BEING HUMAN MEANS A SIMPLE LIFE WITH GOOD FAITH AND ACTION
Modern Conditions Were
Foretold in Scripture Many Centuries Ago
The ability to kill so many—all
humanity
even—did not exist until the
proliferation of
nuclear weapons in the later 20th
century.
A Jewish state in the
Holy Land
controlling Jerusalem.
In the late first
and early second centuries,
the Romans ex-
pelled the Jews
from their homeland. Yet the
book of Daniel
had foretold an
end-time Jewish
sanctuary defilement and interruption
of sacrifices in Jerusalem —meaning there must first be a sanctuary and
sacrifices in place (Daniel 12:10-11;
compare
8:13; 9:27; 11:31).
There was a prototype fulfillment of
these
events in the second century B.C., but
Jesus
made it clear that Daniel’s prophecy
about the
defilement of the holy place pointed
mainly to a
yet future event that would precede the
end-time
Great Tribulation (Matthew
24:15-22)—saying,
“Then let those who are in Judea flee
to the
mountains” (verse 16).
For nearly 2,000 years, a Jewish state
controlling Jerusalem seemed impossible,
with the Jews scattered and the Holy
Land in
Muslim hands. Yet the Jews remarkably
were
never assimilated into the peoples
among
whom they were scattered. And, at long
last, against seemingly overwhelming
odds,
they were able to return to their
homeland
and then to set up and maintain a
Jewish
state—an amazing fulfillment of
prophecy.
(For more information, see our free
booklets
Are We Living in the Time of the End?
and
The Middle East in Bible Prophecy.)
The rise of Britain and
the United
States as world powers.
To the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob God promised great national blessings.
Genesis 35:11 says that the national
birthright
blessings would be realized through “a
nation
and a company of nations.”
Genesis 48-49 shows that this
birthright
was passed on to Jacob’s son Joseph and
his
sons Ephraim and Manasseh—with Ephraim
destined to become the company of
nations
and Manasseh destined to become a great
single nation. Further, these blessings
would
be fulfilled “in the last days”—near
the end of
this age of man.
The magnitude of the blessings
described
in these and other passages were never
realized by Israel in the Holy Land. Instead, the
northern tribes of Israel—including
Ephraim
and Manasseh—were eventually deported
by the invading Assyrians. Clues in
secular
history and various prophecies reveal
that the
so-called lost tribes migrated to
northwestern
Europe. The British Empire and
Commonwealth
is evidently representative of modern
Ephraim,
while Manasseh is today the United
States of
America—these nations’ wealth and
geopolitical standing matching the Bible’s promises
that they would rise to be the dominant
nations
of the world. As Britain dominated the
globe in
the 19th century, so did America in the
20th.
(To learn more about this, be sure to
read our
free booklet
The United States and Britain in
Bible Prophecy.)
Is the Bible True?
pagan temple in the
eastern part of his kingdom. His action so enraged
local inhabitants that
they killed him, bringing him to an inglorious end
(verse 19).
Ver se 2 0 :
According to 2 Maccabees
3:7-40, Antiochus’ other son,
Seleucus IV,
was also financially
distressed by the tribute to Rome
(2 Maccabees is an
apocryphal book that reports on these events). Seleucus sent one of his chief
officials,
Heliodorus,
to collect taxes, even
through plundering the
temple at Jerusalem. Heliodorus went to the holy
city but obtained
nothing. Seleucus was later poisoned by Heliodorus
and was thus killed—“but
not in anger or in battle.”
Antiochus Epiphanes
Daniel 11:21-35:
These verses speak of the
infamous
Antiochus IV
(Epiphanes),
the brother of Seleucus
IV,
who had earlier been
taken
hostage to Rome. He was a
“tyrannical oppressor who
did his utmost to destroy
the
Jewish religion
altogether”
Antiochus passed laws
that forbade the practice
of
the Jewish religion under
penalty of death. He was
a
man of incredible
cruelty.
On his orders “an aged
Scribe, Eleazar, was
flogged
to death because he
refused
to eat swine’s flesh. A
mother and her seven children were successively
butchered, in the
presence of the governor, for refusing to pay homage
to an image. Two mothers
who had circumcised their new-born sons
were driven through the
city and cast headlong from the wall” (Charles
Pfeiffer,
Between the Testaments,
This refers to the
momentous events of Dec. 16, 168 B.C.,
when a crazed Antiochus
entered Jerusalem and killed 80,000 men,
women and children (2
Maccabees 5:11-14). He then desecrated the temple by offering a sacrifice of
swine to the chief Greek god, Zeus. This
outrage was a forerunner
of a comparable event that Jesus Christ said
would occur in the last
days (Matthew 24:15).
