A Bombshell Proposal for Christians!

Christians and our various traditions do not always agree on issues related to Bible prophecy.  However, there are some understandings that cut across denominational and sectarian lines, and if one is not very careful, unintentional gaslighting can occur without any malicious intent.  I urge Christians to take their time with this study and, by all means, make their relationship with God and their gift of prayer an essential and crucial part of any new emerging understanding that might result from this study. 

I. The Neo-Babylonian kingdom, the first kingdom of Bible prophecy, is remembered in Daniel chapter 7 and given center stage to be the setting of a night vision that, when compared to King Nebuchadnezzar’s terrifying dream of the image with four kingdoms, bears a striking, if subtly similar, resemblance. In the latter, so many key details fill in the blanks. For instance, the four kingdoms are adjacent in Daniel 2 and Daniel 7, respectively. 

In Daniel 2 the first kingdom is a head of gold, in Daniel 7 it is a lioness, with the heart of a man; this beast stood on two feet like a man and it had wings of a bird. It stood in for Nebuchadnezzar and symbolized his punishment, contrition, and change of heart.  

II. In Daniel 2 the second kingdom is comprised of chest, arms, and hands of silver, in Daniel 7 the second kingdom is a bear with three ribs in its mouth.  It was given a command to arise and eat much flesh.  This kingdom represented Darius the Mede and Cyrus the Great and their astonishing conquest over the Near East, including realms as far west as Egypt and Ethiopia and as far east as northwest India.  So vast was this kingdom that it had over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces (Esther 1:1). 

III. The third kingdom of Bible prophecy in Daniel 2 was the belly and thighs of brass or bronze, but in Daniel 7 the third kingdom was a four-headed leopard with wings.  Alexander the Great’s Grecian conquests and the Diadochi Kingdoms represented a realm even greater than that of the Achaemenids; it traversed three continents and incorporated more than 2 million square miles (or 5.2 million square kilometers)! 

IV. The map directly below shows that Roman dominion had not reached that far east in 141 B.C., when the Hasmoneans were granted semi-independence from the Seleucid Empire. In other words, the Hasmonean State developed independently and before any direct Roman involvement in Jewish affairs, while the Romans’ interference in the Seleucids’ attempts to annex the Ptolemaic Empire was a contributing factor in Seleucid efforts to radicalize their Jewish subjects and replace Yahwist practices with Hellenism.   

In Daniel 2 the fourth kingdom was shins of iron and feet and toes of iron and clay, but in Daniel 7 the fourth kingdom was a wild beast with iron teeth, ten horns, and an auspicious eleventh little horn that had eyes of a man and a mouth speaking great things.  The fourth kingdom in Daniel, frankly, is not so much described by what it looks like as it is by its words, actions, and ambitions.  Was this because it was an amalgam or blend that was horrifically wicked and indescribable!?

In Daniel’s vision, it had no compunction to revile heaven, it had a deep and murderous hatred for the saints of God; it believed it could alter times and Laws at its own human discretion and its barbaric life was cut short by a decision and behest made collectively by a vast heavenly court.

(1) It is assumed that the fourth kingdom could only be a notoriously famous Gentile world empire, specifically, the Roman Empire; this is conventional wisdom, however, and the next map below shows the extent of Roman power in the region when they did annex the Hasmonean State and made it a part of the Roman Republic.   In 67 B.C., after the death of Queen Alexandra, her two sons, Judah Aristobulus II, and John Hyrcanus II went to war over who was the rightful king of the Hasmonean State. 

Aristobulus was the younger and more politically capable of the two and had been appointed under his mother’s will to rule, however, an Idumean, Antipater, the father of Herod the Great, who had been an official in the royal Hasmonean court, instigated a rivalry between the two brothers and that animus between them sparked a new civil war which ravaged the country which, by then, was rapidly disintegrating religiously and politically.  Not until 63 B.C. were the Romans called in to mediate the two sides and settle the sedition which threatened to devour both sides of the religiopolitical spectrum alive. 

Nevertheless, unexpectedly, Pompey the Great came in with his armies and besieged Jerusalem, arrested Aristobulus, took him captive, and then subdued the country to Roman rule, thus bringing the Hasmonean era to within twenty-five years of the end of its run on the world stage.  By 40 B.C., Octavian, (A.K.A., Augustus), would appoint Antipater’s son, Herod the Great and, within three years he would become, in fact, ‘Herod, the King of the Jews.’  In this way, the preparations for the circumstances and setting for the opening of the New Testament were accomplished.

A Conventional Roman Power as the Fourth

Kingdom Introduces Troubling Results

As the information above demonstrates, the notion that the Romans constitute the fourth kingdom of Bible prophecy is made in spite of the fact that the Romans had not reached the region territorially to subdue Greek or Jewish power.  As a matter of fact, the Romans subdued Syria a year before they captured Judæa and, thirty-three years later, in 30 B.C. they ended the dominion of the Ptolemies.^{1  2  3}

(2) In this one answer a domino of notoriously factual irregularities enters the equation and timeline issues end up causing the outcomes of Daniel 7:7-27 to swerve into the sidelines and end up in a rut of notoriously inconclusive results, OR the Roman Empire is superimposed and the titanic drama of the kingdom struggle and is arbitrarily and prematurely channeled into our Lord’s Ascension just ten days before Pentecost on 26 Iyar of the Jewish year 3794.

