Daniel; The stone and the statue

reply to post by radpetey

Nevertheless, the prophecy is there for a purpose and the purpose is communication, so the task of trying to understand what God wants us to know has to be attempted.

God does not want the meaning of these prophecies to be hidden, because if he wanted it to be hidden he would not have given them in the first place.

Originally posted by DISRAELI
reply to post by radpetey

 

Nevertheless, the prophecy is there for a purpose and the purpose is communication, so the task of trying to understand what God wants us to know has to be attempted.

God does not want the meaning of these prophecies to be hidden, because if he wanted it to be hidden he would not have given them in the first place.

No.....I totally agree!! I was saying that no amount of human understanding will unlock all the mysteries

reply to post by radpetey

At least we're understanding each other, then.
Thank you for your comments.

Incidentally, I agreed with your approval of the comments of Stupidgirl.

Originally posted by radpetey
One thing I have gleaned over the years is that God's eternal purpose is a precious thing;. And he does not just divulge that information to just anyone.

Countless people have tried to figure it out(end time prophecy) over the years, but very few have even touched the surface. Most of the motivation for this quest for prophetic knowledge is simply pride, and the desire to make a whole lot of money through a book deal or what have you.

If you want the goods....it will only cost you your whole life. But believe me....it's worth it!

HE is worth it!!

WHOO-HOOT!! I kno'dat's right......LOL.

Issac Newton comes to mind. Obscenely brilliant, and devoted more of his time to understanding the mysteries of the Christian faith than he did researching natural science.
Crazy smart, the dude basically developed modern calculus, and spent much of his personal time in isolation.....trying to figure out the Bible. Regardless, even his ginormous brain efforts were frustrated.
I don't know the heart of Newton, thus I have no idea of his motives behind such an investment of understanding, but even if they were entirely pure and only for God's glory, it simply may have been the wrong time.
The sealing of some Biblical prophecy to only be understood at the time it is applicable could very well be because there was simply no way to explain our modern world. Poor Ezekiel.....could you imagine trying to articulate the throne of God in relation to space and time and worm holes and physics and kinetics and dimensions and the illusory value of all-that-and-then-there-and-such-and-so-forth?? How would you even explain plasma back then?
Good grief, we're lucky the poor man was able to give us a wheel covered in eyeballs.

Here is a link to a good study on this subject. If you scroll down closer to the bottom of the page, there is a picture of the statue explaining which kingdoms are represented by the different parts of the statue.

www.remnantofgod.org...

reply to post by jeramie

Your link follows the line of interpretation that tries to identify the "ten toes" with ten specific nations (offering two different versions of the attempt).
You will see from one of my earlier posts that I don't think the attempt is necessary.

I regard "ten" as the number of "completeness", so the presence of "ten toes" here and "ten kings" in Revelation simply means that they encompass the whole world.
In the same way as "70" in the Bible or Jewish traditions is actually "7" (the number of God) multiplied by "10" (the number of completeness), indicating the work of God extending through the whole world.

Alexander as the fourth kingdom?

This theory is popular in academic circles, because it makes it possible to think that the writer of Daniel was just describing what he knew from history.
I can see a number of objections, though..
For one thing, it isn’t obvious why God’s people should have any animus against the entire realm of Alexander, so that the stone should be directed against it.
The real hostility was to the Seleucids in Syria, the line of Antiochus Epiphanes. But if the fourth kingdom is Alexander, the line of Antiochus is demoted to being one of the toes, at most- a very insignificant position.

Another problem is that this theory needs to find two empires to fill the gap between Babylon and Alexander.
This means that “the Medes” and “the Persians” have to be identified as two distinct empires.
But this treatment of their empire is quite unhistorical. It was a joint empire, dominated by the Medes in the early days, and then ruled by a Persian dynasty.

