Daniel 11 – All Eyes on Waco

well thank you so much Village band thatwas beautiful yes you lift me up um it'sone of my favoritesongs um when I was pastoring insouthern Minnesota in my first few weeksthere was a young girl stood up inchurch and sung it and I'd never heardthe song before and I assumed she'dwritten it herself and I wrote her andher mother a card saying thank you forwriting that beautiful song and theywrote back and said no no no no we onlysang it uh somebody else wrote it but itreally is a truly beautiful song it's acall on God and it's also a promise fromGod you lift me up it's a pleasure to bewith you here on this beautiful Sabbathmorning uh my name is Pastor Conrad Vineand we are here today as part of our uhconference on the study of Danielchapter11 and um yesterday we had uh abeautiful collegial spirit as we met andwe had a series of presentations in themorning um in the afternoon we broke upinto cluster groups and we were arelooking at very specific questions onthe interpretation of the chapter andtoday we're continuing with our study ofof the Book of Daniel chapter 11 um I'mgoing to be speaking this morning onprinciples of interpretation uh somekind of ground rules for how weinterpret the scriptures uh in ourSabbath School uh in our main hall herethe sanctuary we have two presentationsum on um hermeneutics and they may sayhermen what her whats are hermeneuticsand hermeneutics are the principles ofinterpretation and so we invite you tostay for that in the the the sanctuaryhere and then in our second servicetoday Elder Iva Meers is with us umwe're blessed by his presence and hiscontribution he'll be preaching on thecoming of Jesus Christ in Daniel 12: 1-3uh this afternoon we have some uhpresentations on the basic um how do weinterpret Daniel 11 there are aboutthree basic four basic positions uh allthose Scholars are going to bepresenting um how we interpret it andwhy we interpret it and it's a chancefor you to ask questions of the scholarsand to come to your own conclusions uhbut this morning I've entitled our talkall eyes on Waco and uh as we uh as weopen the word of God together I inviteyou to Bow your heads with me and we askGod to open our hearts and our minds soshall wepray HeavenlyFather we thank you and we praise youthat you are a god ofmysteries but do not leave us withmystery you revealed Mysteries to Danieland he praised you for it you revealedMysteries to John the Baptist and toZachariah and Anna in the temple whenJesus was brought as achild father you are not a God whocreates Mysteries and then tantalizes uswith them you're a God who reveals andinvites us to search for meaning andyou've promised Lord that as we searchthat we will find the understanding oftheseMysteries and so today Father we live ina world where it seems on a politicalsphere that things are going haywire butwe affirm aresh father our faith thatyou on your throne that aspar does notfall to the ground but you know about itand so father as we consider the theprinciples of prophetic interpretationthis morning I ask that the same Spiritwho breathe these words uh the theseprinciples through your writers and daysgone by that your Same Spirit Willbreathe upon us aresh this morning inthe word of our hymn today Father guideus oh thou great Jehovah I ask that youspeak through me father and for me inthe name of Jesus I humbly askamen I'm sure that many of you arefamiliar with this image up on thescreen uh his name was Vernon Howelllater changed to David KES and in 1993he led a group of um Believers calledBranch devidians down in just near Wacoin Texas at a place count called mountAral Center Ranch now the Bureau ofAlcohol Tobacco and Firearms or the ATFthey suspected there was a stockpilingof illegal weapons and so they obtaineda search warrant and uh they came to thecompound with arrest warrants for Keshand some of his leaders well uh as theyattempted to raid the ranch David Keshand his fellow followers um fought backwith their weapons and there was thedeath of four federal agents and sixBranch devidians after the failure ofthat initial ridthere was a Siege lasting for 51 daysfrom the end of February to Mid April1993 um I was growing up in England atthe time and uh even in England the BBCwas showing daily updates of the siegeof Waco and I'm sure that many of uswere watching it here in the states aswell eventually um the the FBI theyinitiated a tear gas attack on this onthe center to force the branch devidiansout of the ranch and during the attack afire engulfed Mount Carmel Centerthere you have a picture of the fire intotal 76 people died women men andchildren including David coreshhimself the survivors are still aroundtoday some of them are still publishingon the internet and you can find theirwritings on the internet many of themhave gone back to their churches about ahalf of those people came from theUnited Kingdom they were not people whowere um you might say crazy eyed many ofthe people at Waco were people who wereearnestly seeking a deeper understandingof scripture and they followed someonewho allegedly offered a deeperunderstanding of scripture in 1993 theeyes of the world were indeed on Waco in2018 it seems the eyes of the world onthe Middle East and but