Chuck Missler - Learn The Bible In 24hrs Series - Part 9

well we are in our nine I've learned in the Bible in 24 hours and every time I use that title I'm almost embarrassed that's an audacious title you can't learn the whole Bible in 24 hours in one sense and yet in a one sense you can because our goal of course is to get a grasp of the whole and once you have a perspective you always know what questions to ask and you can dig into the specifics but this will give you an overview but this particular hour we've actually budgeted the entire hour for a single book it's understandable we use several sessions for Genesis and several for Revelation because they're sort of the bookends that tie it all together but in general we go through and take groups of books but there's a couple of occasions in our study we're gonna single out a book to go a little bit deeper because it's so pivotal and the Book of Daniel is one of those books very popular book I would say after Genesis and revelation it's probably the most popular book to study especially for Gentiles because it's one of the books of the Old Testament that really includes some very special treasures for everyone of course but also specifically for the Gentile so we're getting into the Book of Daniel very colorful book and I have to say candidly one of my favorite books because there is a verse in this book that caused me even as a teenager to be blown away and really discover the reality of who Jesus is and it was that verse that was a Christian I'd say it had accepted Christ but the discovery of the implications of the last four verses of Daniel nine is what really galvanized me to understand the reality that the Bible is true and Jesus Christ really is who he said he is but we'll get there so the Book of Daniel is twelve chapters in two halves the first six are historical that's where we're using it right here in the historical sequence we're doing the first six chapters are really history very colorful history very interesting anecdotes that take place the last six chapters are like appendices at the end of book of the that he saw summaries of a number of very very important visions that it'll be important to understand that it's not in chronological order the first six chapters are chronological but chapters seven eight and nine occur within the other chapters if you follow me so we'll make that clear as we go but anyway Book of Daniel first six historical the second six some really treasures of prophecies so the historical narrows the first chapters the deprecation Daniel is a teenager and he's deported as a slave when Babylon conquers Israel and the second chapter will be a dream that the king of Babylon has that Daniel interprets and that leads him to a key position his rivals contrive against his three friends in himself in Chapter three the famous fiery furnace thing and chapter four will surprise you it's a chapter written by a Gentile King that he committed himself writes chapter four personally chapter five is the fall of the world capital Babylon very colorful chapter and very significant for us today because this future of Babylon is very very critical for any biblically oriented person and then chapter six is the lion's den which strangely enough I will call the revolt of the Magi most people have no idea who the Magi are at Christmas but we'll get into that a little bit as we look at the panorama of history that we've been exploring where after the monarchy we've just been through the monarchy when and at the monarchy ended with Babylon conquering Jerusalem so we're now approaching that period if it's called the Exile where they are captives for 70 years and so in fact that Babylon conquers Nebuchadnezzar is the bright young general of the King naba palazzi and he's a very successful general and he's set siege to Jerusalem and that starts a period of time called the the captivity the Babylonian captivity and he takes captives sets up a vassal King to be subservient to him takes hostages the Daniel of three friends are among those hostages and Jerusalem then goes in rebels after some years and an every competitor has to set up a second siege and he replaces that king that his nephew Zephaniah and again they are still captives to Babylon during this period of time Jeremiah from Jerusalem and Ezekiel from Babylon are saying don't rebel because if you rebel again God will destroy Jerusalem and they don't that false prophets convinced the King on it get him on an ego trip and and he goes ahead and rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar and by now Nebuchadnezzar has had a belly full of this whole situation he lays a third siege and takes all captive and destroys the city so there are two periods of time in the Bible that were predicted to be seventy years one is called the servitude of the nation and it starts of course with the first siege when they were made vassals of Babylon and it goes for exactly 70 years and finally when the Persians conquered Babylon and under Cyrus the Persian that ends the Babylonian captivity that ends the service to the nation because when as you'll see we'll get into it Cyrus frees them to go home there's also a period of time called the desolations of Jerusalem and it's also predictably seventy years and many scholars assume they're both synonymous to serve to the nation the desolation of Jerusalem they're both seventy years but there's desolations of Jerusalem start from the third siege ii chronicles takes us up to the end of the servitude when they finally get to go back home the book of Ezra that we'll come into in the next session will deal with us what's called the post exile after you get back from the exo back from the captivity and then now there desolations of Jerusalem which starts with the 3rd siege ends when they're able to find we rebuild the city and they do that under nehemiah and in nehemiah by then is a cup bearer to the king it's in charge of the area persian king and he gets permission to rebuild the city not the temples will will his is the problem they've gone ahead and worked on that during the days of ezra nehemiah comes along and gets the authority to rebuild the city the decree of artaxerxes will turn out to be very important to us as we get into this and that starts that triggers a very very provocative prophecy in the Book of Daniel that we'll look be looking at but it's important to understand that the servitor of the nation starts from the first siege is seven years to the day to the day until Cyrus release ISM the desolations of Jerusalem the destruction of Jerusalem was from the third siege so they're both seventy years to the day but they're not coterminous the desolation start with a third siege and they end with a very particular decree by a Persian king that we'll get into the book of Esther which actually in your Bible comes after the book of Nehemiah we'll take in the next in the next hour we'll take as rrah Nehemiah and the book of Esther and try to put that in perspective during the this whole period of Babylon we have Daniel as a prophet Ezekiel's also a prophet Daniel gets departed in the first siege Ezekiel gets deported in the second siege also after that Babylonian captivity is over during the days of Ezra we have the Prophet Haggai also preaching the in parallel to the issues that emerge in Ezra and Nehemiah we have Zechariah and Malachi with the Malachi closing of course the the period that we either the Old Testament such a broad view little background to understand what's going on Nineveh ruled the world in the Assyrian Empire until 612 BC when it finally falls to an alliance of both the Babylonians and the Medes it's only a few years later that Pharaoh Necho of Egypt is now emerging as the dominant player because he he leads a army against the remnants of the Assyrian Empire during that time by the way as when Josiah fights Pharaoh Necho to read to try to get the Ark of the Covenant back and gets killed Pharaoh Necho it most people don't realize is Ethiopian not Egyptian and that leads to a whole nother study I encourage you to look at in terms of the possibility that the Ark of the Covenant is still being protected by the Ethiopians to present to the Messiah when he rules in Zion but anyway three years later there is a famous battle battle of Carchemish because by then nebuchadnezzar the general of under neva plaza the king of babylon his son is the sharp guy and he ends up defeating pharaoh Necho at the Battle of Carchemish which makes Babylon the dominant power in the region this is tip the typical date used to mark the beginning of the Babylonian Empire and so that's the background now on his way home nebuchadnezzar lays siege to Jerusalem for an additional trophy during that siege he discovers that his father has died he's now the king of Babylon he he succeeds at this at the siege takes it sets up a vassal King takes Daniel and three friends among others as as hostages to be educated teenagers to be educated at court at Babylon to serve at the in the court of the of the king of Babylon