bible_study/Podcasts/Prophecy Pros/Season 1/S1E11: Lessons From a 2,600-Year-Old Prophecy.md

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Todd: What could we possibly learn from a 2,600 year old dusty book of the Bible? Well, hold onto your seats. You’re about to find out.

Jeff: I’m Jeff Kinley, and along with Todd Hampson here, we’re the Prophecy Pros, and you’re listening to the Prophecy Pro Podcast. And we are so excited that you joined us here today. We’re going to be talking about some really ancient prophecy that we find in the Bible, and how incredibly relevant it is for today.

Jeff: Todd, one of the things that we talk about when people mentioned prophecy is that they want to be able to look around their world and ask the question, “Does my Bible say anything about the times that I’m living in?” And there’s an interesting verse in 1st Chronicles, chapter 12 verse 32, and it speaks about these men called the sons of Issachar. And it says they were described as men who understood the times with knowledge of what Israel should do. And I find this, one of the things that Bible prophecy does for us, it not only helps us understand the times and really what’s going on in contemporary culture in the world, but also gives us wisdom as to know how to live, and how to walk, and how we should make decisions in our lives.

Jeff: And so, as we approach this topic here, looking at the book of Daniel today, we’re going to find out some things that really give us insight as to what’s going on in the world. But I have to ask you to begin with, you think about Daniel, when most people think about Daniel, they think about Daniel and the lion’s den, and God shut the mouths of the lions, and it’s really something we teach our children in Sunday school or at home before they go to bed. But there’s a lot more to Daniel than just Daniel and the lion’s den, right?

Todd: Yeah. There really is. It’s easy to get that flannelgraph connotation of the book of Daniel with the lion’s den, or the fiery furnace, or even Daniel in captivity as a teenager. And all those are definitely relevant, applicable, compelling things and stories we should know, but because of that, a lot of people don’t even realize that literally one half of the book of Daniel is end times prophecy, and actually eight of the 12 chapters contain prophecy. So literally most of the book is prophetic. Of the 12 chapters, eight of them have prophecy in them. So it’s definitely a prophetic book.

Todd: It was written around 537 BC, and there are several compelling prophecies in the book that just really, number one, prove that scripture is from God, that God predicted things in advance. Not just little things that were self fulfillment kind of things, but major, longterm, national and international global prophecies. So we’re going to talk about kind of some of the highlights of those today.

Jeff: That’s exciting. Daniel’s been called the revelation of the Old Testament, I think for good reason. And you’re about to unpack some of those prophecies for us today.

Todd: Yeah, and we mentioned that briefly in a previous podcast that it’s kind of the framework that Revelations sits in, and it’s the first place we learn about several things. One of them, which we’ll hit on at the end of this, and you’ve done a lot of research on this, Jeff, is the person of The Antichrist or The Man of Sin. He’s got a lot of different names, so he’s first unveiled in Daniel. We’ll talk about that towards the end.

Todd: But, first, just to kind of show how incredibly compelling the book of Daniel is, there’s a prophecy of successive kingdoms in Daniel chapter two, and then we learn about it again in a later chapter, chapter seven, but where we learn about it in chapter two, it’s described as a statue that has a head of gold. And then it has the success of metals that go down in quality as you go down, but up in strength. So we have all kinds of stuff that basically represents the Babylonian empire, the Medo-Persian empire, the empire of Greece, and then Rome. The legs are Rome, the iron legs.

Todd: And this prophecy of those successive kingdoms is so compelling that critics used to say, “Oh, it had to be written after the fact.” Then, in 1947, we found The Dead Sea Scrolls, which showed the book of Daniel was long in existence and long used by the Jewish communities as early as 150 BC is the earliest we can go back with The Dead Sea Scrolls.

Todd: And a lot of the prophecies that are described in Daniel chapter two didn’t come to fulfillment until modern times. The Roman legs split into two. That happened after all the Bible was complete. And then even in our times, the last section of that prophecy talks about the feet kind of breaking up into a mixture of iron and clay, and kind of nation state. So these empires would break up into smaller nation states, some of them strong, some of them weak. And that’s exactly what we saw happen historically.

Todd: Then, ultimately, with that prophecy, like I said, all of Daniel ties back into end times prophecy. It says eventually there’ll be a 10-toed kingdom that is the end times kingdom, and prophecy experts differ on whether that’s 10 nations or 10 regions of the world. I kind of lean towards the 10 regions of the world thing right now, but scripture is not crystal clear.