From this confusion, which basically begins with identifying the fourth kingdom as Roman rule, authority, and power, prophecy, content, context, timeline, and target issues collide and explode into a cacophony of disparate fragments whenever New Testament ‘Son of man coming in the clouds’ passages are routed into Friday 26 Iyar 3794.  But why?

V. There was never a historical Roman struggle for the kingdom inheritance.  Therefore, the Romans, since they evidently had no knowledge or awareness of such a prize; it is but fair to conclude that they likewise never thought to seek it.  Therefore, how can it be them?

VI. The impudent, bellicose, and belligerent behavior of the fourth  kingdom in Daniel 7 is not realized behind the scenes or in broad daylight anywhere near the earliest chapters of Acts, but they are foreseen as guaranteed certainties in the middle of the Book of Revelation (e.g., Revelation chapters 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17).

The Kingdom of God in Daniel 2 and 7

It is crucial to consider the parallels and contrasts between Daniel 2’s description of the kingdom of God and Daniel 7’s description of the same kingdom. The kingdom of God is crudely compared in Daniel 2 to a small stone that was hewn out of a mountain without the aid of human hands. This could imply that it was not a human invention, but rather that its tiny and insignificant size, form, and purpose were strictly determined by the wisdom, command, and will of God. However, the kingdom of God is pictured in Daniel 7:7–27 as a Son of man riding on the clouds of heaven approaching a heavenly figure who grants him the rule, power, and greatness of the kingdom forever.

Moreover, in Daniel 7 the Ancient of Days himself descends from heaven to present the disputed kingdom to this Son of man collective, who, the prophecy says, represents the ‘people of the saints of the Most High God.’  In both Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 the kingdom of God is represented as being given forever thereafter a lasting inheritance to the people of God, without any possibility of it being left to another people.⁴

Parallels in the Gospels

The Synoptic of Matthew, Mark, and Luke provides us with a New Testament sketch that unites parallels from Daniel 7 that strongly suggest that this coming of the Son of man on the clouds of heaven was a contemporary event Jesus expected to be fulfilled, not in relation to his own Ascension to God the Father ten days before Pentecost just weeks after his death, burial, and resurrection, but in connection with the internecine wars and tribulation of Judæa, the abomination of desolation of the Second Temple and the destruction of Jerusalem which fell out almost four decades later.

VII. The Olivet Discourse, our Lord similarly surrounds the coming of the Son of man in the clouds with great power and glory with the abomination of desolation we saw so clearly spelled out in Daniel 9:27 cf. Matthew 24:15ff.  Therefore, to drop Matthew 24:30 down to Friday 26 Iyar 3794 has the same enervative, deleterious effect as pronouncing, imposing, and declaring that the Roman Empire sought and forfeited the kingdom of God ten days before the Church was born in A.D.33.

VIII. If the ‘Son of man coming in the cloud’ prophecies of Daniel 7:13-27 and Matthew 16:27-28 were fulfilled ten days before Pentecost (and that, in our Lord’s Ascension from Bethany back to God the Father), doesn’t that also mean that the Caesarean Philippians from N. Judæa were witnesses of it?  And doesn’t that also mean that all the tribes of Israel mourned, and Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin were witnesses of our Lord’s departure as per Matthew 24:30 and Matthew 26:64?  But only thirteen people, the eleven apostles and two angels were witnesses of our Lord’s departure!⁵

IX. If the prophecies of Daniel 7:7-27 were realized and concluded on Friday 26 Iyar 3794, only ten days before the Day of Pentecost when the Spirit of God first came down upon the Apostles, what do the ‘Son of man coming in the clouds’ prophecies delivered by the Holy Spirit after that date mean?  

Parallels in the Book of Revelation:

A Contextual Survey

A contextual analysis of the situation described in the Book of Revelation warns us of outcomes that would be problematic if the Son of Man had arrived earlier. The herald of the coming in Revelation 1:1, 3, and 7, as well as the events that take place as the Jewish uprising begins (in Revelation 11:1-15; 12:1-6, and 13:1-5) support the idea that the occasion of the saint's expectation to receive a kingdom matches the context revealed and primarily outlined in the framework of Revelation chapters 11 through 19. 

Now, we already saw how, where, and when this took place in Daniel 7 and how, where, and when this was expected to take place in the Synoptics (Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 17 and 21).  And, furthermore, we delved into timeline issues with respect to the less than one century captivity under the first kingdom 586 to 516 B.C.) to the slightly more than two century rule of the second kingdom (539 to 311 B.C.), and, moreover, the less than two century concourse of the third kingdom (311-141 B.C.). 

Since the fourth kingdom had its official beginning in 141 B.C. would it not seem highly incredible that after twenty-one long centuries, conventional wisdom encourages and teaches us to believe that the very prophecies the Gospels, epistles, and even the Book of Revelation said were on the cusp of happening in the first century still, after all this time, have not been resolved?

Content 

I. It is now time for us to step back and examine the contents of the prophecies of the night vision Daniel saw.  From Daniel 7:1-6 it is clear that the four kingdoms—Babylon, Medeo-Persia, Greece, and Judæa—arose from the choppy chaotic waters of a turbulent sea, are defined by certain characteristics, and displayed certain traits. 