and so Daniel by the way is the most authenticated book in the Bible many people have problems with Daniel there's more archaeological and documentary evidence of Daniel than any other book in the Bible it has been authenticated by none other than Jesus Christ himself and we'll look at that before the studies are over so if you believe in Jesus Christ you have no problem about the authenticity or the reliability the Book of Daniel if you don't believe in Jesus Christ you've got bigger problems than the authenticity of Daniel but his three friends are departed as teenagers in the first of the three sieges by Nebuchadnezzar and they come in chapter 1 they commit themselves to refrain from the diets and practices of the Babel and they they want to stay faithful to the way they've been taught despite the fact that they are in an in an enforced pagan environment it's a very interesting thing to study because our children are in an enforced pagan environment and it's interesting to see the contrast of the faithfulness of these young men and one is named Hananiah that's his Jewish name but he's given all three are given Babylonian names and due to this popular song about this everybody knows the Babylonian name Shadrach Meshach and Abednego well shadrach's the name was Hananiah which means a loom by the Sun God is what it's bad they're given Babylonian names and in there in the Babylonians attempt to get him get them assimilated into their culture and Mishael is called me Shaq who is like the moon God is what it roughly means in ma Azariah his name was Abednego so the Shadrach mission and Meshach and Abednego are the Babylonian names Hananiah Mishael Azariah are their Hebrew names it's interesting that there has been discovered a clay prism in Babylon it's now it's presently in the Istanbul Museum which mentions these three guys Hanna noodle the chief of the royal merchants a variation of Hananiah and michelle Ameritech Merrik was one of the gods they worshiped and our dean abu these many people believe that these are the pronunciations are very corrupted because of our clumsy attempts to transliterate from one's language to another transliterate is different the translation transliterate means to you try to render it roughly the way it's pronounced and you'll see some strange ones but anyway this is regarded as as a fennec ating the three but anyway so here we have this young king who's just taken over from his father his father passed away this young general is now the king and he inherits the staff advisers these cronies that advised his father and he can't tell whether they're really any good or not so he's defeated that Pharaoh not go so he's taking over the throne and on his father's death but these staff advisers he doesn't know whether they're any good or not one night Nebuchadnezzar has a very troubling dream and he uses the dream as an opportunity on the one hand he's troubled he wants to know what it means but he also uses it an opportunity to see if these guys really have any unique skills so he insists that they interpret it but he won't tell them what the dream is and they're upset about that because if you'll tell them what the dream is they'll contrive some kind of explenation and but he won't do that in fact he believes they're stalling for time I'm not giving an answer one so offer their heads in other words he's he know how to reduce headcount when it wasn't being previously productive so he's really using this as a test and of course he puts out the word now what obviously happens if when you read chapter 2 daniel is in the job category that's been wiped out everybody in that job description was he was to be killed and when Dania gets the word when the word comes down that's what's going to happen he goes to his supervisor Arioch he says give us a chance at it and we have a god that'll help us and so forth and so Arioch what Daniel does he goes through three buddies says boy we have a prayer meeting tonight guys you know because tomorrow offer their heads otherwise and so anyway they go to Arioch Arioch arranges for them to present to the King the results and chapter two is one of the most dramatic chapters in the Bible because you've got these skeptics whose lives are at risk in the back row watching all this and here's these three or four young guys Daniel comes up and he explains to the King what his dream was and he also interprets what it means so this is not subject conjectures Daniel interpret the dream for you but obviously Nebuchadnezzar is profoundly impressed and the elevates Daniel to to high office and so now the dream that Nebuchadnezzar had in his dream Daniel explains that he saw a mental image a very tall mental image the head was of gold the arms and chest of silver the belly and thighs of bronze and the legs were iron and and the feet were also iron iron mixed with clay and as you will discover there are four different metals here the fourth one the second phase where it has something added to it we'll get to that when the time comes and then what happens is a rock a stone cut without hands hits it at the base and that stone grows into a mountain that doesn't only just fill that region but it fills the entire world pretty strange dream if you had that kind of dream you're probably pretty trouble too well Daniel goes ahead and explains it he says you King are this head of gold and but you're gonna be succeeded by someone else and what he lays out what the metal image turns out to be as a timeline of the great empires Babylon first Persia the next then Greece and then Rome but Rome apparently is in two phases because it's gonna break into pieces and then those pieces are gonna re coalesce into a second phase of that that first Empire so we'll call it for our purposes Rome phase 1 and Rome phase 2 and most scholars recognize that Rome in those two phases are represented by the iron and the iron mixed with clay we're going to discover in a subsequent vision the same information that in effect supports this same view we'll get to that when we get to chapter 7 but what's interesting here is babbling of course rose in 606 BC as I mentioned in 539 the Persians conquered Babylon and the persons endure till a young guy but named Alexander the Great conquered the Persians in 332 BC and Greece continues to about 68 BC when this upstart on the Tiber called Rome by then as conquerors the Greeks and the question is who conquered the Romans no one did right on exactly Rome Rome broke into pieces and each one of those pieces have had their day in the Sun and the the Dutch did the the Germans twice the French did Spain did with the Armada England with the mistress as mistress of the Seas and so forth but none of them quite equally and what the the profile is presented is that these elements are going to re coalesce again into a final version of the original Empire and that will be the last empire in the planet earth because I should say next-to-last because that's the one God intervenes with and sets up his own Kingdom that's what the mountain the stone cut without hands is messy it turns out to be the Messiah and the mountain that fills the whole earth is God's kingdom it's going to take over and so we have the whole profile now as most people know the cradle of civilization was what we call the Fertile Crescent there was a Jif to Syria and Babylon preceding the time we're talking about here with Daniel but in Babylon there was a city called Babylon that you know then conquered the area and this is brings us contemporaneous with Daniel but after Babylon of course will come the Persians and the Persians not only conquered but expanded expanded their holdings substantially and then this young guy in a matter of just a few years conquers the Persians and Alexander the Great a very incredible incredible career and when he dies the Empire gets divided four of his generals divided up Cassandra takes the Farwest law simcha stakes that part that we think of as Anatolia or Turkey and so Lucas takes the east and Ptolemy the south the two strongest of the four are Ptolemy and Seleucus they're the primary players and they the dynasties a half a dozen of their dynasties on both sides fight with each other and what's caught right in the middle is guess who Israel now many people talk about the period between the old tests in the New Testament as the silent years and that's true in a sense and yet it betrays a lack of understanding of the book and Daniel because in Daniel chapter 11 the history from the Old Testament through the New Testament is written down in advance in chapter 11 and we'll discover the so-called silent years are detailed in advance in Daniel 11 the interesting book and of course the Roman Empire succeeds all of this and grows to be a you know well known period of our history what most people don't realize many of us that study the Bible or study these things when we think of the Roman Empire we think of Western Europe what we fail to keep aware of is that that Empire broke into two legs has got to bigd administer saudi equation