Transcript

Okay, okay, people will be filtering in from the break, but we're going to go ahead and get started because this is, in my opinion, the most exciting book of the Old Testament.

Time waits for no man; that's why we're going to start.

Time flies when you're having fun.

Time heals all wounds.

Time marches on.

Time is money.

Timing is everything.

These are just a few of the sayings that we use about time.

Time is the most important concept in the Book of Daniel.

Let me read to you what St. Jerome said.

He wrote a very early commentary on the Book of Daniel: None of the prophets has spoken so clearly concerning Christ as has this prophet Daniel; for not only did he assert that he would come—a prediction common to the other prophets as well—but he also set forth the very time at which he would come.

Moreover, he went through the various kings in order, stated the actual number of years involved, and announced beforehand the clearest signs of events to come.

Daniel lived about 600 years in the mid-6th century BC, before Christ, so what he's predicting is going to take about 600 years to unfold.

Okay?

Now, before we get into the book, I want to warn you about what the Rapturists do with Daniel.

We're only going to look at three of the visions; there are actually six visions and a lot of history, but we're going to just look at three of them because of time constraints.

If you want to look at more of them, you'll have to buy the book.

But the three visions that we're going to look at all tell us when the Messiah is going to come, and in all three of these visions—although that is the primary focus of Daniel: when is the Messiah going to come?—in

all three of these visions, the Rapturists insert into the middle of the timeline of Daniel's vision a 2000-year parenthesis.

They call it the parenthetical church age, and they put it right in the middle of every one of his visions.

Why do they do this?

Well, I call it the presumptuous parenthesis because if someone told me they were going to meet me in six minutes down at the corner, and I rushed down there to get there, and then instead of coming in six minutes, they were 20 minutes late for that six-minute appointment, that’s analogous to what the Rapturists are doing.

They’re inserting a parenthesis into Daniel's timeline that is three to four times longer than the timeline that Daniel gives us.

Why do they do this?

Well, it’s because Daniel tells us that the Kingdom of Heaven, the Messianic Kingdom, will be established at a certain time.

We believe that that Messianic Kingdom was established at the time that Daniel predicted during the First Advent, and the name of that Messianic Kingdom for you and I in everyday lingo is what?

The Kingdom of God or the Church.

The Church is the kingdom that Daniel predicted the Messiah would set up.

He gave the timeline of when it would happen, but that is a very dangerous concept to a Rapturist.

In fact, it’s a dangerous concept to most Protestants because if you believe that the kingdom was set up at the First Advent and it won’t be set up at the Second Advent, that millennium, that thousand-year kingdom that the Rapturists are always talking about after the Rapture and after the Tribulation, if you believe we are now in the Messianic Kingdom, then what is the natural response?

The natural response is to try to find it, and there is only one Church that can even remotely make a claim to being the worldwide Kingdom of Christ that was predicted in Daniel, and that Church goes by the name of the Roman Catholic Church.

I speak from experience; Daniel was pivotal to me in my journey to the Church.

When I realized what I had always been doing in the Book of Daniel, that I had been dishonest with what Daniel said, the first thing that came to my mind is, Okay, where is the kingdom?

I looked at every Protestant denomination and their claims for being the kingdom, which the covenant churches make that claim: the Dutch Reformed, the Presbyterian, the Methodist.

Those churches' claims to being the kingdom, to me, when I looked at them, it was laughable.

They were not worldwide; they did not span the time frame that Daniel talked about, and they just didn’t look like a kingdom.

The Church, the Roman Catholic Church, was the only place.

So, it's a very dangerous thing, and it's very important to them to put this parenthesis in the middle of Daniel's prophecy.

Okay, so let's look at the visions, but before we do, we're going to run through this outline.

Okay?

This is going to help you.

Now, the reason this is going to help you is because I'm going to give you a little clue: Daniel's outline is copied precisely by St. John when he writes the Book of Revelation.

If you want to know the Book of Revelation's outline, you look at the Book of Daniel.

We'll get into that a little bit later.

But what he does is he starts out in chapter 1 and he gives the historical setting of the book, and that is Babylon has conquered Jerusalem, and God's people are under persecution.

If you don't eat the food of the king, you're being disloyal.

The same thing happens in St. John's day: if you don't eat the king's food that’s been sacrificed to the idols, you're in trouble.

