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Well, we are in hour nine of learning the Bible in 24 hours.

And every time I use that title, I'm almost embarrassed.

That's an audacious title.

You can't learn the whole Bible in 24 hours in one sense, and yet in one sense you can.

Because our goal, of course, is to get a grasp of the whole.

And once you have a perspective, you always know what questions to ask and you can dig

into the specifics, but this will give you an overview.

But this particular hour, we've actually budgeted the entire hour for a single book.

It's understandable we use several sessions for Genesis and several for Revelation because

there's sort of the bookends that tie it all together.

But in general, we go through and take groups of books.

But there's on a couple of occasions in our study, we're going to single out a book to

go a little bit deeper because it's so pivotal.

And the book of Daniel is one of those books.

Very popular book, I would say after Genesis and Revelation, it's probably the most popular

book to study, especially for Gentiles because it's one of the books of the Old Testament

that really includes some very special treasures for everyone, of course, but also specifically

for the Gentiles.

So we're getting into the book of Daniel, very colorful book.

And I have to say candidly one of my favorite books because there is a verse in this book

that caused me, even as a teenager, to be blown away and really discover the reality

of who Jesus is.

And it was that verse that I was a Christian, I had accepted Christ, but the discovery of

the implications of the last four verses of Daniel 9 is it really galvanized me to understand

the reality that the Bible is true and Jesus Christ really is who He said He is.

Well, we'll get there.

So the book of Daniel is twelve chapters and two halves.

The first six are historical.

That's why we're using it right here in the historical sequence we're doing.

The first six chapters are really a history, very colorful history, very interesting anecdotes

that take place.

The last six chapters are like appendices at the end of the book of the visions that he

saw, summaries of a number of very, very important visions.

It'll be important to understand that it's not in chronological order.

The first six chapters are chronological, but chapters seven, eight, and nine occur within

the other chapters if you follow me.

So we'll make that clear as we go.

But anyway, book of Daniel, first six, historical, the second six, some really treasures of prophecies.

So the historical narratives.

The first chapter is the Deportation.

Daniel is a teenager and he's deported as a slave when Babylon conquers Israel.

And the second chapter will be a dream that the king of Babylon has, that Daniel interprets

and that leads him to a key position.

His rivals can thrive against his three friends in himself.

In chapter three, the famous fiery furnace thing.

And chapter four will surprise you.

It's a chapter written by a Gentile king.

Nebuchadnezzar himself writes chapter four personally.

Chapter five is the fall of the world capital, Babylon, very colorful chapter, and very significant

for us today because this future of Babylon is very, very critical for any biblically oriented

person.

And then chapter six is the lion's den, which strangely enough I will call the revolt of

the Magi.

Most people have no idea who the Magi are at Christmas, but we'll get into that a little

bit.

As we look at the panorama of history that we've been exploring, we're after the monarchy,

we've just been through the monarchy, and the monarchy ended with Babylon conquering

Jerusalem.

So we're now approaching that period of what's called the exile where they are captives

for 70 years.

And so, in fact, Babylon conquers Nebuchadnezzar is the bright young king, excuse me, a general

of the king Nebuchalazzar, and he's a very successful general, and he sets siege to Jerusalem,

and that starts a period of time called the captivity, the Babylonian captivity.

And he takes captives, sets up a vassal king to be subservient to him, takes hostages,

the Daniel and three friends are among those hostages.

But Babylon goes, I mean, Jerusalem then goes and rebels after some years.

And so Nebuchadnezzar has to set up a second siege, and he replaces that king with his

nephew, Zephaniah.

And again, they are still captives to Babylon.

During this period of time, Daniel from Babylon and Ezekiel from Jerusalem are, I'm getting

these two things mixed up.

Jeremiah from Jerusalem and Ezekiel from Babylon are preaching, saying, don't rebel

against Nebuchadnezzar.

We're slaves, but Nebuchadnezzar is the instrument of God here.

And the false prophets are telling the leadership.

God's chosen people, we're going to rebel against Nebuchadnezzar, and they eventually

talk the king into doing it.

And that happened the first time, Nebuchadnezzar replaced that king and laid the second siege

and replaced him.

Well, when they rebelled, oh, and during the, after the second siege, both Ezekiel from

Babylon and also Jeremiah from Jerusalem are saying, don't rebel because if you rebel,

again, God will destroy Jerusalem.

And the false prophets convince the king to get him on an ego trip.

And he goes ahead and rebels against Nebuchadnezzar.

And by now, Nebuchadnezzar has had a belly full of this whole situation.

He lays a third siege and takes all captive and destroys the city.

So there are two periods of time in the Bible that were predicted to be 70 years.

One is called the servitude of the nation.

And it starts, of course, with the first siege when they were made vassals of Babylon.

And it goes for exactly 70 years.

And finally, when the Persians conquer Babylon, and then the Cyrus the Persian, that ends,

the Babylonian captivity, that ends the servitude of the nation because as you'll see, we'll

get into it, Cyrus frees them to go home.

There's also a period of time called the desolations of Jerusalem.

And it's also predicted to be 70 years.

And many scholars assume they're both synonymous.

It's a servitude of the nation, a desolation of Jerusalem.

They're both 70 years, but the desolations of Jerusalem start from the third siege.

Second chronicles takes us up to the end of the servitude when they finally get to go

back home.

The book of Ezra that will come into in the next session will deal with this what's called

the post-exile after they get back from the exhale, back from the captivity.

And then now there's desolations of Jerusalem which starts with the third siege ends when

they're able to finally rebuild the city.

And they do that under Nehemiah.

And Nehemiah by then is a cup bearer to the king.

It's in charge of the area, Persian king.

And he gets permission to rebuild the city.

The temples will, is the problem.

They've gone ahead and worked on that during the days of Ezra.

Nehemiah comes along and gets the authority to rebuild the city.

The decree to art exerts these will turn out to be very important to us as we get into

this.

And that starts, that triggers a very, very provocative prophecy in the book of Daniel

that we'll be looking at.

But it's important to understand that the servitude of the nation starts from the first

siege, is seven years to the day, until Cyrus releases them.

The desolations of Jerusalem, the destruction of Jerusalem was from the third siege.

So they're both 70 years to the day, but they're not co-terminus.

The desolations start with the third siege and they end with a very particular decree

by a Persian king that we'll get into.

The book of Esther, which actually in your Bible comes after the book of Nehemiah, will

take, in the next hour we'll take Ezra, Nehemiah, and the book of Esther and try to

put that in perspective.

During this whole period of Babylon we have Daniel as a prophet.

Ezekiel is also a prophet.

He gets deported in the first siege.

Ezekiel gets deported in the second siege.

Also after the Babylon captivity is over.

During the days of Ezra we have the prophet Hagai also preaching in parallel to the issues

that emerge in Ezra.

And Nehemiah, we have Zechariah and Malachi.

Malachi closing, of course, the period that we, either the Old Testament.

So that's a broad view.

In the background to understand what's going on, Nitha ruled the world in the Assyrian

Empire until 612 BC when it finally falls to an alliance of both the Babylonians and

the Medes.

It's only a few years later that Pharaoh, an echo of Egypt, is now emerging as a dominant

player because he leads an army against the remnants of the Assyrian Empire.

During that time, by the way, is when Josiah fights Pharaoh and an echo to try to get the

Ark of the Covenant back and get skilled.

Pharaoh and an echo, most people don't realize, Assyrian, is Ethiopian, not Egyptian.

And that leads to a whole other study I encourage you to look at in terms of the possibility

that the Ark of the Covenant is still being protected by the Ethiopians to present to

the Maziah when he rules in Zion.

But anyway, three years later there is a famous battle, Battle of Karshamesh, because by then

Nebuchadnezzar the general of under Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, his son is a sharp

guy.

And he ends up defeating Pharaoh and echo at the Battle of Karshamesh, which makes Babylon

the dominant power in the region.