divide it in the two legs and the western leg the Western Europe breaks apart falls apart in for 7680 and following the eastern leg outlast the Western leg by a thousand years so much so that we give it a different label we call it the Byzantine Empire but it's really just the eastern leg of the old Roman Empire anyway so we have a period of the times of the Gentiles this is a phrase we find in the Book of Luke because what Nebuchadnezzar begins and it will continue until the Antichrist is the Dominion of the planet earth under Gentile leadership the Antichrist this coming world leader I'll tend to call ends this peculiar period of time that are known in the scriptures times the Gentiles now it's interesting that from Daniel chapter 2 through Daniel chapter 7 the focus of the book is on the Gentile world and the language that of the text changes the book of days in Hebrew up to chapter beginning of chapter 2 and after chapter 7 it's an Hebrew like most of the Bible but from 2 to 7 it's an Aramaic which was the Gentile language of the period and because that's the focus of it and Daniels prophecies are a very rare glimpse of the Gentile world in general the Bible always talks about his both past history and future history or prophecy through the lens of Israel but we have a gift here a very unusual gift because Daniels prophecies are going to focus on the Gentile world it's an exception in the Bible as I say most of it's different but in from Daniel 2 through Daniel 7 the focus the sin center of interest is the Gentile Dominion and he writes all this down in advance and now the times the Gentiles don't be confused by that phrase because there's a some other similar phrases that are not quite the same thing the times the Gentiles began with Nebuchadnezzar and their kin they'll end with a this coming world leader who will be displaced of course by the Lord Jesus Christ setting up his kingdom the line of the tribe of Judah the root of David now it's frustrating they'd have to go through day and so quickly because Daniel to itself is so dramatic but we'll keep moving here as you can imagine these guys that got upstaged by Daniel these three friends are looking for an opportunity for revenge and we get to Daniel chapter three and these guys apparently have fanned Nebuchadnezzar's ego so he issues a very unusual order he's on an ego trip so first of all as part of Zico trip he builds an image I assume the image is probably very similar to the one he saw in his dream except in this case it's all gold there's no silver bronze it's all gold in other words this is sort of his bid for immortality I suspect and he he orders when certain music is played that everyone is to bow down and worship His image and anyone that doesn't is going to get killed now I suspect he was prompted to do this by Daniel's rivals because these rivals knew that these faithful Hebrew young men would refuse to do that and that was their way of getting them executed and so that's exactly what happens Nebuchadnezzar puts out the word and they these three friends of Daniels fail to bow down so he orders them into the fiery furnace in fact he's so infuriated when he gives them a second chance if you ride on everything be fine and the three young men tell him our God is able to save us and if he isn't up yours O king as the root of their attitude so he's so teed off he orders the furnace turned up seven times its usual heat in fact so much so the guards involved get consumed doing it but in any case they throw these three young men in there but then then Nebuchadnezzar goes to look and he's shocked because he discovers they're not he says didn't we throw three guys in there there's four in there and it's one of those strange appearances of the old testament of apparently the son of God being with him with the other three so there's this fear with them so he orders them brought out and the only things have been burned on them either by the bindings they're unharmed and so now this is a very famous event of course and the fiery furnace event but many scholars notice something else it was so often the Bible you'll find a narrative an actual event that happened detailed but it also tends to model or foreshadow something larger in the future we call that a foreshadowing a it's called a type there's a typological conjecture here and the type of logical conjecture would suggest that this image we know from book of Revelation is going to be a final world leader and he's going to have an image that he's going to force people to worship those I don't worship will be put to death so with a G there's a there's a foreshadowing here and the fact that it's six cubits wide and 60 cubits high is suggestive the 666 has even hinted at here well and that may have some and fire is often used in the scripture as an as an idiom of judgment but if that's the case the question that gets surfaced here is where was Daniel where was Daniel because he's missing but many people don't notice in chapter 3 this very familiar story but Daniels not among them and so there's three possibilities one possibility Daniel must have yielded to the Kings challenge you must have bowed to this image how many think so absolutely not absolutely you're right the other thing is maybe somehow Daniel was exempted from the accusation by his enemies somehow I don't think that's true either the third possibility is the reasonable conjecture and that's that Daniel was removed from the situation somehow I suspect that he was a since he was so senior for the King he was like virtually Prime Minister that he was sent on some errand for the king some foreign assignment to go to he's on some kind of a trip and that's what his enemies took advantage of to try to get his three buddies executed the point is though Daniel doesn't explain why but Daniel is not not in this situation and so many people that make a point of that that kind of interesting that there's apparently a privileged believer removed before the judgment and so that would make doctrine from that but I think it's interesting to observe well chapter 4 is a surprising chapter because Nebuchadnezzar writes the chapter himself he writes it and has it posted throughout the entire world that he rose he ends up having a second dream in which it was a great tree that was hewn down after I'll give you the brief version of it it was cut down after seven years and Daniel interprets the dream to him that the dream he's the dream he's the he's the guy and they're weakened visitors on the ramparts of Babylon and taking pride look what I have done he's on a big ego trip and that's exactly what the dream was anticipating because of pride he would have a seven year seven years in the penalty box so to speak and a year later he's again on this parapet bragging about how great a great king he thinks he is and he's stricken with a mental derangement form of luck Anthropy he where he is literally eating grass and he's the the according to the Hebrew records a Talmud I think it is the Daniel was as nurse during those seven years at the end of the seven years he's cured of that but he also recognizes it acknowledges that it was a fulfillment of the dream that he had himself a year earlier and so he writes the chapter he recovers and he publishes his personal testimony throughout the entire world and I personally from reading chapter four will not be surprised when in heaven if I run at Nebuchadnezzar I think he's a saved person interesting enough he had a very intimate relationship with his friend Daniel they're very close apparently but anyway the reason he's so prideful you need to have a little perspective of Babylon the city of Babel of course was fed by the Euphrates it straddled the Euphrates virtually and the and they had a double wall system if you look at just the Babel and proper it has no it has a double wall and a moat and they had 250 watchtowers a hundred feet higher than the wall itself and the the bank there's a banquet hall involved also where some of this stuff is that's the town itself there's a processional way up at the top and there's the Tower of Babel that's featured in Genesis 11 the temple of mardukan so forth that king's palace is going to be the scene of our the events in chapter 5 and that building has been rebuilt Saddam Hussein is even the for affairs of state but notice how the river euphrates goes through the city to provide it water in case of a siege but it also that water feeds the moat that protects the city and the wall was no trivial wall they had chariot races four to six abreast on top of the wall so it's a this is a so you're talking about you know 15 mile 15 miles on the side so this is a sizable place and it was considered impregnable and therein lies their vulnerability but that belief now the kings the babylon empire after napa plaza of course had nebuchadnezzar as his son that established the kingdom and he has two sons and two daughters and his first son takes over for a bit but he's a but he's a bad apple his other daughter married but mary Glasser has a he takes