[Usually I post a video file first. This time I’m posting the text file first for this video which should be ready to view in a few weeks.]

My approach to the book of Daniel is that of a believer. But I don’t do this with sort of a simplistic, naïve attitude. I’ve done research on this and found that it’s all true, both from a historical and a spiritual perspective.

Antiochus Ephiphanes in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, 166 B.C.

But, if someone studies Daniel chapter 8 and doesn’t have faith in God, they’ll often come up with some rather strange ideas about it. And sadly, those misunderstandings have been printed and published pretty far.

Let’s say you decide to do some research on all this and find, to your surprise, that there are actually Bibles around that, in their footnotes, say these prophecies of Daniel 8 have already been fulfilled! Or that this chapter was not written when Daniel said, but 100’s of years later!

There was a group of famous, highly respected Bible professors, well over 100 years ago, who could be called “the Critics”. They seemed so wise and they had so much education. But what many didn’t have was faith in God. What they taught was that God simply can’t and won’t tell us the future.

And since Daniel 8:21 clearly predicted the coming of Alexander the Great, the learned “Critics” said that Daniel chapter 8 must have been written after the time of Alexander. We’ve gone over enough material in our earlier classes for you to know that God certainly does tell us the future, at least sometimes. We saw that in the prophecies He gave  Abraham, David, Jeremiah and many others.

But these theologians, intentionally or otherwise, spread unbelief in God’s Word. They said that the book of Daniel was written hundreds of years after the Bible says it was. Do you think God knew this was going to happen? Maybe that’s why He had Daniel write, at the beginning of each chapter we’ve studied, exactly what year it was when he got the vision or dream?

Daniel chapter two, verse one says, “Now in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, Nebuchadnezzar had dreams;…“

Daniel chapter seven, verse one says, “In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream…”

And Daniel chapter eight, verse one says, “In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar a vision appeared to me, Daniel…”

Each of those prophetic chapters starts off by giving the date of the prophecy. If the Bible is just a lie and a fiction, why should any of us waste time with it? But it’s not a lie or a fiction. It is a true historical account. And the contradictions and unbelief of some seemingly learned theologians should be seen for what it is and not affect us.

But, you could say,

“What about those that say that “the Little Horn” has already come!? That these prophecies in Daniel chapter 8 have already been fulfilled!?”

Some people say that. Remember how I told you that there have already been men in history, ones like Hitler, Napoleon and even Stalin?  Great, but evil, leaders of nations, who were in some ways foreshadowings of this final demonic dictator to come. Let me now tell you of another one from around 165 BC. And he certainly had many of the characteristics of the final Antichrist.  The Greek, Antiochus Ephiphanes was his name.

During the period of “The Return”, some of the Jewish people had come back to the land they’d been driven from by the Babylonians. They’d been treated fairly well during the time of Alexander the Great. But 200 years later, this Antiochus Ephiphanes became one of the greatest persecutors and tormentors the Jews ever encountered.

During a 3½ year rule of terror, Antiochus Ephiphanes worked fiercely to destroy the faith and even the writings of the Jews. He forbid the Jews to worship God according to their customs.He even went into the rebuilt Jewish temple in Jerusalem and offered a sacrificial pig, an unclean animal, an abomination to the Jews.

It was a horrible, terrible time for the Jews. This godless man was certainly a forerunner and, at the least, a partial fulfillment of these prophecies. But, was he really the ultimate fulfillment of the little horn of Daniel 8?

If he was, then this is all now the past and all these prophecies have all already been totally fulfilled. Maybe we’re wrong about it all? “It’s all the past, nothing to get worked up about!” That’s what some say. I’ll finish this supplemental section to Daniel chapter 8 with a personal story where I was faced with these very questions.

[The second half of the text to this video will be published soon, along with the posting of the video itself.]

On Feb. 7 my dad, Bonner McMillion, passed away here in Austin.In his last days he contracted pneumonia but by then he was in a nursing facility and in extremely poor health. He is survived by his wife and three children, 8 grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

My dad with my mom, on his 92nd birthday, November, 2013

As my mom likes to say, my dad owned three newspapers, wrote three books and had three children. Growing up around journalism and publishing is where I learned so much about printing, writing, publications and many aspects of graphic arts.

In his last years my dad and I were much closer than when I was growing up. Being a person who was somewhat at the center of events in the late 1960’s, my relationship with my parents was similar to how it was for millions of young people back then. But over the years I’ve come to realize how much of an influence my parents were in what I’ve done with my life.

I told you about my grandparents in the blog post “Texas People”. But here I’ll tell you about my parents. Although my father was a Unitarian, the outlook my parents brought me up with had a number of aspects to it which fit well with my later calling to a Christian missionary lifestyle.