today I inviteyou to turn your eyes to scripture andto The God Who reveals himself throughthose scriptures we're going to betalking today about eight principles ofpropheticinterpretation um that uh we can applyto the study of Daniel andRevelation um I'm not uh I'm not talkingabout my own ideas here there is agentleman with us today called brotherDr Edwin deok I I think he's somewherein the congregation today um a dear oldbrother in Christ and um as I Waspreparing for this this conference um II did a lot of reading and of coursemany books weary one's eyes um but theseprinciples of interpretation reallystruck me and I'd like to share themwith you this morning so i' i' like tothank Dr deok uh for graciously uhwriting uh much of this material and andputting it together in his various bookson prophetic interpretation here he isthere Dr deok thank you uh for your workin thisarea so um the first principle thatwe're going to talk about to there areeight of these principles um so so youcan kind of time me I know that peoplelike to kind of countdown as thepreacher is preaching so there are eightprinciples you can count down as we'regoing through um this the sermon notesfor this will be on Daniel 11prophecy.com daniel11 prophecy.com itwill be up there by Monday if you wantto take these for yourself and reflectfurther upon them so the first principlethat we find as we as we look at Danielin particular and Revelation as well isthis listen to the external expositorsyou see many Bible prophecies have adual nature they are part prophecy andthey are part explanation and theexplanation in many times in the Book ofDaniel comes from an angel or from ahuman um that provides an explanationfor the prophecy God not only providesprophecies which include complex symbolsbut he also provides an externalExpositor to tell the reader what thosesymbols mean so rule one therefore is totake seriously the internal expositorsnow let me give you some practicalexamples of this um in Daniel chapter uhsorry Genesis chapter 40 and Genesischapter 41 is a good example the butlerthe Baker and the pH Pharaoh all havedreams remember those storiesthey were pagans God revealed himself toa pagan Butler a pagan Baker and a paganKing but then God spoke and revealed themeaning of those dreams through Josephto the people that had the Visions inDaniel chapter 2 we find thatNebuchadnezzar has a dream and nobodycould tell him the meaning of the dreamuntil God gave the interpretationthrough Daniel as Daniel himself said toNebuchadnezzar on the screen he said butthere is a God in heaven who revealssecrets and he has made known to KingNebuchadnezzar what will be in thelatter days we listen to the we don'tjust worry what was the dream of Daniel2 all about we can actually find theinterpretation within the chapter itselfin Daniel chapter 4 Nebuchadnezzar hadanother dream of a mysterious tree thatwas cut down but not destroyed and onceagain Daniel provides the interpretationof that Vision within the same chapterthe tree says Daniel representsNebuchadnezzar therefore the seven timesof verse 32 of Daniel 4 must beinterpreted literally because it'stalking about an individual KingNebuchadnezzar and we cannot interpretthis as 2520 years or so as theJehovah's Witnesses say um ending in1914 because Daniel said that you arethe tree this is a dream about you ohKing Nebuchadnezzar so an importantprinciple here is to listen to theexternalexpositors as we go as we go through theBook of Daniel in Daniel chapter 5 BelShazer sees the handwriting on the walldoes he not but we're not left indarkness as to what this means later inDaniel chapter 5 God provides theinterpretation through Daniel in Danielchapter 7 we see four beasts coming outof the sea and again we are not askedwe're not left in the dark as to what isthe meaning of these four beasts onceagain God provides an interpretationwithin the text itself in Daniel chapter8 Daniel has a dream of a ra a vision ofa ram and a goat and again we're notleft in darkness as to theinterpretation no um God sends an angelto interpret this for the Prophet Danielin Daniel chapter 9 God instructsGabriel to come bring understanding toDaniel of a vision that he's alreadyreceived and in Daniel chapter 10 11 and12 which are a single unit we find thatwe there was one like the son of man anda majestic Angel and Gabriel says inDaniel 10:14 I am come to make youunderstand and so as we look through theBook of Daniel in particular in chapterafter chapter after chapter where thereis a dream or or a vision there is alsoan explanation given for it and if weonly look at the dreams or the Visionswithout looking at the internalexpositors the internal interpreterswe're going to go astray in ourinterpretation and so the firstprinciple of prophetic interpretation isthis look for the internal Expositorlook for the explanation within thevision or the chapter itself that willoften guide you into the correctinterpretation which leads us to thesecond principle of propheticinterpretation which is the to comparescripture with scripture to comparescripture with scripture assumes thatthe Bible is a coherent whole that theHoly Spirit who inspired the word of Godwhen when a symbol is used in Genesisand then it appears