over and his son i think last two months and then finally a nabonidus takes over and he has since sun Belshazzar as a co region will discover that nabonidus was just he had married and one of the Nebuchadnezzar's daughters he is just not interested in babylon he's often foreign intrigues down in arabia and doing other things in fact he had not been in town for fourteen years when it finally falls and that's worth understanding because there's a huge discrepancy the secular world had all kinds of evidence that that nabonidus was really king of babylon when it fell and that's why the bible couldn't be correct well they discovered more recently things that point out that Belshazzar his son was raining at the time exactly the way daniel says so not only do we know that Daniel wrote that was that Chapter five was correct it had to be by an eyewitness we know now but but Daniel finds the fall of Babylon very very colorful amount of history here instead of the Persian armies on the horizon instead of defending the city he throws a party for a thousand of his Nobles and a big mistake the person army is is formidable and been on the uprise here but they're in this big party and Belshazzar does a dumb thing he sends across the street to the museum to bring out the implements that his grandfather had taken from the temple 70 years earlier I'm gonna use them as party implements well it's just guaranteed to anchor God even further so what the party is doing great until they see the fingers of a man's handwriting on the wall and of course it's you know it's astonishing to realize how many expressions in our common day language come from Daniel you saw the handwriting on the wall you've all used that expression there's numbers up you your wait and found wanting you're in the Idol has clay feet you see all these expressions are from the book of Daniel interesting Lee enough the experts there can't understand what's being written they can't decipher it which is a surprise but the queen-mother Nebuchadnezzar's widow is still alive and she says to her grandson there was a guy around in your grandfather's day you understand they don't have any word for grandfather in Aramaic or Hebrew so when they say father that could that just means a forbear so but anyway as she says there was a guy around in your grandfather's day that had the gift to do that so they bring Daniel out of retirement and he comes in they offer from all kinds of rewards he says you keep your rewards before he gives them the answer you want he gives in the eulogy for Nebuchadnezzar says now there your grandfather there was a king because who he would said who whom he would set up he set up and who he bring down he bring down not like you squirt that's virtually his the phrase it was his discussion but then after all that he goes ahead and interprets the famous event and what he didn't what no one knew in the banquet hall while this was all going on the Persian army had arranged to divert the afraid he's upriver so the water level went down and they slipped in under the gates they took over a Babylon without a battle and that's going to be important later but this is going on while the party's going on here now one of the questions yet people ask are there really hidden codes in the Bible I get that question a lot because of our our doctor will work and some other materials we have and it's in the Bible of proverbs 25:2 says it is the glory of God to conceal a thing and the honor or duty of Kings to search out a matter they're definitely the Bible is full of surprises tucked away underneath the text there's a form of Hebrew encryption that's well known to anybody it's been a student of Photography we take the Hebrew alphabet with the 11 the 22 letters take the first 11 and put the second 11 underneath it so to speak and then transpose if you want an Aleph use Alam it and so forth and that's a simple form of transposition and it's it's named after the first real ever said of Aleph you have it lambda instead of the bet you have a amendment so it's it's equipped to a lbm album is that is the label given to this form of encryption if you take the second half of the alphabet and put it in backwards now we take the letters and put the others in there backwards that's you get a different set of transpositions and again you have an elephant a tall and Annabeth and a shin and so it's it's up it's called akbash according to the talmud the belief in the among the Hebrew scholars is that the encryption that was used in the high during the wall was a form of akbash which means the hammering the wall assuming it was at Bosch would have said something like this except it would be at Aramaic letters rather than the these letters that they use today and using at Bosch encryption and transposing you get what Daniel ended up reading to them remember that all languages go towards Jerusalem in other words all all like everybody east of Jerusalem goes from right to left Hebrew Aramaic Sanskrit etc etc all nations west of Jerusalem go from left to right English Latin Russian Greek you name it so anyway so remember Hebrew goes backwards from our point of view anyway so Daniel says many many that means that the word means by the way the Hebrew only uses consonants the vowels are inferred that's the way a bandwidth reduction and so forth that aren't getting all that here many many means it means numbered or reckoned and he interprets this as God has numbered your kingdom and finished it a way we would abbreviate that's your numbers up okay next word was Tekel which is means weighed thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting Daniel explains and the third word is Paris which means broken or divided since thy kingdom is de and given to the medes and the persians and by the way in your king james and say you farsan the you is simply a conjunction the far since the plural of paris but they don't worry about that in the translation if you infer a different vowel than the e say an a upon us is the word for persians so there's a pun hidden in here also that's not brought up in your normal translations but any cases of course is what daniel announces and that night of course Belshazzar is slain and the PERT and the persians take over the city we're going to talk a little bit more about that in the next session because we'll get to Ezra and I'll use that occasion to explain what Cyrus did when Cyrus makes his grand entrance and that's a that's a great scene but we'll hold that for the next session in Daniel 6 by not Daniel's about 83 years old and one of the interesting things about Daniel's career is that he rises to power in the Second Empire in other words he was the number two man so to speak or high it was high up under Nebuchadnezzar heroes because he interpret Daniel 2 he was given great privileges and responsibilities under Nebuchadnezzar when the Persians take over the Babylonians he again rises to a power he was he's the number three ruler in the kingdom and very prominent and even though he's 83 and in fact he is appointed a Rob MOC the chief of the Magi you need to understand the Magi for lots of reasons the Magi were a hereditary priesthood that had the power to appoint the king in other words they were a priestly sect was religious and yet it was also administrative that's where we get the word magistrate from that word Magi and the but they were hereditary they were Medes in the combined Empire the Medes of the Persians the Medes had that particular role Daniel is appointed the Rob MOC the head of that priesthood now how do you think it went over for these needs to be now reporting to a Jew they were not excited about the prospect apparently because they're the ones I believe that engineered this execute attempted execution of Daniel and so the jealous rivals and trapped him into the lion's den the king of the Persians they had a strange law in among them in in Persia that the king could write a law but he could not change it once it's written we find that operative here in Daniel 6 you'll also it's essential to understand for the book of Esther that we'll come to later in the next session but in any case the the king is tricked into signing this document and then if anyone found praying to the wrong God he gets to the lion's den of course Daniel's very faithful and he is praying and so he gets into this lines and you all know the story it's interesting that the king himself was upset but he couldn't change it and that next morning he rushes there to see if Daniels ok he cares about Daniel you see I fell through this and Danny of course is miraculously spared but something that is implied by this and some other writings is that Daniel apparently was entrusted some prophecies that he that he received some prophecies that he entrusted to a cabal a secret subgroup of the Magi that passed it on four fives for 500 years and these guys are the guys that follow the star to Bethlehem and there's circumstances around that you need to understand the Parthian Empire was the rival to Rome and you need to understand that