If you’re going to be a Christian disciple and a missionary abroad, you need to be comfortable with being different. In a very real sense, I was brought up in an alternative lifestyle. Nowadays that seems to mean that you were home schooled and your parents were far out hippies or some kind of freaks. For me, it meant that my family were not nominal Christians in a city in Texas during the 50’s and 60’s when to not be a church-going Christian was very unusual.

A sign in all city buses.

But one of the things that seemed to be more or less totally accepted by everyone in my part of Texas was racism. When I wanted to take a city bus back then, there was a sign at the front of the bus, “Coloreds to the rear”. I was 17 years old before the schools in Texas integrated, in other words where African-American students were allowed to go to the same schools as white students.

Back of the bus

African-Americans were compelled to sit at the rear of city buses. They couldn’t eat in the restaurants that my family could. They couldn’t use the public restrooms I could or drink at the same water fountain. This was just the way it was and virtually no one said anything against it.

But my parents did. They taught me it was wrong. Nowadays everyone looks at it that way. But when and where I was growing up, virtually no one at all did, including all the Christians I knew. But my folks taught me that to be racist was wrong and evil. I agreed with that and stood up for it. So I was teased and ostracized and I learned to stand up for what I felt was right, even if everyone else didn’t agree.

That’s been a real help in my adult life when standing up for the Lord and putting faith and God’s Word ahead of worldly wisdom and secular values.

Also my parents were politically active. I distinctly remember passing out political pamphlets with my mother on the street in the lead-up to the 1956 presidential election. I was really glad to be able to do that together with them and to stand up for the beliefs that I held with them.

Another alternative, almost weird thing my parents would do would be to take food to the poor and to take Thanksgiving dinners that my mom prepared to poor folks on the other side of town. This type of thing had a profound impact on me. I had no doubts about my parents’ sincere care for others and their benevolence to the needy and those in distress.

Things like this and much more influenced my life to move towards some kind of public service. That was what I was directing my studies towards when I was in university here in Austin in the late 60’s. Through God’s mighty and miraculous hand, He worked in such a way to bring me to a form of “public service” that was far greater than getting involved with the often fruitless life that modern politics can lead to.

Instead, God brought me into a life of Christian service for Him in many lands. But it was my parents’ example of going against the grain and standing up for the downtrodden that set the tone for my life of being a fighter for the Lord’s cause against the spiritual darkness that comes against that cause from so very many quarters.

My dad taught me to care about those who were hated and to not feel I had to succumb to the whims of the majority. I would not have had the life I’ve had without all that I learned from him and my mom.

(This is the text to the video “Famous Failures of Prophetic Interpretation” which can be seen here.)

I guess everyone has heard about times in history when someone has pointed out something they thought was just about to happen, because they felt Biblical prophecy was just about to be fulfilled. That happened one time as a direct result of misunderstanding something that’s in this chapter we’ve just gone over, Daniel 8.

The 1840’s was a time of tremendous change. The Industrial Revolution was changing the order of society as it had been for many hundreds of years. Science was making tremendous strides in understanding God’s creation. And politics and nationalism were bringing huge change around the world.

One new religious movement at that time saw the changes going on as a sign of the soon coming of God’s Kingdom on earth. This group often talked about the return of Jesus. And you could say, “Well, Mark, that sounds a good deal like what you’re doing.” And you might be right.

So, I’m sharing this with you as a warning in some ways, both to you and to me. Because, as much as I believe in prophecy, I also believe it’s possible to misinterpret things that are in the Bible.  So this group, back in the 1840’s, looked at some of these verses we’ve been reading, specifically  Daniel  chapter 8, verse 13, which says

and verse 14

These verses are rather mysterious and I’m not in any way wanting to make fun of what happened. But these folks back then misinterpreted those verses and ended up being embarrassed and needing to make some difficult explanations. Here’s what happened.

A very key event occurred in the history of the Jews, during the time of their captive in Babylon and the beginning of their return to Israel. Some historians have set the date of that event at 544 BC. Setting the exact date on this and explaining the details and specifics are complicated and I won’t go into it here since it’s part of the class on Daniel chapter 9.

But this Christian religious movement in the 1800’s came to the incorrect conclusion that “2300 days“ in Daniel 8:14 actually means 2300 years. So they did their math.

Using an approximate date of 544 BC, adding an additional 2300 years would mean that these verses in Daniel 8 tell us that the Kingdom of God would be set up in …1844!

The 1840’s were not a particularly traumatic time for people living in the United States. But for Europeans, the 1840’s were a time of revolution and major social dishevel in many countries. Well, this religious group I mentioned, spread out in many lands, came down to a fateful night in October of 1844 when they went up on their housetops to welcome the return of Jesus.