If you pray and disobey the emperor and don't worship the emperor but instead worship God, in Daniel's day, what happens to you?

Daniel in the lion's den, right?

You get thrown to the lions.

In St. John's day, if you don't pray to the emperor in the town square and throw the incense in, what happens to you?

You get thrown to the lions in the Colosseum.

The parallels are unbelievable between these two books.

So, they both start out with the historical setting: God's people are being persecuted.

The second thing is then we have an initial vision in Daniel; that’s in the second chapter.

That is the key vision that gives us the whole sum of what Daniel's trying to teach.

We're going to look at that in a minute.

Then he takes a hiatus.

Okay?

And in chapters 3 through 6, he talks about three different important people.

Now, these events are important for Daniel because they modify and talk about some issues in the initial vision.

Okay?

But we're not going to have time to look at those today.

Then the rest of the book, almost the rest of the book, the fourth segment of Daniel, is a series of five visions.

Those five visions give us more information about the initial vision's message.

We're going to look at only the first one of those, what I call a recapitulatory vision.

So, the initial vision is recapitulated in the fourth section; this is chapters 7 through 12. The first one of those is the vision message of the battle strategy of the beast.

We're going to look at that one.

We're not going to look at the vision of the battle strategy of the goat and the ram, but we are going to look at the vision of the battle strategy of God's people.

These exact same visions will appear in Revelation; you're going to see the exact same outline.

Then there's a thematic summary at the end, which is chapters 13 and 14. Protestants miss the thematic summary in Daniel because they don't have it in their Bible.

We're more fortunate; we have the entire Bible, so we have it.

Okay, so let's go back to that initial vision.

What happens?

Nebuchadnezzar has a dream, and he tells his wise men, I want you to tell me the meaning of the dream.

One trick: I'm not going to tell you the dream.

Now, put yourself in the wise men's position.

You've got the king here, and he's saying, You tell me the meaning of a dream, and I'm not going to tell you the dream.

And they're all headed off to the lion's den; they're all going to be killed.

Daniel says, Wait a minute.

I think my God can answer this mystery.

Now, here's what's interesting about how Daniel lays this out: Daniel mentions the word mystery eight times in this initial vision—eight times!

Now, remember, numbers are important in apocalyptic literature.

Eight is the number of who?

It’s the Messiah's number.

Why is it the Messiah's number from our perspective?

On what day was Christ raised from the dead?

On the eighth day, otherwise known as the first day.

The eighth day is Christ's number.

So, Daniel mentions this mystery eight times because the vision is going to reveal the mystery of the Messianic Kingdom.

The mystery of the Messianic Kingdom is going to be revealed in this first vision.

Okay, now let's talk about it.

So, Daniel tells him the dream, and he tells him the meaning of it.

He says, The head of the image you saw was of gold; his breasts and arms were of silver; his belly and thighs were of bronze; and his legs were of iron, and his feet partly of iron and partly of clay.

He said those four divisions are four kingdoms, King Nebuchadnezzar, that are going to come.

Now, does anybody know their ancient history well enough to know what those are?

The gold head is Babylon; that’s who Nebuchadnezzar was the king of.

The silver breast and arms represent the Medo-Persian Empire; they conquered Babylon when Belshazzar took those gold goblets out.

The Medo-Persian Empire was conquered by the thighs of bronze.

Does anybody know who that would be?

The Greeks.

That’s right!

Alexander the Great came and swept through the Persian Empire all the way down to India unbelievably quickly.

His army could move unbelievably fast.

And then the last one, the iron kingdom mixed with clay—who would that be?

Right, Nebuchadnezzar.

You're seeing the future; those are the four kingdoms that are going to be coming.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting.

He says, A stone, then, in your dream that was cut out by no human hand smote the image so that not a trace of the image could be found, and the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

Now, every early Church commentator said that the stone was who?

The stone that wasn’t cut out by human hands would be who?

Jesus, the Messiah.

So, what is the message of Nebuchadnezzar's mysterious dream?

That there would be four kingdoms: the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Greek, and the Roman.

And during the Roman Empire, the Messiah would come and set up His kingdom.

That’s the message; it’s very simple.

He says, in fact, in verse 44 of that chapter, The God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed.