This is the typical date used to mark the beginning of the Babylonian Empire.

And so that's the background.

Now on his way home, Nebuchadnezzar lays siege to Jerusalem for an additional trophy.

During that siege he discovers that his father has died, he's now the king of Babylon.

He succeeds at the siege, sets up a vassal king, takes Daniel and three friends, among

others, as hostages, to be educated, or teenagers, to be educated at court at Babylon to serve

at the end of the king of Babylon.

And so Daniel, by the way, is the most authenticated book in the Bible.

Many people have problems with Daniel.

There's more archaeological and documentary evidence of Daniel than any other book in

the Bible.

It has been authenticated by none other than Jesus Christ himself.

And we'll look at that before the studies are over.

So if you believe in Jesus Christ, you have no problem about the authenticity or the

reliability of the book of Daniel.

If you don't believe in Jesus Christ, you've got bigger problems than the authenticity

of Daniel.

But his three friends are deported as teenagers in the first of the three sieges by Nebuchadnezzar.

And in chapter one, they commit themselves to refrain from the diets and practices of

the Babylonians, and they want to stay faithful to the way they've been taught.

Like the fact that they are in an enforced pagan environment.

It's a very interesting thing to study because our children are in an enforced pagan environment.

And it's interesting to see the contrast and the faithfulness of these young men.

One is named Ananiya, that's his Jewish name, but all three are given Babylonian names.

And due to this popular song about this, everybody knows the Babylonian name, Shadrach, Meshach,

and Abednego.

Shadrach's name was Hananiaya, which means a loom by the sun god.

They're given Babylonian names in the Babylonians attempt to get them assimilated into their

culture.

And Michelle is called Meshach, who is like the moon god, is what it roughly means in

Amak.

As Ariah, his name was Abednego.

So the Shadrach Meshach and Abednego are the Babylonian names.

Hananiah, Michelle, and Ariah are their Hebrew names.

It's interesting that there has been discovered a clay prism in Babylon.

It's presently in the Istanbul Museum, which mentions these three guys, Hanonunu, the

chief of the royal merchants, the variation of Hananiah, and Michelle Emertic.

Emertic was one of the gods they worshiped, and Ardi Nabu.

Many people believe that these are...

The pronunciations are very corrupted because of our clumsy attempts to transliterate from

one's language to another.

Transliterate is different than translation.

Transliterate means you try to render it roughly the way it's pronounced, and you'll

see some strange ones.

But anyway, this is regarded as authenticating the three.

But anyway, so here we have this young king who's just taken over from his father.

His father passed away, this young general is now the king, and he inherits the staff

advisors, these cronies that advised his father.

And he can't tell whether they're really any good or not.

So he's defeated the Pharaoh Naco, so he's taking over the throne on his father's death.

But these staff advisors, he doesn't know whether they're any good or not.

One night, Nebuchadnezzar has a very troubling dream, and he uses the dream as an opportunity.

On the one hand, he's troubled, he wants to know what it means.

But he also uses it, an opportunity to see if these guys really have any unique skills.

So he insists that they interpret it, but he won't tell them what the dream is.

And they're upset about that, because if he'll tell them what the dream is, they'll

contrive some kind of explanation.

But he won't do that.

In fact, he believes they're stalling for time, they're not giving the answer one, so

offer your heads.

In other words, he knew how to reduce head count when it wasn't being productive.

So he's really using this as a test, and of course he puts out the word.

Now, what obviously happens, when you read chapter 2, Daniel is in the job category

that's been wiped out.

And he, in that job description, was to be killed.

And when Daniel gets the word, when the word comes down, that's what's going to happen.

He goes to a supervisor, Ariak, he says, give us a chance at it.

And we have a God that'll help us and so forth.

And so, what Daniel does, he goes through three buddies and says, boy, we have a prayer

meeting tonight, guys, because tomorrow, offer their heads otherwise.

And so, anyway, they go to Ariak.

Ariak arranges for them to present to the king the results.

And chapter 2 is one of the most dramatic chapters in the Bible because you've got these

skeptics whose lives are at risk in the back row watching all this.

And here's these three or four young guys, Daniel comes up, and he explains to the king

what his dream was, and he also interprets what it means.

So this is not subject conjectures, Daniel will interpret the dream for you.

But obviously, Nebuchadnezzar is profoundly impressed and he elevates Daniel to high office.

And so, now the dream that Nebuchadnezzar had in his dream, Daniel explains, that he

saw a metal image, a very tall metal image.

The head was of gold, the arms and chest of a silver, the belly and thighs of, where

bronze and the legs were iron and the feet were also ironed mixed with clay.

And then the head of gold, the chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, the

legs iron and the feet iron mixed with clay.

As you will discover, there are four different metals here.

The fourth one has a second phase where it has something added to it.

We'll get to that when the time comes.

And Daniel, oh, and then what happens is a rock, a stone cut without hands hits it at

the base and that stone grows into a mountain that doesn't only just fill that region, but

it fills the entire world.

Pretty strange dream.

If you had that kind of dream, you'd probably be pretty troubled too.

Well, Daniel goes ahead and explains it.

He says, you king are this head of gold.

But you're going to be succeeded by someone else.

And what he lays out, what the metal image turns out to be is a timeline of the great

empires.

Babylon first, Persia next, then Greece, and then Rome.

But Rome apparently isn't two phases because it's going to break into pieces and then

those pieces are going to recoeless into a second phase of that first empire.

So we'll call it for our purposes, Rome phase one and Rome phase two.

And most scholars recognize that Rome in those two phases are represented by the iron

and the iron mixed with clay.

We're going to discover in a subsequent vision the same information that in effect supports

this same view.

We'll get to that when we get to chapter seven.

But what's interesting here is Babylon, of course, rose in 606 BC.

As I mentioned, in 539, the Persians conquered Babylon.

And the Persians endured till a young guy, Alexander the Great conquers the Persians

in 332 BC.

And Greece continues till about 68 BC when this upstart on the Tiber called Rome by then

conquers the Greeks.

And the question is who conquered the Romans?

No one did, right on, exactly.

Rome broke into pieces and each one of those pieces had their day in the sun.

And the Dutch did, the Germans twice, French did, Spain did with the Armada, England with

the mistress of the seas and so forth.

But none of them quite equally.

And what the profile is presented is that these elements are going to recoalesce again

into a final version of the original empire.

And that will be the last empire on the planet earth because I should say next to last because

that's the one God intervenes with and sets up his own kingdom.

That's what the mountain, the stone cut without hands, it turns out to be the Messiah and

the mountain that fills the whole earth is God's kingdom, it's going to take over.

And so we have the whole profile.

As most people know, the cradle of civilization was what we call the fertile crescent.

There was Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon preceding the time we're talking about here with Daniel.

But in Babylon there was a city called Babylon that then conquered the area and this brings

his contemporaneous with Daniel.

But after Babylon of course will come the Persians and the Persians.

Not only conquered but expanded their holdings substantially.

And then this young guy in a matter of just a few years conquers the Persians and Alexander

the Great, a very incredible, incredible career.

And when he dies, the empire gets divided.

Four of his generals divided up.

And the Great Cassandra takes the far west, the Sémachus takes that part that we think

of as Anatolia or Turkey.

And Sélucus takes the east and Ptolemy the south.

The two strongest of the four are Ptolemy and Sélucus.

They're the primary players.

And they, the dynasties, the half a dozen of their dynasties on both sides fight with

each other.

And what's caught right in the middle is guess who?

Israel.

Now many people talk about the period between the Old Testament and the New Testament as

the silent years.

And that's true in a sense and yet it betrays a lack of understanding of the book of Daniel

because in Daniel chapter 11 the history from the Old Testament through the New Testament

is written down in advance in chapter 11.

And we'll discover the so-called silent years are detailed in advance in Daniel 11.

Interesting book.

And of course the Roman Empire succeeds all of this and grows to be a, you know, well-known

period of our history.

