Content in category Daniel

Discerning the Beginning of Daniel’s Seventieth Seven

Without doubt, what seemed so hopelessly remote and improbable only two years ago appears to be moving at an unprecedented pace towards the deceptive Mideast peace that sets the stage for the final sequence of events leading to the Lord’s return. Just what form this will take or how long it will be in its development remains to be seen, but prophecy clearly shows that a disarming illusion of peace is the necessary prelude to the shock that must come to Israel and the world. 

The danger that besets these exciting developments is the tendency to make premature announcements that discredit prophecy just when its greatest potential for witness and warning is nearing the appointed time when it will be time to say with assurance and authority, “this is that!” (Acts 2:16). Even now, well meaning prophecy watchers are making premature declarations that the final seven has already started.

Others are more cautious to say only that the conditions necessary for the peace that begins the final seven are falling fast into place. Although a necessary first step, the enforcement of a multi-national peace arrangement is not by itself sufficient to signal the start of the last seven, UNLESS this is accompanied by certain equally foretold conditions and signal events. This is what we want to look at in what follows, as it will be a safeguard against the false alarms and premature announcements that are sure to fill the air.

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The Olivet Key to Daniel’s Prophecy of the End

It should be well known from the prophetic portions of both testaments, that the age concludes over an international crisis concerning the Land, and Jerusalem in particular. Shepherds and leaders, and witnesses in general are going to need an answer for why this should be so.

As never before, the whole flow of history is moving exactly in the direction that the plain person’s plain reading of prophecy would have led them to expect. God Himself has made the issue of Israel and the so-called, “Jewish question” a watershed of international division.

Just imagine trying to explain the irrevocable election of Israel, based on grace alone, to a generation that is being fast pre-conditioned, almost overnight, to despise the very suggestion of such an unthinkable notion. Talk about a calculated offense!

So yes, how we see the times we’re in does indeed come down to a question of one’s hermeneutics, but also to a question of the heart.

The pragmatic pastor will want to ask, how is this relevant to the gospel? If a pure gospel is well established in the heart, isn’t that enough? Shouldn’t such details of prophetic speculation be left to the mystery that God intended, nice to know but not critical, since the sheep will surely make it through, come what may?

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How Do You Justify the Gap Between the 69th and 70th Week?

Where in Scripture is it revealed that we should expect an indefinite time gap between weeks 69 and 70?
This cannot be obtained from a straightforward reading of the text.

The gap is what can be called a necessary inference. As with many great truths of scripture, it is not based on one single, obvious text but the cumulative evidence of many verses, scattered here and there, forming a mystery that must be searched out.

What is clear and, as you say, “straightforward”, is that scripture puts the last half of Daniel’s 70th week as arriving at “the consummation / the end”. This end of the age, reaching to the end of the final tribulation, the destruction of the “beast” (Dan 7:11) / “little horn” (Dan 7:8: 8:9) / “vile person” (Dan 11:21) / “wilful king” (Dan 11:36), the deliverance of Daniel’s people, and the resurrection of the righteous dead (Dan 12:1-2) is the same “end” so prominently in view throughout the book of Daniel. There is great, I would say decisive evidence that the final 3 ½ years of this age is the last half of Daniel’s 70th week.

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Thoughts on the Mystery of Heavenly Hindrance

Only weeks apart, I received the same question from two dear friends. It is a question many have asked, and it is one that has the potential to cast great light on much else. Here’s how one friend put the question:

“It is clear the nameless one (described in Dan 10:4-11:1) is the Lord Jesus given clear unity with Revelation 1. How do you understand His being delayed and receiving help from Michael to release the word?”

Even among those commentators who see verses 5-9 as depicting a pre-incarnate appearing of Christ, most will argue that beginning at verse 10, another figure has come into view. The proposed change from Christ to an angel is assumed only because it is thought to be inconceivable that the pre-incarnate Son could need angelic assistance to push past the resistance of the demon Prince of Persia to complete his errand to Daniel (Dan 10:13).

[And what a strategic errand it was! It was to be an exceptionally long, uninterrupted (two chapters), unparalleled, narrative style prophecy that would lay out in astonishing detail “what shall befall your (Daniel’s) people in the latter days.” No wonder the demonic realm was so invested to impede the messenger’s mission. It is important to note what this mighty, history-determining breakthrough of divine revelation cost Daniel, as well as the place that sovereign providence had brought him in preparation for it.]

Yet, does the view that an angel has stepped in in place of the glorious Christ really solve our problem? It still leaves the question, why would the holy angels, sent by God, ever be successfully detained? Wouldn’t it be expected that the only assistance they would need to fulfill their mission would be amply supplied by God Himself? What then is this mystery of demonic resistance? What is its purpose in the great scheme of God’s eternal purpose? Why the struggle? …

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Books Lights (Janko Ferlic)

The Signs Before THE Sign

In order for our view of the two days to be vindicated, we would have to see the signs that precede the principal sign that Jesus gives, all within a very short period of time. By understanding this particular, centermost event, all other principal events of the end are aligned and set in order.