Its sovereignty shall not be left to another people; it shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever.

Now, let me ask you something: do you think Daniel's vision was fulfilled?

I think so.

During the Roman Empire, Christ came and He set up a kingdom that is still around 2000 years later.

Granted, it’s not the kind of kingdom that the Jews were looking for, but a kingdom it is, nevertheless, and Christ called it a kingdom.

Okay?

So, what do the Rapturists do?

They take that fourth kingdom, the iron legs and clay, and they say, You know what?

That kingdom, we're going to split in two, and it is going to reappear.

Most of the time, they say it's going to reappear in the European Union, and that fourth kingdom will reappear, and at that time, the kingdom of Christ will be established.

Now, just on the surface of it, I know we went through that very, very quickly.

Does that really seem like an honest way to deal with the Scriptures?

Is that what Daniel was trying to say?

Or are they taking Daniel's message and twisting it to say something that really it does not say?

Daniel's message is really very clear: there’s a mystery of the kingdom.

The mystery is this: that there will be four kingdoms, and during the fourth one, the eternal Messianic kingdom will be set up.

In fact, the stone that grows into a mountain reminds me very much of Jesus' words in Matthew 13, verse 31 and following.

He said, The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field.

It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown, it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree.

He’s talking about that stone that breaks the image into pieces, growing into, as Daniel said, a great mountain—the Church that we see today.

That’s the initial vision; it’s really pretty simple, pretty straightforward if you just take the vision for what it says and don’t try to put a 2000-year hiatus into the middle of that fourth kingdom.

Anyone that says if the European Union were to become the most powerful empire in the world, that that is somehow the same empire as the ancient Roman Empire, I think that is stretching it past the point of credulity.

It’s not credible, but that’s what they have to do.

Okay, now then, Daniel gives us some historical things in chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6, but in chapter 7, he returns to this whole idea of the vision of the mysterious kingdom, the Messianic Kingdom, and he’s going to give us a little bit more detail.

So, we’re going to go into the next couple of visions here.

Now, let me tell you what he does.

In this first vision, Vision A, which starts in chapter 7, this stone comes down and breaks the image up.

But in this first recapitulating vision, Daniel's going to give us some details.

In other words, is the image going to fight back?

Doesn’t that come to your mind?

Is the image going to take this lying down?

Or is the image, this fourth kingdom, going to fight for its survival?

It’s the vision of the battle strategy of the beasts.

Now, they have a dream; there are again four entities.

They again symbolize Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, but this time they’re not parts of a statue.

This time, in chapter 7, these four kingdoms are signified by what?

Beasts.

The first was like a lion, and it had eagle's wings.

The second one was like a bear.

Another was like a leopard with four wings of a bird on its back.

Remember how Alexander the Great could move his armies at great speed?

Like a leopard with wings on his back.

And the last beast, a fourth beast, was terrible, dreadful, exceedingly strong.

It had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces, and it stamped the residue with its feet.

It had ten horns.

This last beast would be, in Daniel's vision, what?

Rome.

Rome had ten provinces, and that’s how most early commentators looked at those ten horns: as the ten provinces of Rome.

Judea, for example, was one of them.

If you go over to the west, Britannia was another one.

So, they had these ten provinces, and they ruled their empire through the provincial governments.

But it’s the same four empires.

They are just now pictured as vicious beasts fighting back.

These four empires—the empires of the world—are not going to take the Messianic Kingdom lying down.

The person that stands behind the worldly kingdoms is Satan.

He knows that the Messianic Kingdom is his doom, and he’s going to fight back, and they look like terrible beasts.

So, this vision gives us some more details concerning what happens when the stone hits the statue.

What is looked at as instantaneous in the first vision is now sort of drawn out and explained to us so that we can see what actually happens.

Okay?

It also goes a little bit further past it.

It says that the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever and ever.

That’s a new group of people that we haven’t heard about before.

Now we find out that there are saints in this kingdom.

Okay, so how does the beast, this fourth beast, fight back?

Well, we’re told that there’s a little horn.

This little horn on this beast does several things.

He had a mouth that spoke great things, and he spoke words against the Most High.

Nowadays, we call that blasphemy.

He tried to change the times and the law—in other words, the Jewish law.

