of Daniel 11.

They are shown to us in the fulfillment of the prophecy. And so what we're going to do is we're going to address these two geographic issues, and we're going to explain why they matter so much to the solution of Daniel 11.

Once those two geographic issues are resolved, the continuity problems go away. Again, I want to just emphasize the reason that Daniel 11 has become so confusing to us is because it appears to diverge from known history.

There's a major continuity problem in Daniel chapter 11 based on the assumptions that we have brought with us to the text. Once those assumptions are removed, the continuity problem goes away. And when that continuity problem goes away, with it goes the assumption that the northerly antagonist of Daniel 11 is identified with the little horn of Daniel chapter 7.

The significance to us is that once we realize that the northern antagonist of Daniel 11 is not identified with the little horn of Daniel chapter 7, we no longer have to look for the little horn of Daniel chapter 7 to do the things at the end of Daniel chapter 11.

If we await the little horn to do those things, we'll be waiting for something that's never going to happen. In the process, we will overlook the Antichrist, the little horn, the beast of Revelation 13 that we were warned about.

So, as I mentioned, the Roman division and the Greek division are very, very challenging topics historically. But with the Roman division, we were able to narrow down the 13-way split. That is, when the Roman Empire was formally divided 13 ways into 13 dioceses, and that occurred between 373 and 383 AD.

Once we could identify when that happened, we began to look for, okay, finally the Roman Empire is divided 13 ways, now who tries to take three of the 13 dioceses? And we identified Roman Catholicism as the culprit there.

Roman Catholicism is that little horn of Daniel chapter 7. Now, we're going to turn our attention to the Greek Empire, and we need to focus on when the Greek Empire was split four ways. What we'll be discussing is what is called post-Alexandrian Hellenism, which is just a way of saying the Greek Empire after Alexander.

We have to understand post-Alexandrian Hellenism because Daniel refers to it to establish a framework for the prophecies, and he does this four times. Four different times he refers to the four-way division of the Greek Empire.

And that alone should be enough for us to desire to establish exactly when the Greek Empire was divided four ways. I'm citing from four verses in Daniel. In Daniel 7 .6 he says,. After this I beheld and lo, another like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl.

The beast also had four heads, and dominion was given to it. In Daniel 8 .8,. Therefore the he-goat waxed very great, and when he was strong the great horn was broken. And for it came up four notable horns toward the four winds of heaven.

It's Daniel 8 .8. Now, that being broken, that is, we're now moving forward to Daniel 8 .22, which is the angelic interpretation of that vision, referring to the broken horn between the eyes of the goat.

It says,. Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it. Four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power. And then finally to the chapter that has our attention today, referring to the king of the Greeks who will stand up, it says,.

And when he shall stand up his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided toward the four winds of heaven. So four times we are told about a four-way division of the Greek Empire, and twice we're told that it is divided toward the four winds of heaven.

And I would encourage our readers to study in the Scriptures what the four winds of heaven are. And it's very clear from the Scriptures that the four winds of heaven are north, south, east, and west. And you see all four winds of heaven identified that way throughout the Scriptures.

So the question before us, just like it was last week or the week before,.

We asked,.

When did the Roman Empire divide 13 ways? We have to examine when the Greek Empire divided four ways.

And to do that,.

We're going to have to understand what happened after Alexander died. So we're going to be discussing something that is covered in one of my blog posts called, Reduction of the Diadochi. And the Diadochi is just a Greek term for the successor kings of Alexander.

And so when Alexander died, there was almost an innumerable cohort of successors. They were all trying to claim that they were going to be his successor. Now, immediately upon his death, of course, everybody put their ambitions aside, and they simply revered and honored their king who had died.

He had been a great general and a great king to them. But it didn't take very long for them to start realizing that somebody's got to take the reins, and there was tremendous power wielded by Alexander, and whoever could take the kingdom after him would be very powerful as well.

So the most notorious reductions of the Diadochi were performed by Alexander's own mother, Olympias, and his general, Cassander. Olympias murdered Alexander's half-brother, Aridaeus, in 317 BC to eliminate him as successor.

And Cassander then murdered Olympias in 316 BC to safeguard his claims to the Macedonian throne. Cassander then put to death Alexander's mistress, Barcene, and his son by her, Hercules, in 309 BC. So now Alexander's mother and mistress and his half-brother and his illegitimate son are all dead now.

And then eventually, Cassander eliminated Alexander's wife, Roxanne, and her son, Alexander IV, in 310 BC. So this information comes to us from scattered remnants of the historical record of post-Alexandrian Hellenism, but we're able to put it all together largely from those narratives, trying to figure out who killed whom after Alexander died.