again in Revelationwe're not left in the dark in Revelationto how to interpret that symbol we cancompare passage with passage scripturewith scripture many modern scriptures uhcritics of the word of God would say toyou that the Bible is not a coherentwhole it's just a random collection ofrandom writingsbut as people who accept that this isthe word of God and see the evidence inour lives we recognize there is aninternal consistency from Genesisthrough Revelation and if we areuncertain of what a symbol means in onepassage we can look elsewhere inscripture to see where that symbol ismade clear um you might say that youmight Express this this principle inanother way that that which is clear inscripture can be used to interpret thatWhich is less clear and when there isclear light in one part of scripture wecan use that light um when trying tounderstand parts of scripture that areless clear it is easy to interject ourown meaning into a passage a goodexample is here Revelation 12: 1 and 2where it says now a great sign appearedin the heaven a woman clothed with thesun with a moon under her feet and onher head was a Garland of 12 stars andwe ask ourselves well what was the Sunwhat was the moon what were the stars inthat passage Uriah Smith wroteextensively on the book of Daniel hewrote of the woman clothed here with ason in Revelation 12 he argued that thesun represents the gospel era and themoon represents the Old TestamentJudaism he wrote quote the Mosaic periodsha with a light borrowed from theChristian era even as the moon shineswith light borrowed from the Sun endquote now this is poetic it'simaginative but I believe it's actuallyindefensible from scripture if we wereto compare scripture with scripture onthis passage the the only the part ofscripture where we find the sun moon andstars together is in Joseph's dreams andin Joseph's dreams we have the sun moonand the stars bowing down to Joseph uhwhat is the message well yes the thepure woman represents the Church of Godum but she comes out of the Jewishnation and the Old Testament Judaismthat gives birth to the Redeemer uhthere is revelation 121 and2 says thatthe church is the modern daymanifestation of God's God's peoplegoing all the way back to Adam and andEve in the garden of of Eden there is acommunion of faith that stretches backfrom Old Testament through New Testamenttimes and there's an essentialcontinuity between those who walk andare faithful with God which leads us tothe thirdprinciple which is be consistent in yourinterpretation now we may say this iscommon sense and and if you're raising achild you know that one of the basicprinciples of parenting is to beconsistent with your children would youagree um if if you are not consistentwith your children pick up on it reallyquick I've discovered that teenagershave a sense of when something is notfair and if and even if something isfair but it's perceived as being unfairit is unfair in the teenager's mind andas parents we have to make every effortto make sure that we are not onlyconsistent in how we parent our childrenbut we are seen to be consistent and wecan justify and explain why we're makingthe decisions we are as parents and thisprinciple of consistency applies also toprophetic interpretation and it suggeststhat wherever possible where a symbolmeans X in one book of the Bible and itappears in another book of the Bibleunless there is a compelling reasonotherwise we interpret that symbol AS Xas well that there is a consistency ofinterpretation among symbols either thebooks of Daniel and Revelation are achaotic jumble of completely unrelatedand randomsymbols or God is a god of order andthose books have an internal Harmonywhich allow us to interpret one Passageby looking at another passage and theyare a revelation of the future and God'swill for his people let's take a look atthis in practice in Daniel chapter 2we're very familiar with this uh the thethe the image of Daniel 2 the head ofgold representing Babylon the MEO Persiabeing the arms and chest of silverGreece is the uh thighs of bronze Ialways look at these pictures becausethe thighs actually goes down to thekneecaps doesn't it um having broken myleg last year I'm acutely aware of thatmy biology down here uh and pretty muchevery Vision every picture we have ofthis statue is incorrect because thethighs come all the way down to yourknaps almost the legs are what happensbelow the kneecaps but anyway um not notwithstanding we have the legs of Romeand then the divided nations of Europeas the feet of iron and Clay uh thisgets um this is presented in furtherdetail in Daniel chapter 7 uh where youhave um first of all you the the lionthat comes up out of the the Earth withthe wings representing the BabylonianEmpire uh then you have the MEO Persiansrepresented by the bear with the threeribs uh the bear is raised up on oneside representing the fact that Persiawas the dominant power within the medoPersian Empire and the three ribsrepresenting the conquests of EgyptBabylonia and the Lydia or or thecentral turkey of today then you youhave the Greeks the four-headed leopardand then you have uh the fourth Beastthe Indescribable Beast with the 10horns upon its head and his Adventistwith very familiar