and who they were to really understand why Herod was so nervous when they arrived and why he's so different to them there's a whole background there but ultimately these Magi would follow the prophecy that would lead them to a manger in Bethlehem and we'll deal with that of course when we get to matthew chapter 2 well like we've gone through half the book of daniel the last half are prophecies they're the four beasts of Daniel 7 RAM and he go to Daniel 8 the seventy weeks of Daniel 9 and the dark side of the spiritual warfare thing in Daniel 10 and the climax of the book in Daniel 11 and 12 is the final consummation of all things times the Gentiles we we went through bear in mind we're looking at history through the lens of Israel but but here in this particular segment of the Bible it's sort of exception we're going to see all of Gentile history and overview and cinching is only four empires involved not seven three or whatever for Babylon Persia Greece and Rome those four the fifth one will be God actually setting up his own Kingdom on the planet Earth and so if that fourth Empire will be in two phases and we'll get into that we went through Daniel chapter 2 the gold silver the brass the iron and so forth Babylon Persia Greece Rome in Daniel chapter 7 Daniel himself is treated to a series of visions Daniel 2 was given to a man and we see these empires as man would see them bright shiny medals Daniel has given a vision of how they look to God and the subject is the same but the view is quite different God sees them as a series of voracious beasts the first is likened to a winged lion and he's followed by a bear that rises up by him up on one side and there's another one that's sort of like a winged leopard that moves so fast it doesn't even touch the ground and then there's the last one Daniel can't find a animal to even liken it to he calls it the great and terrible beast and it goes into a phase with ten heads and so on and will recognize the ten toes on the one hand the ten heads on the other we going to realize these things to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle and of course the winged lion was a symbol of Babylon the bear on one side is raised up on one side the Persians in the mead it was a coalition in which the Persians were in to end up being dominant and of course that Greek Empire was characterized by its rapidity Alexander and 12-years conquers in the world just a few years at age of 29 he falls on his bed crying there's no other worlds the world's left to conquer and so but Rome of course he merges in roughly 68 BC and that at the Battle of Actium is when Octavius you know defeats Marc Anthony and company becomes Caesar Augustus if you will and you finally get down about 284 AD when the equation divides the Empire that's gone so big he divides it into the two legs in 312 ad Constantine takes over he's so fed up with the politics in Rome he moves the capital of the world to present him calls it Constantinople the new Rome and it's tan indoors till the end of the 15th century when there's long and Muslims finally run it over in 476 the Western Empire course breaks into pieces and every elements had its day in the Sun but let's go to Daniel 8 the RAM and the he-goat oh and by the way Daniel 7 describes the final Empire as as when God Christ takes over the world and it goes it all that Daniel 8 taught is is a detail now on the the Persians and the Greeks this is about two years after the vision of Daniels chapter 7 it's about 12 years before Daniel chapter 5 when Babylon Falls to Steve your rough feeling where this fits in chronologically and the RAM is defeated by the goat there's a rapid goat coming from the West it's clearly it's it's it's it's very vivid description of Alexander's conquest of the Persians and this notable Horn of namely Alexander himself is killed and the and four generals divide up the Empire and there's a little horn that has a key role at the end that's going to be important later and Daniel interprets this for us a leader from the West obviously Alexander the Great will subdue the medo-persian Empire Alexander the Great crosses the Hellespont with 35,000 troops and he's fighting a powerful army in the hundreds of thousands any in series of three battles takes wins takes him on he was a junior in credible general and he would be out there leading his troops he turned several those battles from defeat to victory by his personal involvement absolutely legendary series of events that are well documented and there's obviously a lot of popular movies coming out about it and so forth and so the one hard goat was the symbol of the ancient Macedonians in in Aries the RAM is the symbol of Persia Capricorn the simple of Greece and then may 3334 he crossed the Hellespont with 35,000 troops and first met defeated the person that the Granicus river and then the year later he finds himself at the Battle of Isis and wins that one and the the final big one was Gaugamela October 331 BC which establishes the Greek Empire as the dominant guys of the block here when Alexander dies shortly thereafter he makes Babylon his capital he finally dies he goes all he by way he conquers all the way to India and Cassander takes the western part therefore generals divided up the Senecas takes a Thrace Athenian most of Asia Minor Asia Minor being what we think of as Turkey Ptolemy takes the south Egypt's Armenian part of Arabia and seleucus takes the east Syria and lands to the east all the way to India but much that's hard to hang on to and in this era a circus there's going to be a guy arise we're going to talk about more in the next session Antiochus Epiphanes he's a he's a particular leader he's not very important from a secular point of view he's extremely important from a biblical point of view and we'll get into that but I want to focus very specifically on what's the most astonishing passage in the entire Bible it's the one that impacted my life as a teenager and has never ceased to in those days the materials that I was treated to by some friends were very rare and it was unusual situation today the materials were dealing with our are readily available any any competent book source so you can check this all out and it's absolutely astonishing Daniel chapter 9 a little bit of background you wanted as we go into this you want to understand the history of the English Bible a little bit the original Hebrew sometimes called by scholars of or logon but in 285 BC before Christ it was translated into Greek in those days Greek was being enforced as a language worldwide because the influence of Alexander and his successors if you were Jewish you probably didn't know Hebrew except for ceremonial purposes as much as a Catholic knows Latin it wasn't a common language to you if you were Greek if you were a Jew that was living in that world you spoke Greek you had a desire to have your scriptures in your natural language green well under Ptolemy Philadelphus in Alexandria the primary literary capital of the world in the time he funded the translation of the Old Testament the Hebrew Tanakh what we call the Old Testament into into Greek took 15 years and we called the result of that work the Septuagint involved 70 scholars some say 72 scholars the best they could find to do the translation and so they call that translation the Septuagint fancy word for 70 it's usually abbreviated in Roman numerals 70 lxx but the point is we have that work product the Old Testament as it existed three centuries before the ministry period of the New Testament it's it's in our hands it wasn't Daniel was in black and white I want to emphasize that because you can set aside who wrote what book win didn't matter it was in black and white three centuries before the gossip period in fact it's the Septuagint that becomes the Christians Bible most of the quotes in the New Testament that are taken from the Old Testament are from the Greek Old Testament not the Hebrew so the Septuagint the recording from it soon enough and so I want you to be conscious of the fact that we got three hundred year anticipation of the New Testament here now when four disciples come to Jesus for confidential briefing on a second coming he gives them a to chapter answer in Matthew so also recounted in mark 13 and Luke 21 and in that Jesus identifies the key event of endtime prophecy he points them to the passage we're gonna look at he says to disciples when ye therefore shall see he for he first of all lists lists a bunch of things that are not signs this that and the other thing will happen but the end is not yet but then he gets to verse 15 of Matthew 24 when you therefore shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet stand in the Holy Place whoso readeth let him understand then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains and and you split and you split now he goes on for several verses explain it we'll go ahead and we'll look at that later but how many of you read that on the screen have you seen that passage I did a tourney trick on you because if you read that