And there isn’t any real evidence for the claim that the author of Daniel, at least, took them to be separate empires.
It finds no support in the “animal” imagery of the seventh chapter.
The second animal, the lopsided bear, is a much better match for the lopsided Medo-Persian empire than it would be for the Medes on their own.
The winged leopard with four heads is a much better match for the fast-moving realm of Alexander, which then broke into four parts, than it would be for the Persians on their own.

In the fifth chapter, Belshazzar is told that his kingdom is given to “the Medes and the Persians”, not just the Medes.
In fact the word “PERES” points to the Persians on their own.
Admittedly the end of the chapter does say that the conquest was made by Darius the Mede, but that only confirms how little the writer distinguished between the two groups.
Finally, in the sixth chapter, the laws of Darius are described as the laws “of the Medes and the Persians”, which is exactly how they should have been described on the understanding that they were a joint empire.

In short, the theory that Alexander was the fourth kingdom does not work as an explanation of the writer’s intended meaning.

reply to post by stupid girl


dangit...stupid girl ..you are so cerebral....
yep, what you wrote, primarily......then I was just thinking out loud remembering what Jesus might of meant by : "as in the times of Noah"
you Texas women are so smart.....and therefore by default.....fun to talk with.

I suppose the main reason for the times of Noah to be mentioned, from a Scriptural standpoint....is the need to get rid of the bad mix of .....what Disraeli wrote.....DNA. number two....the morality going wild.


ETA about prophecy...yes so important....1/3 of the Scripture is prophecy and there is part of our hope, Of Faith, Hope and Love. there's more(Jesus said learn the parable....), but discovering the roles in our lives of Faith, Hope and Love....

reply to post by DISRAELI


Yes, the Harlot is most likely the Vatican. The Vatican is making much effort to make peace with Islam. If some sort of wacky, crazy, almost unbelievable thing happened to make the Vatican more apathetic to Islam, say, something that would seem of mutual beneficial interest, then it seems reasonable that the Vatican would continue to whore itself by assuming superficial 'support' of Sharia Islam.
Of course, this joint endeavor would only last briefly, long enough for the Vatican to serve its purpose of justifying Islam, then it will be destroyed.
Then it will be checkmate, and only one King left on the board.

And I say Vatican, rather than Catholic. There is a difference, IMO.

reply to post by stupid girl


Did you know I've been battling the Vatican bunch for 30 years now.....Spiritual war....but that even manifested in the physical....I grew up in North Irving, Texas.....home of the cistercians outpost.....they shot 22's at me and Debby.....they were chanting to a fire on the hill.....with drum and tambourines...My brother in law worked for them, they had pot plants in the south windows anyone could see who went there....and they would get drunk and smash their cars.....laughing about it......and finally they're in cahoots with the jesuit order....which means....big time evil. you know all that gold the spanish boated back to the homeland?....the evil leaders took it all from spain in the 1700's....that gold really belongs to the everyday average members of the catholic church, not the few evil spiritual principalities in high places.

reply to post by stupid girl

Just to spell out, then;
I take it you're identifying Islam as the Beast?
It's a workable combination.

Nabonidus as the fourth kingdom?

Commentators will sometimes pick up on the point that the golden head is identified as Nebuchadnezzar, not as the Babylonian kingdom.
They will correct anyone who says “the gold head is Babylon”.
Yet nobody seems to follow through and consider the possibility that the other three “kingdoms” are also meant for individual kings.
In that case, they would seem to represent the last four kings of the Babylonian empire, as follows;
Gold- Nebuchadnezzar
Silver- Amel-Marduk, son of Nebuchadnezzar
Bronze- Neriglissar- brother-in-law of Amel-Marduk
Iron- Nabonidus.
Nabonidus had the short-lived son of Neriglissar murdered and swept away the old ruling house, which is enough to qualify him as the ruler of iron who crushed his predecessors.
He was the last king of Babylon, though (Belshazzar was his son and would have been under his authority). During his reign, the realm was falling apart, and that’s what gives us the division and the “feet of clay”.
On that interpretation, the entire statue would represent the Babylonian empire, while the stone would represent the Medo-Persian power, which overthrew Babylon on God’s behalf; the same idea as at the beginning of Isaiah ch45.
That could have been the original concept of the story, as a first reaction to the fall of Babylon.
After that, of course, history moved on, and Persia was found not to be the final kingdom.
Obviously my main line of interpretation, in the OP, is based on what the chapter now means as part of the larger context of the book of Daniel.
In other words, I’m pursuing the meaning intended by the writer of Daniel as the book now stands.