What most people don't realize, many of us that study the Bible or study these things,

when we think of the Roman Empire we think of Western Europe.

What we fail to keep aware of is that that empire broke into two legs because it's got

too big to administer.

So the equation divided into two legs.

And the Western leg, the Western Europe, breaks apart, falls apart in 476, 80 and following.

The Eastern leg outlast the Western leg by a thousand years.

So much so that we give it a different label.

We call it the Byzantine Empire but it's really just the Eastern leg of the old Roman Empire.

Anyway, so we have a period of the times of the Gentiles.

This is a phrase we find in the book of Luke because what Nebuchadnezzar begins and it

will continue until the Antichrist is the dominion of the planet Earth under Gentile

leadership.

The Antichrist, the coming world leader I'll tend to call him, ends this peculiar period

of time that are known in the scripture of the times of Gentiles.

Now it's interesting that from Daniel chapter 2, through Daniel chapter 7, the focus of

the book is on the Gentile world and the language of the text changes.

The book of Daniel is in Hebrew, up to beginning of chapter 2 and after chapter 7, it's in

Hebrew like most of the Bible.

But from 2 to 7 it's an Aramaic which was the Gentile language of the period because

that's the focus of it.

And Daniel's prophecies are a very rare glimpse of the Gentile world.

In general, the Bible always talks about past history and future history of prophecy

through the lens of Israel.

But we have a gift here, a very unusual gift because Daniel's prophecies are going to

focus on the Gentile world.

It's an exception to the Bible, as I say most of it's different.

But from Daniel 2 through Daniel 7, the focus, the center of interest is the Gentile dominion

and he writes all this down in advance.

And now the times that Gentiles don't be confused by that phrase because there's some

other similar phrases that are not quite the same thing.

The times that Gentiles began with Nebuchadnezzar and they'll end with this coming world leader

who will be displaced of course by the Lord Jesus Christ sitting up his kingdom, the line

of the tribe of Judah, the root of David.

Now it's frustrating to have to go through Daniel so quickly because Daniel 2 itself

is so dramatic but we'll keep moving here.

As you can imagine, these guys that got upstaged by Daniel his three friends are looking for

an opportunity for revenge.

And we get to Daniel chapter 3 and these guys apparently have fanned Nebuchadnezzar's ego

so he issues a very unusual order.

He's on an ego trip.

So first of all, as part of this ego trip, he builds an image, I assume the image is

probably very similar to the one he saw in his dream except in this case it's all gold.

There's no silver, bronze, it's all gold.

In other words, this is sort of his bid for immortality I suspect.

And he orders when certain music is played that everyone is to bow down and worship his

image and anyone that doesn't is going to get killed.

Now I suspect he was prompted to do this by Daniel's rivals because these rivals knew

that these faithful Hebrew young men would refuse to do that.

And that was their way of getting them executed.

And so that's exactly what happens.

Nebuchadnezzar puts out the word and these three friends of Daniel's fail to bow down.

So he orders them into the fiery furnace.

In fact, he's so infuriated.

He gives them a second chance.

If you bow down, it would be fine.

And the three young men tell him, our God is able to save us.

And if he isn't, up here is okay.

This is really their attitude.

So he's so teed off, he orders the furnace, turned up seven times as usual heat.

In fact, so much so the guards involved get consumed doing it.

But in any case, they throw these three young men in there.

But then Nebuchadnezzar goes to look and he's shocked because he discovers they're not...

He says, didn't he throw three guys in there?

There's four in there.

And it's one of those strange appearances of the Old Testament of apparently the Son

of God being with them, with the other three.

So there's a visitor with them.

So he orders them brought out.

And the only things that have been burned on them are the bindings.

They're unharmed.

And so now this is a very famous event, of course, in the fiery furnace event.

But many scholars notice something else.

So often in the Bible, you'll find a narrative, an actual event that happened detailed.

But it also tends to model or foreshadow something larger in the future.

We call that a foreshadowing.

It's called a type.

There's a typological conjecture here.

And the typological conjecture would suggest that this image we know from Book of Revelation

there's going to be a final world leader.

And he's going to have an image that he's going to force people to worship.

Those who don't worship will be put to death.

So we think, gee, there's a foreshadowing here.

And the fact that it's six cubits wide and six cubits high is suggested.

The 666 is even hitting that here.

And that may have some...and fire is often used in the Scripture as an idiom of judgment.

But if that's the case, the question that gets surfaced here is, where was Daniel?

Where was Daniel?

Because he's missing.

But many people don't notice in chapter 3 this very familiar story, but Daniel's not among

them.

And so there's three possibilities.

One possibility is Daniel must have yielded to the King's challenge.

He must have bowed to the image.

How many think so?

Absolutely not.

Absolutely.

You're right.

The other thing is maybe somehow Daniel was exempted from the accusation by his enemies.

Somehow I don't think that's true either.

The third possibility is the reasonable conjecture.

And that's that Daniel was removed from the situation somehow.

I suspect that he was...since he was so senior for the King, he was like virtually prime

minister that he was sent on some errand for the King some foreign assignment to go...he's

on some kind of a trip.

And that's what his enemies took advantage of to try to get his three buddies executed.

The point is that Daniel doesn't explain why, but Daniel's not in the situation.

And so many people that make a point of that, it's kind of interesting that there's apparently

a privileged believer removed before the judgment.

And so that you could...I wouldn't make doctrine from that, but I think it's interesting to

observe.

Well, chapter 4 is a surprising chapter because Nebuchadnezzar writes the chapter himself.

He writes it and has it posted throughout the entire world that he controls.

He ends up having a second dream in which it was a great tree that was hewn down after...I'll

give you a brief version of it.

He was cut down after seven years.

And Daniel interprets the dream to him that the dream...he's the dream...he's the guy.

And Nebuchadnezzar is on the ramparts of Babylon and taking pride.

Look what I have done.

He's on a big ego trip.

And that's exactly what the dream was anticipating because of pride he would have a seven-year...seven

years in the penalty box, so to speak.

And a year later, he's again on this parapet bragging about how great a great king he thinks

he is.

And he's stricken with a mental derangement, a form of lacanthropy where he's literally

eating grass.

And according to the Hebrew records, Talbot, I think it is, the...Daniel was a great writer.

He was a nurse during those seven years.

At the end of the seven years, he's cured of that.

But he also recognized that he acknowledges that it was a fulfillment of the dream that

he had himself a year earlier.

And so he writes the chapter.

He recovers and he publishes his personal testimony throughout the entire world.

And I personally, from reading chapter four, will not be surprised when in heaven, if I

run a Nebuchadnezzar, I think he's a saved person.

Interesting enough.

He had a very intimate relationship with his friend Daniel.

Very, very close, apparently.

But anyway, Nebuchadnezzar, of course, ultimately passes away.

Oh, and the reason he's so prideful, you need to have a little perspective of Babylon.

The city of Babylon, of course, was fed by the Euphrates.

It straddled the Euphrates virtually.

And it had a double wall system.

If you look at just the Babylon proper, it has not only...it has a double wall and a

moat.

And they had 250 watchtowers, 100 feet higher than the wall itself.

And there's a banquet hall involved.

I'll show you where some of this stuff is.

That's the town itself.

There's a procession way up at the top.

And there's the tower of Babel that's featured in Genesis 11, the Temple of Marduk and so

forth.

The King's Palace is going to be the scene of the events in chapter five.

And that building has been rebuilt.

The Saddam Hussein is even using it for affairs of state.

But notice how the river Euphrates goes through the city to provide it water in case of a

siege.

But it also that water feeds the moat that protects the city.

And the wall was no trivial wall.

They had chariot races, four to six abreast on top of the wall.

So this is a...you're talking 15 miles on a side.

So this is a sizable place.

And it was considered impregnable.

And therein lies their vulnerability, that belief.

Now the King's the Babylon Empire.

After Nebuchadnezzar, of course, Nebuchadnezzar is a son that established the kingdom.

