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Godmindbody Part 3, Chapter 6: Daniel

  • robrensor1066
  • Sep 8
  • 43 min read

Updated: Oct 2

Daniel in the lion's den
Daniel in the lion's den

Godmindbody: The Bible, Prophecy, Miracles and TMS Healing Explained

 

By Robert Ensor

 

Copyright © 2025 Robert Ensor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.The author’s moral rights have been asserted.First Published September 2025.


All Bible quotations, unless otherwise stated or referenced, are taken from the online World English Bible, which is in the public domain. It is available at the following link: https://ebible.org/eng-web/index.htm. English language Bibles are translated from Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. I am no linguist, and I don’t know any linguists, so I have had to rely on others’ translations and romanizations of the Hebrew and Greek texts. Occasionally, I have examined the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek of the Bible, zeroing in on key words where the received English translation is debatable or misses the full meaning of the original.


Disclaimer: I am not a doctor or a therapist – merely a concerned layperson (!) – and nothing in this book should be considered medical advice. Nor should it be considered a substitute for diagnoses, prescriptions and treatments from qualified doctors. If you have symptoms, I recommend that you see a doctor to rule out anything serious and get proper care.

 

The full title is available free from this website. You can also buy the book from amazon at the following link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FQ6MNZ2N. For part 1, see the link: https://www.robertensor.com/post/godmindbody-a-book-about-tms-and-christianity-part-1


For the entire book see the pdf below:


Chapter 6: Daniel


Next we’ll turn to the Book of Daniel, since it develops the eschatological themes of Isaiah and Jeremiah. John’s prophecies in Revelation also build on Daniel’s earlier visions and symbolism. The prophets are links in a golden chain.

 

Daniel is interesting because in this book, God effectively presented the world with a riddle. If correctly interpreted, the riddle will not only yield the date of the Messiah’s coming, the Antichrist’s abomination and the duration of the worst part of the tribulation, but it will enable the reader to pass judgement and live forever. If misinterpreted, however, Daniel and other End Times prophecies could lead the reader to fail the test, and the judgement. The stakes couldn’t be higher.Traditionally, the Book of Daniel was believed to be written by the Hebrew prophet Daniel in the 6th century BC. I wholeheartedly agree with this Hebraic tradition; indeed, King Nebuchadnezzar II (reign: 605–562 BC) is in the book, which has the context of the Babylonian captivity (6th century BC). Later scholars reckon the book was written in the 2nd century BC, primarily as a history of the Seleucid tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes (215–164 BC) and the Maccabean revolt. Which is odd, when you consider that the style of the book is clearly prophetic, future-oriented and laden with symbolism. If the Jews of the 2nd century BC had wanted to chronicle their experiences with the Grecian Seleucids, they’d have written a straightforward history like that found in the Book of Kings and Chronicles, they would have named the names of the players involved, and there would be no need to indulge in the complex animal, horn and metallic symbolism found in the text. If the Book of Daniel was dated earlier than the 2nd century it would obviously have correctly predicted several historical episodes, including the conquests of Alexander, the wars of the Seleucids and Antiochus’ desecration of the temple, but the scholars just can’t bring themselves to believe that correct prophecy is possible, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. Indeed, the modern denial of prophetic accuracy has been a stumbling block for many academics, leading to misinterpretations of numerous verses and the misdating of many canonical books. In any case, to the best of my knowledge, there is no significant scholastic viewpoint that Daniel was originally written after 33 AD, so the book provably predicted the coming of Jesus, as shall be seen…

 

Within Judaism, Daniel has been excluded from the prophets and placed in the Hebrew Kethuvim (writings), calling into question his prophetic status. But Daniel was included among the prophets in the Septuagint – the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which is believed to have been produced from the 3rd to the 1st century BC – and Jesus believed Daniel was a prophet, hence he referred to his prophecy in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24:15). For all Christians, this fact should effectively end the debate as to whether Daniel was primarily or solely writing about Antiochus Epiphanes, and whether he was a prophet or not, since the founder of our religion acknowledged him as a prophet whose prophecy was unfulfilled circa 30 AD, almost two centuries after Antiochus’ reign. On a technical level, the Aramaic used in parts of Daniel has been deemed consistent with a 6th century BC dating by linguists.[i]

 

We’ll begin with Chapter 2 of Daniel. In the 6th century BC, King Nebuchadnezzar II of the Babylonian Empire, who had conquered Jerusalem and deported the Jews, was frightened by a disturbing dream. Without telling them the content of the dream, he called upon his magi to recount the dream to him and interpret it; otherwise, they would be put to death. The magi could not do what the king asked of them and were terrified of execution. Daniel, who was at the court in Babylon with other Jewish deportees, prayed to God for the ability to know the king’s dream and its meaning. His prayer answered, Daniel came forward and proceeded to accurately describe the king’s dream about a statue of a man. The head was made of gold, the chest and arms of silver, the belly and thighs of bronze and the legs of iron. The feet were ‘part of iron and part of clay.’ (Daniel 2:33). Then a stone ‘cut out without hands’ struck the statue on its feet and the statue was smashed to pieces (Daniel 2:33). The stone became a ‘great mountain and filled the whole earth.’ (Daniel 2:35).

 

The king was amazed that Daniel had correctly recounted the dream and praised his God. Daniel interpreted the golden head as Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom, and the other parts of the statue as kingdoms that would come after his time. The feet of iron and clay Daniel saw as a ‘divided kingdom’, ‘partly strong and partly brittle’ (Daniel 2:42). ‘In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, nor will its sovereignty be left to another; but it will break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms and it will stand forever.’ (Daniel 2:44).

 

Many modern scholars regard the kingdoms of gold, silver and bronze in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream as Babylon, Media and Persia, respectively. Seleucid Syria and Ptolemaic Egypt are seen as the ‘divided’ feet, partly because these kingdoms had failed marriage alliances, which some scholars believe Daniel was alluding to when he wrote ‘they will mingle themselves with the seed of men; but they won’t cling to one another, even as iron does not mix with clay’ (Daniel 2:34). The biggest problem with this interpretation is that Seleucid Syria and Ptolemaic Egypt were not replaced with the eternal Messianic kingdom outlined by Daniel; they were superseded by the Roman Empire, which eventually became Christian, but obviously did not last forever, and was not ruled directly on earth by God.

 

Traditionally, Christians interpreted the metals in the dream as representing the Babylonian (gold), Persian (silver), Greek (bronze) and Roman (iron) empires, since Babylon fell to the Medes and the Persians, who were succeeded by the Greeks, who were conquered in their turn by the Romans. Indeed, the chief Babylonian deity Marduk was associated with gold, and the city of Babylon was decorated with gold. The silver arms of the second world empire indicated that it would actually be comprised of two empires: Media and Persia. The Medes and the Persians united in 550 BC and conquered Babylon in 539 BC. Likewise, the Greek Empire[ii] was split into four significant kingdoms after the death of Alexander, but two of these were the most prominent, namely, the Ptolemaic Egyptian kingdom and the Syriac Seleucid kingdom, symbolised by the two bronze thighs of the statue. Flavius Josephus, the Roman-Jewish historian, identified Rome as the fourth kingdom of Daniel.[iii] Iron was understood as a symbol for the strength and militaristic aggression of the Roman Empire.