He tried to amend it; he tried to change it.

That’s in chapter 7, verse 25. He plucked up three royal people before him; in other words, he put down three royal people.

In chapter 7, verse 24, when you look at how this small horn of that last beast is described, it fits the life and career of one Roman Caesar to a glove.

It fits the life of Caesar Nero.

Nero was well known for the fact that he had a big mouth; he spoke great things about himself.

He also blasphemed God repeatedly.

Roman emperor worship was common by the time Nero came along.

The difference with Nero is he actually believed it; he actually thought he deserved it.

He had the idea that maybe he really was God.

He tried to change the times and the seasons, the festivals, and the law that the Jewish people observed, just as Daniel predicted that he would.

In fact, one of the things that started a war with Jerusalem was they stopped sacrificing in the temple for the Caesar.

He got them to start sacrificing for the Caesar.

Even the three royal people that are plucked up before this little horn fit the life of Nero.

There were three important people in Nero's life.

He was not really of royal lineage; his mother was Agrippina, and she married the Emperor Claudius.

When she married Claudius, she asked him to put Nero in the royal lineage—in other words, to be the next person to be emperor.

This meant that Nero would take a step in front of Claudius's real son, his son by birth, Britannicus.

In order to make this a little bit easier to swallow, Nero married Claudius's daughter, Britannicus's sister.

After Nero became emperor, he had all three of these people killed—in other words, the three people that had helped him ascend to the throne.

He turned around and had them taken out of the way.

They had power bases separate from his own.

He was a very ruthless man, and he fits the description of Daniel like a glove.

Even the end of what happens to Nero fits what Daniel says.

Daniel says this little horn, his dominion shall be taken away from him, and it will be consumed and destroyed.

Nero was the last in his dynasty.

Nero did not have a son or an adopted son that became emperor after him.

Nero did not choose who would be the next emperor; he committed suicide.

He committed suicide when the army and even his own bodyguard turned against him, and the next emperor of Rome was a man that was not of royal lineage and hated Nero.

His name was Vespasian.

So, even what Daniel tells us about this little horn and how he ended fits with Nero.

But there’s one more important thing that’s very, very significant about this Nero, this little horn, and that is this little horn made war with the saints and prevailed over them in chapter 7, verse 21. Now, we’ve just been introduced to the saints.

The saints are the citizens of this kingdom, correct?

The saints are the name that Daniel gives to the citizens of the kingdom, and he’s telling us that in the vision of the battle strategy of the beast, there will be a little horn that will try to blot out every citizen of God’s kingdom, and Nero did that.

Nero was the first Caesar to turn on the Church.

He did it in 64 AD. Up until that point, the Roman Empire sort of looked at Christianity as a small little sect within Judaism, and they said, You know what?

They’re killing each other, and that’s fine, but that’s just sort of a Jewish problem.

Let’s let them handle that.

But in 64 AD, that all changed because Nero wanted to expand his palace, and so he started a fire.

That fire in July of 64 burned down two-thirds of Rome.

At the end of the fire, Nero had to have someone to blame it on, and he found a very convenient scapegoat: it was the Christian Church.

The Christians started the fire, and the Christians were the ones that did that.

Now, as a result, the whole Roman Empire took the side of the Jerusalem leaders, the Sanhedrin, against this small little Church, which we now know is the Kingdom of God, and they almost succeeded in blotting it out.

Okay?

The whole Roman Empire turned against the Church until February of 67. In February of 67, something else happened.

Nero decided that the Christians weren’t the real enemy; the real enemy was Jerusalem.

Now, what had happened?

In 66, in the summer, Jerusalem revolted.

There was a general in Jerusalem, or in Israel, with the Roman garrison, and the Jerusalem temple priests decided to stop their sacrifices for Nero.

Every day, they sacrificed for Nero in the Jerusalem temple, but they stopped it.

This made the Romans so mad that he came and attacked the temple, and it actually looked like he was going to win.

But for some unknown reason, he started a retreat across the Israeli-Judean countryside.

He lost 6,000 Roman soldiers in that retreat, along with most of his animals and most of his war material.

The Jerusalem people thought that their glory had come back, so they declared war on Rome.

There was only one garrison left; this was now a garrison of Roman soldiers surrounded by hostile territory.

