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Reformation Day Deadline
Daniel's 70 "Weeks" -- Is Time Up after October
31, 2007?
Phil Maxwell (January 18, 2006; Revised November
11, 2007)
Seventy weeks [490 years] have been decreed for your
people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin,
to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal
up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most holy place. Then ...the
people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary.
And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war;
desolations are determined. (Daniel 9:24-26 NASB)
I doubt that the 490th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant
Reformation this October 31 will catch as much public notice as the Halloween
festivities of the same day, but maybe it should. This is because there is
substantial cause to believe that the Reformation marked the beginning of
Daniel’s prediction of a 490 year countdown that would end in great destruction
against the people of God in the world, beginning, I believe, with a six-prong
nuclear attack against the United States of America.
As much as I don’t want this to be true, this is as reasonable an interpretation
as I’ve heard of passages like Daniel 9:24-27, Revelation 17-18, Ezekiel 9, etc.
Most recognized Christian commentators negate the implications of Daniel’s
prediction by claiming that the single 490-year period he plainly cited is
actually the sum of two segments of time separated by millennia’s. No parent
would accept a child interpreting a two-hour deadline to clean their room as
meaning an hour now plus another next week, but that’s essentially what such
claims make of God’s word. No, Daniel wrote what God said -- at some future
date, His people would be given 490 years to fulfill His purposes and then
suffer catastrophic consequences for failing to do so.
In recent years, I’ve heard plenty of government officials and other talking
heads claiming that such an attack against the U.S. is somewhere between very
possible to virtually inevitable, and none saying it won’t happen. Add Daniel’s
prediction of a horrific conclusion to the post-Reformation era, and I see as
much reason for alarm as New Orleans residents had before their city was
devastated by hurricane Katrina a few years ago.
In my mind, what really raises the probabilities of the connection between
Daniel’s 490-year deadline and the forthcoming 490th anniversary of the
Reformation is the apparent convergence of this with a completely separate
prediction found in Daniel 8. One leads to “the people of the prince who is to
come” (the antichrist) causing great destruction, while the other speaks of a
powerful, war-mongering leader’s reign being suddenly broken as a prelude to the
antichrist's ascent to power.
These both also relate directly to the judgment of the "harlot" in Revelation
17ff, where ten powerful leaders will rid themselves of their subjection to the
"harlot" by causing a massive sudden, fiery attack against the people
represented by the harlot. Their motive will be to pave the way for their
“prince” to ascend to power, also.
Anyway, the striking correlation between the Bush administration's history and
Daniel's forecast lead me to believe that his is probably the last
administration before all hell reigns down on this country. If true, it is
doubtful that his term will be finished before the government he heads is broken
and superseded by the ten conspirators intent on crowning the antichrist as the
ruler of the world.
I don't think it is a mere coincidence that the Bush administration's final year
coincides with the 490th anniversary of the Reformation while both seem to
relate directly to consecutive prophecies by Daniel. Of course, my thoughts are
also influenced by what I consider to be the probable revealing of the "man of
sin" in the world in recent years, as that, too, is a necessary precursor to the
"sudden destruction" Paul said would come shortly thereafter. Reasonable
doubt naturally diminishes as "coincidences" like these pile up, and that is
exactly how God intended these prophecies to come to light in the appointed
time.
Getting back to the original decree forecasted in Daniel, the nature of its
elements merit a further look because, even though Daniel was largely in the
dark about what he was writing, he wrote a pretty good synopsis of the New
Testament Church founded by and envisioned by the apostles hundreds of years in
the future.
Although it appears in the subsequent context that this decree
is associated with the onset of a major reconstruction process, it isn’t about
rebuilding – its about reforming. Since the context also clearly reaches to and
even marks the beginning of the tribulation and emergence of the antichrist,
then it also pertains to Christianity, not Judaism. Since that is the case, then
it must be in reference to Christian mandates much like Paul’s description of
the Church’s commission to the Ephesians:
And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and
some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of
the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;
until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son
of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the
fulness of Christ.
As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves,
and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by
craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to
grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ, from whom the
whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies,
according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of
the body for the building up of itself in love. (Ephesians 4:11-16 NASB)
To Daniel, rebuilding the geographic city of Jerusalem, along
with its temple, was the ultimate goal, as, to us, building the Church upon the
foundation of the apostles’ testimonies should be. However, unbeknownst to
Daniel, the city he thought of as Jerusalem, along with the temple in it, would
become more or less irrelevant to God’s work in the world in a few centuries.
When Yahshua declared that the Jews were cutoff and that He was temple, it
illuminated passages like these in ways that could not previously be seen. As
the foundation of the new temple was laid by the apostles, it became even more
clear, but when the apostles died, the work fell into decay where it has pretty
much remained since. That is why the “people of the prince who is to come” will
wreak such havoc upon this temple and the city in which it sits. That is, the
people will have failed to measure up to the highly spiritual mark set forth in
the decree, so they will be trampled under foot until not one stone remains upon
another. (Revelation 11, Matthew 24, Ezekiel 9) God is not going to dispense
wrath against the Jewish city of Jerusalem for the failures of the Christians in
the world who are supposed to be taking the New Testament mandates to heart.