One state?

A popular theory based on the ten toes looks to see a “kingdom” formed by bringing ten states together.
But if the detail of the toes is going to be pressed, it needs to be pressed accurately.
When you look down the human body from top to bottom, your survey of the body ends at the toes. The toes don’t lead into anything else.
So the real message of the ten toes, if there is one, is that the divided state of the fourth kingdom ends in permanent fracture and division

But readers of Revelation will say “what about the kingdom of the Beast”?
Admittedly I’ve described the first Beast, myself, as a “world-state”.
On the other hand, I’m beginning to see, there’s no sign that he rules the world as a unified state.
We’re told that the “ten kings” (that number again) “give over their power and authority to the Beast” (Revelation ch17 v12), but they’re also continuing to rule.
In other words, though the Beast dominates the world, he’s not controlling it by direct rule.
His dominion over most of the world comes through indirect rule, by means of his ability to control “client” kings, the rulers of the continuing fragments.



Not directly relevant, just saving for future reference.
en.wikipedia.org...

This link below is worth a moment of consideration.

It is the U.N. plan to divide the world into 10 regions....Have fun reading this garbage!!

nuclearsuntan.blogspot.com...

reply to post by radpetey

Thank you.
At least they cover the whole world, which chimes in with my own take on it.
But yes, trying to pull in every association they can find does tend to turn the blog into garbage.

Originally posted by DISRAELI
reply to post by radpetey

 

Thank you.
At least they cover the whole world, which chimes in with my own take on it.
But yes, trying to pull in every association they can find does tend to turn the blog into garbage.

I actually meant the U.N.'s commie/socialist/fascist global utopia they have planned for the masses.....a.k.a. Agenda 21

Did I misunderstand what you meant by blog?

reply to post by radpetey

No, sorry, I misunderstood what you were describing as "garbage", and noted that they were dragging in speculative maps from 1942 etc which never came into effect.

reply to post by DISRAELI


my focus is on this paragraph item:

In the king’s dream, the statue has an adversary, the second actor in this drama.
There is a stone “not cut by human hands”, which means that it comes from God.
The fact that the stone is “cut” means that it’s a building stone, taken from a quarry, not a pebble picked up from the ground.
That stone is able to crush the statue, absolutely, and then grow into a great mountain which fills the earth.

i have a simpler explaination of the 'stone not cut by human hands"
this is identifying a asteroid from outer space...

and the stone smashing the statue means an ELE (extinction-level-event) to befall the Planet

a soon to be ELE which wipes out all civilization, commerce-trade, governments, history, technology, financial systems...
all of this 15.000 years post ice age is reduced to ashes, and nature will recycle the rest as rust, oxidized and deteriorated stuff, to be broken down into nurtients for bacteria and plant life....

Originally posted by DISRAELI
reply to post by radpetey

 

No, sorry, I misunderstood what you were describing as "garbage", and noted that they were dragging in speculative maps from 1942 etc which never came into effect.

edit on 14-2-2013 by DISRAELI because: (no reason given)

Not yet anyway....give it another couple of years!

2nd.

reply to post by St Udio

I'm not sure that your explanation is simpler.
This stone has been "cut".
Building stones are "cut"; asteroids are not.

Also this "stone" is explicitly, in v44, identified with the kingdom of the God of heaven, which will never be destroyed.
An asteroid is not the kingdom of the God of heaven.