So, the Romans in that garrison promised to lay down their weapons if they were given safe conduct.

The Jews agreed and said that they would give them safe conduct.

The minute they laid down their weapons and started to retreat, they slaughtered them to the man.

This so enraged Nero that in February of 67 AD, he declared war officially on the Jewish people.

It’s called the Roman-Jewish War, or the Jewish-Roman War.

It extended from February 67 AD until August of 70 AD—exactly 42 months.

Now, that switch of strategy on the part of the Roman Empire, secular historians tell us, is the only reason the Church survived.

Because if the Roman Empire had continued to pursue Christians at the rate at which they were, we would have all been wiped out.

I want to propose to you that there’s another reason the Church wasn’t wiped out: it’s because even though the beast was fighting against the Church, the beast's battle strategy was to try to wipe this small kingdom out before it could grow, the Messiah had already come, and the Messiah's kingdom had already been established.

The Messiah Himself would not allow it to be overrun.

So, in 67 AD, Nero declared war, and in Daniel chapter 7, in the vision of the battle strategy of the beast, Daniel tells us that there will be a war against the law and against the Jerusalem people by the little horn, and he exactly predicts the amount of time.

He tells us that that war will go for three and a half years.

How many months is three and a half years?

Forty-two.

Daniel tells us that the war that the little horn will make on the law will be for three and a half years—a time, two times, and half a time.

It’s an Old Testament way of saying three and a half.

For three and a half years, there’ll be a war.

When we look at what happened in the first century, that’s exactly what happened.

In 64, Nero turned on the Church and decided to blot it off the face of the earth, and at that time, the Jewish leaders were saying, Go get them!

Go get them!

They didn’t like us either.

Okay?

In 66, Jerusalem revolted.

In February of 67, Nero sends Vespasian to try to conquer Jerusalem back again, and that takes 42 months—the exact amount of time that Daniel predicted 500 years earlier.

Now, the vision gets interesting.

Let me read to you what Daniel says happens next during these 42 months.

Okay?

Daniel tells us in Daniel chapter 7, verses 13 and 14—if you’ve got your Bible: With the clouds of heaven, there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him.

And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.

And his dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom shall not be destroyed.

Now, does that sound vaguely familiar?

Remember when we were in this first vision, the initial vision?

There was a kingdom that was going to be set up, and very much the same language was used.

That was the kingdom that Christ set up at His first coming, and in fact, this is the very same one and the same kingdom.

Daniel is saying that at this time, the kingdom will be established.

But let’s go back and look at the passage because some people look at this passage, including Rapturists, and say, You know what?

This has not happened yet; this has got to be the second coming.

Okay?

Now, in that, they’re disagreeing with the Church.

In the Church's liturgy, if you look up Daniel chapter 7, verses 13 and 14, and find out where in the Mass readings that is, it is connected with Christ's first Advent.

This occurred in the first Advent.

Now, how do we know that?

Let’s look at it.

First of all, who are the players?

There are two people mainly, right?

There’s the Ancient of Days, who would be who?

God.

And there’s the Son of Man, who would be?

The Messiah, Christ.

In fact, Jesus in Matthew chapter 26 says, I am the Son of Man.

He takes this exact passage, this exact phrase, for Himself and says, I am the Son of Man.

Now, what’s going on here?

The Son of Man is making a trip and coming somewhere.

If you’ve got the passage in front of you, who is he going to?

He’s going to the Ancient of Days.

And here’s where the Rapturists don’t look at the passage; they say he’s coming to us.

That’s not what the passage says.

The passage says he’s coming to the Ancient of Days.

This occurred at the Ascension; this happened at the first Advent.

It’s very clear in the passage that he’s going to the Ancient of Days and he’s going to be presented before Him.

So, this passage, this prediction, happened during the first Advent.

And where did it happen?

Primarily in heaven.

But Jesus gives us some other details about this in the Matthew passage that I just mentioned before.

Matthew chapter 26 says, Jesus tells us, chapter 26, verse 64: I tell you, now he’s talking to the people that are judging him and condemning him to death.

They are right in the process of condemning him to death.

He says, I tell you hereafter that you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power.

Whose right hand?

The Ancient of Days.

He’s alluding to this Daniel passage, and you will see him coming on the clouds of heaven.