 

Of course, Christians see the stone replacing the statue as the coming of Christ’s kingdom; whether that kingdom be on heaven or earth depends on the denomination, and the individual. It is however pretty clear that this Messianic kingdom is implied to be at least partly on the current earth, the ground that the statue and the kingdoms it represented stood upon, because Daniel said the stone ‘filled the whole earth.’ (Daniel 2:35). Again, Jesus is the stone the builders rejected (Psalm 118:22; Acts 4:11). He was ‘cut out without hands’ because he is God and man, not a literal stone, who does not come from a man, but from God.[iv] The fact that this stone became a mountain is an allusion to the ‘holy mountain’ of Isaiah and Ezekiel on which the Messiah’s temple rests and from whence he will rule the world in the books of those prophets.

 

After interpreting Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, Daniel himself had a dream and visions about various beasts while lying in his bed (Daniel 7:1). Like John the Apostle in the Revelation, Daniel equated the animals or beasts with kingdoms: ‘these great animals, which are four, are four kings that will arise out of the earth’ (Daniel 7:17) and ‘the fourth animal will be a fourth kingdom on earth.’ (Daniel 7:23). Both John’s beast, and Daniel’s animals, came out of the sea (Daniel 7:3; Revelation 13:1). The four animals of Daniel’s dream correspond to the metals of the king’s dream and provide further clues as to the identities of the empires.

 

The first animal, a lion with the heart of a man (Daniel 7:4), was the Babylonian Empire; the lion was an ancient Babylonian symbol for their king, and lions used to roam the plains of ancient Mesopotamia. In Jeremiah, the Babylonians are likened to ‘lions’ (Jeremiah 51:38). In Chapter 4 of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon is described as being given ‘an animal’s heart’ (Daniel 4:16). After a period of madness, the heart (or mind) of a man was restored to him by God.

 

The second ‘animal’ – a bear raised up on one side, with three ribs in its mouth (Daniel 7:5) – was the Medo-Persian Empire. However, some see it as the Median empire, and regard the third animal as the Persian Empire, treated as a separate entity. The three ribs in the bear’s mouth probably symbolize the kingdoms of Babylon, Lydia and Egypt, which were conquered by the Persians. The bear being raised up on one side indicates that Persia would come to dominate the Median Empire; this interpretation is borne out by the facts of history. Furthermore, the combination of the Medes and the Persians into a single beast or unit of analysis has precedent within the text itself; an angel who interpreted one of Daniel’s later visions described the two horns of a ram as standing for the Medes and the Persians (Daniel 8:20). Therefore, we can safely identify the bear as the combined Medo-Persian Empire.

 

The third beast, a leopard with four heads and four wings (Daniel 7:6), was the Greek Empire. The choice of a leopard, the fastest of the three animals, signifies the speed of King Alexander’s conquests, which took place within just twelve years. The four heads and four wings symbolize the division of the Greek Empire following Alexander the Great’s death.

 

The dreadful fourth beast with ‘iron teeth’ (Daniel 7:7) that is different from the others and more powerful, is the Roman Empire. The ‘ten horns’ (Daniel 7:7) of this fourth beast are identified as ‘ten kings’ that will ‘arise out of’ the fourth kingdom (Daniel 7:24) and represent ten kingdoms that come in the wake of Rome.

 

Scholars have seen the fourth iron kingdom as the Greek Seleucid Empire. They are mistaken, for several reasons. The Roman Empire dominated other kingdoms and broke them ‘in pieces’ (Daniel 7:24) to an extent that was unprecedented in the ancient world, which fits with Daniel’s characterisation of the fourth beast. Moreover, the fourth animal is described as devouring ‘the whole earth’ (Daniel 7:23). Neither Rome nor the Seleucids had worldwide empires, but the Romans had a much larger dominion than the Seleucids and came pretty close to conquering the entire known world from the perspective of Daniel, which was mostly confined to the Middle East and the Mediterranean. I’m no linguist, but the original Aramaic basis for ‘the whole earth’ in Daniel 7:23 is ‘kol ara’, which may mean the entire world, or may have a more limited meaning.[v] Further evidence for Rome as the fourth beast is found in the later chapters of Daniel.

 

Then Daniel told of an arrogant ‘little horn’ with the ‘eyes of a man’ on the fourth beast, before which three of the other horns ­were uprooted (Daniel 7:8). Eventually, in Daniel’s vision, the fourth beast was destroyed by fire (Daniel 7:11) and ‘one like a son of man’ (Daniel 7:13) was given an ‘everlasting kingdom’ (Daniel 7:14). The Son of Man is how Jesus identified himself (Mark 2:10), based on this usage in Daniel. An angel explained to Daniel that the little horn was one that would arise after the ten kings, and he will put down three kings and ‘wear out’ the saints of the Most High (Daniel 7:25). The times and the law will be given to him until ‘time, times and half a time.’ (Daniel 7:25). Daniel foretold that ‘the kingdom and the dominion, and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole sky, will be given to the people of the saints of the Most High.’ (Daniel 7:27). This last part is a prophecy of the Messiah coming to rule the earth with the saints, and for Christians like myself, it is a clear reference to the Second Coming of Jesus. The chronology of Daniel 7 means that the kingdom will be founded after the Antichrist’s death. The timeline in Daniel 9 provides further evidence for the identity of Jesus, the Messiah and the Messianic ‘one like a son of man’ in Daniel 7.

 

Let’s cross reference the two dreams for a clearer picture, as they are closely related. The gold, silver and bronze in the statue are clearly meant to correspond to the lion (Babylon), bear (Medo-Persian Empire) and leopard (Greek Empire) of Daniel’s vision, respectively; there are four metals and four beasts, and iron comes fourth in both dreams, equating the iron empire of the statue with the fourth animal who has ‘iron teeth’ (Daniel 7:7). The divided kingdom symbolised by the feet of clay and iron corresponds to the fourth beast’s latter phase. Indeed, the feet represent the various kingdoms that came after Rome, which to some extent inherited Rome’s cultural legacy, borrowing as they did the Latin alphabet, in addition to elements from the Roman language, architecture, military tactics, law, diplomacy, religion and political institutions such as the senate. The Renaissance, which laid the groundwork of our modern science, technology and art, was literally a resurgence of interest in all things Greco-Roman and may also account for the preservation of some Roman ‘iron’ in the statue’s feet. The ten toes equate to the ten horns of the fourth animal: the ten kingdoms of the Antichrist’s alliance in territories formerly held by the Roman Empire. The poorly mixed clay and iron in the toes anticipates the breakdown of this ten-king alliance and the divided post-Roman world into war; and this same war corresponds to the three horns uprooted by the little horn and the wars of the kings to the north and south of Israel in Daniel 11.