They each exercised rule, power, and authority and then they were subsequently displaced by the next beast.  It will be noted in any study of the  complicated reign of the Hasmoneans that after less than a century seized by the Romans and shortly thereafter it was punctuated and transmogrified by the Herodian usurpation

The Babylonian Captivity of

Yehud Began the Sojourn

I. The Jewish people experienced an anguished national ordeal after they refused the repeated overtures of Yahweh their Deity, who bid them to sincerely repent and return to faithful practices of the legislation of Moses from Mount Sinai.  In all the prophet’s pleadings and warnings the Jewish people basically said, “No.”  And after the Kingdom of Israel was subdued and taken captive by the Assyrians and Yehud still was none the wiser, God determined that the same procedure would happen yet again and Yehud was taken captive into Babylon for 70 years in all.  That Captivity was ended by the completion of the Second Temple in October of 516 B.C., thus ending the rule, authority, and power of the lioness who had wings of a bird and the heart of a man.⁶   

II. The advent of Medeo-Persian rule meant the ascent of the Achaemenid Empire and the relatively peaceful sojourn of the Jewish people in a province the Persians designated as “Yehud Medinata.” Persia had five capital cities: but the chiefest among them was Susa.⁷

III.  In 311 B.C., the year designated by the Rabbis as the Minyan Shterot, the  Jewish people recognized the end of Persian rule and the beginning of the Hellenistic era under the tumultuous ethos of the Ptolemies and the Seluecids.  Two other Diadochi realms, far to the north and northwest, Asia Minor and Macedon, exercised what was at first an imperceptible, but insidious influence on the Jewish world by steadily increasing degrees until, at last, critical mass, saturation and Jewish tolerance had reached its limit.⁸

IV. In all, Babylon’s 70 years, Medeo-Persia’s 228 years and the Hellenistic kingdom’s rule would be officially recognized to end in 141 B.C., making the third kingdom’s tenure 170 years in all (1 Maccabees 13:41).  This means that a total of 468 years had passed since the beginning of the Jew’s captivity and loss of national self-determination.  This mathematical total will serve as a basis for comparison and contrast when we examine theories surrounding the rise and duration of the fourth kingdom below.

V. Now, if the first three kingdoms combined equals less than half a millennium of progress, what are we to do with extremely popular suggestions which maintain that the fourth kingdom, after almost 20 CENTURIES, has failed to witness the fulfillment of any of the prodigious events foretold in Daniel 7:13-27!?  But this is not the only saying being promoted in Christian ranks because, in fact, another competing claim is advanced, but both of which we will take a look at in some detail in VI and VII below.

VI. The first claim is that the fourth kingdom did experience the Danielic episode, but it was on 26 Iyar 3894, as we already discussed above.  This interpretive option alleges that the scene described so graphically and vividly in Daniel 7:13-27 is the Ascension of our Lord, more than a week before the Day of Pentecost, on 6 Sivan 3794.

VII. The competing interpretation against VI above, claims that the fourth kingdom is a Roman Empire/ European Economic Union that still has not appeared after an entire 2,163 years, however, that is not its biggest handicap.  The bigger issue is that the emphasis and constraints of Jesus’ prophecies in Matthew chapters 24:34, 10:23, 16:27-28, 19:27-30, 25:31-46, and 26:64 are extremely consequential for these notions and do not afford an extended timeline that allows any such expectations to make sense or be possible in light of any New Testament claims.  Hence, both VI and VII falsify the claims of Jesus, the Apostles, and the New Testament, altogether, making each of these options untenable for Christians, at the end of the day.

Context 

I. To the unsuspecting, what Daniel refers to in Daniel 7 or 2 has to be, generically worldwide kingdoms.  But this is a Jewish history timeline but how do we know this?  We know this because all other parallel kingdoms are excluded from the prophecy except the kingdom that ‘chaperoned’ Yehud.  The Mayan Kingdom existed at that very time, for example, the Mayan Kingdom of Mesoamerica was not under the influence of or affected by the Babylonians in any way, shape, or form; it was an independent kingdom in the world, at the time, in its own right.⁹  

In Africa, conversely, the kingdoms of Kush, Punt, Carthage, and Aksum enjoyed opulence, prestige, and power parallel but apart from any of the happenings that were shaping the Jewish cultural identity or posing challenges to the Hebrew theocratic psyche.  During the second kingdom's tenure, Persian reach into the southwest went only as far west as Egypt and south through Ethiopia, north to Asia Minor, and southeast to India: It, too, was not a worldwide kingdom, nor were any of the rest.  This all means that the purposes and the emphasis of the kingdoms in Daniel 7 pertained to Jewish history and Jewish concerns, and this brings us to our discussion about the timeline.

Timeline 

I. 605 to 539 b.c. all that happens, the cultural nostalgia, the longing to return to and rebuilt the Temple and Zion.  Remembrance of the days of Solomon’s Temple and the glory that was now lost in the mists of time.  Religious challenges, conflicts, and dangers prevailed in a polytheistic environment hostile to the unique beliefs of the Jewish people (Daniel 3:1-30).

II. Under Persian rule (circa, 539 B.C.) and Hellenistic ethos (circa 311 B.C.), the apparent benevolent rule was punctuated by religious competition and malevolence (Daniel 6:1-28) terror, and the real possibility of genocide (Haman and the Amelekite’s intrigues recorded in the Book of Esther - 3:1-15; 4:1-17; 5:1-14; 6:1-14; 7:1-10; 8:1-17, and 9:1-22).