with theinterpretation of these particularbeasts but if you come through to theBook of Revelation you find inRevelation 12 and Revelation 13 and inRevelation 17 beasts with seven headsand 10horns and if you look at this screenhere how many heads are present in in inthe beasts of Revel of Daniel chapter7 how many heads do you see there'suh one 2 3 4 5 6 seven there are sevenheads how many horns are in the visionof Daniel chapter 7 well the only hornsare here there are 10 of them and thenso you have uh seven heads and 10 hornsin Daniel chapter 7 which we knowrepresents Meo Persia Babylon Greece anduh and the Roman uh the Roman systemwhether Pagan or ultimately paple roomewhen you come to Revelation CH 12 andRevelation 133 and Revelation 17 threeother chapters of the Bible you haveBeasts with 10 heads uh seven heads andum 10 horns there you have the Sea Beastof Revelation chapter 13 it comes out ofthe sea um it has seven heads and 10horns now the horns have got crowns onthem um but in the vision it has thehead of alion it has the feet of a bear and thebody of a leopard and 10 seven heads and10 horns and immediately we realize thatthis really is a composite of all thebeasts of Daniel chapter7 now if we're to be consistent in ourapplication and our terinterpretationif if the 10 horns here represented thedivided nations ofEurope then logically speaking in thisBeast here of of Revelation chapter um12 these must also represent the dividednations of Europe and so forth and sothere there needs to be a consistency ofinterpretation as we go through as wecompare symbol with symbol if we are notconsistent in ourinterpretation just just case just takethis as a case uh in point we end uphere with 28 heads and 40 horns and andif you say that these are all differentthen then you know all bets are off interms of prophetic interpretation ifthere are 28 heads and 40 horns all ofwhich require a separate historicalactor this leads you to an infinitenumber of possible interpretations whichis confusing uh we look at again atRevelation 177 so he carried me away inthe spirit Into the Wilderness and I sawa woman sitting on a Scarlet Beast whichwas full of names of blasphemy havingagain seven heads and 10 horns and soonce again we have the seven heads and10 horns appearing in the Book ofRevelation and so if we are to beconsistent in our application orinterpretation we must look back toDaniel to see what was Daniel speakingabout when he spoke of 10 horns andseven heads and we know in the Book ofRevelation that there are are threemajor opponents of the Lamb there's thedragon there's the leop leopard-likeBeast and there's the two-horned Beastwe know this because in Revelation 20those are the three beasts that end upin the sea of fire at the end of time sotherefore this Beast of Revelation 17must correspond with one of thoseultimate three beasts that end up in theSea of Fire in Revelation Chapter 20 Thebasic Point here is this we must beconsistent when applying symbols acrossdifferent passages of scripture if weare not consistentwe end up with an literally an infinitenumber of possible interpretations andthen your guess is as good as mine as towhat an individual passage might meanwhich leads us to the fourth principleof prophetic interpretation and it isthis recognize prophetic augmentationsee Visions in Daniel from 2- 7 to 8 to9- 10- 12 they basically cover the sametime period in history but they arenever identical in the details laterVisions in include differences ofemphasis they include additional detailsthat you do not find in the earlyVisions particularly the vision ofDaniel 2 in the process the symbols ofDaniel May remain the same or Daniel Mayexpand or modify them but theinterpretation itself remains consistentuh this is uh this is akin to a marriageI'm not saying that marriage is twobeasts but uh what I'm what I'msuggesting is that when you're datingyou get that's like Daniel 2 that's theoutline prophecy you've got a generalidea of who you're going to marry butafter 20 years of marriage that's likethe beasts of Daniel 7 you you'veactually you actually see M you have amuch richer picture of the Beast withwhom you're married all right um youknow whether they have 10 horns or sevenheads or psychotic or psychosis orthings like this so you understand mypoint yes as you go through time inmarriage your understanding of of youryour spouse is much richer there's muchmore Nuance to the picture things thatyou didn't know in your dating time younow understand after 20 years ofmarriage it is the same with theProphecies of Daniel that there arebasic outline prophecies at thebeginning two and then seven is kind ofan outline prophecy but then as you gothrough 8 9 10 11 and 12 a lot moredetail is added and the additionaldetail that's added doesn't disqualifyor discredit that which went before itsimply enriches our understanding ofwhat went before and so there is thisprinciple of um or propheticaugmentation once againuh we come back to Daniel chapter 2we're again we're familiar with this uhand then you have in Daniel chapter 7you have a lot more detail added as asas to these individual Nations um inDaniel chapter 2 Greece is representedby the thighs of bronze it doesn't tellyou much about