 

The Roman Catholic Church is the last surviving remnant of the Roman Empire; it was there, as the official state religion, during the reign of the Emperor Theodosius, and it has survived through centuries to this day. Although Catholics are not pagans, the Catholic Church preserved and transmuted some pagan Roman customs and the Roman religious calendar. In summation, then, the continuation of the Catholic Church and the lasting cultural legacy of Rome help to explain the presence of iron in the statue’s feet of iron and clay. Some postmillennialists believe the stone represents the Church, but the Church coexisted with the fourth (Roman) empire, whereas the stone destroys it, and the stone’s conquest is not gradual, like the church’s, but sudden, so this reading does not fit the symbolism of the text.[vi]

 

Moreover, the Roman Empire was administratively divided into eastern and western parts by the Emperor Diocletian in 286 AD. Although Constantine reunited them for a time, and the two empires were usually allies, the division stuck, and was represented symbolically in the statue by the (two) legs of iron. While the Western Roman Empire finally collapsed in 476 AD, the Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire) centred on Constantinople did not fall until 1453 AD, which also accounts for the continuation of some Roman iron in the feet and toes of the statue. Regarding the possible allusion to failed marriage alliances in Daniel 2, the Byzantine Imperial line and European royal families married on several occasions, though east-west relations were forever marred by the Great Schism between Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox Church. The ‘mingling’ could also refer to the diverse ethnic makeup of post-Roman Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Furthermore, Europe and the Mediterranean nations have not achieved lasting political unity since the fall of Rome. The Holy Roman Empire was not centralised like the original Roman Empire. It was ‘neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire’ as Voltaire famously quipped.[vii] Centralised pan-European empires such as Napoleon’s and Hitler’s collapsed within fifty years of being founded, and despite shifting alliances, and the recent European Union, the nations of the region remain largely independent political units, and look set to stay that way for some time. Therefore, when all these things are taken together, one can see why the post-Roman age was characterised in the dream as ‘divided’, but retaining some Roman influence or ‘iron.’ But I am not suggesting that any current government or political leader is the little horn that will be destroyed by the Kingdom of God, symbolised in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream by the stone. The Antichrist and the tribulations lie in the future, for reasons that will be made plain…

 

We cannot currently be living in the millennium as postmillennialists maintain because the one like a son of man’s rule is described as being worldwide, as indicated by his dominion over ‘the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole sky’, combined with the fact that most people in the world are not Christians.[viii]


Indeed, the ‘Kingdom of God’ stone smashing the feet of the statue also has two valid meanings, because, as previously outlined, the kingdom has three aspects: an earthly, a heavenly and the New Jerusalem on the new earth. Christ came to enable access to the heavenly Kingdom of God – the kingdom ‘not of this world’ (John 18:36) – during the ‘iron’ Roman Empire, which access ultimately leads to resurrection into the eternal kingdom of the New Jerusalem on the new earth that is also not ‘this world’. The other aspect of the Kingdom of God represented by the stone in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is that Christ will also return to establish the physical kingdom on the current earth at the end of our ‘divided’ post-Roman age – as indicated by the smashed feet of iron and clay – which will transition into the new earth. It is this final reconciliation of the heavenly and earthly aspects of God’s kingdom that will truly be ‘everlasting’ in the sense meant by Daniel, whereas the Kingdom of God on this earth will only last 1,000 years. The heavenly kingdom is a forerunner of the earthly, and the New Jerusalem, giving new meaning to the words of the Lord’s prayer, ‘let your kingdom come. Let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,’ (Matthew 6:10) and the Hermetic adage, ‘as above, so below’.[ix] Thus both the first and second comings of Jesus were foreshadowed by the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. The destruction of the little horn by fire matches the fate of the beast in Revelation 19:20, who is thrown alive into the lake of fire.

 

The statue made of various precious metals represented the human perspective on the successive world empires, since it was King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, a product of his sinful, proud psyche. By contrast, the vision of four ravenous predatory animals is how God sees those empires.[x] The fact the metals of the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream become progressively lower in value and the beasts become more and more vicious, represents the decay of human civilizations over time, leading to their total death and replacement by the kingdom of the Son of Man.[xi]

 

The little horn of the fourth beast that persecutes the saints in Daniel 7 does not fit Rome. Though it persecuted Christians on occasion, the Roman Empire did not make war with Christians for only 3.5 years specifically, and crucially, it did not immediately precede the Kingdom of God being established on earth. The little horn and feet of iron and clay are thus better regarded as some kind of later offshoot of the iron beast Rome, that will arise ‘out of’ Rome. Some Christians see the little horn of the fourth beast in Daniel 7 as the future beast of Revelation (13:1) because its reign is destroyed and superseded by a Messianic kingdom. I agree with this interpretation, for reasons that will be elucidated later in this chapter and in my chapter on the Book of Revelation.

 

The ‘little horn’ has also been widely interpreted as Antiochus Epiphanes (215 BC – 164 BC), the Seleucid basileus who ruled Judea and desecrated the temple, provoking the Maccabean revolt. Supporting evidence for this thesis is found in the following chapter (8) of the Book of Daniel, which told of a male goat with a large horn, who came from the west and struck down a ram with two horns. Then the large horn of the goat was broken and replaced by ‘four notable horns toward the four winds of the sky’ (Daniel 8:8). Out of one of them came a ‘little horn’ that ‘grew exceedingly great…towards the glorious land’, took away the regular burnt offering[xii] and cast down the ‘sanctuary’ and ‘the truth’ (Daniel 8:9–12). A ‘holy one’ (Daniel 8:13), probably an angel, interpreted the vision to Daniel, explaining that the removal of the burnt offering and the ‘disobedience that makes desolate’ (Daniel 8:12) would last for ‘two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings’ (Daniel 8:14), and that the two horns of the ram were the kings of Persia and Media (Daniel 8:20). The goat was the King of Greece (Daniel 8:21). The big horn that is broken was the first Greek king (Daniel 8:21). The four horns that replaced this broken horn are identified as four kingdoms that will ‘stand up’ ‘out of the nation, but not with its power’ (Daniel 8:22).

 

This is a very clear prophecy of King Alexander the Great’s conquests of Medea and Persia, the fragmentation of his Grecian empire into four notable kingdoms (including the Seleucid empire) following his death, none of which rivalled the power of Alexander, and the rise of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Seleucid ruler and ‘little horn’ who declared himself a god. Indeed, Epiphanes was ancient Greek for ‘God-manifest’.[xiii] Antiochus appointed a new high priest, Menelaus, who tried to establish Hellenic customs in Judea. Some Jerusalemites rebelled against Menelaus under the deposed high priest Jason. Antiochus put down the revolt, massacring and enslaving many men, women and children (2 Maccabees 5:12–13).[xiv] He entered the Holy of Holies and stole its treasures. On the king’s birthday every month the Jews were forced to eat the sacrifices (2 Maccabees 6:7), which may be taken to imply that these were sacrifices made to Antiochus himself. Antiochus outlawed Jewish religious rites, banned the Sabbath, removed the burnt offering from the temple, sacrificed a pig (an unclean animal in Judaism) at the altar, sprinkled the sacred books with pig broth, forced Jews to eat pork, and dedicated the temple to Zeus (2 Maccabees 6:2), with whom he identified himself.[xv] Antiochus’ men fornicated with prostitutes in the holy places (2 Maccabees 6:4).[xvi] Anyone who did not conform to Gentile customs was killed (2 Maccabees 6:9). Jews who continued to worship or circumcise their boys were killed, and the Torah was publicly burned.[xvii] Some went along with Antiochus’ changes, others resisted and were killed for their faith. Thus Antiochus fulfilled the prophecies of Daniel when he committed the disobedience that makes desolate, blasphemed the most high, cast down the sanctuary (temple) and the truth (the Torah/holy books) and killed the ‘wise’ (Daniel 11:33). The temple was desolate after this, because it had been profaned, and therefore could not be used for a time. Antiochus’ insane actions provoked a revolt among Jewish patriots, led by the Maccabees, and after a war, the temple was purified and rededicated in December 164 BC, an event celebrated annually in Judaism as Hannukah.[xviii]

