Dan 11DaDad said:Please allow the following synopsis:
Daniel 11
Daniel 11 is NOT an ancient prophecy.
1. The 10:1 context demands a Babylonian era.
2. Darius was the LAST Babylonian king, thus he had to be "strengthened".
3. The "three more" and "fourth" speak to the Silver - Medo/Persian; Bronze - Grecian; Iron - Roman; and Clay - "divided".
4. Newton readily discounted a Hellenistic fulfillment, and wrote a Roman fulfillment which also failed. Thus he refused to publish.
5. The prophecy is contiguous. (I.e., there is no "pause" between an ancient fulfillment and an end-time fulfillment.)
6. Daniel 2:39 explains the significance of "Greece".
7. Daniel's Chapters 5, 6, & 9 confirm Darius as a Babylonian king.
8. Daniel 7 agrees that the Lion, Bear, & Leopard (actually a "Tiger") are concurrent, corresponding with the King of the South, the King of the North, and the Kings of the East.
9. Daniel 7 agrees that the "dreadful" will be judged, corresponding with the verse 45 "he", -- United Nations --, judgement.
10. History confirms the Scriptural specifics as a modern interpretation.
1, While you are correct that v.1 establishes the dating for the vision, the Man in Linen (Jesus) says in 10:14 that it concerns the future yet to come.
2. If you're trying to reference "gabar" in Daniel 9:27, you're relying on a flawed King James Version for that word meaning.
3. Negative. The fourth is Alexander the Great and the four kingdoms which result formed afterward during the Greek reign. The generational battles of the Ptolemy and Seleucids over a 150 years are covered in so much succinct detail in vv 5-30, that critics of Daniel cite it as being historical rather than prophetic.
4. Newton is not the defining word on Bible commentary and he's not here to present and defend his ideas.
5. Negative. Gabriel inserts three events which happen after the one 'seven.' The first is the cutting off of the Messiah. The second happened nearly forty years later with the destruction of the city and the sanctuary. The third is still ongoing - war will continue until the end of the one 'seven.' War is still with us today. Gaps exist in prophecy all the time in the Bible. No one narrative complete in listing everything that will happen.
6. The fact that Greek conquered the "whole" world relates only to its affect as it pertains to Israel and its surrounding environs. Neither China, who had just as great as an empire was affected, nor were the Americas or sub-Sahara Africa affected. You have to be careful being a Western-trained person in the technical language of English to read Hebrew in an ultra-literal, legalistic manner. Their standards are not ours. The fact as stated in the Bible is true even though Greece didn't conquer the WHOLE world - AND this does not make Greece the fourth terrible beast. Greece already has an animal symbol for it: the goat, which is a clean animal by the way...
7. And the point you are trying to make is?
8. Actually, none of the reference books I have, the NASB Exhaustive Concordance, Brown-Driver-Briggs, nor Strongs' define the Aramaic H5245 any different than they do H5246 - it is a leopard. You're alone in saying it's a tiger. You will stay that way as I will not join you on just the basis of what you say. Furthermore, I disagree that the three animals in Daniel 7 equate to three directional Kingdoms of the end-times. In Rev 13:2, they are shown to make up the fourth terrible beast, and in Daniel 7:12, the component nations of that greater federation survive the decapitation of the fourth when the anti-Christ and false prophet are captured alive at Armageddon. The King of the North must be victorious at that battle before Jesus and the 144,000 defeat him so as to gain the whole world.
9. While both are speaking of the anti-Christ, you're entirely on your own to assign the United Nations to that role. I do not agree with you. Isaiah 14 describes a single person trudging through the land of the dead on his way to eternal damnation.
10. This statement of yours has no particular point to address; it is just your conclusion in favor of your brand of eschatology, whatever that may be (I don't know - yet).