SHEPHERD BOY DAVID KILLED GOLIATH OF GATH WITH A STONE TO HIS FOREHEAD! THE ALMIGHTY SON OF DAVID STRUCK THE GIANT ON HIS FEET AND 10 TOES OF IRON AND CLAY—SELAH. |
The 70-year Babylonian Captivity of the Jews commenced in 527 BC when the 17-year old Daniel was taken captive to Babylon by tyrannical King Nebuchadnezar.
That devout Jewish youth, from the royal Davidic dynasty, had his name changed to Belteshazzar, as it was the custom of the Babylonians to give their captives the names of their pagan gods (Daniel 1:7).
Around 524 BC, that king had a terrifying dream that none of his astrologers, fortune-tellers, or sorcerers could interpret. Finally, Daniel correctly interpreted the king’s nightmare. Here is a brief portion of the king’s dream:
You watched while a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, which struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them to pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together and became like the chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. Then the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth (Daniel 2:34-35).
The nightmare of King Nebuchadnezzar, interpreted by Daniel the Prophet, is the foundation, template, or blueprint upon which all of the seer's subsequent visions are built!
The seer was later shown the 4 metals as 4 wild beasts: Babylon as a lion, Medo-Persia as a bear, Greece as a leopard with 4 wings, and Roma as a nondescript dreadful and terrible wild beast, with teeth of iron, nails of brass, and 10 horns on its head (Daniel Chapter 7).
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Unlike Goliath of Gath, that nightmarish image of the future of the world from the divine perspective had only 10 toes:
1+2+3+4=10 |
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Here are the dates of that awesome prophecy based on the Daniel Chapter 9 timeline.
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When the "Prince of Peace" was born in Bethlehem the entire world was at peace under the Pax Romana of Augustus Caesar (Saint Luke 2:14).
I BC was an annus horribilis for the Jews in Old Jerusalem. Josephus reported that King Herod had 2 beloved rabbis burned alive for inciting 2 youths to tear down a golden eagle that Herod had placed over the eastern gate of the Temple.
On January 10, Josephus reported a lunar eclipse, and later in the same month that monster went to Hades. Josephus forgot to report that KIng Herod ordered all the babies in Bethlehem under 2 years of age to be massacred!
Stepfather Joseph was told in a dream to leave Egypt and return to the land of Israel with his wife Miriam and the young child, who was about 3 years old at that time (Saint Matthew 2:17-19).
In the summer and autumn of 1 BC, the Jews, fired by Messianic expectations after the death of King Herod, went on the warpath against the Romans. Quintilius Varus (46–9 AD), governor of Syria, was ordered to suppress the revolt:
Now at that time there were ten thousand other disasters in Judea which were like disturbances, because a great number put themselves into a warlike posture, either out of hopes of gain to themselves, or out of hostility to the Jews, (Josephus, Antiquities, Book 17, chapter 10).
According to Josephus, 2,000 Jews were crucified. It was the precursor of the disastrous 66–70 AD war. Quintilius Varus was later sent by Augustus to command the Rhine frontier garrison. In 9 AD, his 3 legions were ambushed and massacred by Germanic tribes led by Arminius at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
Christians who lived before the destruction of Old Jerusalem believed that they were living at the time of the feet and toes of iron and clay. However, the Roman Empire was only about 60 years old at the time of Christ's Resurrection from the dead.
Firstborn rebellious Jews who were fighting fanatically against the Roman legions ignored that keystone prophecy to their deadly peril. They could not comprehend how JEHOVAH would give such a panoramic view of the future to pagan King Nebuchadnezzar who destroyed King Solomon's Temple circa 527 BC.
During the siege of Old Jerusalem they believed that the Messiah would appear out of the sky at the last minute, destroy the legions, and set up a literal earthly "throne of David," with Old Jerusalem replacing Roma as the capital of the world!
Fake Jewish "historian" Flavius Josephus never told Emperor Vespasian and his son Titus that Roma was the dreadful and terrible Fourth Empire that would trample down the entire earth!
His massive tome of over 1,000 pages of small print never once mentions the 4th Empire of Daniel Chapter 2. However, he did mention that a Greek would conquer the Persian Empire:
And when he (Alexander) went up into the temple, he offered sacrifices to God, according to the high priest's direction, and magnificently treated the high priest and the priests. And when the book of Daniel was showed him wherein Daniel declared that a Greek should conquer the empire of the Persians, he supposed that he himself was the person intended. (Josephus, Antiquities, Book 11, Chapter 8).
By completely ignoring the legs of iron, Josephus became a confidante of 2 Emperors, and a discreet and very rich Fourth Empire collaborator!
Constantinople or New Roma was not the other leg of the image because Constantinople was part of the Greek Empire, and the 4 World Empires were bitter geopolitical rivals!
Another fake "historian" named Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) in his massive tome: History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ends at the fall of Constantinople to the Terrible Turks in 1453.
The date for the birth of the Messiah, and thus the start of the Anno Domini (AD) dating system, ranges all the way from 6 BC to 1 AD. Here is a quote from a book by the scholarly former Pope Benedict XVI, who was forced to resign by Pope Francis:
Johannes Kepler († 1630) proposed a solution that in its key elements has been put forward again by astronomers today. Kepler calculated that in the year 7–6 B.C., which as we have seen is now thought likely to have been when Jesus was born, there was a conjunction of the planets Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. (Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, p. 98).
According to that Pontiff in "Purgatory," this year is the 2000th anniversary of the Resurrection of Christ.