 

Many Bible interpreters believe the 2300 mornings and evenings the angel gave as a timeframe for the abomination of desolation and the temple to be trodden underfoot meant that 2300 days, or just over six years, would elapse before the rededication of the temple. But history tells us it took approximately three years – from 167 BC to late 164 BC, when Antiochus was dead – for the burnt offering to be resumed in the temple. Some may wonder, was the prophecy wrong? No. The 2300 mornings and evenings means 1150 days, because the 2300 figure includes the mornings and the evenings, therefore each day is counted twice. In 1 Maccabees, the exact date the ‘abomination of desolation’ was ‘set up’ is given as the ‘fifteen day of the month of Casleu’ (Kislev) in the ‘hundred forty and fifth year’ (1 Maccabees 1:54), and the desolation was ended on Hannukah, the 25th of Kislev (1 Maccabees 4:52), or late November to December in our Gregorian calendar.

 

The Hebrew calendar used by Daniel is different from the Julian one we use for ancient dates. Unlike the Gregorian calendar, which charts the 365.25 (366 on a leap year) days it takes for the earth to orbit the sun, the Hebrew calendar is a lunar calendar with twelve months of twenty-nine or thirty days, coming to about 354 days for the entire year. The Hebrews then added an extra month seven times in a 19-year cycle, to yield an average of around 365 days per year, a close approximation of the solar year. From late 167 BC to the first Hannukah in late 164 BC is roughly just over three years, which fits with the 1, 150 days given by Daniel.

 

So is the little horn Antiochus, or a future Antichrist? Well, he’s both. To explain why, the other chapters of Daniel must be covered in some detail.

 

The prophecies in Daniel 11 and 12 were made by an angel who came to Daniel by the river in a vision. They tell of the ‘king of the north’ and the ‘king of the south’ who emerged after the kingdom of a ‘mighty king’ was ‘divided towards the four winds of the sky, but not to his posterity’ (Daniel 11:3–4). This prophecy is clearly about the division of Alexander the Great’s empire among his generals and their warring successors, the two most prominent of whom were Seleucus and Ptolemy. The kings of the north were the kings of the Seleucid empire, and the kings of the south were the kings of the Ptolemaic Egyptian empire, because the Seleucids were north of Israel and the Ptolemies were south of it, making these words relevant to the Jewish people who received the prophecy by Daniel and had to suffer numerous incursions during the course of the Hellenic wars. It is written that ‘a contemptible person’ will become king by ‘flatteries’ (Daniel 11:21). Then ‘ships of Kittim’ will come against him, which will upset him and make him angry at the ‘holy covenant’ (Daniel 11:30). Kittim was Cyprus but was also used in a broader sense by Jews to refer to the seafaring west.[xix] ‘Forces from him will profane the sanctuary, even the fortress, and will take away the continual offering. Then they will set up the abomination that makes desolate.’ (Daniel 11:31). This king is forecasted to kill ‘some of those who are wise’ (Daniel 11:35).

 

Antiochus Epiphanes was not the rightful heir to the Seleucid empire; he took the crown by intrigue and flattery. He fought the Ptolemaic Egyptians in 168 BC but was forced to retreat by a Roman fleet, because it was part of the Roman divide et impera policy to maintain a balance of power among the Hellenic kingdoms. The Roman Consul Popilius pressed Antiochus to withdraw from Egypt or find himself at war with the Roman Republic.[xx] In Alexandria, Popilius drew a literal line in the sand around Antiochus, forcing him to reach a decision before crossing the line. Antiochus retreated from Egypt. The frustrated king took out his rage on the Temple of Jerusalem by desecrating it, and was opposed by some Jews in the Maccabean revolt, as described above. These historical events were pretty obviously the fulfilment of the prophecies contained in Daniel 11.

 

But towards the end of Daniel 11, something changes. The next part of the chapter is described as occurring at the ‘time of the end’ (Daniel 11:35; 11:40) and tells of a ruler who ‘will exalt and magnify himself above every god, and will speak marvellous things against the god of gods’ (Daniel 11:36). The ‘time of the end’ is a phrase used exclusively to denote the eschatological era.[xxi] Daniel 11, from verse 35 onwards, refers to a future Antichrist, who is juxtaposed with Antiochus here because he will be similar to the Greek tyrant and cause another abomination of desolation in the end days. Sadly, I don’t think anyone would regard a future war in the Middle East as unlikely.

 

Daniel describes the Antichrist in the following terms: ‘He won’t regard the gods of his fathers, or the desire of women, or regard any god; for he will magnify himself above all. But in their place, he will honour the god of fortresses. He will honour a god his fathers didn’t know with gold, silver and precious stones and pleasant things. He will deal with the strongest fortresses by the help of a foreign god.’ (Daniel 11:37–39). Antiochus demanded worship as a god, but he had some regard for the gods of his fathers, as he set up an idol of Zeus in the temple. He also didn’t worship a god his fathers did not know, unless we count him worshipping himself, so these descriptions pertain instead to the Antichrist. Having no regard for the desire of women does not really fit the promiscuous Antiochus, nor does it necessarily mean the Antichrist will be gay or celibate; it may simply indicate that he doesn’t care what women think and want. In his letter to Timothy (1 Timothy 4:1–3), Paul prophesied that in ‘later times’ some people will forbid marriage; perhaps this is what Daniel meant by the little horn having no regard for women’s desires, although there was the 2nd century Encratite heresy which forbade marriage.[xxii]

 

‘At the time of the end the king of the south will contend with him, and the king of the north will come against him like a whirlwind’ (Daniel 11:40). He will enter into the ‘glorious land’, and ‘many countries will be overthrown’, except for Edom, Moab and the chief of Ammon’s children (Daniel 11:41). Edom, Moab and Ammon were ancient kingdoms that territorially correspond to significant parts of modern-day Jordan, including the location of Bozrah, where the Israeli remnant are prophesied to take refuge during the Great Tribulation, because of Jordan’s future status outside the beast’s dominion.

 

The above verses do not fit Antiochus, not least because he was identified as a king of the north, and the kings of the south and possibly the north war against this blasphemous ruler (Daniel 11:40). The three kingdoms ‘uprooted’ by the little horn, then, are probably the king of the north (ruling over former Seleucid Syrian territory), the king of the south – ‘the land of Egypt won’t escape’ (Daniel 11:42)[xxiii] – and Israel, the traditional location of the burnt offering that the Antichrist will remove; in order to perform such an incendiary act he would need to have control of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, which are in Israel. ‘The Libyans and Ethiopians will follow his steps’ (Daniel 11:43) is a prophecy that Libya and Ethiopia (the biblical Ethiopia was in a different location to the modern nation of that name)[xxiv] will be part of the Antichrist’s empire, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. These two nations were not part of Antiochus’ empire, which helps to differentiate the two figures.