So, Jesus, in the very midst of his trial, refers back to this vision of the battle strategy of the beast, and he says, You, you that are condemning me to death, you will see me seated by the Ancient of Days, and you will see me coming on the clouds.

Now, on the clouds means what?

Ground rule?

Glory.

As judge, he will come as a judge in glory.

So, what Jesus is saying to the Sanhedrin is, You think that you are judging me to death, and you may be, but the final judgment will come, and you will see it in your lifetime.

I will judge you; I will come in the clouds of glory, and it will be a judgment you will never forget.

Now, how do we put all this together?

Let’s go back to one of the ground rules.

When God says that he’s going to come in judgment, do we actually see him there?

Not always, right?

Sometimes when Egypt is told that God is going to come and judge, what really shows up is the Assyrian army.

Sometimes when Belshazzar is told that Babylon is going to be judged by God, what really shows up is the Medo-Persian army.

Okay?

And when Jesus tells the Sanhedrin that within this generation you will see me coming as your judge, what shows up is the Roman army.

The Roman army came and did the judgment on the Sanhedrin at the end of the Jewish-Roman War that Daniel predicted 500 years before would last for three and a half years.

This is what he says.

This is Jesus speaking in Luke chapter 19, verses 41 to 44. He says, For the day shall come upon you when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you.

That all was literally fulfilled in 70 AD. Not one stone in the entire city was left on top of another; they plowed it over as a field and filled it with salt.

But then Jesus goes on, because this is why it’s going to happen: Because you did not know the day of your visitation.

You didn’t accept me.

The battle strategy of the beast was to get people to reject the Messiah, and those that did not reject the Messiah, to try to wipe them off the face of the map.

But it didn’t work.

Now, let’s go back to one of the ground rules—ground rule number three.

This event has already been fulfilled; it should not be confused with the Second Coming.

Daniel is not predicting the Second Coming; he’s talking about when the Son of Man comes to the Ancient of Days.

However, as with all Old Testament and New Testament events, when something happens, that event in and of itself can be a prediction of the final eschaton, when Christ will come back and will judge the whole entire earth.

Okay?

Now, there’s one more vision we want to look at, and we’ve got about ten minutes to do it, so we’re going to do it real quick.

We’re going to look at this vision, which is probably the most difficult passage in the entire Old Testament.

We’re going to try to do it in ten minutes.

I can’t believe we’re going to do this, but it’s this: we’ve got the vision strategy of the goat and the ram.

We’re going to skip over that one; it’s the visions of the battle strategy of God’s people.

Okay?

We know what the battle strategy of the beast is.

The kingdom’s being established; the stone has come down and hit the statue.

And they are going to try to wipe the Messianic Kingdom off the face of the earth.

So, what is the vision of the battle strategy of God's people?

What are God's people supposed to do about it?

Well, this is being written in 550 AD, so what are God's people supposed to do in 550 AD? What are they supposed to do to help God's plan for how this Messianic Kingdom is going to be established?

We’re going to look in Daniel chapter 9; that’s where the vision is.

It’s a very complicated vision.

We’re not going to deal with every little tit and tat of it, but let me tell you what this vision boils down to.

The long and the short of it: If you build it, he will come.

That’d make a good movie, wouldn’t it?

If you build it, he will come.

That’s the battle strategy of the people.

God’s people build the temple, and the Messiah will come.

But then there’s another second part to the vision: they’re not going to live happily ever after.

If you build it—if you build the temple—remember, the temple is in ruins; Babylon destroyed it.

And Daniel's being told way over in Babylon, If you can get the Jewish people back to Jerusalem and they rebuild that temple, when that temple is rebuilt, the Messiah will come.

You build it, he’ll come.

But it’s not going to turn out the way you think.

What’s going to happen is the Messiah is going to be cut off, the temple’s going to be destroyed, and it’s not going to end up happily ever after.

That’s the message of this vision.

Now, there are a lot of things in this vision, and I hate to keep doing this to you, but point by point, you’re going to have to go to the book because there’s just too much to cover in it all.

But basically, that is what the vision says.

Now, how do the Rapturists deal with it?

Let me tell you what they do.

They take, and in the middle of a sentence between verse 25 and 26, they put their 2000-year hiatus in there.

That’s where they put their presumptuous parenthesis.