III. In the years 311-141 B.C. mixed messages and pull between two mortal enemies - the kings of the Seleucid north and the kings of the Ptolemaic or Lagid south.  Sandwiched between the Greek north and the Greek south the Holy Land essentially found itself to be beholden to the brand new threat of an attraction to and acceptance of Hellenism and the opposite impulse of a rising barometer of a bloody revolt and an irredentist Jewish nationalism.¹⁰

Judea, for 468 years, was deprived, threatened, and pushed to the tipping point by the Seleucids by coercion to eat pork, sacrifice to Zeus, succumb to the seductions of the gymnasium, regret circumcision, witness widespread public repudiation of Judaism, witness sacrilege at the Second Temple, finally exploded and emerge as itself: A brand new fourth kingdom of Bible prophecy.

IV. The significance of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Hasmoneans, and Hannuka. More . . .

V. The Seleucid-Judeans wars and the year of independence, 141 B.C., / 3621 the year the Hasmonean Dynasty began require us to look and see where the Romans were and what they were doing. 

The map we saw before, again, tells us the extent of Roman Republican power and, at the very same time shows us that Jewish national independence from the Seleucids did NOT overlap or intersect with any Roman control of the region.

Therefore, the sense of the timeline up until Hasmonean rule means we have only to examine the actions of this Jewish kingdom to determine if the disintegration, anarchy, and chaos described in Daniel’s night vision were realized and came to pass in a corollarial event that also included or witnessed the coming of the Son of man in the clouds of heaven in the B.C. years, and if so, when? 

VI. Daniel 9’s timeline.   Daniel chapter 9 presents a timeline of events from the time of our Lord’s death to the abomination of desolation and the destruction of the Second Temple.  Interestingly, as a potent point of apologetics in Jewish evangelism, it is accurately pointed out that Israel’s true Messiah HAD to come before the destruction of the Second Temple.  The order of events, starting in Daniel 9:24 was written before even one brick of the Second Temple was set in place by the Levites.

Now, it must be remembered that when the Book of Daniel was revealed and written Daniel was a youth taken captive in the catastrophic Babylonian Captivity which came in three waves ending with the Destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.  By the time Daniel was an old man, the Second Temple was nowhere near being built.  However, in Daniel 9 Gabriel came to Daniel and revealed to him that a command would be given to restore and build Jerusalem, and after a sixty-two prophetic week period the Messiah would come, be cut off, but not for himself, and then the city and the sanctuary would be besieged for half a week bringing the sacrifices and oblations, which the Hebrew people had been offering God more or less steadily since they were first begun on Mount Sinai, would unceremoniously, even ignominiously, come to an end.¹¹

Now, Jesus, seventy-two hours before he was crucified, gave the Olivet Discourse prophecy which harked back to this prophecy of Gabriel and our Lord, at that very time, assured his apostles that the abomination of desolation and the coming of the Son of man in the clouds of heaven would happen as interrelated events at the destruction of Jerusalem (Matthew 24:15-30).  Let’s take a closer look at the Matthew 24 timeline . . .

VII. Matthew 24’s timeline, for all that it entails, does not seem to anticipate any events which, at that time, were only a few weeks away, at most.  In Matthew chapter 24 Jesus describes:

a. His coming.  b. Catastrophic geological, political, and natural disasters destined to befall the contemporary world of the Jewish people.  c. The successful preaching of the Gospel to the entire Jewish ecumene.   d. The abomination of desolation.  e. The flight of the Church out of Jerusalem into the countryside. f.The coming of the Son of man in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. g. The resurrection of the dead with the sound of a trumpet. h. The sworn time declaration: “This generation shall not pass away till all these things be fulfilled.” ^{12    13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20} 

In the Olivet Discourse motifs from Daniel 7:13-27; Daniel 9:27, and Daniel 12:1-4 emerge and merge—and it is very clear that these events happen in an orbit spinning around the Second Temple, social unrest and disorder, the resurrection of the dead and the termination of the Jewish State Theocratic era. 

But, again, we must stop and question if this all happens ten days before Pentecost in 3794/ A.D.33 and if not, when?  But before we explore that let’s take a look at a similar Son of man prophecy in Matthew 25 . . .

Unpacking Matthew 25

VIII. Matthew 25’s astonishing implications.  Matthew chapter 25 is the continuation of the Olivet Discourse and in it, a number of things need to be brought to our attention: (1)The Parable of the Ten Virgins alludes to the marriage between Christ and his church that the Parable of the King’s Son’s wedding alluded to in Matthew 22.^{21   22}  

(2) The Parable of the Talents offers a glimpse into the kinds of rewards and one specific punishment slothful servants would receive at the time of the Lord’s coming judgment.²³ (The Revelation 20 period, corresponds to the Judæa Capta episode in Jewish history and in it, Jesus’ own family members came out from Pella and established Jerusalem as their center of outreach replicating Christian leadership through a line of Jewish bishops all the way to the Bar Kokhba Rebellion).²⁴

(3) The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats makes it clear that the judgment of the dead at that time would be a referendum on the basic notion of love and human dignity that the Hebrew people were obliged to follow, obey, and exemplify in the Law of Moses.  On the basis of obedience or disobedience the reward of life eternal or punishment of everlasting fire would be determined.8 This judgment of the twelve tribes of Israel harks back to Matthew 16:28 and 19:28 and 1 Corinthians 6:2.²⁵

IX Matthew 26:64’s implications.  At our Lord’s trial which was a little more than fifty days before his Ascension and almost the same distance from that Pentecost of the Church’s birth, he again alludes to the prophecy of Daniel 7:13 but here we must pause and analyze the implications of what this invocation would mean if it meant that the prophecy finds its satisfaction and fulfillment in the Ascension rather than the Second Coming.