 

‘He will plant the tents of his palace between the sea and the holy mountain.’ (Daniel 11:45). This indicates that the Antichrist will probably have a palace in Israel or perhaps Lebanon, since Zion is elsewhere identified as the holy mountain. Alternatively, if the sea here is the Persian Gulf then the palace may be in the Antichrist’s capital, Babylon. In any case, one can imagine a powerful ruler like the Antichrist having multiple palaces.

 

In Chapter 12:1, Daniel goes on to write about Michael standing up ‘for the children of your people’. The archangel Michael is the sword-arm of God, traditionally depicted in Christian art as trampling the devil in battle. Michael cast Satan out of heaven in Revelation 12. ‘At that time your people will be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book.’ (Daniel 12:1). The later Book of Revelation also stresses that only those whose names are written in the book of life will be saved during this period (Revelation 20:12).

 

‘Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.’ (Daniel 12:2). This is the mass resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgement, about which Revelation provides more detail. It is not the first resurrection, since all who participate in that are blessed (Revelation 20:6). The fact ‘many’, not all of those who are dead shall ‘awake’, implies reincarnation, since every person will be raised and judged, but people who have had multiple lives in multiple bodies will only be resurrected for judgement in one body. Daniel is then told to shut up the book and seal it, to the time of the end (Daniel 12:4). In other words, this part of the prophecy is for the End Times and cannot be fully comprehended until then. ‘Many will run back and forth, and knowledge will be increased’ (Daniel 12:4) is a pithy summation of subsequent world history.

 

Interestingly, like the Apostle John, Daniel was also called ‘man much beloved’ (Daniel 10:11) and delivered from martyrdom[xxv] and he was literally ordered by God to seal up the book until the End Times, implying that he would be around to unseal it at that juncture. The Book of Revelation, written in the last days (in that it was composed after Jesus’ incarnation), builds on the theological foundations laid in The Book of Daniel, hence both works feature beast symbolism, are eschatological, and intertextual. I am left to conclude from these facts that John, prophesied to return at the time of the end by Jesus, was Daniel reincarnated.

 

Then the messenger stated, ‘Many will purify themselves and make themselves white and be refined, but the wicked will do wickedly; and none of the wicked will understand, but those who are wise will understand.’ (Daniel 12:10). This ‘purifying’ is a reference to the salvation of true Christians and the concatenation of purity with comprehension in the above verse implies that salvation will be an aid to understanding the prophecies of Daniel. In other words, the ambiguity of prophecy is a mechanism for sifting the wise from the unwise. But understanding Scripture does not only require intellect; one must also want to know the truth and possess the moral fibre to face up to what is required. Daniel 12:10 also foreshadows the concept of ‘the elect’, elaborated upon by Jesus in the Olivet Discourse, and in the Revelation. Someone asks, ‘how long will it be to the end of these wonders?’ (Daniel 12:6). The answer is, ‘a time, times and half a time.’ (Daniel 12:7). The messenger clothed in linen went on to say that there will be 1,290 days from the time the burnt offering is taken away and ‘the abomination that makes desolate is set up’ (Daniel 12:11). ‘Blessed is he who waits and comes to the 1335 days.’ (Daniel 12:12). 1290 days enables us to differentiate this latter-day abomination from the one committed by Antiochus, which was given as 2, 300 mornings and evenings, or 1150 days. The 1290 figure also indicates the meaning of ‘time, times and half a time’, during which the little horn will war against the saints. A time is a year, times is two years and half a time is half a year: three and a half years is 1278 days in our modern Gregorian calendar, which is close to 1290 days (42 months), but more than a month shy of the 1335 days. Even the Hebrew calendar, which Daniel would have been familiar with, is of roughly the same length, as their years average out at circa 365 days per year. But how to account for the several days gap between three and a half years and 1290 days, and the 45-day gap between the 1290 days and the 1335 days? We will return to this question later, once more facts have been established about the durations.

 

Daniel was writing about two chains of events occurring at different times, with the Antiochus story functioning as a type of the antitype, the future Antichrist episode. How else to make sense of the clear references to the Hellenic kingdoms and Antiochus Epiphanes in almost the same breath as the resurrection of the dead, the End Times and the Last Judgement? Although Antiochus persecuted the brave Jews who opposed him, he was not directly overthrown by the Messiah; but an Antiochus-like ruler in the future, the ‘beast’ of Revelation (13), will be. The blasphemous little horn is both Antiochus and the future Antichrist, because at one point that little horn is overthrown by one like a son of man (Daniel 7:13), an event that has yet to transpire. The Antichrist is prophesied to profane the temple like his Hellenic predecessor. The symbolism of Daniel, as well as the concepts of multiple fulfilments and multiple meanings, and an understanding of reincarnation, will be crucial to comprehend the prophecies contained in The Book of Revelation.

 

I have left Daniel 9 until now because an understanding of Daniel 11 and 12 will help us to comprehend this difficult chapter. In Daniel 9, God effectively threw down the gauntlet to humanity, and provided a key to history, enabling the wise to calculate the date of the Messiah’s coming.

 

Daniel, having understood that Jeremiah prophesied a 70-year desolation of Jerusalem, beseeched God to forgive his nation, Israel, for their transgressions (Daniel 9:17–19). He saw the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon, and the Jewish people’s captivity in Babylon, as God’s punishment for their disobedience of the law. Then, the angel Gabriel came to Daniel to tell him that, ‘seventy weeks are decreed on your people and on your Holy City, to finish disobedience, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up the vision and the prophecy, and to anoint the most holy.’ (Daniel 9:24). This implies that the seventy weeks will end with the physico-spiritual salvation of the Israeli remnant, the coming of the Messiah and the Kingdom of God. The term ‘most holy’ is a translation of the Hebrew kodesh kodashim, used in the Old Testament to refer to the Holy of Holies in the temple,[xxvi] which means that 70 of Daniel’s weeks are required to anoint the new temple outlined by Ezekiel.

 

‘Know therefore and discern that from the going out of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem to the Anointed One, the prince, will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks. It will be built again, with street and moat, in troubled times. After the sixty-two weeks the anointed one will be cut off, and will have nothing. The people of the prince who come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end will be with a flood, and war will be even to the end. Desolations are determined. He will make a firm covenant with many for one week. In the middle of the week he will cause the sacrifice and the offering to cease. On the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, and even to the decreed full end, wrath will be poured out on the desolate…’ (Daniel 9:25).

 

The seventy weeks are commonly believed to mean seventy times seven years. In English Bibles, the original Hebrew shavu’im shiv’im[xxvii] is translated into seventy weeks, but it can also mean ‘seventy sevens’; shav’a or sheva is the Hebrew for seven, so shavu’im can be a group of any seven things.[xxviii] The word heptad would perhaps be a better translational choice. Moreover, the text itself gives us the key to cracking the ‘week’ code. The one who in the middle of the week will cause the sacrifice and offering to cease is pretty obviously the same Antichrist figure who, like Antiochus, brings about the abomination that makes desolate in the temple, for a period given earlier in the text as ‘1290 days’ or ‘time, times and half a time’ (3.5 years), after which the Antichrist will be destroyed and the Kingdom of God established. Therefore, the 1290 days are roughly equivalent to half a week, a full week in the Daniel 9 schema is seven years, and the week containing the ‘desolator’ will be the last week of the seventy before ‘everlasting righteousness’ is brought in.

