The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

246 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
Actually, most of the chapters in the book of Daniel do not
contain material that could be said to point forward toward “the
establishment of a universal eternal kingdom of God through the
rulership of the ‘son of man’ “: chapter 1 deals with Daniel and his
companions at the court of Babylon; chapter 3 tells the story about
the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace; chapter 5 deals with
Belshazzar’s feast, which ended with the fall of Babylon; chapter 6
tells the story of Daniel in the den of lions, and chapter 8 contains
the vision of the ram and the he-goat, which culminates with the
end of the tyrannical rule of Antiochus IV, in the second century
before Christ’s coming. 24
And although the prophecy of the “seventy weeks” in chapter 9
points forward to the coming of Messiah, it does not say anything
about the establishment of his kingdom. Not even the lengthy
prophecy in the fina1 chapters, Daniel 10–12, which end with the
“great tribulation” and the resurrection of “many of those asleep in
the ground” (Daniel 12:1–3), explicitly connects this with the
establishment of the kingdom of Christ.
The fact is that the only clear and direct references to the
establishment of the kingdom of God are found in chapters 2 and
7 (Daniel 2:44–45 and 7:13–14, 18, 22, 27). 25
Thus any precedent which would call upon us to give a greater
application to Nebuchadnezzar’s “seven times” of madness simply
does not exist.
b) The time of the vision
If, as claimed, the time at which this vision was given should
indicate a greater fulfillment, pointing to a 2,520-year break in the
royal dynasty of David, it should have been given close to, or
24 This is how the vision is understood by most commentators. The statements at
Daniel 8:17 and 19 that “the vision pertains to the time of the end” should not
automatically be understood as a reference to a final, eschatological “End of Time”
In the Old Testament words and phrases such as “the day of the Lord,” the “end”
(Hebrew qetz) and the “time of the end” (compare Amos 5:18–20, Ezekiel 7:1–6;
21:25, 29; Daniel 11:13, 27,35, 40) “do not refer to an End of Time but rather to a
divinely appointed crisis, a turning point in history, i.e., a point within historical
time and not a post- or supra-historical date.” (Shemaryahu Talmon, Literaty
Studies in the Hebrew Bible, Jerusalem-Leiden: The Magnes Press, 1993, p. 171)
The attempt of Antiochus IV to destroy the Jewish religion, as predicted in Daniel
8:9–14, 23–26, was certainly such a “crisis” and has often been described as a
“turning point in history” See, for example, the comments by Al Walters in The
Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Vol. 55:4, 1993, pp. 688–89.
25 Compare the careful study of this question by Dr. Reinhard Gregor Kratz, “Reich
Gottes und Gesetz im Danielbuch und im werdenden Judendom,” in A. S. van der
Woude (ed.), The Book of Daniel in the Light of New Findings (Leuven, Belgien:
Leuven University Press, 1993), pp. 433–479. (See especially pp. 441–442, and
448.)