you know there's a as a part of this has written to you it says whoso readeth let him understand your we're gonna discover this is gets a little technical but it's clearly the intent of Jesus Christ that his reader understand what he's pointing to here you with me and we'll talk about the abomination of desolation later but I want you to notice is spoken of by Daniel the prophet Jesus Christ authenticates Daniel that he was a prophet and he specifically points to the verses we're gonna be looking at as the key to the end times and so let's just take a look at this Daniel Daniel 9 is the chapter with the interrupted prayer and at first 19 verses he's reading from the Book of Jeremiah and he's reading where Jeremiah predicts that the captivity would be for 70 years and he knows that the seven years are almost over so what does Daniel do about it he goes to prayer see we're supposed to do the same thing most of when we get excited about the endtime by Jesus coming soon what do we do about it what we're supposed to do is pray for it that's what's in the Lord's Prayer thy kingdom come that's a prayer prayer is God's Way of enlisting you and what he's doing well that's exactly Daniel sets that example and he goes in this prayer and when it's frustrated we can't take the time to get into the prayer but even in the English translation as you read it we buy timing at the verse 1819 you can feel Daniel crumble as you read it you'll see the frequency of the verb start picking up you just feel he's getting into a frenzy and his prayer is interrupted by the arrival of a most unusual visitor Gabriel comes to see him we have two Archangels that are super angels that are have names and we know the job descriptions Michael and Gabriel Michael is always a military commander on behalf of Israel Gabriel is always an annunciator always announcing something having to do with the Messiah whether it's to Daniel here or to Mary and Luke whichever so Gabriel visits from verse 20 to 23 and he gives Daniel four verses that are turn out to be the most astonishing verses in the Bible they're known as the seventy weeks of Daniel from verse 24 through the end of the chapter verse 27 for verses 70 weeks of Daniel now there's 70 sebou him I'll come back to that a minute the first of the four verses is the scope the second of the four verses is 69 weeks the 69 weeks then we encounter an interval and then the 70th week now this sounds pretty simple but it's very important to understand that verse 25 compasses 2069 of the total weeks verse 27 encompasses the last final missing week verse 26 talks about things after verse 25 but before verse 27 that thus we infer the weeks are not contiguous there's a gap there's an interval so once you understand that it all flows and makes sense the first word of the four is verse 24 the scope seventy sevens are determined upon thy people by my holy city seventy seven seventy shabooey means what is seventy sevens is what is resync if I told you I've got to leave I'll be back in a decade when would you expect me ten years exactly I didn't say years I just a decade in Hebrew they have a week of days we obviously familiar with that there's a week of weeks that's what Shevat is all about there's a week of months that's there from nice andhe Tishri or tishreen eyes on either way is is seven seven months and they also have a sabbatical year seven years six years you can plow the land the seventh year you're supposed to leave it rest so is the rest for the land also so in the Jewish mind they're set the seven there's all kinds of sevens but a week of years is a very common unit of measure when Jacob labored for his wives he labeled he labored for seven years for one and seven years to next one he had to fulfill her week as the expression in Genesis and so on it goes well anyway so these are obviously weeks of years seventy sevens 70 weeks of years are determined upon whom get this that's very important to notice right away upon thy people in the holy city this is nothing with the church it has to do it's Jewish Daniel was Jewish upon thy people and upon thy holy cities on its and the Jews in Jerusalem since seventy sevens are determined or reckoned upon thy people upon the holy city to do six things to finish the transgression to make an end of sins to make reconciliation for iniquity to bring in everlasting righteousness to seal up vision in the prophecy and to anoint the most holy place now we could spend some time going through each one of these but it's pretty obvious that least as a group they are not complete yet have we made an end of sins not so you'd notice have we finished transgressing pick up the daily paper any time have we brought brought in everlasting righteousness and so on so the point is this when this happens when this is finally when the seventy sevens are completed that's all she wrote there's a real sense of completion here you with me so it isn't complete yet so the next verse verse 25 deals with 69 of those weeks and this is the one I want to focus on no they're for Gabriel says the day you'll know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem Daniel isn't in Babylon Jerusalem is in rubble two couple hundred miles to the west but he knows that Jerusalem is their gonna reach the captivity is about over it has a destiny to be rebuilt Gabriel drops in and says by the way know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah not heed the Messiah the King shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks and the street shall be built again and the wall even in troubled times now I want you to notice from unto there are milestones it's a the trigger the beginning is a commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem don't confuse that with the temple the cities in view here and Ikes proves that D in a minute on to the Machine I need the word naked his first use of Saul it's the sigh of the King shall be seven plus plus 62 threescore into and Northey the Holy Spirit adds something here the street shall be built again and the wall even trouble times why did the Holy Spirit put that in there so you wouldn't get confused because it will be preceded by some decrees to rebuild the temple the issue here is not the temple it's the city of Jerusalem 77 to determine upon thy people and the holy city right okay now so we have a mathematical prophecy from the commandment restore and build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the king shall be 69 weeks it turns out we're indebted to Sir Robert Anderson's in the head of Scotland Yard his landmark study of 1894 where he recognized that in the Bible for God's own reasons he deals in 360-day years he does that in Genesis he does that in Revelation and as a whole thing behind that we can get into we do it when you study Joshua and the the orbits of Mars and all that business but I won't get him out here we know that the biblical usage 360-day years when dead just robert anderson for unraveling this whole thing by recognizing that particular thing so 69 times 7 times 360 turns out to be 173,880 days and you have to remember that number we'll get to that in a minute but there they say there's some of your Bibles they say therefore decrees to rebuild jerusalem cyrus in 537 there is our exerts these 458 another one right excerpt season 4 45 and these are all referred to in your Bible by the way but in this in verse 25 it spoke of Rahab the street and the wall or the moat and those are Hebrew words they have nothing to do with the temple they have to do with the city it turns out that it's the city not the temple that's in view and Daniels prophecy so these first three are having to do with the temple not with the city we reached in the one by r-two exercies launch amano-san 445 BC so we know where that decree is if we know that from records that that was mark it quit on our calendar would be March 14th to 445 BC the problem is okay great when did Jesus allow himself to be presented as a king several times in the gospel period they tried to take him as a king and he says my an hour is not yet come he slips away I'd say John six and some other places then one day Jesus does something very bizarre he not it's that he arranges it to deliberately fulfill zechariah 9:9 in Zechariah the Prophet said rejoice greatly o daughter of Zion shout o daughter of Jerusalem behold thy King cometh unto thee he is just and having salvation lowly riding on is in fact a colt the foal of an ass the King cometh out of the house riding this donkey and of course we recognize that right away that as we look in Luke 19 when he's riding the donkey from Bethany up over the Mount of Olives down through the qidan Valley Jerusalem and as they as he does so they lay down their palm branches and the coats and the sing psalm 118 in Luke 19 verse 38 says they're saying blessed be the king that cometh in the name of the Lord peace in heaven glory in the highest how many of you have heard the thing this is the day the Lord hath made we shall rejoice and be glad in them sure we've all heard that we apply