Todd: But-

Jeff: And that’s very interesting, by the way, because we can actually historically trace those previous nations. We say, okay, yeah, yeah, it’s fine. We’ve got Babylon here, we got Medo-Persia, we’ve got Greece, we’ve got Rome, but Rome has never existed in a 10 nation or 10 coalition state, which tells us what? That it’s not in the past, right?

Todd: That’s right. It’s yet future.

Jeff: Yeah.

Todd: And then, going with that, and we’ll get into this in a moment, there’s other prophecies in the book of Daniel that hint at a gap of time, and it’s in Daniel chapter nine, and we’ll talk about that in a moment, but also with the feet to the 10 toes, again, that shows us there’s some kind of gap or there’s something mysterious there that … How to go from broken up nation states to these 10 toes, and then we kind of find the answer to that in Daniel chapter nine.

Todd: And there we learn of 70 weeks of years. I often tell people if you really want to get a grip on God’s timetable specifically for the Jewish people … Well, let me back up a little bit. Daniel knew from studying Jeremiah that they were supposed to be in Babylon for 70 years. And he knew that, okay, 70 years is about up, because the book of Daniel is actually a full lifetime chronology of Daniel’s … It’s basically his journal of prophecy and events, so it’s written over a long period of time. So he knew, based on other prophecy, that that 70 years was almost up. So he went into a period of fasting and praying, and he was just trying to find out when it was time to go back home, but just like God always does, he gave Daniel more than he bargained for and said, “Okay, not only am I going to tell you when you’re going back home, but I’m going to tell you the entire Jewish history from now until the very end.” He gave him a lot more than he bargained for.

Todd: And it’s really that prophecy, and I’d encourage our readers to read it and study it. It’s the last four verses of Daniel chapter nine, and it’s so dense. There’s so much there. It’s like you go to pick up a tennis ball and you find out it weighs as much as a cannon ball. You know? There’s just so much packed into that that you can really study it.

Todd: But basically what it does, it talks about 70 weeks of years, and the biblical model here is kind of like we talk about decades. He uses sevens here. We find that all but the last seven weeks have already been fulfilled. And there are several things that he talks about in there, but again, he gives the full scope of Jewish history. And one of the things he gives is he talks about the time of Jesus’s or the Messiah’s first arrival. And I’ve heard … I haven’t done this personally where I mapped it out, but I’ve read other prophecy experts who have done the math, and from King Artaxerxes’ decree to allow Nehemiah to go back and rebuild Jerusalem to the time of Palm Sunday was exactly the timeframe that Daniel said would be for the Messiah to come in.

Jeff: Works out to the absolute day actually.

Todd: Yeah.

Jeff: It’s very specific.

Todd: Mind blowing. And God’s given us archeological discoveries and other historical things to back up, so we know exactly when those dates were. So it’s just kind of neat how God allows us to verify the prophecy.

Jeff: Yeah, it really does, and how specific God. Some people think that prophecies just generalize, because when you read certain events and certain things in Revelation, you go, “Okay, well that could happen here, that could happen here,” but there are specific prophecies that do give us, and this is one of them, an exact date on when the Messiah would appear in Jerusalem, which indeed he did when he wrote into Jerusalem on a donkey.

Todd: Mm-hmm (affirmative). And then also in those four verses, we have Jesus’s death prophesied. It says after the 62 sevens, the Anointed One would be put to death, and have nothing. This was clearly fulfilled at the cross. Jesus died. He literally owned nothing, was buried in a borrowed tomb, and we know that historically. Then also it prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish temple in 70 AD. That event was prophesied and happened, if we look at that along with what Jesus said in the Olivet discourse, that every stone would be thrown down from the temple. Again, specificity. Every single detail of those prophecies were fulfilled and linked together.

Jeff: Yeah. And once again, Todd, even if you were to take a late date for Daniel, which no one really does now because of the archeological discoveries, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. But even if you took a late date, there’s no way he could have known that Jerusalem would be destroyed in this way in 70 AD by the Roman General Titus. And he came, and he sacked it completely. But that, again, just speaks to the specificity to the accuracy of Bible prophecy.

Jeff: And we have to just pause for just a second just to say Bible prophecy … It’s not Nostradamus here. It’s not a horoscope.