I am speaking of the “abomination of desolation”. This is the event that Jesus directs His disciples to “read and understand” (Mt 24:15). Jesus well knew that by obedience to His solemn command to identify and understand this event, it would become possible for His sheep to recognize a number of other preliminary signs that must precede and lead up to the abomination of desolation (Mt 24:15 with Dan 8:11-14; 9:27; 11:31: 12:11).

It is these well defined events, one that is particularly unmistakable, that will alert, awaken, and mobilize the saints for their finest hour of witness and triumph over Satan and the man of lawlessness. There is a divine strategy that God has invested in making the approximate time of His coming unmistakably clear to His saints when these key, preliminary signs will be in clear, unmistakable fulfillment.

But I don’t want to begin my answer by simply laying out the order of events leading to Christ’s return. We have done that often elsewhere. Instead, I want to point out the interpretive key that is essential to support and defend our view of the end from all other competing interpretations, both now and across the annals of church history.

It is crucial that this be in the hands and understanding of God’s people for the sake of the many that will be called upon to give an answer, as we expect that the manifest fulfillment of the prophecies on the open stage of history will prove the greatest evangelistic tool since the days of the early church (Dan 11:32-33; 12:3; Rev 7:9, 13-14).

This critical key of interpretation is found in the most unexpected place. By God’s design, the event that so clearly and indisputably holds all else in proper alignment is also the most misunderstood and commonly dismissed. I speak of the indispensable sign of the sacrifice.

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The Sign of the Sacrifice [VIDEO]

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ESV on Dan 9:25-26?

Unless God supernaturally intervenes, translation work is not an exact science.

Yes, the ESV has some poorly translated spots here and there, but no more than most others. Except in the case of Dan 9:25 ESV, Dan 9:26 ESV. (Compare with Dan 9:25, 26 KJV) That isn’t just a poor translation; it’s bad! Yet, even there, there are arguments, coming mostly from liberal Christian and Jewish Hebrew scholars that make a case for it to be translated precisely as it is in the ESV. This translation has “given great occasion to the enemies” of the messianic interpretation.

That translation made the anti-missionaries happy, giving legitimization by Christian translators to what Jewish Hebrew scholars have been protesting all along. Of course, speaking from a strictly “technical” linguistic standpoint, it can also be JUST as legitimately translated the way KJV, NKJV, NASB, and nearly every other Christian translation in history has translated it UNTIL the ESV came along and makes this massive concession and capitulation to what Jewish scholars have been insisting all along to be the result of Christian bias, tampering with the text, giving it a forced, “unnatural” meaning. But unnatural to who?

They argue that it is the Christian who has the vested interest to “force” the text to yield a meaning that would be unnatural unless one was already predisposed to see in it one Messiah rather than two. For Jews who have no such vested interest (?), it is argued that one should see two messiahs, not Israel’s long awaited anointed Davidic ruler of ancient promise, but two priestly figures or anointed leaders, one after the first seven weeks (49 years) and another after the 62 weeks (434 years), with the latter anointed leader killed, usually by some usurper.

So what’s the tiebreaker between (some would argue) equally technical options? Well, it’s context! context! context!

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Jerusalem photo by Josh Appel

Who is the Restrainer in 2 Thessalonians 2?

Reggie’s response to an excellent comment (quoted at the bottom of this article) on the video “The Downfall of the Devil is in the Details of Daniel.” Someone’s been listening in class! 🙂 In the interest of brevity and people’s natural lack of stamina for involved discussions, I would only […]

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How Close Are We? (Hosea 5:14 – 6:2)

Ten Years?

If the necessary preceding events fall into place within the next few years, then yes, we could be as little as ten years away.

If we interpret the thousand years of Rev 20 as literal and exact (rather than symbolic or approximate), then we have our key to the three days of Hos 6:2. The question in dispute is whether this is a key that God intends. Or is this merely symbolic of a brief period of time, as thought by most commentators?

But what is brief about two days if it represents the whole duration of the age of exile and covenant judgment? And why is the golden age of Jewish hope limited to only one day (i.e., “the third day”)? Surely a mystery is invested in this unusual usage that is set to serve its greatest purpose at the time of the end (Dan 12:4, 9).

One thing should be undeniably clear. The “affliction” of Hos 5:15 can be nothing less than the great tribulation of the latter days spoken of by Moses and all the prophets. Beginning with Moses, this transitional event was seen as the great dividing line between “this age” of estrangement and covenant judgement, and “the age to come” of ultimate covenant fulfillment when the nation’s perennial blindness would be lifted forever (Deut 29:4; Isa 6:10-11; 32:13-17; Eze 39:22, 28-29).

It is well documented that many have understood the course of civilization to be on a scale of six millennia given to the government of man (the number of man), and a seventh, millennial sabbath of the kingdom of God on earth. On this reckoning, the metaphorical third day envisions the millennium of Rev 20.

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Reflections on the Mystery of Israel and the Church... by Reggie Kelly

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