 

The first edict to rebuild the city walls of Jerusalem following the Babylonian captivity was issued by Cyrus the Great in 539 BC. The temple was rebuilt in the sixth year of the reign of Darius (Ezra 6:15) – 515 or 516 BC. Artaxerxes’ reign started in 465 BC, as attested by Greek historians, Babylonian records and archaeological evidence.[xxix] But the streets and the walls of the city were still in ruins thirteen years later, in the ‘twentieth year’ of Artaxerxes’ reign, according to Nehemiah (2:1; 2:11–17). In that year, Nehemiah was cupbearer to the king and beseeched him to allow Jerusalem to be rebuilt. Artaxerxes acquiesced. The decree to rebuild Jerusalem that was immediately acted upon came in 445 or 444 BC.

 

But these weeks of Daniel raise many questions. Why is the time until the Messiah given as sixty-two weeks and seven weeks? Is it because we are supposed to add 62 and seven, and the time is really 69 weeks? Then why not just say 69 weeks? ‘Know therefore and discern’ is obviously an injunction to discern, i.e. to distinguish different things from one another. This is followed by, ‘from the going out of the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem to the Messiah, the prince, will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks.’ We as readers are therefore being instructed by the angel to discern between the seven weeks and the sixty-two, because there are multiple durations from the command to rebuild Jerusalem until the coming of the Messiah being forecasted here: 62 weeks (434 years), 69 weeks (483 years) and 7 weeks (49 years). Indeed, ‘until the Messiah’ and the Messiah’s ‘coming’ can have different meanings. The Messiah can come more than once. At the end of seventy weeks (490 years) from a command to rebuild Jerusalem will be ‘everlasting righteousness’ and the anointing of the most holy, which makes it plain that the coming of the Messiah to bring about an eternal Kingdom of God and a new temple is also being scheduled here. Jesus did not establish an eternal kingdom on earth and dedicate a new literal temple the first time he came. That lies in the future. In other words, the dates of the first and second comings are hidden in Daniel’s weeks. Agnostics and atheists may be wondering why they should get excited about any of this. Well, read on for some important proofs…

 

But before calculating dates based on Daniel’s weeks, we must first establish which calendar we need to use to obtain accurate dates. The hypothetical prophetic year of 360 days is based on numbers provided in the Bible. For example, Genesis 8 gives 5 months as 150 days, yielding a 30-day month. The months in the Hebrew calendar are 29 or 30 days long. The prophetic year makes calculations easier by removing the extra months in Hebrew leap years and making every month 30 days. God wanted it to be possible for any wise person to calculate Daniel’s weeks; he did not want to restrict the knowledge to mathematicians and experts in ancient calendars who memorise every Hebrew leap year. Echoing Daniel, ‘forty-two months’ (Revelation 13:5) and ‘time, times and half a time’ (Revelation 12:14) are given in the Book of Revelation alongside ‘1260 days’ (Revelation 12:6;11:3) – 360 x 3.5 = 1260 days – although it does not follow that they are all definitely the same duration, as each of the above time periods is connected with a different event in the narrative, which may not be coterminous: the duration of the beast’s ‘authority’, the time the woman clothed in the sun is given refuge in the wilderness, and the time the two witnesses prophesy for, respectively.

 

 ‘After the 62 weeks, the anointed one will be cut off, and will have nothing’ is a clear prophecy of Jesus’ Crucifixion, intended to let the Jewish people know in advance that their Messiah would be killed and would not come into his earthly kingdom at that time, so that they wouldn’t expect him to be a military conqueror during his initial appearance (a qualification that nonetheless went partially unheeded), and would instead anticipate two advents, with the second associated with the reign of ‘everlasting righteousness’ established at the end of the 70th week (Daniel 9:24) by the aforementioned ‘one like a son of man’ (Daniel 7:13). However, it is not at the end of the 62 weeks or 434 years that the anointed one is killed, but after them. And the ‘sixty-two weeks’ was written after the ‘seven weeks’ in the foregoing sentence. Therefore, the verse can be read as after the ‘seven weeks and sixty-two weeks’, i.e. after 69 weeks, or 483 years from the command to rebuild the Holy City. 69 weeks or 483 prophetic years comes to just 476 of our Gregorian solar years, plus twenty-one days (483 years times 360 days = 173880 days and 173880 divided by 365.25 = 476.057 years). 476 years after Artaxerxes’ decree to rebuild the Holy City in 445-444 BC yields a date of 31–33 AD for the Messiah coming and being ‘cut off’ – ‘after the sixty two weeks’, of the ‘seven and sixty two weeks’ – and this is a historically acceptable range for Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey and his Crucifixion. Therefore, we’ll go with the prophetic year, since it yields historically accurate prophetic dates. As a side note, the 62nd and 69th week of Daniel falling as they do during the historic run of the Roman Empire, is further evidence that Rome is represented as the fourth beast and the kingdom of iron in Daniel 7 and Daniel 2, respectively.

 

Now let’s calculate the next number of weeks given until the Messiah’s coming. 62 weeks or 434 prophetic years (427.76 Gregorian years) from 444–445 BC lands on 17 to 16 BC: the date of Jesus’ birth. These dates would make Jesus 49 or 50 years old at the time of his ascent, which contradicts the popular idea that Jesus died aged 33 ­– inspired by Luke’s note that Jesus was ‘about thirty years old’ (Luke 3:23) when his ministry began – but would fit with a remark made by jeerers in the Gospel of John that Jesus was ‘not yet fifty years old’ (John 8:57), the kind of thing you would say to someone who is nearly fifty, not someone who is in his early thirties. Neither Jesus nor his followers quibbled with these detractors over his biological age, implying that they were correct about the age of Jesus’ body, whilst completely missing the eternity of his spirit. On the few occasions where they conflict, John’s account must have priority over Luke’s, because Luke received his information second hand, and John, in addition to being Jesus’ son, was an eyewitness disciple who knew Jesus and his mother well. The two gospel accounts could agree, however, if Jesus’ ministry went on for 17 to 20 years; that is what the early church father Saint Irenaeus believed,[xxx] although I have found an alternative date for Jesus’ baptism based on Daniel’s prophecy of weeks. Irenaeus also believed that Jesus was around fifty at the time of the Crucifixion, so that all the phases of human life were sanctified, a figure based on reports from elders who knew John in Asia. Some of these elders also knew other apostles who gave the same account of Jesus’ age, and Irenaeus received instruction from Polycarp, a disciple of John the Apostle.[xxxi] Indeed, Irenaeus was writing in the 2nd century AD, and he stated that John was still around in the reign of Trajan (98 – 117 AD).[xxxii] In addition to Luke 3:23, the notion that Jesus was 33 when he died may have arisen out of confusion with 33 AD as the date of his Crucifixion.