it to any day and that's okay but some what it's about that's the psalm 118 verse 26 the reason is it's talking about the day the Messiah presents himself they're singing this song under these conditions now anytime you and I as Gentiles not having a good Jewish background run the danger of missing something the Pharisees come to our rescue any time they get unglued pay attention the Holy Spirit taught us something because the next verse it says some of the Pharisees from among the moated said unto him that as the messiah said Master rebuked by disciples what are they upset about because they recognize that by singing this Psalm under these conditions they're declaring him them as mashiac Nahid and they assume he certainly doesn't want them to blaspheme he felt yet the picture you see why they're upset he's he they're dirty clearing this guy the Messiah the next verse Jesus responds to them very tactfully he said instead of them I tell you that if he should hold their peace the stones would immediately cry out and I'm one of these cynics I wish they would have shut up for a minute see if that is just a figure of speech and I always tell our people when we're on tour we go to almost every year we go to Israel and what like most tour groups we will be up at the Mount of Olives because it's a great picture outlook over Jerusalem over the Kuna Valley and the next stop is usually to get 70 which is the base of the Mount of Olives so the buses will drop you up there for your pictures but you let you walk down that road to Gethsemane which is usually your next stop for a devotional before going on wherever will always tell the group before they get off the bus take your pictures but then you have an opportunity to get the best bargain in Israel as you walk down that road to get cemani pick up a couple of stones put it your pocket and when you get home mount them on a piece of wood for your den or your desk at the office or wherever and as a little that's a trophy and when somebody is visiting says what's that because that's one of the stones it didn't cry out and you got a good he got explained Daniel nine you get into Luke 19 and they brought it up you know the chronology of Christ's ministry should understand ministry began the fall of 28 ad how do we know that Tiberius was appointed in 1480 that means the augustus died in 1919 214 ad and we know from Luke 3 verse 1 that it was within the fifteenth year of Tiberius to be in the fifteenth year there's 14 behind him so that's your 28th honor on reckoning you follow me and we know that the crucifixion occurred incident to the fourth Passover which would have been April 6 to 32 832 ad and so Robert Anderson obviously Neal's always down there are other chronologies held by good scholars but most of them are contrived in order to support a Friday crucifixion and there's a lot of reason there's about at least three reasons from the scripture that he could not have been crucified on Friday I won't get into all that here we'll get into that later but so the point is we know the trigger the terminus odd quo as they call it the degree of our exertions Vanja - March 14th - 444 45 BC and we know the triumphal entry was unable 632 ad what's interesting about this is the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament occurs roughly a third of the way there from between the two and their words three hundred years earlier is the translation is in black and white so this is not contrived by some rabbis this was black and white before it happened well from 445 BC 3280 is a hundred and seventy three thousand seven hundred forty days if you go through the arithmetic from March 14th April six another twenty four days if you go through the leap year calculation is another hundred and sixteen days to deal with and it turns out that adds up to guess what 173,880 days what was Gabriel's margin of error five centuries advance he predicts the exact day that Jesus Christ presents himself as the machinery to Jerusalem when you think that through that is staggering proof of just who Jesus Christ is he is the Messiah of Israel if you want a Messiah of Israel has to be somebody that was killed before this date and and and conforms to all the other specifications crucifixion of Christ was not a tragedy it was an achievement fulfilling specifications that were laid down as early as Eden and following but throughout not through and Luke 19 Jesus as he's coming up over the hill on the donkey when he's coming here it says he beheld the city and what did he do he wept over it and notice what he says carefully wept over it saying if thou hadst known even though at least in this thy day the things which belonged to thy peace but now they're hidden from their knives he expected them to know this day and because they didn't know what they are now blinded for ever no Paul will tell us they're blinded only until Romans 11:25 till the fullness of the Gentiles be come in this thy day but now they're hidden from my eyes then he goes on he says but for the day's will come upon thee that thy enemies shall cast a trench about the encompass the ground and keep the end on every side and shall lay thee even with the ground and thy children within thee and they shall not leave in the one stone upon another and indeed their Roman legions the 5th 10th 12th and 15th Roman legions 38 years later it's very interesting that when Israel failed to take charge the land at Kadesh Barnea they had they were destined to wander in the land for 38 years we say 14 round figures was 38 years it's interesting because they didn't recognize their mazaya 38 years later the Roman legions lay siege slaughter over a million inhabitants men women and children another half a million died due to the pestilence that followed why was Jerusalem destroyed in 70 AD the biggest mourn of the biggest milestone in the Jewish calendar why was Jerusalem destroyed in 70 AD a lot of good answers to that let's look at Jesus's answer the rest of that verse because thou knowest not the time of that visitation you know that's chilling Jesus held them accountable I personally believe you hold us accountable - we've had a lot more light than they did and I think he holds us accountable - they knew it's not the time of visitation the next verse talks about the interval after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off cut out but not for himself when the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city in the sanctuary and the end thereof shall be with a flood and unto the end of the war desolations are determined cut out to be executed for a capital crime the Messiah is going to be killed yes it says so in the Old Testament Daniel said since there are several places Daniel 9:26 Isaiah 53 Psalm 22 etcetera it also introduces another character the prince that shall come we know who the people were that destroyed the city of sanctuary but here the describes the people of the prince that shall come the princess shall come is one of 33 titles in the Old Testament of a coming world later we tend to call him the Antichrist who are the people of Britain come the Romans that's why we think the prince is a Roman that doesn't mean he's from Western Europe we have other evidence to indicate that he's an Assyrian from the Roman Empire as it's extended in the old days so we have this interval during which the crucifixion takes place takes place four days after the event of the the donkey temple was destroyed more than 38 years we've got two thousand that we've experienced before the 70 this last final week so the interval this interval by the way is implied in 24 different verses throughout the Bible the 24 interesting number because it's also a symbol of the church from Revelation the intervals defined I mentioned from first-look 1942 to Romans 11:25 and it's a period of the church that's an era that's kept secret the Old Testament pretty much that Paul explains in Ephesians 3 the church was born at Pentecost and there are prerequisites for the church the atonement the resurrection and the Ascension all had to precede it spiritual gifts are only given after the Ascension so there's a whole ecclesiological son ecclesiology it necessary here but let's move on the last verse of Daniel 9 and he that is the prince that shall come and fits the pronoun always refers to the last-mentioned antecedent which was of course the princes shall come shall enforce the covenant with many many it's idiom for Israel for one week the final week and in the midst of that week he will cause the sacrifice the oblation to cease that caused us to infer that somehow the Covenant that he enforcing allowed them to indulge in their sacrifice and ablations so we know the temple standing by the time you get to the middle of the week we don't want the temples built could be built during the first half of that week of years or even earlier who knows but he desecrates it here he causes the sacrifice new blazing disease Paul details this for you in 2nd Thessalonians 2 and elsewhere and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate