Israel in Prophecy — the Series - Who Is Israel?

Israel in Prophecy — the Series

What Happens?

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Continuing the prophet Daniel’s interpretation of the vision King Nebuchadnezzar saw, Daniel says,

Another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these. And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with soft clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay. And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever just as you saw that a stone was cut from a mountain by no human hand, and it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. A great God has made known to the king what shall happen after this. The dream is certain and its interpretation sure. (Dan 2:39-45)

Traditionally, Daniel’s interpretation has been read to mean that the course of secular history was followed as the series of metals replaced one another: Babylon succumbed to the Medes and Persians, who were defeated by Alexander the Great. But here problems enter. The usual assignment of meaning has Rome then defeating the Greeks, which they did. Then the traditional interpretation has Rome dividing into two legs, which, again, Rome did during the reign of Emperor Constantine, centuries after defeating the Greeks. But Daniel’s interpretation doesn’t support this scenario. The division of the image was in its bronze portion, with the thighs or loins, the heaviest part of the legs being bronze. So the usual Protestant or Arian interpretation is, frankly, dishonest with the text. And those pundits who teach this tradition are false prophets, deceitful, and carnally or naturally minded. They are without spiritual understanding and should be avoided.

Again, the division of the image occurs in its bronze portion, the portion that shall rule the world. Rule is never given to the iron legs. Rather, they break or crush this rule, an odd juxtaposition considering that the kingdom of God will crush the iron and clay toes, thereby breaking in pieces all these kingdoms and bring[ing] them to an end…the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold. The image still stands when the kingdom of God crushes its feet. It stands as a man stands, a vertical image casting a horizontal shadow. And it is the middle of the image, the belly and groin region that rules over the world—and continues to rule until the stone cut without hands crushes the feet. So visualizing the image as a standing man, the way Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel saw the image, consider why advertising agencies use a sensuous woman to sell automobiles. The appetites of the flesh rule over humanity. What the iron legs do is begin to break and crush this rule of fleshly appetites.

The iron legs are actually oriented on a north-south axis, not on an east-west axis. When Christ returns, “there will be a highway from Assyria for the remnant that remains of his people, as there was for Israel when they came up from the land of Egypt” (Isa 11:16). In biblical typology, Assyria represents death as Egypt represents sin. In the vision Daniel received about what would happen to his people, kings of the north and of the south war with each other. Today, disciples war against the law of sin and death that dwells in their members (Rom 7:25)… Rome is nowhere mentioned in biblical prophecy, for cause. Biblical prophecies pertain to the geographical region that encompasses pre-Flood Eden, the land from the Tigress River in the north (Assyria) and east (Babylon) to Egypt and the land a little west of the Nile River. This geographical region (in relationship to the whole world) portrays the conscious confines of humanity’s mental topography. Biblical prophecies are ultimately about what occurs in the minds and hearts of human beings, are about where people mentally live. Real estate is used to make visible invisible mindsets. Real nations have been used to represent self-aware consciousness. Thus, a physically circumcised Israelite dwelling in a stone house in the hill country of Judea serves as the lively shadow of the born of Spirit, or born anew Christian, as stone becomes flesh, as what is physical moves to spiritual. Actually, Christians live in fleshly temples analogous to Solomon’s temple, which was stone on the outside and sheathed with gold inside. This is what the Apostle Paul understood, but the circumcision faction did not. This is what The Philadelphia Church today understands, but the Churches of God do not. This is what the remnant that keep the commandments and have the spirit of prophecy (Rev 12:17 with Rev 19:10) take to victory against the antiChrist.

One iron leg is unable to rule over the other leg, just as the Seleucid and Ptolomaic empires were unable to rule over the other. Rather, their warring broke and crushed Greek rule over the geographical region representing pre-Flood Eden. And these two empires form the shadow of spiritual Babylon’s legs once the great horn, located in the groin region of the image, is broken. Therefore, traditional explanations of Daniel’s interpretation should be rejected, for Rome truly doesn’t belong in biblical prophecies, nor do revivals of the Roman or Holy Roman Empire. The European Union is not a ten nation, seventh rival of the Holy Roman Empire as is too often taught in the Churches of God. Such teachings are nonsensical and not of God.