 

Now let’s calculate the seven weeks figure. Seven times seven years is 49 years. 49 Gregorian years from 445–444 BC is 396–395 BC. Even 49 prophetic 360-day years (48.29 solar years) yields 397 or 396 BC. These dates seem insignificant with regards to the coming of a Messiah. None of these dates are even the date Nehemiah finished rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, as that was accomplished in just 52 days (Nehemiah 6:15). The key to the significance of the seven weeks ­– and why they were isolated from the 62 weeks figure, instead of being given as 69 – is that Jerusalem has been rebuilt more than once. Seven ‘weeks’ or 49 prophetic years after Herod the Great began the reconstruction of the Temple Mount and other parts of the city in 19 or 20 BC yields the date of 28 or 29 AD, which I believe is when Jesus’ ministry began (at the age of 44 to 46). 28 and 29 AD are considered probable dates for the beginning of Jesus’ ministry even by mainstream historians, lending further credence to the prophetic year as Daniel’s preferred measure of time. Not that the Son of God would necessarily need a long gestation, but given the extremely advanced (indeed, perfect) state of Jesus’ knowledge, wisdom, miraculous abilities, and the fact he had an adult son, it makes sense that he had until his mid-forties to develop before going public, and that his ministry lasted longer than the traditional three years. Furthermore, the reference to the city being rebuilt, walls and moat, in a ‘troubled time’ would fit with Herod the Great’s reign, which was most certainly a troubled time.[xxxiii]

 

The cutting off of the Messiah was followed in Daniel 9 by the people of the prince destroying the city and the temple (sanctuary) in some kind of war: Jerusalem was sacked in AD 70, and the Temple Mount was burned by the Roman army under Titus, son (or prince) of the Emperor Vespasian. The prince to come is generally understood by premillennial exegetes to be the future Antichrist, who will be in some way ‘of’ the people (Romans) who sacked Jerusalem in AD 70. The Antichrist is the distant fulfilment ‘prince’, with Titus as the near-fulfilment prince.

 

Then, in Daniel 9:27, there is a description of someone making a firm covenant with many for one week. Who is the ‘he’ who makes this covenant? It is the coming prince, not the Messiah, because the prince was the last figure referenced in the relevant passage. This ‘covenant’ is taken by many interpreters as a reference to the Antichrist making a peace treaty or an alliance for seven years, which would presumably break down into conflict when the Antichrist conquers three of the ten kingdoms/horns. There is no doubt that at some point these ten kings will have to forge their alliance, but whether that is the covenant with many at the outset of Daniel’s 70th week is unclear. The covenant may equally be a solely ‘religious’ covenant of the Antichrist’s false belief system, a diabolical counterfeit of Jesus’ covenant.

 

In the middle of the week the regular burnt offering will cease. The puzzling thing about this cessation is that it occurs after the 69 weeks that culminated in circa 33 AD and after the temple was destroyed in 70 AD. There has not been a temple with a regular burnt offering since that date. And I do not know of any Antichrist-like ruler who made a peace treaty or some other agreement in the Middle East for seven years, and then desecrated the temple halfway through that period. The description doesn’t fit what we know of Antiochus Epiphanes. Therefore, this week has been understood as the future final seven years of the prophecy, the last seven years before the end of the age, and the abomination of desolation is scheduled to occur roughly three and a half years into that week, with a further 1290 or 1335 days until the reign of everlasting righteousness is brought in, i.e. until the Messiah establishes his kingdom on earth.

 

Indeed, the verses about a regular burnt offering and an abomination in Daniel have been understood as foretelling the building of a Third Temple in Jerusalem, because ever since AD 70, there has not been a temple in the Holy City. After all, how can you remove the regular burnt offering without a temple? The burnt offering took place in the temple. According to Daniel, this Third Temple will be built before the tribulation period, or in the first three and a half years of that era, in order for there to be an abomination of desolation and for the regular burnt offering to be removed in the middle of Daniel’s final ‘week’ (Daniel 9:27) of seven years. As we have seen, Isaiah (66) spoke of an unsanctioned reinstatement of temple sacrifice, that has not yet occurred. Ergo, the final week of the seventy is yet to come. The rebuilding of the temple is technically possible since Israel won the Six-Day War in 1967 and thereby gained security control of the Temple Mount complex, although the Waqf Muslims currently administrate religious access to the site.[xxxiv] The tribe of Levi have preserved their tribal identity, which is significant because they were, and will be, the tribe from which the temple priests are drawn.[xxxv] Practicing Jews pray daily for a Third Temple to be built, although many Jews do not want it to be built, others want a new temple to be constructed after the Messiah comes, and only a minority of Jews at present are trying to bring about that temple. But the Islamic buildings, the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, currently stand on the site of the temple. I am not suggesting that the current Israeli government has any plans to do so, but it is extremely difficult if not impossible to envisage a scenario in which an attempt to build a Third Temple on the Temple Mount would not upset Muslims and be highly controversial. Indeed, that is one of the main reasons nobody has done it yet. Prophecy does not mean that the one who builds the Third Temple is necessarily Daniel’s ‘little horn’, however. The Samaritans still perform a Passover sacrifice ceremony, including a burnt offering, on their holy site Mount Gerizim in Israel. Another unpleasant possibility is that in addition to the primary ‘abomination of desolation’ prophecies, which pertain to a future temple, the Antichrist may stop the Samaritan sacrifice and burnt offering or desecrate some other ‘holy place’. Unfortunately, Saint Peter’s Basilica is also a potential target of the Antichrist’s minions, in light of the numerous prophecies of the Pope’s absence in the last days, some of which were made by 20th century Popes,[xxxvi] in conjunction with the destruction visited upon the city of ‘seven mountains’ in Revelation 17:9. Catholics do not make a burnt offering in the traditional Jewish sense, but they do burn incense regularly in their liturgy. Of course, I take no pleasure in outlining these dire eventualities; I am merely trying to give people a heads up based on Bible prophecies that have already been partially fulfilled.

 

The abomination of desolation was described in more detail by Saint Paul as the Antichrist sitting in the temple of God pretending to be God (2 Thessalonians 2:3–4). The desolation is to be ‘on the wing of abominations’ (Daniel 9:27); traditionally, the only wings in a Jewish temple are the wings of the cherubim, where the presence of God once manifested (Exodus 25:21–22; Hebrews 9:5).[xxxvii] The Antichrist may therefore perform his ‘abomination’ on top of a reinstated Ark of the Covenant (whether that be the genuine article returned[xxxviii] or a counterfeit remains to be seen) or do it in the place of the ark in the Holy of Holies of the next temple.

 

There remains the mystery of why the angel differentiated between three and a half years or ‘times, time and half a time’, 1290 days and 1335 days. This is a mystery we are in a better position to solve now that we have the right calendar, since the prophetic year has been proven accurate when it came to Jesus’ birth, ministry and Crucifixion. The simplest solution to this conundrum is that not all of the 1290 days will be a period of persecution; they are not explicitly stated as such in the text. It is merely written that there will be 1290 days from the abomination of desolation and the cessation of sacrifice. The persecution period is given as ‘time, times and half a time’: three and a half years or 1260 days of the prophetic year (the same duration of the woman’s wilderness exile in Revelation 12:4–6), which is thirty days less than 1290 days and 75 days shy of the 1335 days.