But, Jesus didn’t come back that night and that whole denomination was mocked and ridiculed.  It didn’t end there. Years later a new denomination was started. They looked over the mistakes the other group made and came up with a new idea. They saw places in the Bible that used the number  “70”.

And they added 70 more years onto 1844. That would mean that the coming of the Lord would actually be in…1914!

1914 was a very significant, turbulent year to say the least. It was the beginning of World War I, a war unlike any other before it. Also, in the fields of science, culture, business and technology, things were changing incredible fast.

But, the Lord didn’t return in 1914. So they ended up saying that actually Jesus did return that year to the earth. But that He’s now presently “in the clouds”, looking over the judgment books. And honesty, if you keep up with these kinds of things, this type of prophetic interpretation is happening in our times just as much if not more than it was 100 years ago. Remember Saddam Hussein?

At the time of the Iraq war, there were all kinds of web sites and commentators saying that Saddam Hussein was the Biblical Antichrist. And the modern nation of Iraq was the fulfillment of Babylon the Great from Revelation 18.

Websites and airwaves were full of those kinds of twisted, opportunistic interpretations of Bible prophecy, often for political motives and secular agendas. We believers are supposed to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. But that doesn’t mean we’re to be naive, gullible and easily manipulated.

I believe it’s important to be very realistic and cautious about interpreting God’s Word. There’s just a real danger in getting overly specific about soon-coming events through a misapplication and misinterpretation of ancient Bible prophecy, especially if politics or nationalism is using Bible prophecy for their own secular ends. Not only can you just being totally wrong, you can do enormous damage to the faith of millions of people “the multitudes in the valley of decision”, as the prophet Joel talked about.

There are so many people today “in the valley of decision”, who sense the truth and want to learn more. But when they’re stumbled by false teaching and prophetic interpretations that prove false, they turn away from God and search elsewhere for the truth they’re seeking.  That’s heartbreaking and must grieve the heart of the God of Abraham for any of us to do that.

On the other hand, simply because mistakes like this have been made, it doesn’t take anything away from the certainty of prophecy. But it’s a serious, sober warning to us all to not teach speculation and hypothesis as something that we should take as absolute gospel truth.

I’ll be starting up a new series of live classes in Austin soon so I wanted to let ones in the area know in case they’d be interested in taking part.

From Acts 1, verses 10 & 11

This series is going to be on the book of Acts, which is the history of the birth and growth of the Early Christian church in the first years after the resurrection of Jesus.

What I love about that book is that we can find there the original pattern of Christian discipleship and cooperation as lived by the Apostles who had been with Jesus, as well as by Paul of Tarsus who was miraculously called to be an apostle as well. There’s just so much there in the way of their original beliefs, what they did with their lives, their difficulties in agreeing and working together, how they witnessed their faith, their sacrifices, the strong persecution they received and how the Lord through the Holy Spirit was so very present to lead them and guide them and show them what to do. I love to see how the Lord was, in a sense, way out in front of them and leading them into all truth. At times it almost appalled them as the Lord’s ways were so revolutionary and different from what they thought was the way God would do things.

A recent Revelation class in Austin

Five months ago I posted an article about the live classes I was doing at that time in Austin. That was a series on the books of Daniel and Revelation which so many are especially interested in nowadays. We finished that up last week with a class on the Millennium and the New Heaven and New Earth, all found in Revelation 20 through 22.

A series on Daniel and Revelation is pretty hard to follow. Those are some of the most envisioning, soul-challenging chapters in the Bible, especially if you’re of the ones who believe that we’ll be going through times of tribulation before the coming of the Lord, as I and my friends believe.

But with the book of Acts, it’s a good deal more down to earth. On the other hand, there are all kinds of things in there that most churches shy away from teaching or even bringing up for a number of reasons. And yet it’s the fifth book in the New Testament, evidently written by Luke the Evangelist. It’s primarily a historical book but in it can be seen the fervor and dedication of the first disciples, as well as how they explained who Jesus was and what His significance was to the people of their day. With great zeal and fervor the early Christians witnessed daily both to the Jews who’d been looking for the coming Messiah as well as the much larger group of “Gentiles”, most of whom knew virtually nothing about the promises that had been made to Israel.

So I’m really looking forward to this study. And if you’re in the area and would like to possibly see if you’d like to join us, I’d like to hear from you. We’ll be meeting on Thursday evenings in the Cedar Park area, a suburb north of Austin. I’m finding that the atmosphere in these “small groups” has a real advantage at times over the much larger corporate church in that there can be so much more of an “open forum” environment and personal interaction between those present. I’ve made some good new friends over the past months and found a number of ones with whom I have similar views and aspirations.

We’re open to finding others who are looking to go further with their Christian discipleship and to dig deeper into God’s Word. If this is something you’d like to check out, please do get in contact with me and I can let you know more. God bless you, your friend, Mark