Again, the shadow of a standing man lies horizontally across the ground. Likewise, the shadow of the standing Babylon that Nebuchadnezzar saw lay across secular history from Nebuchadnezzar to Antiochus Epiphanes, whose rule over Jerusalem was broken by physical sons of light. The shadow ends where Christ Jesus will crush spiritual Babylon halfway through seven, endtime years of tribulation in a different manner than the Maccabees defeated the Seleucids. The shadow doesn’t continue through another secular kingdom—Rome—nor will there be another secular kingdom after the king of the North (Death) is taken and dealt a deathblow, with his body given over to be burned.

Daniel records the fall of Babylon:

Then Daniel answered and said before the king, “Let your gifts be for yourself, and give your rewards to another. Nevertheless, I will read the writing to the king and make known to him the interpretation. O king, the Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar your father kingship and greatness and glory and majesty. And because of the greatness that he gave him, all peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him. Whom he would, he killed, and whom he would, he kept alive; whom he would, he raised up, and whom he would, he humbled. But when his heart was lifted up and his spirit was hardened so that he dealt proudly, he was brought down from his kingly throne, and his glory was taken from him. He was driven from among the children of mankind, and his mind was made like that of a beast, and his dwelling was with the wild donkeys. He was fed grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, until he knew that the Most High God rules the kingdom of mankind and sets over it whom he will. And you his son [successor], Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, though you knew all this, but you have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. And the vessels of his house have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives and your concubines have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know, but the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways, you have not honored.

Then from his presence the hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed. And this is the writing that was inscribed: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, and PARSIN. This is the interpretation of the matter: MENE, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. TEKEL, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; PERES, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.…That very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old. (Dan 5:17-28, 30-31)

Thus, the prophet Daniel records the rise of another kingdom (Dan 2:39) after Babylon, and the division of this kingdom, with the Medes first coming to power. Because of the division, it was never possible for the Medes and Persians to have the glory or radiance that Babylon possessed. It isn’t possible for arms and chest to have the glory of the head, just as silver doesn’t have the radiance that gold has.

Before Babylon fell, in the third year of Belshazzar, Daniel had a vision:

I saw in the vision; and when I saw, I was in Susa the capital, which is in the province of Elam [near the coast of present day Iraq]. And I saw in the vision, and I was at the Ulai canal. I raised my eyes and saw, and behold, a ram standing on the bank of the canal. It had two horns, and both horns were high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher one came up last. (Dan 8:2-3)

In order for Daniel to see that the higher horn came up last, he had to see the rise of both horns. This vision has a specific geographical location with which Daniel is familiar. The events of this vision, if those events were the rise of the Medes and Persians, were not far in the future, but events he witnessed that happen in a location he recognized.

I saw the ram charging westward and northward and southward. No beast could stand before him, and there was no one who could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great.

As I was considering, behold, a male goat came from the west across the face of the whole earth, without touching the ground. And the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes. He came to the ram with the two horns, which I had seen standing on the bank of the canal, and he ran at him in his powerful wrath. I saw him come close to the ram, and he was enraged against him and struck the ram and broke his two horns. And the ram had no power to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground and trampled him. And there was no one who could rescue the ram from his power. Then the goat became exceedingly great, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead of it there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven. (Dan 8:4-8)

The ram charged west, north and south, but not east, as the city and canal were on the east side of the nation—directions matter, or Daniel would not have recorded them. The eastern border of Iraq is close to, or at the eastern boundary of pre-Flood Eden; thus, the ram can, in biblical prophecy, only push in three directions. Of necessity, the ram incorporates the kings of the east, the kings of Persia with whom the angel who brought Daniel knowledge had to contend for twenty-one days. These kings of Persia are powerful spirit beings that still rule over the mental topography of humanity, and will rule until they are defeated by the king of Greece, an even more powerful federation of spirit beings as the king of spiritual Babylon loses control of the rebels under him.