even unto the consummation and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate and so ends Daniel 9 in this verse we find time times than half a time we find that in in Daniel 7:25 at night 9 of 12 7 revelation 12:14 so half the half weeks are called three and a half years some places 42 months other places 1260 days the Holy Spirit's on everything it's the most documented period of time in the Old Testament and those documented period of time the New Testament the strange of to half half weeks of years and so in fact every detail in the scriptures by design when you get to John 10 right in the middle of John 10 that the whole the the Jesus is giving us the Good Shepherd discourse but right in the middle it says it was Jerusalem at the feast of dedication that it was winter if you're normal you know normal human being go on read on but if you've been to one of my Bible studies you're no longer a normal well-adjusted human being you know that everything is there is there deliberately why'd the Holy Spirit want you to know that it was Jerusalem the feast of dedication and it was winter well what dedication could that be Solomon's Temple is dedicated in the fall according to first Kings 8 the second temple the Rebels temple was dedicated in the spring according to Ezra 6 what temple occurred in the winter the rededication of the temple and the 25th of Kislev when anti celebrating the rededication subsequent to an attack as epiphanies desecrating it that happened two centuries before Jesus made the remark and we're going to talk about that there's a very peculiar event called the abomination of desolation they will talk more about in the next session it uh sure is in a period of time time of trouble as the world has never seen to that time where everyone see again and Jesus himself labels that the Great Tribulation by quoting from Daniel 12 and the two halves of that week as I say are documented many many times over and Jesus says that further in this discussion of the disciples there should be Great Tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world this time there ever shall be and except those days should be shortened there should no flesh be say but from like sake those days shall be shortened he's quoting from Daniel 12 we haven't gotten there yet but it says but at that time shall Michael stand up the Great Prince which standeth for the children that people and there shall be a time of trouble such was never since there was a nation even to that same time and at that time thy people shall be delivered every one that shall be found written in the book and Jesus says in another place and was there he says I will go and return to my place till they acknowledge their offence and seek my face in their affliction they will seek me earnestly in order for him to return he must have left his place right so even though it's that's in Hosea last verse of chapter 5 it's obviously is referring to the return of Jesus Christ and of course the end of the week of course we have the second coming and we have the gathering of the church and there's three a number of different views some feel that the gathering of the churches at the end of the seven years some feel it's in the middle some a little later in the middle we hold the view ourselves that it's before the 70 we even starts in fact by a short distance ahead probably there are good scholars supporting each one of these and we will discuss the pros and cons of each one of these later in the study but we do know that 69 weeks are behind us the seventies week we believe for lots of indication indicators are not far away so it's an exciting time you might be ested to know that the the the 490 years that are represented by 70 weeks is the fourth such period in Israel's history because if you take the period from Abraham to the Exodus and subtract out the years that they were in disfavor it was five hundred five years from on the one hand but just take out the fifteen years that you it was Ishmael was he a sir per in effect you have 490 years if you go from Exodus to the temple at 601 years but if you subtract out the servitudes of the judges which are a hundred eleven years you again get this interesting number of 490 years you go from the temple to the Edict of artaxerxes you again have five hundred sixty years when you subtract the seven years of the Babylonian captivity again for 290 years and of course from our exertions to the first Avenue to the 69 weeks plus the seventh week we don't know the interval the interval Israel's a set aside for the moment so this is I think first it was first noticed by Clarence Larkin back in 1919 but it's an interesting possibility I shared before you Daniel 10 will give us a glimpse of the dark side a very brief episode here it's a prelude to the final two chapters of the book Daniel fast for 21 days an angel is sent when he gets there he points out he was withstood for 21 days by a creature called the prince of the kingdom of Persia one of Satan's hosts and he can't get through until Michael comes and helps him when assisted by Michael the chief Prince and he's explaining to Danny he's going to give him a subsequent vision that'll be Daniel the last two verses last two chapters Daniel Daniel 11 12 and he'll happened then he'll have to go back and deal with that the Prince of Persia and then you also have to deal with the Prince of the power of Greece this is just a glimpse but we get the impression here that there are demonic hosts behind each of the major world empires after all that is Satan's world isn't it but you can't help it doesn't say this but you can't help but wonder is there a linkage between Daniels fast and his ability to get through Dayna fast for 21 days he was set when Daniels started and he gets through after the 21 days to give him these visions that are coming you started wonder what would have happened if Daniels stopped his fast after 19 days there is there anything is there like between them we don't know it's suggested isn't it of course anyway the Empire gets divided in chapter 11 and we have the detailed as I mentioned to you before of the period between the Testaments and I will take you through these but there's a half a dozen Ptolemaic dynasties that fight with half a dozen Antiochus dynasties and they're so deep the first verses 5 to 35 are so detailed that the experts have had to try to say that Daniel must have been late dated and it was in Ptolemy Philadelphus by the way the Septuagint was translated and so on but so the detailed profiles there and it also includes the last few verses give us a detailed background on this coming world leader which we'll be taking up in a subsequent session but the Bible has over 8,000 predictive verses on almost 2,000 predictions on over 700 different matters according to one categorization by J Parton Baines an encyclopedia of Biblical prophecy in other words the Bible is largely prophetic and as we look around the world today we see major themes in Israel Jerusalem the Temple Babylon Russia the rise of China Europe emergence of European super-state lawless is going on a tied towards ecumenical religion let's all get together a global government tide on the rising and of course the rise of the occult each one of these is predicted in the scripture each one of these is measurably emerging on horizon that one of them is something some one little thing it's all of them the tide of each one of them is clearly setting the stage for the big climax coming check it out and the more you know about your Bible and the more you know about what's going on in the world the more you'll begin to see that we are converging to the big climax and the ultimate issue of course is that you and I are in the possession of a extraterrestrial message and it portrays us as both the pawns and the prize of an unseen warfare and our eternal destiny depends upon a relationship with the ultimate victor in this cosmic conflict where do you stand with respect to him now in the next session we'll talk about the decree of Cyrus that's a very colorful thing they'll blow your way we'll talk about Ezra the rebellion of Temple in the book of Nehemiah which focuses on the building of Jerusalem and we'll talk about one of those colorful dramas in the Bible the book of Esther it'll have some it's quite a drama very colorful it also hidden underneath the text are some surprises that we'll share with you and then we'll talk a little bit about the inner Testament period in the next session stay with us

Channel: Justin Pinter

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Keywords: Chuck Missler, The Bible, Bible, Bible Study, 2019, Babylon, Book of Daniel, Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Magi, Lion's Den, Greece, Persia, Rome, Winged Lion, Nineveh, Pharaoh Necho, Lecture, Lesson, Scripture, Old Testament, New Testament, Christ, God, Israel, Jerusalem, occult, Byzantine Empire, prophecy

Id: -jqyPvVqksE

Length: 75min 47sec (4547 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 04 2019