the Greek Empire but bythe time you come to Daniel 7 you knowthat it its conquests are rapid becausethere the wings of an eagle uh you knowthat it has four heads so the the Empireis ultimately going to divide into fourafter the death of Alexander it's a goodexample of prophetic augmentation inpractice Daniel 8 provides more detailsof how the little horn from Daniel 7persecutes God's people and opposes theHeavenly Sanctuary Ministry of theMessiah Prince Daniel 10 through 12 is afurther explanation of the vision ofDaniel 8 expanding on the activities andfinal fate of the actors of Daniel thevision of Daniel chapter 8 recognizingprophetic augmentation is cruciallyimportant as we study the books ofDaniel and Revelation because itnecessitates a realization that thevisions of Daniel and Revelation shouldbe studyedtogether you cannot study one withouttheother that the two of them fit hand inhand hand like like two gloves goingtogether they are not a series ofdisconnected snapshots but a connectedfilm of interrelated sequences therealternative schools of propheticinterpretation such as futurism and PRprism they fail to recognize thisprinciple of the interrelated nature ofDaniel and Revelation unless they fallfar short in their interpretations ofthese two books and so the fourthprinciple is this recognize propheticaugmentation When You See It additionaldetail in later Visions does notdisqualify the earlier Visions it'ssimply giving you a richer picture ofwhat you've seen before the fifthprinciple is this to seek historicalaccurateness correctness and that's aterrible word isn't it accurateness isthere such a word as accuratenessokay um I should be accurate in myEnglish language here so seek historicalcorrectness and accuracy simply put thepredictions of scripture should bemeasured against historicalevents but you may ask yourselves whosehistory are we talking about whosehistory are we to assess scriptureagainst can we be truly objective in ourstudy of history at what points toobjective facts merge into a subjectiveinterpretation of those facts where SirIsaac Newton here he is here um when hewrote his book called his chronology ofancient kingdoms in1728 uh there you have the date downthere 1728 quite a while ago almost 300years ago he was working from the Bibleand the works of classical Roman andGreekAntiquity uh so over 100 years later wehave at Jones and in the uh when hewrote his empires of the Bible in thelate 1800s which is a magnificent threevolume series on the Syrian Empire thefour empires of Daniel 2 and then thethe ecclesiastical Empire that is theRoman Catholic Church when he wrote inthe late 1800s he had access to fargreater historical knowledge um than SirIsaacNewton but we have grown since then inthe 21st century we are witnessing anexplosion of understanding an explosionof knowledge knowledge is increasingrapidly as we speak and and so modernScholars are they they can stand on theshoulders of those those who' gonebefore but we have much greaterunderstanding of what actually happenedin the past and we Face the temptationall of us um to to twist history to suitour current needs we do this inrelationships this is what you did lastyear no it isn't yes it is you did thatbefore no I didn't yes you did we havethis tendency to twist the facts to meetour own personal needs and uh historianseven in in church history um fall preyto this particular particular Temptationin particular uh clerics within theCatholic church we know from his historyhave been particularly prone toperverting or obscuring the facts and attimes deliberately falsifying them we'llcome to some specific examples in amoment zealous to promote the interestsof the papacy and no doubt for thegreater glory of God clerics haveresorted to blatant forgeries such asthe Donation of Constantine and thedecretals of shudoIsador refraining from similar andshameful abuse of History should be oneof our goals in prophetic interpretationuh when I was uh when I was a student atnewal I um I studied the writings of theteachings of David coresh at some lengthI was going to write a dissertation onit the thing that struck me about hisinterpretation of scripture uh was was adefinite skewing of History to to fit acertain narrative and uh those wholistened to him maybe were not pickingup on this but with the hindsight ofHistory we can realize this is what hewas doing which leads us to the nextpoint which is to avoid history asforgery now we hear a lot these daysabout fake news don't we but fake newsis nothing new um back in the early1700s uh the Germans invented the phraseEl Ved which means he lies as though itwereprinted uh with the invention ofprinting with the gutenberg's printingpress and people were not just printingtruth but they were printing fake newsback in the early 1700s and this phrasecame into the German language in theearly 17 00s because over 300 years agopeople recognized that just because it'sprint doesn't mean it's necessarily thetruth um nothing can deceive like adocument fake news truly is nothing newwe see this throughout history here's aa picture rames II known as rames thegreat who lived in the late 1200s BC heused to boast about his militaryvictories his greatest battle wasagainst the