Is anyone going to offer that Joseph Caiaphas or any member of the Sanhedrin witnessed the Ascension of our Lord?  According to Luke’s record, as we have already noted, only thirteen people on earth witnessed this unusual event: The eleven apostles and two angels dressed in white.  Did Caiaphas of the senators of Israel witness this from their palaces or from their homes?  How likely would that be and they not join themselves to the first believers awaiting the Holy Spirit’s arrival on the Dau of Pentecost?  

But as we explained in this dissertation, the content and context of events expressed in Daniel 7:7-27 happen in a malevolent rather than a benign social setting and that setting does not find itself mirrored or echoed in anything that happened to Jesus or the Apostles ten days before Pentecost.

However, again, that malevolent environment, with all of its hardships and cruelties, is easily identifiable in the pages of the Book of Revelation which described the circumscribed rule, authority, and power of the beast, starting in Revelation chapter 11:7 where he attacks and kills the two witnesses who preached in the streets of the Great City which is called Sodom and Egypt, where our Lord was crucified (Revelation 11:8). 

The remainder of chapter 11 and what happens from chapter 12 to chapter  19:21 is easily identifiable with the events that happened to the Jewish people and it is preserved for posterity in the record and annals of the writings of Mattathias Josephus who wrote Life, the Antiquities of the Jews, and Wars of the Jews.

Target 

I. Disintegration and anarchy in the Hasmonean Kingdom first begin to make their appearance under King Aristobulus I, who imprisoned his own mother and brothers and let them starve to death behind bars.  Rot appeared again, but on a wider and more public scale under King Alexander Janneaus.  Under him more than fifty-thousand Jews died at the hands of the merciless and unblinking eyes of a man they unaffectionately called “The Thracean.”  He it was who crucified and cut the throats of over eight-hundred Pharisees whose shadows he utterly hated to death!  It was a new nation, a proud nation, a nation full of promise, a nation ruled by the descendants of its immortalized heroes who, now at last, broke them into pieces and bruised them without the slightest compassion or compunction!  

II. The nine-year-long peaceful rule of King Alexander Jannaeus’s widow, Queen Shelamziyyon Alexandra, was followed by the chaotic and destructive rule of Aristobulus II and John II Hyrcanus and the internecine civil war that invited the Roman general, Pompey who, after he had settled the dispute, absorbed the country into the Roman Republic and made it a client kingdom quite against its will.  In this way, Judæa lost its hard-won independence, but still, there was no coming of the Son of man.

III. Herod the Great usurps the dominion of the Hasmoneans and holds it in a painful penitentiary stasis for 37 years!  For all intents and purposes, the Jews got out of the brutal Hasmonean rule only to be forcefully imprisoned by magnificent marble fortresses, astonishing palaces, state-of-the-art harbors, and a top-notch spy network to inform and quickly alert Herod of any efforts to overthrow control of a country that he, as a descendent of Esau, had no natural birthright to rule, which was the throne of King David.

IV.  The Jews, however, still possess the kingdom during the Roman Judæan period (Matthew 21).  One would think that the Sanhedrin’s surrender of political control of the country to the Romans and Herod would also mean that Rome and not Judæa now possessed the kingdom of God—but that is certainly not true if we follow the logic of the Parable of the Vineyard!

V.Prophecies about the coming of the Son of man in the clouds of heaven, nevertheless, and contrary to the claim that the prophecy of Daniel 7:13 was already fulfilled in the Ascension, continued to be reiterated even after Friday 26 Iyar 3794, namely in Revelation 1:7, which harks back to Matthew 10:23; 16:27-28; 19:28; 21:43; 24:30; 25:31; and 26:64.²⁶  But what does that mean?

VI. It means that the contents (and the fulfillment) of those Danielic transactions have to be in specific circumstances where these events are expressly and specifically spelled out and identified.  But where would that be along the continuum of time in the New  Testament?  This question brings us to the genuine target both to the Danielic prophecies and the Matthean prophecies of our Lord . . .

Discussion 

First, Revelation 1:1, 3, and 7 make it clear that the Daniel 7:13 prophecy was to shortly to come to pass—more than three decades after the Pentecost of Christianity’s birthday!  The time is at hand.  Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him and all the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him . . .harks back to Acts 1:11, 17:30, 1 Cor. 1:6-9; 7:29-31; 1 Thess. 4:16-5:1-4; 5:23-24; 2 Thess. 2:1-8; 2 Timothy 4:1; Titus 2:13; Hebrews 10:37; James 5:-9, and Jude 14 . . .the impetus, on one hand, has been to get the ‘this generation’ prophecies in the Gospels arbitrarily shoe-horned and fulfilled in Ascension ten days before Pentecost, or else delay them by more than twenty centuries by ascribing them to an unknown but eventual future. 

Either way of interpreting them in this manner voids, cancels, and nullifies the meaning of Daniel 7:7-27 and locks it into the superficial similarities, conflicting claims, and discordant, misleading, or inconclusive results we discussed in our Abstract. 

Second, prophecies and warnings in Revelation 2:24-28.