For them, here’s what the vision says: you build the temple, the Messiah will come, the Messiah will be cut off, 2000 years happen, then the temple is going to be destroyed.

That’s why they believe that the temple has to be rebuilt, because they are saying that verse 26 is still in the future.

That when the temple is destroyed, that’s still in the future; it hasn’t even happened yet.

Okay?

The simplest way to take the vision, though, is that Daniel wants to know what his strategy is supposed to be.

He’s waiting for the Messianic Kingdom.

There are going to be four kingdoms; he knows it’s going to be a long way off.

I mean, Babylon seems unconquerable at that point, and you still have to have the Medo-Persian, and then you still have to have the Greek, and then you still have to have this terrible Roman Empire before the Messiah comes.

So, Daniel’s told, Your strategy: you build the temple, the Messiah will come, the Messiah will be cut off, and the temple will be destroyed.

There is no reason in the passage to put a 2000-year hiatus in between the building of the temple and the destruction of what in the passage is the same temple.

But what the Rapturists say is a whole other temple that hasn’t even been built yet.

Are you all following me?

So, the simplest way to take the passage is what it says.

Now, let’s just look at the passage real quickly: Seventy weeks or seasons are decreed concerning your people and your holy city.

And here’s what’s going to happen in this timeframe of when you build it, the Messiah comes, the Messiah is cut off, and the temple is destroyed: We’re going to finish transgression, we’re going to put an end to sin, we’re going to atone for iniquity.

We’re going to bring in everlasting righteousness, we’re going to seal both vision and prophet, and we’re going to anoint the most holy.

Now let me ask you, just look at that passage that we just read: when did that happen?

Or did it happen?

Has iniquity been atoned for?

I hope you say yes.

Has transgression been finished?

According to Hebrews, it has been.

Has everlasting righteousness been brought in?

I hope you say yes to all those things.

If you say no, then you’re a Rapturist.

The Rapturist has to say no, that none of that stuff has occurred yet because they have to have their hiatus of 2000 years.

They say that none of this is going to happen until that new temple, which this prophecy doesn’t talk about the rebuilding; it’s just all of a sudden there to be destroyed.

That’s when transgressions are finished; that’s when everlasting righteousness has been fulfilled.

That stands in direct opposition to everything that the New Testament and the Church have ever said.

And so, this entire prophecy is about the first Advent and the events that flowed from that into 70 AD. Let me just give you an example.

Tertullian wrote, and Tertullian is sort of a favorite with Rapturists because he ended up disagreeing with the Church about some other issues, but let’s see what he said about this passage: The day when Christ was born, eternal righteousness was revealed, and the saint of saints was anointed, namely Christ.

And the vision and prophecy were sealed, and those sins were remitted which are allowed through faith in Christ's name to all who believe him.

It was because the prophecy was fulfilled by his Advent that the vision was confirmed by a seal, and it was called a prophecy because Christ himself is the seal of all the prophets, fulfilling as he did all that the prophets had previously declared concerning him.

Okay, we went through that last vision real quickly, but I think you’ve got the idea.

What Daniel is predicting is that the Messianic Kingdom will come.

He tells us when it’s going to happen; he tells us who’s going to be reigning.

He even gives us details about the Caesar that’s in charge at that time, and he tells us about the events of the destruction of the temple.

This is not only a Christian view.

Let me read to you a totally non-Christian Jewish interpretation of these events.

Josephus was a general who fought against Vespasian and lost.

This is what he wrote: Our nation suffered under Antiochus Epiphanes, and in many years in advance, Daniel wrote what was to take place.

That’s some of the visions we didn’t look at.

In the same manner, he also wrote about the empire of the Romans and that Jerusalem would be desolated by the Romans.

This is the standard view of these visions for most of the Church's history.

Zechariah now picks up this same outline, and he talks about something that he calls the Day of the Lord.

The Day of the Lord in Zechariah fits into this vision of the battle strategy of God's people.

It’s the 70-year time, 70-year period from the birth of the Messiah to the destruction of the temple.

It’s called one week—the last week of Daniel.

Now, that week of Daniel, most of the early Church believed, was that seven-decade period of time.

Eusebius makes it very clear that the majority opinion in the early Church was that the last week of Daniel, spoken of in this vision we just finished with, is seven decades.