Todd: Vague …

Jeff: Yeah, it’s not this vague thing. It’s actually God himself who’s writing history in advance, and he’s doing it for our benefit. He did it for Daniel’s benefit, and, in this case, he’s doing it for the whole Jewish nation’s benefit here. So, yeah, the crucifixion of the Messiah, the destruction of Jerusalem. I interrupted you. Go ahead.

Todd: No, you’re good. That’s perfect.

Todd: Another thing it prophesied is that there would be a mysterious gap, and this is where you really got to pay attention in those dense four verses. But there’s a mysterious gap in between verses 26 and 27, and that’s where I believe the church age fits in. And the reason we know there’s a gap there … It’s almost a hidden gap, but he talks about the destruction of the temple, and then in the very next verse he talks about this evil in times ruler that will come and defile the temple. So somewhere there had to be some kind of time period hidden in here between the destruction of one temple and the rebuilding of another temple.

Todd: Now, with hindsight, and what we know about the church age, we know that’s the church age. So it’s almost like at the triumphal entry when Jesus walked through that, the prophetic Jewish clock, so to speak, was paused, and it will restart again when the Antichrist signs a seven year covenant. And that will restart the clock, and issue in those final seven years, which we know as the Tribulation.

Jeff: Right. But what’s interesting too is that when you read Daniel chapter nine, like you said, there’s this mysterious gap there. We’re actually living between verse 26 and 27 right now.Todd: That’s pretty cool.

Jeff: We’re in this little gap. And people say, “Well, why didn’t God just fill in all the blanks here? Why didn’t he tell us everything?” And one of the principles of Old Testament prophecy I think our listeners would be very curious to hear is that in the Old Testament, God gave certain parts of the plan to different prophets to reveal to Israel, and when you put it all together, you kind of got the whole puzzle, right? But someone described it this way. It’s like these prophets are looking at mountain peaks that go off in the distance, and they can see this mountain peak and this mountain peak, and they write about it. But they can’t see the valleys in between, you know?

Todd: Yep. It makes a lot of sense.

Jeff: Yeah, and when you consider the fact that not only could they not see what was going to happen in the in between events, but also that the whole idea of the church and of the church age was a biblical mystery to the Old Testament prophets. And, in fact, Paul talks extensively about church, and the broad of Christ being this mystery because, as a Jewish believer, they could only see the Jewish nation’s covenant relationship with God, and they couldn’t conceive of the possibility that gentiles would enter into this. And of course, we read about it in Romans chapter nine through 11. How God grafted us in, and how the church is this huge mystery.

Jeff: But, yeah, so we’re living between verse 26 and verse 27 right now.Todd: Yeah. That’s pretty interesting to think about, and I like what you said, too, about us being grafted in, and then the church being a mystery because in our next episode, we’re going to dive more deeply into that, about Israel, and the importance of Israel, and the difference between Israel and the church, and God’s conditional and unconditional promises to Israel, and how that all relates. This is a good setup for that.

Jeff: Yes. Absolutely.

Todd: And as a lead into that, a lot of people get confused about Israel and the Jewish people, but once they study Daniel, particularly Daniel chapter nine, it really gives you a really good solid groundwork to understand those things.

Todd: And, Jeff, there’s one last thing that we mentioned that you’ve done a ton of research on. There’s a very large section, several sections, in Daniel that talk about this person called The Man of Sin, or we call him The Antichrist, but he’s got all these different titles. Why don’t you share a little bit with us about that individual, and what Daniel says about him?

Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Daniel has a lot to say about The Antichrist. In fact, I get perhaps more questions about The Antichrist than anyone else. And it’s interesting, he’s a major player in end times prophecy. In fact, the Bible says more about The Antichrist than any other end times figure except Jesus Christ himself, with over a hundred passages in scripture about The Antichrist. So God might’ve wanted us to know a little bit about this person.

Todd: Yeah, he might’ve wanted us to know a little bit about him.

Jeff: But we see the word “Antichrist,” and we’ll do a whole episode just on that in the future, but The Antichrist is mentioned, specifically that word, five times in the New Testament, specifically in first John, but also we see other names he’s known by. He’s called The Beast. He’s called The Man of Sin, The Son of Perdition, and The Arrogant Prince. And it says here in verse 27 of Daniel, it says he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week. But in the middle of the week, he will put a stop to sacrificing grain offering. On the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed is poured out on the one who makes desolation.