Third, prophecies and warnings in Revelation 3:10-11 make it clear not only that Christ was coming soon but also that the Church of Philadelphia would, by the grace of God, be able to escape what was about to happen.

Fourth, the scenes John observed in Revelation 4 and 5 remind us of the solemnities and the pomp, multitudes, and circumstances Daniel saw in his night vision in 556 B.C. . . . “ten thousand times ten thousand attended, the judgment was set and the books were opened.”  As John described what he saw, listen to this:-

“And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; ¹² saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. . .” (Revelation 5:11-12).

Likewise in Revelation 5, the occasion was, apparently the same—and for the selfsame reasons: 

“And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.  And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?  And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.  And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.

And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.

And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.  And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat on the throne.

And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odors, which are the prayers of the saints.  And they sung a  new song, saying .  .  .” (Revelation 5:1-9).

This scene in the Book of Revelation is, interestingly, directly adjacent to the outpouring of Seal judgments, which will begin a mere five verses away; can we posit this vision as happening ten days before Pentecost, in A.D.33 without doing something fundamentally harmful and destructive to the time and occasion John received these visions during his incarceration on Patmos? And, remember, Revelation was received by John well past the mid-mark of the 50s of the first century!

Fifth, Revelation 6:12-17 and Luke 23:26-31 share a strong connection that lassos and isolate the beginnings of the Seals, to nobody but first century Judæa.

Sixth, yet John saw what he saw more than thirty years after 3794 (33), possibly the year 3823 (62) or 3824 (63) about seven years before the Destruction of Jerusalem.

Finally,  the real size, shape, and danger of the situation begins to come out in full spectrum in Revelation chapter 11 when the Jewish Zealots, around 8 Marcheshvan 3827 or 15 November A.D.66 routed the Romans and killed 5,680 of them in the famous Beth Horon Pass.²⁷

The Romans, in this stunning loss, suddenly forfeited all control of Jerusalem and, for the next forty-two months rule, authority, and power was exercised solely and exclusively by a group of Jewish entities that John sketches that almost identically resembles the fourth beast of Daniel 7:7-27 in every essential feature!  Its words, behavior, horns, attempt at the kingdom, audacity and impudence towards God, and its surreptitious and untimely end are EXACTLY the same in every way to the fourth beast of the Tanakh.

The Appointment of Jewish Leadership in

the Wake of This Unexpected Victory

After the Romans fell in the Beth Horon gorge, the victorious Zealots returned to Jerusalem, says Josephus, “Came back running and singing to their metropolis,” . . . “and when they had returned back to Jerusalem, they overbore some of those who favored the Romans by violence, and some they persuaded [by entreaties] to join them, and got together in great numbers in the Temple, and appointed a great many generals or the war.”^{28  29} 

Pay close attention; for it is here that the leadership takes on the shape described for us in Daniel 7:7, 20, and 24: right after their moment of victory, the Jewish rebels run back to Jerusalem, assemble on the Second Temple plaza in great number and appoint ten leaders whose names are as follows:

¹ Joseph Ben Gorion, over all affairs within Jerusalem.

² Ananus Ben Ananus, over all affairs within Jerusalem.

³ Jesus Ben Sapphias, in charge of Idumea.

⁴ Eleazar Ben Ananias, in charge of Idumea.

⁵ Niger the Peraite, was under these two Idumean generals.

⁶ Joseph Ben Simon, over Jericho.

⁷ Manasseh, over Perea.

⁸ John the Essene, over Thamna and Lydda.

⁹ John Ben Matthias, over Gophnitica and Acrabattene.

¹⁰ Josephus Ben Matthias, over the Galilees (Upper amd Lower), and Gamala.³⁰

The extraordinary moment happened, in the twelfth year of the reign of the Emperor Nero, on a Saturday, 8 Marchesvan A.D.66 and, according to Jesus, when the Christians saw the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not, they should immediately vacate Jerusalem at once!  And they did flee, being warned in a vision, according to traditions handed down to us from the Church historian, Eusebius.

The dangers, perils, and hazards, as indicated in the prophecies of Daniel 7:7-27; Matthew 24, and Revelation 11:1:ff seem to be best suited for the malevolent environment that Josephus describes that ensued immediately after Jewish leadership had complete control of the unhappy city.  Almost at once all avenues to flee were closed off in order to force the inhabitants to desperately fight for the freedom the rebels presumed lay just over the proverbial horizon.  A grain supply of enough corn to feed everybody in Jerusalem for twenty-three years was intentionally burned up in order to up the ante!  Two opposing factions of Zealots—one under John Gishcala, a Levitical priest, and the other under Simon Bar Giora, a ruthless messianic pretender and bandit—raged in fratricidal combat with a third moderate army of pro-Roman combatants.  In no time at all, what began as a Jewish victory against the Romans at Beth Horon turned into a deadly civil war (centered in the Second Temple) for the next forty-two months!

Now, according to Daniel 7, and Matthew 24 it is in the midst of these specific circumstances and conditions that the coming of our Lord and the exaltation of the mysterious Son of man from the womb of the Jerusalem church to the throne of God dynamically intersects in the Book of Revelation (Revelation chapters 11-19). Therefore, it is not what happens at the Ascension, but what happens at the Jewish rebellion which captures our attention and persuades and convinces our minds, in no uncertain terms, that this is a match and no other event but the Destruction of Jerusalem and the failure of the First Jewish Revolt is what Daniel 7:7-27 predicts as the need, reason, and occasion for the intervention of the Son of God and the coming of the Son of man to him to receive an everlasting kingdom in glory and power.