While the decree in Daniel 9:24-27 emanates from God and was to
be marked by some sort of order to rebuild and restore Jerusalem, how and when
this would unfold remained unknown until human events revealed the fulfillment
of these prophecies. Thus, since it covers such a long span of time, it requires
a good look into history to determine when and how this might have happened. Of
course, alternately, one may accept either that there are at least 490 years
until the end of this age or the ludicrous but popular interpretation of it as
two separate periods of time that total 490 years. Though I mean no disrespect
to those who believe differently, neither of the latter two options even qualify
as plausible theories to me.
This plus the forest of reasons to consider the Protestant Reformation and
subsequent history a solid match to the aims and elements of Daniel’s prophecy.
In my previous post, I established that, unbeknownst to Daniel, the decree he
forecasted was directed to the Christians of the last five centuries of the
church age. Therefore, it amounts to a call to return to the apostles’ teachings
and continue their work of building the Church according to the teachings of
Christ.
The New Testament not only sheds a great deal of light on Daniel’s prophecy, it
is itself an expansion of it. It is to Christians what the law of Moses was to
Jews, their highest law. It is the words of the apostles that Yahshua said would
be the means that future generations would come to know and believe in Him. It
is the policy and instruction manual for all who call Him Lord, the only
reliable means by which His servants would know what to do in the generations
beyond the apostles.
Now, it is important to note that the New Testament hasn’t been around for all
that long from a historical perspective. In the first few centuries of
Christianity, the apostles words were spread mostly by word of mouth and
handwritten copies of their letters. As a result, they were highly subject to
errors and sabotage in the course of transmission. Later, what we know as the
New Testament was compiled through thoughtful comparison of all available copies
of their writings, which enabled a high degree of accuracy. Unfortunately, the
1,200 year Roman Catholic monopoly over Christianity forbade anyone but clergy
direct access to the scriptures.
Then on or about October 31, 1517, a member of the clergy, Martin Luther, boldly
published a 95 point rebuttal to his own church’s teachings and practices, and
the Reformation sprang up almost simultaneously throughout Europe shortly
thereafter. As a result,
both the people of God and the scriptures were liberated from captivity, which
seems to me to be ample evidence of a divine decree for His people to do what
Daniel wrote. Individuals believers were thereafter accountable to a higher
standard than Roman Catholic doctrine and a higher authority than the pope: They
were accountable to the higher standards of the New Testament and the judgment
of Christ, and, in my estimation, subject to the deadline proscribed by Daniel.
History has established the far-reaching consequences of the
grassroots rebellion now known as the Protestant Reformation, and they are
immeasurable. The liberation of individual thought initiated a chain of
events that broke up both the Roman Catholic monopoly on religion, but also the
Roman empire's unrivaled strength in the world. Ultimately, it led
directly to the rise of empowered Christians democratically ruling over the
governments of the wealthiest and most powerful consortium of nations in the
world, and chief of these is the United States of America, which correlates most
naturally with the "holy city" that was to be rebuilt and become the preeminent
"city" of the lands occupied by the Christians at the end of this age.
Daniel's prophecy was written from a perspective that viewed Jerusalem, the holy
city, as the chief city in the tiny land of Israel, but he wrote about a time
when the kingdom of God would encompass the globe and his people would control
dozens of countries, not towns. In other words, the U.S. and other
Christian democracies of the world are to Christianity what Jerusalem and the
other towns of Israel were to the Jews in Daniel's time.
Further, the great "harlot" of Revelation that is destined also
to be destroyed by the "people of the prince who is to come" is said in chapter
11:8 to be symbolically associated with the city of Jerusalem in a state of
apostasy, just like the "holy city" Daniel envisioned would be at the end of the
490 year decree.
Daniel's 490 year decree is the longest reaching and, therefore,
first of many specific timeframe references that reach to, through, and beyond
the time of great tribulation slated to end this age. The onset of this
was intended to be noticed by the wise and observant saints of Daniel's
far-distant future, and, therefore, must now either be a matter of history or of
the future. However, unless one thinks the great tribulation, advent of
the antichrist, and establishment of the kingdom of God in the world are yet 490
years or more into the future, then the past is the only direction to look, and
the Protestant Reformation and subsequent course of human events plainly
indicates exactly what Daniel predicted. Time is very short for the
free people of the predominately Christian nations to do God's work. Just
as surely as the Reformation birthed these free nations and marked the beginning
of the allotted time, so will the sudden, fiery demise of the chief of these
mark the onset of an unprecedented time of worldwide
tribulation.
See also Protestant
Reformation articles from Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, and Schaff's History of
Christianity
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