Jeff: And what’s very interesting about this verse, it tells us a lot here. Won’t be able to dive into all of it, but it says he makes a firm covenant. Well, we know between verse 26 and 27 is the church age, so sometime at the end of the church age, this person is going to emerge from the waters of history, and he’s going to make an agreement with the Jewish people.

Jeff: Now, there have been presidents, every president, in fact, since Richard Nixon has tried to bring peace to the Middle East. In fact, as we speak, the Trump peace plan is being presented and being talked about with Israel right now, and just billions of dollars that are going into all this kind of thing with peace in the Middle East, but they’ve all failed. Every one of them has failed. Antichrist will not fail. He will bring this peace, I believe, and he will make it possible for them in this peace plan somehow to rebuild the Jewish temple.

Jeff: And there’ve been many theories about how that’s going to happen. Personally, I think there’s going to be the war of Gog and Magog that’s going to happen at the beginning of the Tribulation, sometime in that inner period there, but it’s going to enable the Jews to rebuild their temple, whether the current Mosque of Omar, the current Dome of the Rock is taken away, but this is going to be something happened there to enable them to do that. And we know that from it says he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering. Well, how they get them to do sacrifice and grain offering is if there’s no temple. So, apparently, we can piece the puzzle together to say The Antichrist will make a peace covenant with Israel, enable them to rebuild their temple. They will make sacrifices in the temple. And then somewhere in the middle here, actually in the middle of the seven year Tribulation period, he’s going to come in. He’s going to put a stop to that.

Jeff: When we harmonize the rest of scripture together, we find out what Jesus was talking about called the abomination of desolation. And basically that’s the time when The Antichrist will enter into that temple. He’ll put a stop to sacrifice. He’ll declare himself to be God. He’ll sit in the holy place, and demand that the world worship him.

Todd: So, in other words, Daniel, Jesus, and John in Revelation all talk about this guy and this mid-Tribulation event?

Jeff: Yes, absolutely.

Todd: That’s pretty good.

Jeff: They’re all in sync. Imagine that.

Todd: [crosstalk 00:16:28]. Real quick question related to all that. Because it says in Daniel nine that he’ll enforce or strengthen a covenant, do you think some of the existing peace covenants, maybe even the one now, the peace agreement, could be kind of the framework that this future individual uses and adds to it, strengthens it, maybe adds the temple building to it?

Jeff: Absolutely.

Todd: And pushes it over the finish line?

Jeff: Yes. And with that, I think is the context of the time that he’s going to do this in. I believe that there’s going to be the rapture event prior to this that’s going to bring cataclysmic global chaos to the world, and there’s going to be a time in which a huge upheaval is going to be happening. There’s going to be economic collapse, moral depravity on a worldwide scale. There’s going to be panic. There’s going to be just mass suicides. There’s going to be so much going on, I believe, during that time, Todd, that that’s going to enable him to come in in that context, much like Hitler did in pre-World War Germany. When the whole country was suffering, he brought hope to them. Unfortunately, he was an evil man, but he brought the sense of pride to the German people, and hope, and that type of thing. Restored their sovereignty.

Jeff: So what I think The Antichrist is going to do is he’s going to look at this situation, this context. He’s going to seize upon the opportunity as the ultimate opportunist. He’s going to make this peace covenant with them. And, yes, I think he very well could draw from previous peace plans to be able to strengthen it, but it’s going to be one that’s going to be stronger than all of them together, and more convincing as well.

Todd: And so as believers living in the church age right now, we’re not waiting to see The Antichrist. What we’re going to see first, you and I believe, is the rapture. But the rapture’s not what starts the Tribulation period. It’s the confirming of this peace covenant, right?

Jeff: Absolutely, and that’s a huge misunderstanding I think that a lot of Christians have is then once the rapture happens, the Tribulation starts. No. There’s going to be some sort of time period. It could be weeks-

Todd: Hours, days …

Jeff: It could be months, who knows? But The Antichrist … When that ink dries on that document, that’s when the Tribulation period officially begins.

Todd: That’s wild, man.

Jeff: Yeah.

Todd: That is really wild.

Todd: Well, like you said, we’ll definitely hit on that more in depth. Jeff’s got a whole book on that where he’s done just a ton of research, so it would be neat to do a deep dive on that.

Jeff: Yeah, I think it really will be, and I think one of the things that our audience, I think, appreciates is the fact that we’re trying to give this panorama Bible prophecy in a irrelevant form. And that’s one of the things that I do in my new book, Interview with The Antichrist. It’s a full on novel about a young man who gets in the inner circle of The Antichrist. But at the end of the book, I give 30 compelling questions answering all the questions that are typically asked about this antichrist straight from the scripture. So I think they’re really going to enjoy it. We’ll talk about that in future podcasts.