 

Only Christ’s arrival will end the persecution of the Israeli remnant and the saints (as Isaiah 63 and Zechariah 14 establish), which could coincide with the 1260-day mark and the 1290-day mark, if we allow for a 30-day gap between the abomination and the beginning of the persecution. After Christ returns, he is described as warring against and defeating the Antichrist, before proceeding to judge the Antichrist, his subordinates and the surrounding nations in Isaiah 24, Daniel 7, Joel 3, Matthew 25 and Revelation 19–20. Even under divine leadership, this is likely to take some time, as is the construction of the temple, the regathering of the mortal diaspora and the rebuilding of Jerusalem. It may only be after this first judgement period – on the 1335th day from the abomination – that the reign of Jesus on earth is officially inaugurated. Further evidence for the 1335 days inaugurating the new temple is furnished by the fact that Daniel’s earlier ‘two thousand and three hundred mornings and evenings’ prophecy terminated with the rededication of the temple under the Maccabees. The blessing for those who come to 1335 days would accordingly be entry to the millennial kingdom and possibly the reception of a ceremonial blessing associated with the opening of the new temple, for those who passed Jesus’ judgement.[xxxix] I will clarify the potential timelines in the summary and discussion chapter towards the end of this book, after the New Testament prophecies have been interpreted. The Book of Daniel finishes with Daniel being told that he will rest and stand in his ‘inheritance’ at the ‘end of days’ (Daniel 12:13). This is God consoling Daniel for being given dreadful visions of destruction, by assuring him of his place in God’s kingdom come the end. It is easier to do your job as a prophet, gazing into the abyss of future calamities, when you know you will be okay. Moreover, the fact Daniel has an inheritance – translated from a Hebrew word meaning ‘in your lot’ or ‘in your allotted place’ (ESV)[xl]– suggests that he will be Ezekiel’s ‘prince’, the only figure with his own portion or allotment in the Promised Land (Ezekiel 45).

 

Let’s take another look at the chronology in this passage (Daniel 9:26–27). After the ‘people of the prince who come’ – identified as the emperor’s son Titus and the future Antichrist – destroy ‘the city and the sanctuary’, Daniel wrote that ‘desolations are determined. He will make a firm covenant with many for one week…’. Then, ‘on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate.’ Again, ‘Desolations are determined’ means more than one desolation. This may be read as looking to Antiochus’ abomination, the Roman Sack of Jerusalem and the Antichrist’s final desolation; if so, Daniel was partially repeating himself. Or the prophet may have been forecasting multiple desolations after the Roman one. Indeed, a reading of Isaiah (not to mention Revelation and Zechariah) leaves one with the impression that Jerusalem – ‘the city of David’ (Isaiah 29:1) – and Babylon are in for a rough time during the end days. ‘There will be wars to the end’ is a pretty accurate description of the subsequent history of the Holy Land. This is part of what Jesus meant when he said in Luke 21:24: ‘Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.’


[i] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[ii] Or Greco-Macedonian, since Alexander and many of his generals were Macedonians, but he ruled over Greece before his Asian conquests, his army was largely Greek and spread Hellenistic culture. Furthermore, Ancient Macedonians spoke a Greek dialect and were generally considered to be Greek. So for simplicity’s sake, I denote the empire of Alexander and its successor kingdoms as the Greek Empire, or Greek kingdoms.

[iii] Flavius Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews.

[iv] Irenaeus. Against Heresies.

[vi] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[vii] Voltaire. Essay on the General History and on the Manners and Spirit of Nations.

[viii] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[ix] Paraphrasing of The Emerald Tablet of Thoth Hermes.

[x] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] In ancient Judaism, a burnt offering was a form of sacrifice in which an entire unblemished animal was burned on the altar of the temple as a tribute to God. Other forms of sacrifice were partly burnt and ritually eaten. There were daily offerings, as well as additional ones for special occasions such as Passover and the Shabbath (Exodus 20;29;40).

[xiv] Montefiore, Simon Sebag. 2012. Jerusalem: The Biography – A History of the Middle East. Wiedenfeld & Nicolson.

[xvi] Montefiore, Simon Sebag. 2012. Jerusalem: The Biography – A History of the Middle East. Wiedenfeld & Nicolson.

[xvii] Ibid.

[xviii] Ibid.

[xx] Montefiore, Simon Sebag. 2012. Jerusalem: The Biography – A History of the Middle East. Wiedenfeld & Nicolson.

[xxi] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[xxii] Eusebius. The History of the Church.

[xxiii] Indeed, Ezekiel prophesied the desolation of Egypt and the dispersion of the Egyptians at the hands of the ‘king of Babylon’ (30:25).

[xxv] Through the wiles of an intriguer, King Darius reluctantly committed Daniel to the lion’s den in order to uphold a law he had made against prayer. Miraculously, the lions didn’t harm Daniel, because he was innocent in the eyes of God (Daniel 6:22).

[xxvii] The Jewish holiday Shavuot, also known as First Fruits and Pentecost, means ‘sevens’ in Hebrew as it is celebrated seven weeks and one day (50 days) from Passover. It marked the wheat harvest (Exodus 34:22), the day the disciples received the Holy Spirit and, according to Rabbinic tradition, the date of the revelation of the 10 commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. It is also associated with the giving of the Torah and is not to be confused with the Feast of First Fruits, the day Jesus was resurrected, which comes two or three days after Passover, though the two festivals are related; they are both concerned with the harvest.

[xxx] Saint Irenaeus, Against Heresies.

[xxxi] Ibid.

[xxxii] Ibid.

[xxxiii] We have hereby established that Jesus was prophesied by the Old Testament prophets such as Daniel and sees himself as the fulfilment of that tradition, making numerous statements like, ‘For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me; for he wrote about me’ (John 5:46). This proves that, contrary to the false teachings of many Gnostics, Jesus is the Son of Yahweh, and Yahweh is the God of the Old Testament and the New. Source: Irenaeus. Against Heresies.

[xxxiv] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[xxxv] Ibid.

[xxxvii] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

[xxxviii] The movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, has Pharaoh Shishak taking the ark to Egypt when he carried off the treasures of the temple (2 Chronicles 12:19). Others believe that King Hezekiah hid the ark soon after Solomon’s death. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims to have the Ark of the Covenant in the Church of our Lady Mary of Zion in Aksum, Ethiopia. But only one custodian, a monk, is allowed to see that ark. They believe Menelik, a son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, brought the ark to Ethiopia. The Talmud has the ark being hidden prior to the Babylonian Sack of Jerusalem in 587 BC by King Josiah (648–609 BC), and 2 Maccabees 2:2–12 has the prophet Jeremiah hiding the ark in a cave, somewhere in the vicinity of Mount Nebo (Jordan) before that sack, to remain hidden until ‘God gathers the people together again and shows mercy…and the glory of the Lord shall be seen with a cloud, as it was also shown to Moses, also as Solomon implored that the place might be consecrated greatly, and it was also declared that he, having wisdom, offered a sacrifice of dedication, and of the finishing of the temple’. Given that 2 Chronicles 35:3 describes King Josiah ordering his priests to return the ark to the temple (meaning that it was in the temple or at least Judah well after Shishak and Menelik’s day), the fact there is no mention of the Babylonians taking the ark when they plundered the temple, and Jeremiah’s foreknowledge of the Babylonian attack, I find the latter tradition to be the most plausible. 2 Maccabees 2:7–11 may be taken to imply that after Jesus returns in glory with the clouds, and the diaspora is regathered for the last time, the ark’s location will be revealed. This deuterocanonical scripture and interpretation militate against the Antichrist having the real ark in the Third Temple. Source: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/ark-covenant-ethiopia

[xxxix] Hindson, Ed. LayHaye, Tim. 2011. Exploring Bible Prophecy From Genesis to Revelation PB: Clarifying the Meaning of Every Prophetic Passage. Harvest House.

 
 
 

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