And he has two sons and two daughters.

And his first son takes over for a bit, but he's a bad apple.

His other daughter married.

But Mary Glasser has a...he takes over and his son I think lasts two months.

And then finally, Nabonitis takes over.

And he has his son, Belchaser, as a co-region.

We'll discover that Nabonitis was just...he had married one of Nebuchadnezzar's daughters.

It's just not interested in Babylon.

He's often foreign intrigues down in Arabia and doing other things.

In fact, he had not been in town for 14 years when it finally falls.

And that's worth understanding because there's a huge discrepancy.

The secular world had all kinds of evidence that Nabonitis was really the king of Babylon

when it fell.

And that's why the Bible couldn't be correct.

Well, they discovered more recently things that pointed out that Belchaser, his son was

reigning at the time exactly the way Daniel says.

So not only do we know that Daniel wrote...that chapter 5 was correct, it had to be by an eye

witness, we know now.

But Daniel 5 is a fall of Babylon, a very, very colorful amount of history here.

Instead of the Persian armies on the horizon, instead of defending the city, he throws a

party for a thousand of his nobles.

And a big mistake, the Persian army is formidable and been on the uprise here.

But having this big party and Belchaser does a dumb thing, he sends across the street to

the museum to bring out the implements that his grandfather had taken from the temple

seven years earlier and going to use them as party implements.

Well, that's just guaranteed to anger God even further.

So what the party is doing great until they see the fingers of a man's hand writing on

the wall.

And of course, it's astonishing to realize how many expressions in our common day language

come from Daniel.

You saw the handwriting on the wall.

You've all used that expression.

There's numbers up.

You're waiting and found wanting.

The idol has clay feet.

You see, all these expressions are from the book of Daniel, interestingly enough.

The experts there can't understand what's being written.

They can't decipher it, which is a surprise.

But the Queen Mother, Nebuchadnezzar's widow is still alive and she says to her grandson,

there was a guy around in your grandfather's day.

You understand they don't have any word for grandfather in Aramaker Hebrew.

So when they say father, that just means a forebear.

But anyway, as she says, there was a guy around in your grandfather's day that had to give

to do that.

So they bring Daniel out of retirement and he comes in, they offer him all kinds of rewards.

He says, you keep your rewards.

Before he gives them the answer he wants, he gives an eulogy for Nebuchadnezzar.

He says, oh, there, your grandfather, there was a king because whom he would set up, he

set up and who he'd bring down, he'd bring down.

Not like you, squirt.

But then after all that, he goes ahead and interprets the famous event and what he didn't,

what no one knew in the banquet hall, while this was all going on, the Persian army had

arranged to divert the Euphrates upriver.

So the water level went down and they slipped in under the gates.

They took over Babylon without a battle.

And that's going to be important later, but that's going on while the party is going

on here.

Now, one of the questions that people ask are, they're really hidden codes in the

Bible.

I get that question a lot because of our doctoral work and some other materials we have.

And it's in the Bible.

Proverbs 25-2 says, it is the glory of God to conceal a thing and the honor or duty of

kings to search out a matter.

They're deaf and the Bible is full of surprises tucked away underneath the text.

There's a form of Hebrew encryption that's well known to anybody.

It's been a student of cryptography.

We take the Hebrew alphabet, the 21st, the 22 letters, take the 1st, the 11th, and put

the 2nd, 11th underneath it, so to speak, and then transpose.

If you want an alaphy, use the lamad and so forth.

And that's a simple form of transposition.

And it's named after the 1st, say, alaphy, you have an alamda, instead of a bet, you

have a mem.

So it's equipped to ALBM.

Album is the label given to this form of encryption.

If you take the second half of the alphabet and put it in backwards, now you take the

letters and put the others in there backwards, you get a different set of transposition.

And again, you have an alaphy, a tau, and a bet, and a shin.

And so it's called atbosh.

According to the Talmud, the belief among the Hebrew scholars is that the encryption

that was used in the hydrating of the wall was a form of atbosh, which means the hydrating

of the wall, assuming it was atbosh, would have said something like this, except it would

be Aramaic letters rather than these letters that they use today.

Using the atbash encryption and transposing, you get what Daniel ended up reading to them.

Remember, they're all languages go towards Jerusalem.

In other words, everybody east of Jerusalem goes from right to left.

Hebrew, Aramaic, Sanskrit, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

All nations west of Jerusalem go from left to right.

English, Latin, Russian, Greek, you name it.

Anyway, so remember Hebrew goes backwards from our point of view.

Anyway, so Daniel says many, many.

That means that word means, by the way, also the Hebrew only uses consonants.

The vowels are inferred.

That's the way a bandwidth reduction and so forth.

I won't get into all that here.

Many, many means numbered or reckoned.

And he interprets, he says, God has numbered your kingdom and finished it.

The way we would abbreviate that is your number is up.

First word was tekel, which means weighed.

You thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting.

Daniel explains.

And the third word is perez, which means broken or divided.

So it's thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.

Now something that's also kind of, and by the way, in your King James, let's say you

are the Pharsen, the you are simply a conjunction in the Pharsen is the plural of Paris, but

I don't worry about that in the translators.

If you infer a different vowel than the E, say in A, a perez is the word for Persians.

So there's a pun hidden in here also that's not brought up in your normal translations.

But in any cases, of course, is what Daniel announces.

And that night, of course, bell shaz are a slain and the Persians take over the city.

We're going to talk a little bit more about that in the next session because we'll get

to Ezra and I'll use that occasion to explain what Cyrus did when Cyrus makes his grand

entrance.

And that's a great scene, but we'll hold that for the next session.

In Daniel 6, by now Daniel is about 83 years old.

And one of the interesting things about Daniel's career is that he rises to power in the second

empire.

In other words, he was the number two man, so to speak, or it was high up under Nebuchadnezzar.

He rose because he interpreted Daniel too.

He was given great privileges and responsibilities under Nebuchadnezzar.

When the Persians take over the Babylonians, he again rises to power.

He's the number three ruler in the kingdom and very prominent, even though he's 83.

And in fact, he is appointed a rob mag, the chief of the Magi.

You need to understand the Magi for lots of reasons.

The Magi were a hereditary priesthood that had the power to appoint the king.

In other words, they were a priestly sect, which was religious, and yet it was also

administrative.

That's where we get the word magistrate from that word, magi.

But they were hereditary.

They were Medes in the combined empire, the Medes and the Persians.

The Medes had that particular role.

Daniel is appointed the rob mag, the head of that priesthood.

Now how do you think it went over for these Medes to be now reporting to a Jew?

They were not excited about the prospect, apparently, because they're the ones, I believe,

that engineered this attempted execution of Daniel.

So the jealous rivals entrapped him into the lion's den.

The king of the Persians, they had a strange law among them in Persia, that the king could

write a law, but he could not change it once it's written.

We find that operative here in Daniel 6, it's essential to understand for the book of Esther

that we'll come to later in the next session.

But in any case, the king is tricked into signing this document, and if anyone's found

praying to the wrong God, he gets to the lion's den.

Of course, Daniel is very faithful, and he is praying, and so he gets into his lions

and you all know the story.

It's interesting that the king himself was upset, but he couldn't change it.

And that next morning he rushes there to see if Daniel's okay.

He cares about Daniel.

You see it well through this.

And Daniel, of course, is miraculously spared.

But something that is implied by this and some other writings is that Daniel apparently

was entrusted some prophecies that he received some prophecies, that he entrusted to a cabal,

a secret subgroup of the Magi that passed it on for 500 years.

And these guys are the guys that follow the star to Bethlehem.

And there's circumstances around that you need to understand.

The Parthian Empire was the rival to Rome, and you need to understand that and who they

were to really understand why Herod was so nervous when they arrived and why he's so

different to them.

There's a whole background there, but ultimately these Magi would follow the prophecy that would

lead them to a manger in Bethlehem.