Here’s what the Rapturists do: they take those seven periods of time.

We’re not told what periods of time they are, although the RSV calls them years; that’s not in the original; it’s not in the Hebrew.

They take those as seven years.

They put the parentheses in there, and those seven years become what?

The seven-year Great Tribulation.

Now, in that, first of all, in calling it the seven years instead of seven decades, they’re standing in opposition to what most of the early Church believed.

Most of the early Church believed it was seven decades.

Second of all, they put that 2000-year parenthesis in between the building of the temple and the destruction of the temple in order to get that seven years into the future.

I don’t think either of those things they can justify.

But let me tell you the bad news if you’re a Rapturist: that’s the only place the seven years are in the Bible.

If they don’t have the seven years in this vision, which the early Church didn’t believe they did—they said it was 70—if they don’t have those seven years there, they don’t have it.

They talk about a seven-year tribulation, and that’s the only place that is mentioned.

Those seven years are nowhere else.

Let me just mention one other thing.

As long as we’re hearing Daniel, Daniel chapter 12, verses 2 and 3 talks about a resurrection.

That resurrection, the Rapturists claim, has to be at the end of the world because it’s a resurrection.

But we know that resurrections sometimes are what?

Ground rule 7: sometimes resurrections are a spiritual renewal, and that’s what Daniel chapter 12 is talking about.

I’m just saying that if you’re reading through that and you go, Golly, where did that come from?

that’s the spiritual renewal that happened under Judas Maccabeus, which is still celebrated in every Jewish synagogue as what festival?

Hanukkah.

That’s right; it was a very important time.

One other thing that Daniel mentions in Daniel chapter 4: Daniel said, Seal up the book until the time of the end, and then knowledge will increase.

You hear silly little things that Rapturists sometimes say, that this is talking about the knowledge that is increasing in our life, that it’s talking about the computer revolution.

That’s not what Daniel’s talking about.

Daniel, his whole book is about the mystery of the kingdom, and he’s frustrated by the end of it because he still doesn’t understand what all he’s laid out.

It’s sometimes hard for us to look at it and figure out what he’s saying, but from his perspective, he didn’t know that the Messiah was going to come and be killed and set up a spiritual kingdom.

He was still looking for a physical kingdom.

But God says, Don’t worry about it; seal the book up.

At the time of the end, knowledge will increase.

Knowledge about what?

Knowledge about the kingdom.

That’s what Daniel cares about; he doesn’t care about computers.

The knowledge that’s going to increase is the knowledge about the mystery of the kingdom, and this is exactly what Jesus said.

Do you remember Jesus saying this?

He said, The prophets longed to see what you see.

What did the prophets not see that the disciples saw?

The mystery of the kingdom—the fact that it was a spiritual kingdom, the fact that the Messiah was a serving king, the fact that Jew and Gentile would eat at the same table.

That is the key to the kingdom: the Jew and Gentile would eat at the same table.

They never did before Jesus.

Jews didn’t eat with Gentiles, but Paul came along and said there is no longer Jew and Gentile; there is no longer slave and free, man and woman.

Those distinctions are unimportant now.

What’s the important one?

Are you in the kingdom or are you out of the kingdom?

And if you’re in the kingdom—and that was set up during the Roman Empire—if you’re in the kingdom, you will eat with all the other people in the kingdom.

We’re going to do that at 5 o’clock.

We’re going to eat in the kingdom at 5 o’clock tonight.

Pascal was a famous mathematician; he summed up Daniel very well.

He said, One must be bold to predict the same thing in so many ways.

It was necessary that the four idolatrous monarchies, the end of the kingdom of Judah, and the 70 weeks should happen at the same time, and all this before the temple was destroyed.

The time foretold by the state of the Jewish people, by the state of the heathen, by the state of the temple, by the number of years, Christ will be killed in the last week—the 70th week of Daniel, that 70-year period.

The heathen should be brought to the knowledge of God, the God worshipped by the Jews, that those who loved Him should be delivered from their enemies and filled with all His fear and His love.

And it happened 500 years before Jesus' birth.

Daniel predicted the rebuilding of the temple, the coming of the Messiah, the cutting off of the Messiah, and yes, the destruction of the temple, and it all happened the way he said.