Todd: That is super cool. And then just as as we wind this one down, it’s neat to note as we looked at all these specific prophecies, and what scripture says, that we can look out into the world right now and see the stage being set for all this, like we said. Whether it’s iterations of the peace agreement, whether it’s the conditions of the world that are already screaming for somebody who can bring peace to the chaos. There’s more uprisings in countries right now than there’s been in a really long time.

Jeff: That’s a great point, Todd, because I think those two things you just said, the two things that the world wants right now more than anything else is peace in the Middle East, and pushing for world unity. There’s this globalist/globalism push that we’re having right now where countries, even right now, are leaning on other countries. It’s almost like mountain climbers being tethered to one another. It’s like that’s the way our countries are right now. When one falls, it affects another one. So countries are bailing out other countries. They’re in debt to each other. There’s going to come a time where the world’s going to be led by a 10 nation coalition headed up by The Antichrist. And that’s going to be the ultimate world unity, which is what Satan has been wanting ever since the dawn of time. But then the other thing is just being The Antichrist, bringing that peace to the Middle East. If someone today brought absolute calm to the Middle East, and everybody was happy and we knew it-

Todd: They’d give him whatever he wanted.

Jeff: Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Todd: So why is that a bad thing? I’m playing devil’s advocate. Why is globalism a bad thing? Why shouldn’t we all just unite, and erase our borders, and just all be one big, happy family?

Jeff: Well, that’s a great question. As with other great qualities, what Satan does is he counterfeits good things. Unity is a good thing, but it’s what are you unified around? Even in the Christian church, people say, “Well, we just need unity above all.” Well, wait a minute. What are we unified on? We need to be unified on things that are true.

Todd: There’s got to be some standards.

Jeff: Yeah. And so what The Antichrist is going to do, he’s going to bring the world together for an evil unity, ultimately to worship Satan, to worship The Antichrist. And so that’s why unity is not a good thing in this situation.

Jeff: And also it doesn’t take into account the sin nature that we all have. There’s no checks and balances if nations can’t hold each other accountable, or push back on each other. And every single case we’ve ever seen of a dictator running everything, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Sin takes over, and it’s just not a good thing.

Jeff: So add that with the fact that Satan’s had a long laid plan to bring this guy to the forefront, and literally in the midpoint of the Tribulation, he possesses this guy. So it’s not a good thing in any way, shape or form.

Jeff: Flip that around to tell our listeners this is that there will be a day when Jesus Christ returns to this earth.

Todd: Amen.

Jeff: He is going to bring us together as one. We will be united under the reign of the true king, Jesus Christ. And also there will be that peace. The Bible calls him the Prince of Peace, and he will bring peace to the earth during his millennial kingdom.

Jeff: So those are some great thoughts from Daniel. Todd, thank you so much. And there’s so much more, obviously, we could dive into, but wanted to hit some of the high points there to give our listeners some insight on that. And, as we said in the beginning, just like the sons Issachar, you can discern the times and see what’s coming to know how you should live your life. And so we wanted to give that wisdom today. Hope they enjoy it.

Todd: Amen. And just like we always mentioned, we want to hear from you. We want to hear your questions, whether it’s related to something you heard today, or there are other topics related to this which we’ll talk about in the future, like what is the millennial kingdom? What’s that going to be like? What’s the purpose of it? It’s almost like every question we answer unveil seven new questions to answer, but that’s the beauty of scripture is it’s a never ending well of just beauty and just majesty.

Todd: So we hope you’re picking up on some of that, but we want to hear from you. We want to hear your questions, and you can find out all the information you need to about Jeff’s ministry, about my ministry if you just go to prophecyprospodcast.com. And there, you can answer questions, and you can follow us on various social media platforms, and that sort of thing. So, again, just go to prophecyprospodcast.com, and we’ll catch you next time.

Todd: Hey, thank you so much for listening. We’re really excited you found us. Make sure to subscribe, if you have not done so already. And if you liked what you heard, please let us know by leaving a review. That does us a huge favor and helps us out a lot.Todd: For more resources or to ask questions or find more about our ministries, go to prophecyprospodcast.com. And a major thank you, major shout out to Harvest House Publishers for helping us with this podcast.