And we'll deal with that, of course, when we get to Matthew chapter 2.

Well, we've gone through half the book of Daniel.

The last half are prophecies.

They're the four beasts of Daniel 7, Ramon Hego to Daniel 8, the 70 weeks of Daniel 9,

and the dark side of the spiritual warfare thing in Daniel 10, and the climax of the

book in Daniel 11 and 12 is the final consummation of all things.

And the times of the Gentiles, we went through, bear in mind, we're looking at history through

the lens of Israel, but here in this particular segment of the Bible, it's serving exception.

We're going to see all of Gentile history and overview.

And it's interesting, there's only four empires involved, not seven or three or whatever,

four, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, those four.

The fifth one will be God actually setting up His own kingdom on the planet Earth.

So at that fourth empire will be in two phases and we'll get into that.

We went through Daniel chapter 2, the gold, silver, the brass, the iron, and so forth,

Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome.

In Daniel chapter 7, Daniel himself is treated to a series of visions.

Daniel 2 was given to a man, and we see these empires as man would see them, bright, shiny

metals.

Daniel is given a vision of how they look to God, and the subject is the same, but the

view is quite different.

God sees them as a series of voracious beasts.

The first is likened to a winged lion, and he's followed by a bear that rises up on

one side.

And there's another one that's sort of like a winged leopard, it moves so fast it doesn't

even touch the ground.

And then there's the last one, Daniel can't find an animal to even liken it to.

He calls it the great and terrible beast, and it goes into a phase with ten heads and

so on.

And we'll recognize the ten toes on the one hand, the ten heads on the other, we're going

to realize these things to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

And of course the winged lion was a symbol of Babylon.

The bear on one side is a, rises up on one side, the Persians in the mead, it was a coalition

in which the Persians end up being dominant.

And of course the Greek empire was characterized by its rapidity, Alexander in 12 years conquers

in the world, just a few years.

At age of 29 he falls in his bed crying, there's no other world left to conquer.

And so, but Rome of course, he emerges in roughly 68 BC, and the battle of Actium is

when Octavius defeats Mark Anthony and becomes Caesar Augustus if you will.

And you finally get down about 284 AD when the Ecclesian divides the empire.

That's known so big he divides it into the two legs.

In 312 AD Constantine takes over, he's so fed up with the politics in Rome, he moves the

capital of the world to Byzantium, calls it Constantinople, the new Rome.

And it's endures till the end of the 15th century when the Muslims finally run it over.

In 476 the Western empire of course breaks into pieces and every element's had its

day in the sun.

But let's go to Daniel 8, the ram and the he-goat.

Oh and by the way, Daniel 7 describes the final empire as when Christ takes over the

world.

And it goes in all that.

Daniel 8 is a detail now on the Persians and the Greeks.

This is about two years after the vision of Daniel 7.

It's about 12 years before Daniel chapter 5 when Babylon falls.

Just to give you a rough feeling where this fits in chronologically.

And the ram is defeated by the goat, the rapid goat coming from the west.

Clearly it's a very vivid description of Alexander's conquest of the Persians.

And this notable horn, namely Alexander himself, is killed and four generals divide up the

empire.

And there's a little horn that has a key role at the end that's going to be important

later.

And Daniel interprets this for us.

A leader from the west, obviously Alexander the Great will subdue the meet-up Persian

empire.

Alexander the Great crosses the Hellespont with 35,000 troops and he's fighting a powerful

army in the hundreds of thousands.

And he, in a series of three battles, wins, takes them on.

He was at an incredible general and he would be out there leading his troops.

He turned several of those battles from defeat to victory by his personal involvement.

Absolutely legendary series of events that are well documented and there's obviously

a lot of popular movies coming out about it and so forth.

And so the one horn goat was the symbol of the ancient Macedonians.

And in the areas of the ram is the symbol of Persia, Capricorn, the goat, the symbol

of Greece.

And in May 33, he crossed the Hellespont with 35,000 troops and first met, defeated the

Persians at the Granicus River.

And then a year later he finds himself at the Battle of Isis and wins that one.

And the final big one was Gogamala, October 331 BC, which establishes the Greek empire

as the dominant guys of the block here.

When Alexander dies shortly thereafter, he makes Babylon his capital, he's only dies.

He goes all the way to the way to the way to India.

And because Alexander takes the western part, the poor generals divided up, the Cemicus

takes Thraces, Bithynia and most of Asia Minor, Asia Minor being what we think of as Turkey.

Ptolemy takes the south, Egypt, the Sirenian part of Arabia.

And Salucus takes the east, Siren lands to the east, all the way to India, but much

of that's hard to hang on to.

And in this era of Sukkot, there's going to be a guy arise, we're going to talk about

more in the next session, Antiochus Epiphanes.

He's a particular leader, he's not very important.

From a secular point of view, he's extremely important from a biblical point of view, and

we'll get into that.

But I want to focus very specifically on what's the most astonishing passage in the entire

Bible.

He's impacted my life as a teenager and never ceased to.

In those days, the materials that I was treated to by some friends were very rare and it was

unusual situation.

Today, the materials we're dealing with are readily available in any competent book source.

So you can check this all out.

It's absolutely astonishing.

Daniel chapter 9, a little bit of background, as you go into this, you want to understand

the history of the English Bible a little bit, the original Hebrew is sometimes called by

scholars of Borlaga, but in 285 BC, before Christ, it was translated into Greek.

In those days, Greek was being enforced as a language worldwide because the influence

of Alexander and his successors.

If you were Jewish, you probably didn't know Hebrew except for ceremonial purposes, much

as a Catholic knows Latin.

It wasn't a common language to you.

If you were Greek, if you were a Jew that was living in that world, you spoke Greek,

you had a desire to have your scriptures in your natural language, Greek.

Well, under Ptolemy Philadelphus in Alexandria, the primary literary capital of the world

in that time, he funded the translation of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Tanakh, what

we call the Old Testament, into Greek.

It took 15 years, and we called the result of that work the Septuagint.

It involved 70 scholars, some say 72 scholars, the best they could find to do the translation.

And so they called that translation the Septuagint, fancy word for 70.

It's usually abbreviated in Roman numeral 70, LXX.

But the point is we have that work product.

The Old Testament, as it existed three centuries before the ministry period of the New Testament,

it's in our hands.

Daniel was in black and white.

I want to emphasize that because you can set aside who wrote what book when?

Doesn't matter.

It was in black and white three centuries before the Gossip period.

In fact, it's the Septuagint that becomes the Christian's Bible.

Most of the quotes in the New Testament that are taken from the Old Testament are from

the Greek Old Testament, not the Hebrew.

So it's the Septuagint they're quoting from, interestingly enough.

And so I want you to be conscious of the fact that we've got 300 year anticipation of the New Testament here.

Now when four disciples come to Jesus for confidential briefing on a second coming,

he gives them a two chapter answer in Matthew.

So also we counted in Mark 13 and Luke 21.

And in that Jesus identifies the key event of end time prophecy.

He points them to the passage we're going to look at.

He says to the disciples, when ye therefore shall see the...

He first of all lists a bunch of things that are not signs.

This, that and the other thing will happen, but the end is not yet.

But then he gets to verse 15 of Matthew 24.

When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel in the prophet,

standing in the holy place, who so readeth let him understand,

then let them which be in Judea, flee into the mountains and you split and you split now.

He goes on for...

He explains that.

We'll go at that later.

But how many of you read that on the screen?

Have you seen that passage?

I did a turdie trick on you.

Because if you read that, you know, there's a part of this is written to you.

It says, who so readeth let him understand.

You're going to discover this gets a little technical,

but it's clearly the intent of Jesus Christ that his reader understand what he's pointing to here.

You with me?

And we'll talk about the abomination, desolation later, but I want you to notice this spoken of by Daniel the prophet.

Jesus Christ authenticates Daniel that he was a prophet and he specifically points to the verses

we're going to be looking at as the key to the end times.

