Global SITREP B9-18: The Kings

"the kings"

15 June 2018: Our brother Nick posed a question to me via email the other day about the kings mentioned in the Book of Daniel. his question was in an Email because - for whatever reason - Nick simply couldn't get online to pose his question as a comment in the last SITREP. And I thought my plan of action of sending an Email back to Nick with my answer would be a simple thing to do; I thought my understanding of Daniel that has developed over many years is fairly solid, so writing an Email response would be not issue at all. 

Well, I'm here to tell you no sir and no ma'am, that plan of action was simply not going to happen. Firstly, every time I tried the words never got to be more than four or five and the train of thought would fizzle. Dead stop. Try again. Same thing. Forty-five minutes later I fully understood because the LORD let me know very clearly that my response had to be done here, in this manner. There was something important I had to learn anew and pass along to others who read here. 

Have you ever had the thought or wondered why God sent the angel Gabriel to provide the prophet Daniel the specific information that we read in Daniel chapters 10 and 11? I've never read an expose that speks to this question by any biblical eschatologist. Why was it important for Daniel, and, by extension, all of us, to learn about the kings of the north and south in chapter 10? What more important lesson could there be within all of the dialog foretelling a couple hundred years in advance specific details regarding two of the four empires that came out of Alexander the Great's Empire (i.e. the third beast empire)? This is directly related to Daniel 8:21-22, but we'll get to that shortly. So, for us this is ancient history; fulfilled prophecy, right? Or is it? Could it be a two-fold prophecy?

The two empires I'm talking about are the Greek Seleucid in southwest Asia, and the Ptolemaic Empire centered in Egypt and the Levant. The king of the north and the king of the south. Long story short, over hundreds of years and several successor kings of these two empires and umpteen battles between them, it finally came to pass that the king of the south emerged victorious over the king of the north. But not by his power did the king of the south be victorious over the king of the north. 

God sent another empire, another "king" to subdue the king of the north. The new king was Rome, the fourth (and final) beast empire which put an end to the king of the north's plan to conquer the Ptolemite throne in Egypt. I've written of this part before on Eschatology Today, but not in this manner. The king of the north was Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and his encounter in northern Egypt with a Roman consul who drew a line on that sandy beach and informed the precursor of the coming Antichrist, if you cross this line you will be at war with the Roman Republic. Antiochus thought wisely and turned his army north, marching them to Jerusalem where the precursor of the coming "Abomination of Desolation" took place in the Second Temple in 167 BC. A hudred years later, circa 64 BC, Rome would complete the conquest of the Seleucid Empire, and thereby all of what had been the third beast empire because part of the fourth beast empire just as God had revealed to Daniel back in Daniel 2:36-45. 

The Daniel 2 prophecy is expounded upon in Daniel 7, but with an over 2,000 years twist. The fourth beast which consumes the third beast, which had consumed the first and second beast, is now send as a ten-horned beast. But Rome isn't to be a ten-horned beast until the time of Israel's 70th Week. In Daniel 7:7 we have it in plain text, absolutely unambiguously i would add, that ancient Rome, which was never a ten-headed beast, is the same as the fourth beast of the 70th Week. This beast will control territory in Europe and well as in southwestern Asia, exactly as ancient Rome did. Two feet representing two land masses, with five toes on each foot. those five toes are the ten horns. And (Daniel 7:8 and 7:24) the eleventh, the little horn, which rises up among the ten is Antichrist.

Hopefully, I haven't lost anyone yet and you're following this eschatological trail of bread crumbs. Like the Revelation of Jesus Christ the Book of Daniel bouces forward and backward in time as we understand it. So we come to Daniel 8 and Daniel 8 has a great deal to do with what follows in Daniel 10 and 11. Now we're launched back to Daniel 8:21-22. Greece, which we know all four horns, which stood up in place of Alexander's Empire, are conquered by Rome. And read verse 23: "And in the later time of their kingdom..." Here again is a 2,000+ year leap forward in time to the present era, to the era of Israel's 70th Week as detailed by the angel Gabriel in the subsequent chapter, Daniel 9.

Now moving along, Daniel 10 gets really, really interesting. It should be fresh in your mind, yet recall that Gabriel has just given Daniel the 70 Weeks prophecy that we read in Daniel 9:24-27. Yet in Daniel 10:10-21 we see the same over-arching prophecy tied-in directly with various angelic beings which are manifested as prices or kings over a couple of specific nations of interest: Greece and Persia. These angelic beings are engaged in fighting each other as well as manifesting in the events that directly affect these nations and their futures. There is also an incredible, little mentioned note here regarding what had been previously written in what gabriel refers to as "the Scripture of Truth" and which this angel intends to reveal to Daniel for the specific purpose of fulfilling what was stated in verse 14: "I have come to make you understand what will happen your your people (the Jews) in the latter days, for the vision refers to many days yet to come." 

The Bible, especially the Old Testament in which the Book of Daniel is a key part, has not yet been written as the time this meeting between Gabriel and Daniel takes place, i.e. the third year of Cyrus, king of Persia. So the "Scripture of Truth" Gabriel is referring to must be some Heavenly tome of the things that will be; an angelic book of God-breathed prophecy.

Daniel 11 begins with the warring kings of the north and south. This time is the first year of Darius the Mede which turns the clock back to Daniel 5:30 and the aftermath of the "writing on the wall." So Daniel 11 begins by recapping a foretelling of future events which we've also seen in Daniel 8:21-22, and the wars between the Seleucid Greeks (kings of the north) of Babylonia and the Ptolemaic Greeks of Egypt (kings of the south). At verse 20 the text begins speaking specifically about Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the forerunner of the coming Antichrist. At Daniel 11:30 we see Antiochus IV Epiphanes being turned back by Rome (western ships of Kittim that sailed from Cyprus). Again, this was fulfilled in 168-67 BC. And the blasphemous actions at verses 30-31 are an exact foreshadowing of the mid-70th Week 'Abomination of Desolation."

Suddenly as verse 36 the narrative Gabriel is giving to Daniel jumps forward in time, from discussing the forerunner of the future Antichrist, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and his battles against Greeks in Egypt, to the actual man who will be the coming Antichrist. An intantaneous forward leap of approximately, 2,100 years into the future, our present era, this generation. Instantly, we see in this prophetic Scripture that the king of the north and the king of the south are no longer fighting each other as they did for all of the 3rd and 2nd centuries before Christ- they are suddenly allies standing against the Western Antichrist of the 70th Week.

And it is here that some error has been made. In earilier eschatological works various writers had erroneously assigned the 'king of the north' nomenclature upon the coming Antichrist. Nowhere is the made more clear than in Daniel 11:40 where both a future king of the north and a future king of the south will together attack the Western Antichrist, and whom we know for certain is directly associated with both Greece and Rome, and a kingdom which begins wth ten horns, or kings of nations, among whom he was the eleventh to rise up among them and pluck a certain three of those ten out by the roots for himself. Those ten horns (kings) are represented in the image at the top.

In Daniel 11:40-43, as a direct result of the Western Antichrist being attacked by a king of the north (probably Russia) and a king of the south (North African nations), a great war erupts in the Middle East. This could very well be a world war as well, as we can see in Daniel 11:44 the king of the north and those from the east cause Antichrist to go on an even greater warfighting campaign. This I believe is the lead in to the final battle of Har Megiddo and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.