The full brilliance of Daniel 7:7-27 comes out in the shakedown and outcome, prodigies and peregrinations of a forty-two-month-long siege that constitutes the Jewish civil war, the brazen and shameful sacrilege of the Second Temple, and the tragic Destruction of Jerusalem which happened in the years A.D.66-70.  If our Lord would come in the clouds, it would be by then (as he promised), NOT thirty years earlier OR twenty centuries later.

Summary

Daniel 7:13 does not describe Jesus Christ being brought to God the Father.  The Bible never describes what God the Father looks like!  What is shown in Daniel 7:13 and  is explained, again and again in Daniel 7 has to be ‘the people of the saints of the Most High God’ as explained more than once to Daniel.

In fact, the Ancient of Days is the exact description of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereas the Son of man in Daniel 7:27 is said to be ‘the people of the saints of the Most High God being presented to Jesus who, at the time of the fourth kingdom’s numbered days, was expected to be given the kingdom of God by Jesus.’³¹   The ascension of this peculiar Son of man comes after he is “born” in Revelation 12:4-5 and, two chapters later, he is fitted with both crown and sickle to judge the citizens of the Second Jewish Commonwealth in a series of gruesome judicial executions that are both beyond our imagination and comprehension (Revelation 14:14-20)!

Conclusion

By upbringing, indoctrination, and training we are inclined to, causes us, by the force of habit, to imagine the reasonableness of a Roman fourth kingdom, and by the same means we are groomed to expect and look for the glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ, if not in our lifetime, certainly by the end of time.    But prophecies, content, context, timeline, and target of the coming of the Son of man prophecies in neither the Tanakh nor the New Testament make such predictions or offer any support for such notions. 

Neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament envisions a transferral of kingdom power to the new people of God outside or separate, beyond or apart from the abomination of desolation, a bizarre and deadly Jewish civil war, and the fiery destruction of the Second Temple.  In this respect, the New Testament Synoptics, Pauline prophecies, and the Book of Revelation, are in complete and harmonious agreement.

 

Endnotes

¹ In 64 B.C., under the hand of Gnaeus Pompey the Great, Seleucid Empire was terminated by the Romans.

² In 63 B.C. Hasmonean Judæa in 63 B.C. fell under Roman power, however, Pompey and his successors allowed local rulers to run the country while denying them the title of ‘king.’ It was not until 40 B.C. that the first Roman emperor, Augustus, appointed Herod to be the king of the Jews and Herod’s descendants continued as a line of regents up through New Testament times.

³ Ptolemaic Egypt was terminated by the Romans in the autumn of 30 B.C. after Augustus defeated Mark Anthony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium.

⁴ The fifth kingdom, the inheritance, and the prize, was understood by Jewish nationalist extremists to be something God promised Israel and they were entitled to it and would never lose it: Daniel 2:44 and Daniel 7:18.  John the Baptist sought to disabuse the Jews from believing in this notion of entitlement (Matthew 3:9 KJV). 

⁵ See Acts 1:10.  Either these people were witnesses of the people of the saints being brought to meet a glorified Jesus ten days before Pentecost or they witnessed this with their own eyes during the surreal, chaotic, and prodigious days that marked the forty-two-month-siege and destruction of Jerusalem.

⁶ In Daniel 9:1ff, Daniel yet prayed for the end of the Babylonian Captivity eight years after the rule of the Babylonians had ended.  This leads us to conclude that the Babylonian Captivity period can reliably be adduced as the exact period between the Destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C. and the completion of the Second Temple in 516 B.C.

⁷ The main capital of the Achaemenid empire, according to the Bible, was Susa (Esther 1:2).

⁸ The Hellenization process was by degree causing compromise, mayhem, and destruction in important Jewish institutions till, at last, it came to blows when King Antiochus IV Epiphanes openly forbade the people to read the Law, observed the dietary restrictions and finally installed an idol of Zeus in the Holy of holies of the Second Temple in 167 B.C.

⁹ Mesoamerican, African, and Asia kingdoms flourished beyond the pall of Judah or its political masters during the whole time down to the universal destruction of the State of Israel in A.D.135/6.  The purpose of the four-kingdom timeline must be for purposes limited to the progress and vicissitudes of Jewish salvation history as it marched arduously towards its conclusion in the explosive events which rocked Hebrew civilization in the late Second Temple era and the Zealot wars in the first and second centuries.

¹⁰ Pressure from the Hellenistic society not only had the effect of fertilizing rampant apostasy but also fomenting a strong irredentist counter impulse which was at last realized in the Hasmonean Rebellion which, after its initial success, imploded and flailed about as a failed state (with the exception of John Hyrcanus I and Queen Alexandra Schlomzyyon’s nine-year-rule) until the advent of the Romans.

¹¹ See Wars of the Jews on the shocking end of the Levitical Priesthood and see Hebrews 8:13 where he confirms the early Christian expectation that that institution had reached its end.

¹² It is important to understand that in the Olivet, ‘Your coming,’ in Matthew 24:2, 4, and 30, cannot be abridged to any events that would be fulfilled in A.D.33.

¹³ In Matthew 24 and its Synoptic parallels, the geopolitical upheavals and natural calamities also cannot be seen as developments to happen a week before the birh of the Church.