And so let's just take a look at this.

Daniel 9 is the chapter with the interrupted prayer.

And at first 19 verses, Daniel is reading...

He's near the end of the 70-year period.

He's reading from the book of Jeremiah, and he's reading where Jeremiah predicts that the captivity would be for 70 years.

And he knows that the 70 years are almost over.

So what does Daniel do about it?

He goes to prayer.

See, we're supposed to do the same thing.

Most of when we get excited about the end time, boy, Jesus is coming soon.

What do we do about it?

What we're supposed to do is pray for it.

That's what's in the Lord's prayer.

Thy kingdom come.

That's a prayer.

Prayer is God's way of enlisting you in what he's doing.

Well, that's exactly Daniel sets that example and he goes in his prayer and

as frustrated we can't take the time to get into the prayer.

But even in the English translation, as you read it, by the time you get to verse 18 and 19,

you can feel Daniel tremble.

As you read it, you'll see the frequency of the verb start picking up.

You can just feel he's getting into a frenzy and his prayer is interrupted by the arrival

of a most unusual visitor.

Gabriel comes to see him.

We have two archangels that are super angels that have names and we know the job descriptions.

Michael and Gabriel.

Michael is always a military commander on behalf of Israel.

Gabriel is always an enunciator, always announcing something having to do with the

Messiah, whether it's to Daniel here or to Mary and Luke, whichever.

So Gabriel visits from verse 20 to 23 and he gives Daniel four verses that turn out to be the most

astonishing verses in the Bible.

They're known as the 70 weeks of Daniel from verse 24 through the end of the chapter, verse 27,

four verses.

70 weeks of Daniel.

Now there's 70 Shibuim.

I'll come back to that in a minute.

The first of the four verses is the scope.

The second of the four verses is 69 weeks.

Then we encounter an interval and then the 70th week.

Now this sounds pretty simple, but it's very important to understand that verse 25 compasses

20, 69 of the total weeks.

Verse 27 encompasses the last final missing week.

Verse 26 talks about things after verse 25, but before verse 27.

After verse 25, but before verse 27, thus we infer the weeks are not contiguous.

There's a gap.

There's an interval.

So once you understand that, it all flows and makes sense.

The first of the four is verse 24, the scope.

77s are determined upon my people, upon my holy city.

77, 70 Shibuim is what it's what it's what he's saying.

If I told you I've got to leave, I'll be back in a decade.

When would you expect me?

Ten years, exactly.

See, I didn't say years.

I just did a decade.

In Hebrew, they have a week of days.

We obviously familiar with that.

There's a week of weeks.

That's what Chavot is all about.

There's a week of months.

That's from Nai-san to Tishri or Tishri and Nai-san either way, is seven months.

And they also have a sabbatical year, seven years.

Six years, you can plow the land.

The seventh year you're supposed to leave it rest.

There's a rest for the land also.

So in the Jewish mind, there's all kinds of sevens.

But a week of years is a very common unit of measure.

When Jacob labored for his wives, he labored for seven years for one and seven years to the next one.

He had to fulfill her week as the expression in Genesis.

And so on it goes.

Well, anyway, so these are obviously weeks of years.

77s, 70 weeks of years, are determined, upon whom?

Get this. It's very important to know this right away.

Upon thy people in the holy city, this is nothing to do with the church.

It has to do with its Jewish.

Daniel is Jewish.

Upon thy people and upon thy holy city.

It's on the Jews in Jerusalem.

It says, sevens are determined, or reckoned, upon thy people, upon the holy city,

to do six things.

To finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for

iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision in the prophecy, and to anoint

the most holy place.

Now, we could spend some time going through each one of these, but it's pretty obvious

that at least as a group, they are not complete yet.

Have we made an end of sins?

Not so you'd notice.

Have we finished transgressing?

Pick up the daily paper, anytime.

Have we brought in everlasting righteousness?

And so on.

So the point is, when this happens, when the 77s are completed,

that's all she wrote.

There's a real sense of completion here.

Are you with me?

So it isn't complete yet.

So the next verse verse 25 deals with 69 of those weeks, and this is the one I want to focus on.

No therefore, Gabriel says to Daniel, no therefore I understand that from the going

forth of the commandment to restoring to build Jerusalem.

Daniel is in Babylon.

Jerusalem is in rubble, a couple hundred miles to the west.

But he knows that Jerusalem is, they're going to read the captivity is about over.

It has a destiny to be rebuilt.

Gabriel drops in and says, by the way, no therefore I understand that from the going

forth of the commandment to restoring to build Jerusalem unto the Mashiach Nagid, the Maziah,

the king shall be seven weeks and three score in two weeks and the street shall be

built again and the wall even in troubled times.

Now I want you to notice from unto, there are milestones.

It's the trigger, the beginning is a commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem.

Don't confuse that with the temple, the city's in view here, and I'll exclude that in a minute.

Onto the Mashiach Nagid, the word Nagid, is first use of Saul.

It's Maziah the king shall be seven plus, plus 62, three score in two.

And notice the Holy Spirit adds something here, the street shall be built again and the wall

even troubled times. Why did the Holy Spirit put that in there?

So you wouldn't get confused because it would be preceded by some decrees to rebuild the temple.

The issue here is not the temple, it's the city of Jerusalem.

The seventy-seven return upon by people and the holy city.

Now, so we have a mathematical prophecy from the commander starting to build Jerusalem

unto the Maziah the king shall be 69 weeks.

It turns out we're indebted to Sir Robert Anderson, the head of Scotland Yard.

His landmark study of 1894 where he recognized that in the Bible, for God's own reasons,

he deals in 360 day years. He does that in Genesis, he does that in Revelation.

And there's a whole thing behind that we can get into when you study Joshua and the orbits of Mars

and all that business, but I won't get in that here. We know that the biblical usage is 360 day

years and we're indebted to Sir Robert Anderson for unraveling this whole thing by recognizing

that particular thing. So 69 times seven times 360 turns out to be 173,880 days.

And you have to remember that number we'll get to that in a minute.

They say there's some of your Bible say say there are four decrees to rebuild Jerusalem,

Cyrus in 537, Darius, our exerts, He's 58, another one by the exerts, He's in 445.

And these are all referred to in your Bible by the way. But in verse 25, it spoke of Rahab,

the street and the wall or the moat. And those are Hebrew words, they have nothing to do with

the temple, they have to do with the city. It turns out that it's the city, not the temple that's

in view in Daniel's prophecy. So these first three are having to do with the temple, not with the city.

We're interested in the one by Artax, actually, he's launched in Monos in 445 BC.

So we know where that decree is, we know that from records that that was

on our calendar would be March 14th to 445 BC. The problem is, okay, great, when did Jesus allow

Himself to be presented as a king? Several times in the gospel period, they tried to take Him as a

king and He says, my hour is not yet come, He slips away. John 6 and some other places.

Then one day Jesus does something very bizarre, He not only permits it, He arranges it

to deliberately fulfill Zechariah 9.9. In Zechariah, the prophet said,

Rejoice, great, new daughter of Zion, shout, new daughter of Jerusalem, behold, thy king

cometh unto thee. He is just in having salvation, lowly, right in the ground of the ass. In fact,

a cult, the full of an ass. The king cometh unto thee, how will be recognized, writing this donkey.

And of course, we recognize that right away that as we look in Luke 19, when he's writing the donkey,

from Bethany up over the Mount of Olives, down through the Keaton Valley, Jerusalem.