The he-goat comes out of the west without touching the ground, a trick Alexander could not accomplish although he seemed to fly across distance, but a readily accomplishable feat in the heavenly realm, and seemingly accomplished by the American military. Thus, the sequence of events is that the ram appears, then grows a long horn followed by growing an even longer horn, then pushes until he provokes the he-goat, who tramples him.

When I, Daniel, had seen the vision, I sought to understand it. And behold, there stood before me one having the appearance of a man. And I heard a man’s voice between the banks of the Ulai, and it called, “Gabriel, make this man understand the vision.” So he came near where I stood. And when he came, I was frightened and fell on my face. But he said to me, “Understand, O son of man, that the vision is for the time of the end.” (Dan 8:15-17 emphasis added)

And when all of this happens is at the time of the end, not during Daniel’s lifetime, or two centuries later.

The above cannot be stressed too strongly: the appearance of the ram, the growth of his two horns, him pushing westward, northward and southward, followed by the he-goat flying out of the west is for the time of the end. Israelite radicals thought that they were living in the time of the end in the 1^st-Century BCE. Because Alexander, the Ptolomies, and Seleucids seemed to have fulfilled the prophecies of Daniel, these radical sons of light were certain the end was near. But the end they saw was a century later when the physically circumcised nation ceased being the holy nation of God. And since those 1^st-Century BCE radicals wrote about a great war on a scroll that anticipated E.G. White’s Great Controversy, a host of carnally minded pundits have trapped themselves in a Catch-22, time of the end scenario—the time of the end begins when the prophecies of Daniel can be understood, and the prophecies of Daniel can be only understood when the time of the end begins. Every generation of radicals and pundits living prior to the time of the end have not understood Daniel’s prophecies although they thought they did. Thus, when God unseals these prophecies, the revealed knowledge can be rather easily dismissed for it will differ from previous teachings, and it will seem like just another interpretation coming from a man (or woman). But this is how it has to be with God, who must be believed by faith.

The angel Gabriel identifies the ram and he-goat:

And when he had spoken to me, I fell into a deep sleep with my face to the ground. But he touched me and made me stand up. He said, “Behold, I will make known to you what shall be in the latter end of the indignation, for it refers to the appointed time of the end. As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia. And the goat is the king of Greece. And the great horn between his eyes is the first king. (Dan 8:18-21)

Again, this vision of Daniel’s is for the time of the end, not for Daniel’s era even though Daniel witnesses the fall of Babylon and the rise of the kings of Media and Persia. Therefore, biblical scholars need to erase from their minds traditional interpretations. The Churches of God need to spiritually grow past ad men and con men.

Before picking up the missing portion of Daniel’s vision of the third year of Belshazzar, biblical scholars should realize that secular historical texts are not needed for assigning identity to the metals of the image Nebuchadnezzar saw. Daniel tells the king that he is the head of gold. Daniel then witnesses the rise of the Medes and Persians, and the angel Gabriel tells Daniel that it is the king of Greece who tramples the Medes and Persians. Yes, history agrees with the ebb and flow of these named nations, so much so that the book of Daniel is often assigned a post-Maccabean date by secular scholars. But Jesus dates the appearance of the abomination of desolation (Matt 24:15 referring to Dan 11:31) to the time of the end. If Jesus so dates Daniel’s vision, His words agreeing with the vision’s internal dating, then it would seem that believing scholars should likewise so date Daniel’s visions. This has not, however, been the case. Would-be scholars and carnally minded pundits have been satisfied with the prophecies’ sealing shadow being the fulfillment of the prophecies. But then, Daniel’s visions have been sealed and kept secret until the time of the end.

(to be continued)

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