Hittites of turkey but itended in a draw it was a stalemate butrames came comes back to Egypt and heboasts about the Battle as though itwere a great Victory and of coursepeople in Egypt most of them hadn't beenthere they didn't know they acceptedthis as a great Victory sakb the next uhanother good example of viewing historyas forgery um he went on on a a rampageof Conquest across the Middle East hecomes down to the the kingdom of Judahin the time of Hezekiah he takes most ofthe cities of Judah but um he doesn'ttake Jerusalem remember the story wherehe was encamped around Jerusalemand the angel Lord came down that nightand slew185,000 of the Assyrian soldiers wellsakab records that event but he doesn'tsay he doesn't describe it how it'srecorded in the Bible what he says wasand I quote he says Hezekiah was aprisoner in Jerusalem his Royalresidence like a bird in acage well that's one way to describewhat happened that night down atJerusalem where he lost 185,000 of hissoldiers in one night uh you might saythat was truly history as foror fake news here's another famousexample of fake news in church historyusus I think pretty much every studentAndrews if you're in the Seminary readseusebius he is one of the standardtextbooks of early church history but uhwhy did he write what he wrote well hewrote Because he wanted to emphasize thelegitim legitimacy of a church led bymonarchical Bishops including the onefrom Rome and so he skews early churchhistory to make to to justifyum and to legitimize the onset of theearly papacy through the Bishops of Romefor many years the papacy used a numberof documents such as a Donation ofConstantine to assert its legal right tocivil Dominion of Western Europe Thiswas included in a documents called thedecretals of shudo isidori this is fromthe 9th century ad and it's a collectionof fictional accounts of early churchcouncils most of them fictional theynever happened from the first sevencenturies of church history to assertand buttress the power of the papacythese documents were in circulation inWestern Europe for centuries and theywere complete frauds history truly wasum uh fake uh for thesehistorians uh here's the on the Donationof Constantine Lorenzo Vala there youcan read it online and you can still getit this is a very famous Britishhistorian he was a Catholic he lived inthe late 1800s in the Victorian era hisadvice to persons about to write historyis very simpledon't apologies to any history teacherspresent here this morning um don't writeabout history now uh Lord Acton was avery famous historian and he recognizedthe tendency even among Christians touse history as forgery to justify yourintentions today and he was the guy whoCo coined those famous words power tendsto corrupt and absolute power corruptsabsolutely this is the guy that came upwith that phrase and what was he talkingaboutwhen he when he made this phrase wellthere was a book came out in England inthe late 1800s about the Renaissancepopes and it kind of um painted them inthis glorious light there was not a wordabout um there was not a word aboutmurder there's not a word about bribingpeople to become the pope there was nota word about the boures there was not aword about the popes having multipleMistresses and illegitimate children andthen their children becoming popes andso forth and so forth he recognized IEDthis guy here Lord Acton though he was aCatholic he recognized that absolutepower corruptsabsolutely whenever we quote that phraseabsolute power crups absolutely we'reactually quoting a Catholic historianwho's criticizing other Catholics forwhitewashing the history of the papacyhe opposed the doctrine of papal andfallacy and uh which causes hugeproblems for the papacy today so howright was Sir Walter Scott when he firstwrote Oh what a tangled web we weavewhen first we practice to deso perverted history is a seriousproblem for prophetic interpreters truthis often the first casualty of war andalso of historical writings it lies asif it were printed say the Germans andalas it especially lies of clerics whenthey are involved in the writing ofHistory so if the Bible's predictionsare to be measured against current eventpast events as well as current eventsthen we need to be scrupulously honestwith how we review history and ourunderstanding of History we leads us toour seventh principle is to avoid theTrap of the Contemporary and this is aproblem in prophetic interpretation thatgoes back to time immemorial sometimes awriter will notice a superficialresemblance between what is happening inthe news today and a certain eventwithin the scripture and they rushed toproduce a book or these days they put upa website that looks exciting and iscertain to impress certain types ofreaders however when subsequent historyturns out differently and defiesexpectations the writer is called coughtin the Trap of the Contemporary mockeryand embarrassment follow avoiding thistrap is another sound principle let megive you some examples of thisthroughout history interpreters haveargued that Adolf Hitler Jimmy Carterand even Henry Kissinger have beenmanifestations of antichrist thedispensationalist writer Hal Hal Lindsayargued that the world would end withintwo generations of the establishment