And as they, as he does so, they lay down their palm branches in the coats and they sing

Psalm 118. In Luke 19 verse 38 says, they are saying, blessed be the king that cometh in the

name of the Lord, peace in heaven, glory in the highest. How many of you have heard the thing,

this is the day the Lord hath made, we shall rejoice and be glad in them? Sure, we've all heard

that and we apply it to any day and that's okay, but that's what it's about. That's Psalm 118

verse 26. The reason is it's talking about the day the Messiah presents Himself. They're singing

this song under these conditions. Now, anytime you and I, as Gentiles, not having a good Jewish

background, run the danger of missing something, the Pharisees come to our rescue. Any time they

get unglued, pay attention. Holy Spirit, should I tell us something? Because in the next verse,

it says, some of the Pharisees from among the Mounted said unto him that as the Messiah said,

master rebuke thy disciples. What are they upset about? Because they recognize that by

singing this Psalm under these conditions, they're declaring Him the Mosheukna Yeet.

And they assume He certainly doesn't want them to blaspheme. You follow the other picture? You see

why they're upset? They're declaring this guy the Messiah. The next verse, Jesus responds to

them very tactfully. He answered and said to them, I tell you that if these should hold their

peace, the stones would immediately cry out. And I'm one of these cynics, I wish they would have

shut up for a minute. See if that is just a figure of speech. And always tell our people when we're

on a tour, we go to, almost every year, we go to Israel. And like most tour groups, we will be

up in the Mount of Olives because there's a great picture out look over Jerusalem over the

Kedun Valley. And the next stop is usually to get seminy, which is the base of the Mount of Olives.

The buses will drop you up there for your pictures, but then you'll let you walk down that road to

get seminy, which is usually your next stop for a devotional before going on wherever. We'll always

tell the group before you get off the bus, take your pictures, but then you have opportunity to

get the best bargain in Israel. As you walk down that road to get seminy, pick up a couple of stones

put it in your pocket. And when you get home, mount them on a piece of wood for your den or your

desk at the office or wherever, and as a little, as a trophy. And when somebody is visiting, says,

what's that? Because that's one of the stones that didn't cry out. And you've got to explain

Daniel 9, you get it Luke 19, and they brought it up. The chronology of Christ's ministry should

understand that ministry began in the fall of 28 AD. How do we know that? Tiberius was appointed

in 14 AD. That means, see, Augustus died in August 19th, the 14 AD. And we know from Luke 3,

verse 1, that it was within the 15th year of Tiberius. To be in the 15th year, there's 14

behind him. So that's year 28 on reckoning. You follow me? And we know that the crucifixion

occurred to the fourth Passover, which would have been April 6th, the 32 AD. And so Robert

Anderson obviously nails all this down. There are other chronologies held by good scholars,

but most of them are contrived in order to support a Friday crucifixion. And there's a lot of

reasons. There's about at least three reasons from the Scripture that you could not have been

crucified on Friday. I won't get into all that here. We'll get into that later. But so the point is,

we know the trigger, the terminus odd quo as they call it, the degree of art exertion is

launched in March 14th of 445 BC. And we know the triumphal entry was on April 6th, the 32 AD.

What's interesting about this is that, by the way, just a frame of reference, the Septuagint

translation of the Old Testament occurs roughly where that on the third of the way there,

between the two. And in other words, 300 years earlier is the translation is in black and white.

So this is not contrived by some rabbis. This was in black and white before it happened.

Well, from 445 BC to 32 AD is 173,740 days, if you go through the arithmetic. From March 14th

April 6th, another 24 days, if you go through the leap of your calculations, another 116 days

to deal with, it turns out that adds up to, guess what? 173,000, 108 days. What was Gabriel's margin

of error? Five centuries in advance, he predicts the exact day that Jesus Christ presents himself

as the Mashiachnagi to Jerusalem. When you think that through, that is staggering proof

of just who Jesus Christ is. He is the Messiah of Israel. If you want to, the Messiah of Israel has

to be somebody that was killed before this date and conforms to all their other specifications.

Crucifixion of Christ was not a tragedy, it was an achievement,

fulfilling specifications that were laid down as early as Eden and following.

But it's not through. In Luke 19, Jesus, as he's coming up over the hill in the donkey,

when he's coming near, it says, he beheld the city and what did he do? He wept over it.

And notice what he says carefully. Wept over it saying, if thou hast known, even thou,

at least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace, but now they're hidden from their

eyes, he expected them to know this day. And because they didn't know it, they are now blinded.

Forever know, Paul will tell us they're blind at all until Romans 11, 25, till the fullest of the

Gentiles become in. This thy day, but now they're hidden from their eyes.

Then he goes on, he says, but for the days shall come upon thee, that the enemies shall cast

the trench about thee and compass thee round and keep thee in on every side and shall lay thee

even with the ground and thy children within thee, and they shall not leave in thee one stone

upon another. And indeed, the Roman legions, the fifth, tenth, twelfth, and fifteenth Roman

legions, thirty-eight years later, is very interesting that when Israel failed to take charge

the land at Kedish Barnia, they were destined to wander in the land for thirty-eight years.

We say forty and round figures, but it's thirty-eight years. It's interesting that because they didn't

recognize their Messiah, thirty-eight years later, the Roman legions, they sieged, slaughter over

a million inhabitants, men, women, and children. Another half a million died due to the pestilence

that followed. Why was Jerusalem destroyed in seventy-eight-e, the biggest one of the biggest

mouths on the Jewish calendar? Why was Jerusalem destroyed in seventy-eight-e? There are a lot of

good answers to that. Let's look at Jesus' answer, the rest of that verse. Because thou knew us not

the time of that visitation. You know, that's chilling. Jesus held them accountable.

I personally believe you hold us accountable too. We've had a lot more light than they did,

and I think he holds us accountable too. They knew it's not the time of visitation.

The next verse talks about the interval, after a three-score and two-week shall the Messiah be

cut off, karate. But not for himself, and the people of the Prince that shall come shall destroy

the city in the sanctuary. In the end there shall be with the flood, and to the end of the war

the desolations are determined. Cut out to be executed for a capital crime. The Messiah is

going to be killed. The essence says so in the Old Testament. Daniel says there are several places.

Daniel 926, Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, etc. It also introduces another character, the Prince that shall

come. We know who the people were that destroyed the city of sanctuary, but here they describe as

the people of the Prince that shall come. The Prince that shall come is one of 33 titles in the

Old Testament of a coming world leader. We tend to call him the Antichrist.

Who are the people of the Prince that come? The Romans. That's why we think the Prince is a

Roman. That doesn't mean he's from Western Europe. We have other evidence to indicate that he's

an Assyrian from the Roman Empire as it's extended in the old days. So we have this interval,

during which the crucifixion takes place. It takes place four days after the event of the donkey.

The temple is destroyed. More than 38 years, we've got 2,000 that we've experienced before the

70th. This is the last final week. So this interval, by the way, is implied in 24 different

verses throughout the Bible. The 24th is a very interesting number because it's also a symbol of

the church from Revelation. The intervals defined, as I mentioned from Luke 1942 to Romans 11, 25,

and it's the period of the church. That's an era that's kept secret in the Old Testament

pretty much. Paul explains in Ephesians 3, the church was born at Pentecost and there are prerequisites

for the church, the atonement, the resurrection, and the ascension all had to precede it. Spiritual

gifts are only given after the ascension. So there's a whole ecclesiological, a study of ecclesiology

that's necessary here. But let's move on. The last verse of Daniel 9, and he, that is the Prince

of Shilkam, if it's the pronoun always refers to the last mentioned antecedent, which was of course

the Prince of Shilkam. Shilkam enforced the covenant with the many. It's the idiom for Israel for one

week, the final week. And in the midst of that week, he will cause the sacrifice and ablation to cease

that causes us to infer that somehow the covenant that's enforcing allowed them to indulge in

their sacrifice and ablation. So we know the temple standing by the time you get to the middle of the

week. We don't know when the temple is built, it could be built during the first half of that week

of years or even earlier, who knows? But he desecrates it here. He causes the sacrifice and ablation to

cease. Paul details this for you in 2 Thessalonians 2 and elsewhere. And for the overspreading of

abominations, he shall make a desolate even unto the consummation. And that determined shall be

poured upon the desolate. And so ends Daniel 9. In this verse we find times and half of time.