¹⁴ In Matthew 24:14 our Lord envisions the successful preaching of the New Testament Gospel to the entire Jewish ecumene (See Romans 16:25-26 and Colossians 1:23).

¹⁵ In Matthew 24:15, the ascent of the abomination of desolation marks the beginning of the termination of Jewish worship to God in the State Temple that was founded in 516 B.C. and had by A.D.66 persisted for almost six centuries.

¹⁶ The Pella flight is hinted at by Josephus (in Wars 2.20.1:556), described in the Book of Revelation 12:6 and 14, and covered, in some detail, in the writings of Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History.

¹⁷ It is unclear at this time what exactly the sign of the Son of man in heaven is, but it is clear from verse 30 that the coming of the Son of man of Daniel 7:13 was certainly not fulfilled three decades earlier before Pentecost.

¹⁸ The resurrection of the dead, which in Daniel 7:10 only hints at, is explicitly promised in Daniel 12:1-2 is in Matthew 24:31 situated within the Destruction of Jerusalem (and reconfirmed in Revelation 11:15-19).

¹⁹ The sworn time declaration of Matthew 24:34 is informed by Matthew 11:16-19; there is also a turnaround period within those same constraints (Matthew 12:43-45), and a reconfirmation of it in Acts 2:40.

²⁰ The Parable of the Ten Virgins.  The marriage of Christ to the church.

²¹ The Parable of the Talents.  The idea of Christian leadership after the fact of the Destruction of Jerusalem is here directly suggested.  There was the leadership of the Pella Church, starting with Jesus’ own family members, all the way from the end of the Destruction of Jerusalem to the advent of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in A.D.132-135/6.  See: The First Christian Bishops of Jerusalem.

²¹ The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.  We know that followers of God are called ‘sheep,’ but it is interesting, however, that those who rejected the leadership of the Lord Jesus are called ‘goats’ and Alexander the Great, in Daniel 8:5 described as a ‘he-goat:’ A perfect link is therein made between those who followed the example of a worldly unspiritual life filled with brute ambition for conquest and gain and those who denied themselves and carried their crosses in order to identify with Jesus and obtain eternal life.

²² Talents and elders as rulers over many in the world to come after the fact of destruction of Jerusalem and end of the Jewish world.  This challenges the Preterist premise that eldership has ended due to the wording of Ephesians 4:11-16 and the fact of the destruction of Jerusalem arguing that historic Christianity is ‘illegitimate’ and the basis for leadership today is ‘invalid.’

²³ The Jerusalem church that had fled to Pella, it is said, was led by Cleopas, a relative of Jesus, and returned to the ruins of Jerusalem and established a tiny Christian church on the spot where the Upper Room used to be.  According to church history, a line of Jewish Christian bishops reigned from Jerusalem from A.D.70 to the second year of the revolt led by Simon Bar Kokhba when the Sanhedrim put Christians on trial and executions were reinstated against Christians with a vengeance.

²⁴ A little-known and even less discussed aspect of Pauline theology is the idea that Christians would actively participate in judging the world (1 Corinthians 6:1-2, Revelation 12:5, and 14:14-20).

²⁵ Revelation 1:1, 3, and 7 strongly deflects the idea that the coming of the Son of man was really fulfilled a couple of weeks before the Day of Pentecost, thirty-seven years before the Destruction of Jerusalem.  Prophecies and promises like e.g., Matthew 10:23; 16:27-28; 19:28; 21:43; 24:30; 25:31, and 26:64 make better sense in light of the tenure of Daniel 7:7-27 and what is reflected in Revelation 11:1-19:21 mainly because a premature date makes the prophecy happen in a benign setting whereas it is obvious and apparent that the prophecy had to be fulfilled in a malignant, violent, and malicious setting—which John in the Book of Revelation confirms.

²⁶  The Beth Horon disaster (cf. Wars of the Jews 2.19.9:554-555), was a Jewish victory against the Romans that brought unspeakable joy but had serious and frightening pyrrhic overtones and consequences.  It is because it happened that the Zealots were able to take over Jerusalem, but their seizure of the city was precisely what made the Destruction of Jerusalem ripe for the events called for in both Daniel 7:7-27 and Revelation 11:1-17:17.

²⁷ Wars of the Jews 2.19.9:554.

²⁸ Wars of the Jews 2.20.3:562.

²⁹ Wars of the Jews 2.20.3:562-4:568.

³⁰ The seemingly confusing interplay between the Ancient of Days (Jesus Christ) and the Son of man (the people of the saints of the Most High God) and the coming and presentation of the kingdom of God to them could seem unintelligible until we contemplate and understand the interplay between the Father, the Son, and the people of God expressed in what Jesus prayed in John 17:20-23 and what the Apostle John wrote in 1 John 3:2.

 

Recommended Reading

Richard A. Horsley, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence, 1993.

James D.G. Dunn, Jews and Christians the Parting of the Ways A.D.70 to 135, 1992.

William Horbury, Jewish War Under Trajan and Hadrian, 2014.

Comments on Matthew 10:23: The Second Coming in Light of the Social World of the Apostles.

 

Related

Occam’s Razor & Daniel 7:13ff—Our Lord’s

Ascension or the A.D.66-70 Jewish Rebellion?

The Systemic Roman Monkey

Wrench in Bible Prophecy Equations

The Fig Tree of the Olivet Discourse

Is Matthew 16:27-28 a Prophecy

About the Ascension?