ofthe state of Israel in 1988 came andwent and we are still here today whenNapoleon bonapart was rampaging acrossEurope an English biblical and propheticinterpreter called Samuel tuvi arguedthat Napoleon was the two-horned Beastof Revelation 13 he tried to find 666 inthe name Napoleon bonapartinconveniently for him Napoleon wasexiled by the British to the SouthAtlantic where he died and so the twohorn Beast of Revelation that particularinterpretation didn't go very far thetruth is that very very few individualshave made it into specific prophecies inscripture in fact there are threeprimary individuals other than JesusChrist who've made their way into intoeschatological prophecy the first isCyrus the Great in Isaiah chter 45 thesecond is Nebuchadnezzar in Danielchapter 2 and the third is Alexander theGreat in Daniel chapter 8 the reason forsingling out these three individuals inprophetic interpretation is they aresynonymous with the empires which theyfounded and for the impact they had onGod's people in their era and we wouldavoid a lot of embarrassment today if wewere little more cautious in avoidingthe temptation to say that contemporaryevents are direct fulfillment of Bibleprophecies which leads us to our eighthand final principle propheticinterpretation is to respect thepreviousinterpreters those who write today mustbe aware of those who wrote yesterday inthe last century and in the lastMillennium we can learn as Adventiststoday from the writings of intellectualGiants such as Martin Luthera Lutheran Charles Wesley a Wesleyan SirIsaac Newton an Anglican Uriah Smith anAdventist and Leroy Edwin Frum there aregiants of prophetic interpretation as wedid our study group here in this churchon Daniel L over the last six weeks werealized that there were people likeManuel Luna that there were Jesuits inthe past who made crucial discoveriesand prophetic interpretation such as theYear Day principle in the mid 1260s thatwe rely on todayand so it's important for us tounderstand that we we we stand on theshoulders of those who've gone beforesome of them were Adventists but most ofthem were not if you imagine theChristian world as a tree Judaism is theroots and the split between CatholicOrthodox and Protestant of the threeboughs of the tree we are a small twigon a minorBranch then some humility in ourprophetic interpretation is called forand we recognize that we stand on theshoulders of those who go before Peterwrote this he said no Prophecy of thescripture is of any privateinterpretation this means thatthroughout salvation history God hasblessed his church with those who mayinterpret prophecy within the body ofChrist God gave us prophecy that so thatwe might know and also be blessed in thesearch for understanding the symbols ofProphecy are difficult to understand butthey're not unintelligible and those whohave a desire to serve God and love forhim they will seek to understand him inMatthew chap 13: 45 Jesus compares thekingdom of God to a search a merchantwho was searching for a pearl and wealways assume that the kingdom of God isthePearl but Jesus says the kingdom of Godis like a merchant in search of thePearl and so the process of searchingfor understanding uh involves me leavingyesterday's understandings behind maybeadmitting where I was wrong and seekingto grow my understanding to be in searchof that pearl of understanding is torecognize I don't have all the answerstoday that I need to move from where Iam today to another understandingtomorrow I need to grow and deepen andbroaden in my understanding and so whenJesus says the kingdom of God is like amerchant in search of a pearl of greatprice he's inviting us to a life ofcontinual study and continual growthhe's inviting us to be different in theevening to those who rais God up in themorning that we've grown in ourunderstanding that we've shed ourprejudices or our biases or or our lackof understanding of the morning and thatwe've grown closer to Christ spirituallyand we've grown closer to God in ourunderstanding of his word the kingdom ofGod is like a merchant in search of apearl uh Jesus is calling us to afaithful study of scripture day by daybecause in the process of searching weleave where God does not want us to beand we go closer to his kingdom itselfso what do we say in conclusion todaylet's come back toWaco uh when I was uh back in when I wasback in England newal doing my uhdissertation newalum I knew that there were Adventists inBritain who had been at Waco uh theystill go to churches in Britain and someof them still bear the scars physicallyand psychologically of the tragedy ofWaco and so I wanted to understand whydid David cores interpret the Bible theway that he did so I spent three monthsof time and that's a lot of timestudying the the the videos and thewritings of David KES I learned hishistory I learned his life story Ilearned the churches where he'd be whathe'd been saying the videos he'd beenputting out who his left tenants werethe mighty men that he called them um Ilearned an awful lot about David KES andat the end of three months I I realizedthat that I was going down a culdesactheologically that there's there's nolight in this cisac um that's to that'sto mix metaphors isn't it but that