That's it. We find that in Daniel 725, Daniel 12 7, Revelation 1214. So half, the half weeks are

called three and a half years, some places, 42 months, other places, 1260 days, the Holy Spirit

is the most documented period of time in the Old Testament and those documented period of time

in the New Testament. The strange two half weeks of years. And so, in fact, every detail in the

scriptures by design, when you get to John 10, right in the middle of John 10, the Jesus is giving

us the good shepherd discourse. But right in the middle it says it was Jerusalem at the Feast of

Dedication and it was winter. And if you're a normal, you know, normal human being, you go

and read on. But if you've been to one of my Bob's studies, you're no longer a normal well-adjusted

human being. You know that everything is there is there deliberately. Why the Holy Spirit wants

you to know that it was Jerusalem, the Feast of Dedication, and it was winter. Well, what

dedication could that be? Solomon's Temple was dedicated in the fall, according to 1 Kings 8.

The second temple, the trouble temple, was dedicated in the spring, according to Ezra 6.

What temple occurred in the winter? The rededication of the temple and the 25th of

Kislev, when celebrating the rededication, subsequent to Anataiic Epiphanes,

desecrating it. That happened two centuries before Jesus made the remark and we're going to talk

about that. There's a very peculiar event called the Abomination of Desolation. They will talk more

about the next session. It ushers in a period of time, a time of trouble as the world has never

seen to that time where everyone would see again. And Jesus himself labels the great tribulation by

quoting from Daniel 12. And the two halves of that week, as I say, are documented many, many times

over. And Jesus says that in this discussion with the disciples, there should be great tribulations

that was not since the beginning of the world this time, wherever it shall be. And except those

days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved. But for He likesake, those days shall

be shortened. He's quoting from Daniel 12. We haven't gotten there yet, but it says that time

shall Michael stand up, the great prince which stand up for the children of thy people, and there

shall be a time of trouble such as never since. There was a nation even to that same time, and at

that time thy people shall be delivered every one that shall be found written in the book.

And Jesus says in another place, in Oseo, He says, I will go and return to my place till they acknowledge

their offense and seek my face. In their affliction they will seek me earnestly. In order for him to

return, he must have left his place, right? So even though that's in Oseo, the last verse of chapter

5, it's obviously referring to the return of Jesus Christ. And of course, the end of the week,

of course, we have the Second Coming, and we have the gathering of the church, and there's a number

of different views. Some feel that the gathering of the church is at the end of the seven years,

some feel it's in the middle, some a little later in the middle. We hold the view ourselves that

it's before the 70-week even starts, in fact by a short distance ahead probably. There are good

scholars supporting each one of these, and we will discuss the pros and cons of each one of these

later in the study. But we do know that 69 weeks are behind us. The 70th week we believe for lots

of indicators are not far away, so it's an exciting time. You might be interested to know that the

490 years that are represented by the 70 weeks is the fourth such period in digital history,

because if you take the period from Abraham to the Exodus and subtract out the years that they

were in disfavor, it was 505 years from, on the one hand, but just take out the 15 years that

it was, Ishmael was a usurper, in effect, you have 490 years. If you go from Exodus to the temple,

601 years, but if you subtract out the servitudes of the judges, which are 111 years, you again get

this interesting number of 490 years. You go from the temple to the Edict of Artaxerxes,

you again have 560 years, but you subtract the 70 years the Babylonian captivity, you have,

again, 490 years. And of course, from Artaxerxes to the first avenue, the 69 weeks,

plus the 70th week we don't know the interval. The interval is rules aside for the moment.

So this is, I think first, I was first noticed by Clarence Larkin back in 1919, but it's an

interesting possibility I shared before you. Okay. Daniel 10 will give us a glimpse of the dark side,

a very brief episode here. It's a prelude to the final two chapters of the book. Daniel fasts

for 21 days. An angel is sent. When he gets there, he points out he was withstood for 21 days

by a creature called the Prince of the Kingdom of Persia, one of Satan's hosts. And he can't

get through until Michael comes and helps him when assisted by Michael, the chief prince.

And he's explaining to Daniel, he's going to give him a subsequent vision. That'll be

Daniel the last two verses, the last two chapters of Daniel, Daniel 11 and 12. And then he'll have

to go back and deal with that, the Prince of Persia. And then he also have to deal with the Prince of

the power of Greece. This is just a glimpse, but we get the impression here that there are

demonic hosts behind each of the major world empires. After all, this Satan's world, isn't it?

But you can't help, it doesn't say this, but you can't help but wonder, is there a linkage

between Daniel's fast and his ability to get through? Daniel fasts for 21 days. He was set

when Daniel started and he gets through after the 21 days to give him these visions that are coming.

You sort of wonder what would have happened if Daniel stopped as fast after 19 days?

Is there anything, is there a link between them? We don't know, it's suggested, isn't it?

Of course, anyway, the empire gets divided in chapter 11. And we have the detail, as I mentioned

to you before, of the period between the Testaments. And I won't take you through these, but there's

half a dozen Ptolemaic dynasties that fight with half a dozen Antiochus dynasties. And they're

so deep, the first, verses 5 and 35 are so detailed that the experts have had to try to say that

Daniel must have been late dated. And it was in Ptolemaic, Ptolea, by the way, that Septuagint was

translated and so on. But so the detailed profiles there, and it also includes the last few verses,

give us a detailed background on this coming world leader, which we'll be taking up in a

subsequent session. But the Bible has over 8,000 predictive verses on almost 2,000 predictions on

over 700 different matters, according to one categorization by Jay Parton Baines and Encyclo

PDF, Biblical Prophecy. In other words, the Bible is largely prophetic. And as we look around the

world today, we see major themes in Israel, Jerusalem, the temple, Babylon, Russia, the rise of China,

the emergence of European superstate. And while this is going on, tied towards ecumenical religion,

let's all get together. A global government tied on the horizon, and of course the rise of the

occult. Each one of these is predicted in the scripture, each one of these is measurably

emerging on a horizon. Not one of them, it's not some one little thing, it's all of them,

the tide of each one of them is clearly setting the stage for the big climax coming.

Here's the challenge I want to give you, and if I put this challenge on the board, I want you

to, if you accept us, you flunk. I want you to challenge this briefing I'm putting on here.

I believe we are being plunged into a period of time about which the Bible says more than it does

about any other period of time in human history, including the time that Jesus walked the shores

of Galilee, or climbed the mountains of Judea. Now that's preposterous, but to Charles,

you've got to do two things. You've got to find out what the Bible says about these things. Now

with Chuck Misdler, whoever, what the Bible says about these things. The second thing you've got

to do used to be hard, it's not today. Find out what's going on. You won't know the 10 o'clock news.

We have a media that takes pride in shaping opinions rather than informing them. Most of our major

media, prostituted themselves in the last election by presenting information they knew was untrue

in their overt attempt to topple a sitting president. Now the media has their own agenda.

They take pride in shaping opinion rather than informing it. But there are ways to find things

out. There's the alternative press. There's talk radio. The internet is an incredible resource.

Not everything on the internet is reliable, but there are incredibly reliable sources on the

internet. Check it out. And the more you know about your Bible and the more you know about

what's going on in the world, the more you'll begin to see that we are converging to the big

climax. And the ultimate issue of course is that you and I are in possession of an extraterrestrial

message. And it portrays us as both the pawns and the prize of an unseen warfare. And our eternal

destiny depends upon a relationship with the ultimate victor in this cosmic conflict.

Where do you stand with respect to him? Now in the next session we'll talk about the decree of

Cyrus that's a very colorful thing that will blow you away. We'll talk about Ezra, the rebuilding

of Temple and the book of Nehemiah which focuses on the building of Jerusalem. And we'll talk about

one of the most colorful dramas in the Bible, the Book of Esther. It'll have some, it's quite a

drama, very colorful. It also hidden underneath the text are some surprises that we'll share with you

and then we'll talk a little bit about the intertestment period in the next session.