These verses appear to
describe, on one level, the
indomitable will and
courage of the
Maccabees,a family of
priests who
resisted Antiochus and
his successors. The Maccabees’ revolt against
the Syrian king was
triggered when “Mattathias, the leading priest
in the city of Modein .
.
.
, after killing the
officer of Antiochus who had
come to enforce the new
decree concerning idolatrous worship .
.
.
, led
a guerrilla band that
fled to the hills”
Mattathias was aided in
his cause by five sons, most notably Judah or
Judas, nicknamed
Maqqaba
(Aramaic for “hammer,”
whence derives the
name Maccabees). Many of
these patriots died in this cause, but their
heroics ultimately drove
the Syrian forces from the country.
On another level, these
verses evidently refer to the New Testament
Church, with their
references to mighty works, persecution and apostasy
continuing “until the
time of the end” .
Indeed, with the explicit
reference to the end time, Daniel’s prophecy
definitely takes on a
different tone at this point. To quote
Expositor’s :
“With the conclusion of
the preceding pericope , the
predictive material that
incontestably applies to the Hellenistic empires
and the contest between
the Seleucids and the Jewish patriots ends. This
present section contains some features that hardly apply to
Antiochus IV, though most
of the details could apply to him as well as
to his latter-day
antitype, ‘the beast.’”
Liberal and conservative
scholars “agree that all of chapter 11 up to
this point contains
strikingly accurate predictions of the whole sweep
of events from the reign
of Cyrus ... to the unsuccessful effort of
Antiochus Epiphanes to
stamp out the Jewish faith” .
Interpreting the prophetic evidence
These scholars differ,
however, on what this means. Speaking of the
two viewpoints, Archer
says that to conservative scholars “this pattern of
prediction and
fulfillment [serves as] compelling evidence of the divine
inspiration and authority
of the Hebrew Scriptures, since only God could
possibly foreknow the
future and see to it that his announced plan would
be precisely fulfilled.
To the rationalists, however, who begin with the
premise that there is no
personal God .
.
.
, there is no possibility
of a
genuine fulfillment of
prophecy .
.
.
“All biblical instances
of fulfilled prophecy must be accounted for
as pious fraud in which
only after the event takes place has the fiction
recording its prediction
been devised .
.
.
This is what rationalists
have
to say about all
predictive portions anywhere in the Bible. For them there
can be no such thing as
divine revelation of events to come. Otherwise
they must surrender their
basic position and acknowledge the possibil
-
ity of the supernatural,
as demonstrated by detailed fulfillment of events
The Jewish priest Mattathias triggered a
rebel
-
lion against Antiochus Epiphanes when
he
violently resisted the king’s enforced
idolatry.
The Bible and Prophecy
Woodcut by Gustave Doré
Is the Bible True?
65
foretold, as here in
Daniel, by a prophet of God more than 360 years
in advance”.
What this is saying is
that those who dispute even the possibility
of the existence of Bible
prophecy do it because they want to deny the
supernatural; they want
to deny
even the existence
of a God who is able
to foretell events down
to the smallest details.
Some atheists admit that
they reach their conclusions because they
simply do not want God
telling them how to live.
For instance, Aldous
Huxley wrote in
Ends and Means
of his bias:
“I had motives for not
wanting the world to have a meaning; conse
-
quently assumed that it
had none, and was able without any difficulty to
find satisfying reasons
for this assumption .
.
.
The philosopher who finds
no meaning in the world
is not concerned exclusively with a problem in
pure metaphysics; he is
also concerned to prove that there is no valid
reason why he personally
should not do as he wants to do, or why his
friends should not seize
political power and govern in the way that they
find most advantageous to
themselves.”
He continued, “For myself
.
.
.
the philosophy of
meaninglessness was
essentially an instrument
of liberation .
.
.
We objected to the
morality
because it interfered
with our sexual freedom
How much more plainly can
it be said? People deny the authority of
the Bible because they do
not want God telling them what to do. But for
those who are willing to
see, the truth is clear. God alone can foretell the
future and then bring it
to pass. It stands as irrefutable proof of His exis
-
tence and of the divine
origin of the Bible for those willing to look into
it, accept it and believe
Him.
And in Isaiah 45:21-22 He challenges us to do just that: “Who
foretold this long ago,
who declared it from the distant past? Was it not
I, the
Lord? And there is no God apart from me, a righteous God and
a Savior; there is none
but me. Turn to me and be saved, all you ends
of the
earth; for I am God, and there is no other.”
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