therethis cusac was going nowhere and so I Iput the study of ches to one side and Ihad another 3 months to knock out mydissertation so I went to the library atubal college and I sat down for threemonths and I banked banged out a paper Idon't know like 30,000 words orsomething so I banged out another paperand I thought what a waste of timestudying the writings of DavidKES that was in summer2014 um December 2014 there was thetsunami in Southeast Asia do youremember that they called the SoutheastAsian tsunami and um I was lying in bedon boxing day that's the day afterChristmas like a a python after a bigmeal and uh I was feeling some somewhatbloated um I was due to start in in achurch in London on the 1st of Januaryand I just handed in my dissertation andI got a call that said oh um thedivision wants you to go out to umIndonesia and Lead adra's response for 6months and I said have you checked withmy conference they said yeah they'vereleased you and we'd like you to gotoday to the airport and fly out so I Idrove to heo airports and I went to thecheck-in desk and they gave me sometickets and the tickets said Columbo andI said uh I thought I was going toIndonesia that would be Jakarta but mytickets are for Colombo why am I goingto Columbo and they said well that's theticket you have so I I figured somebodymust know what they're doing here so umit's like the guy who flew to Grenadaand ended up in Granada yes uh so uh youkind of Wonder was is he flew he flewfrom New York to to he landed in Londonthen he was flown down to the south ofSpain and and nowhere on the journey didhe realize looking at the maps on theplane I'm on the wrong continent hereyou know astonishing story anyway I goton the plane went to Columbo was therefor 6 months leading a padra response Icame back and I was asked by the BBCRadio Service in London to an interviewon breakfast radio on a Sunday morningand ostensibly this was the topic wewant you to talk about what it's like tobe an aid worker after thetsunami which is an interesting topicand so I went in to early Sunday morningand I was going to speak about being anaid worker as I sat there the firstquestion live on breakfast radio wasthis we know that you studied at Newboldand the wacko from Waco David cores hewas at Newbold could you explain to usthe relationship between Newbold collegeand DavidKES just out of theblue at that moment I just this thisthis this thought flashed across my mindthank you Lord the last year I spentthree months boning up on this guy onhis history on his theology on exactlyhis relationship ship with the churchwhen he was disfellowshipped and I gaveher a five minute answer like a minilike a um encyclopedia bran bratanicanswer I ran through the facts at theend of which the the host said wellthank you very much we'll move on to thenext question shall we and um I kind offigured this was kind of a trap live onbreakfast radio to see how am I going toanswer this one but the point is this umwhen you study prophecy it's neverwasted you may think when you studyprophecy that you haven't come to a fullunderstanding but you don't know whenyou're going to have to answer for yourfaith one day you don't know whensomebody's going to ask you a questionabout why do you believe what youbelieve you don't know when somebody'sgoing to ask you does the Bible haveanything to say about the crisis we'regoing through in our world today we maynot come to the full understanding in2018 of Daniel 11 probably not but as wesearch for understanding God grows usand he matures us so that when we areasked to defend our faith we can give amature and a responsible answer andwe're not going to be caught short wecan indeed glorify God in our answersand that we come across as Christiansnot as mindless Lemmings but as peoplewho have an intelligent Faith who useour brains and think as we as we worshipour heavenlyfather so I want toconclude with uh the prayer of Danielchapter2 and I'm going to paraphrase the lasttwo sentences of thatprayer it says this blessed be the nameof God from age to age this is Danielpraising God for revealing the mysteryof the dream the vision ofNebuchadnezzar to him blessed be thename of God from age to age for wisdomand power are yours you change times andSeasons you depose Kings and you set upKings you give wisdom to the wise andknowledge to those who haveunderstanding you reveal deep and hiddenthings you know what is in the Darknessand Light dwells with you to you oh Godof my ancestors we give thanks andpraise now the paraphrase comes in foryou alone give wisdom and power and wehumbly ask that you reveal to us what weask of you a fuller understanding of theopen scroll of Daniel 11 and theboldness to share your last offer ofMercy with our DyingWorld it's my prayer that God willindeed as we search for understanding asthe merchant searched for that Pearlthat God will grant us an understandingof his Prophecies of Daniel 11: 12 thatour witness will burn brighter that ourlove will be deeper our faith will bestronger and that more people will enterthe kingdom of God through our livingwitness as God's Representatives onEarth in Earth's Li last and dying daysmay God bless us as we live as we studyand as we witness for his name's sakeamen