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Twin Timelines

Part XXV

In the last chapter of Twin Timelines, we examined how the principle of a Role Reversal punctuates the Prophetic Parallels of the kingdoms of the world. In the ancient timeline, heathen Rome was the mission field from which the LORD drew those whom He had chosen to enter in to His kingdom. In the modern equivalent, the Antichrist imagery of the Little Horn draws from the ranks of the saved, in an effort to populate the realm of perdition – which is allegorically identified in the text as the "ground." Juxtaposed against the many descriptions wherein the LORD raises the dead, through "the power of His resurrection" (Philippians 3:10) – the divine authority which raises us up to "sit together in heavenly places" (Ephesians 2:6) -- the Little Horn is able to cast down some of the Saints from our position in glory.

"It cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them" (Daniel 8:10).

Those who teach a believer cannot lose his or her salvation are among those who fail to understand the Little Horn's ability to cast down some of the host is based upon deception. The Scriptures plainly teach that the Devil – who is the Spirit depicted as the Little Horn -- does not have the power to simply snatch believers out of the kingdom of God. However, the False Prophet hemispheric half of this emblem of Antichrist does have the ability to lure the believers into voluntarily relinquishing their Spiritual birthright in Christ.

Just as the serpent could not coerce Eve into eating the forbidden fruit in the famous Garden, instead relying on his ability to convince the woman she was qualified to decide the matter for herself, the Little Horn has the ability to beguile the believer into receiving another gospel.

"And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat" (Genesis 3:13).

Just as Esau heeded his animal appetite instead of trusting in his father's favor, the entire issue turns on the trustworthiness of God the Father's promises, which He has already kept. 

As we have repeatedly shown, the 6^th kingdom in the Christian era is identified with the international order created by America, even as the Little Horn is the modern Israeli state – which is an integral part of the multiple horns on the head of the American beast. Indeed, the bizarre imagery, wherein the beast empire (which is another picture of Antichrist) is presented with a crown of horns (an imitation of the crown of thorns on the head of the Saviour), provides a grotesque parallel. 

Contrary to the fleshly and unscriptural chosen people based on race myth, the fraud that causes believers to exercise faith that the so called Antichrist will fulfill prophetic expectations dovetails with numerous adjacent prophetic truths. One of the more intriguing proofs is related to the pattern wherein Christ's ministry occurs in the first half of Daniel's fabled 70th week.

"…and after [Messiah's arrival] shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself…and in the midst of the week [the 70th "week"] he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease" (Daniel 9:26, 27).

In noting how the Messiah is "cut off" in the midst of the week, and His blood sacrifice is that which brings a halt to the Old Covenant temple system of sacrifice, this crucial truth is circumvented by the legend of a modern Antichrist who makes a treaty with the Jewish people; a political instrument which allows the diminutive state to build a third temple. In this faulty version of end time's events, this political Antichrist then breaks the treaty, and betrays the trust placed in him.

The fictional projection, which may be characterized as the Rapture Cult sequence, vastly diminishes the truth that Jesus Christ has already fulfilled all that was predicted of Him in the 70 Weeks prophecy – including the entrance of everlasting righteousness through His sacrifice and resurrection:

"Seventy week are determined upon thy people and upon they holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy" (Daniel 9:24).

This astonishing feat, accomplished during the 70 Weeks, eliminates the possibility of Christ achieving the foregoing during a contrived "gap" which supposedly occurs in between the 69th and 70th "week" – with the "week" defined as a period widely reckoned to be 7 years in duration. To rephrase that thought, the work of the Saviour, in which He brings in everlasting righteousness, must occur during the stated time period of 70 weeks – as opposed to an indeterminate number of years in a so called "gap," which is not a part of the specified period.

Further, since Christ's earthly ministry concludes with His death and resurrection "in the midst of the week" (Daniel 9:27), that leaves a period of 42 months to conclude the temporal timeline of the 70 Week prophecy. Therefore, since Christ has already accomplished His mission, that remaining half of the week must be related to something other than His redemptive work, for He pronounced "it is finished" at the cross (John 19:30). Once again, at the risk of redundancy, it is not Christ's second coming on the last day which makes "reconciliation for iniquity" (to say nothing of introducing the righteousness of God, etc), it is His death on the cross.

As no part of the truth of the Gospel is non-essential, if we miss this marvelous fact, we will have skewed adjacent prophecy, and such distortions will profoundly affect our theological perceptions. Furthermore, since Christ's kingdom arrives during the days of the Roman Empire, we compute that the 7th kingdom is the prophesied Kingdom of God, as there were six earthly kingdoms which preceded its introduction.

"And in the days of these kings [Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome] shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed…" (Daniel 2:44).

As the just mentioned quartet of kingdoms were preceded by the two empires of Egypt and Assyria, as widely documented in the Old Testament, we have six kingdoms (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome) preceding the 7th Kingdom – all of which arrived before JESUS CHRIST fulfilled Daniel's 70 Weeks prophecy.

In the Twin Timelines series, we've repeatedly shown the entire scope of prophecy is doubled, and the kingdoms of antiquity are also doubled, through the agency of Prophetic Parallels, which are revealed in the Scriptures. The first Christian era kingdom is the Holy Roman, followed by Imperial Spain – two kingdoms which parallel the Egyptian and Assyrian pair. Then the quartet imaged in Daniel 7 as the Lion, Bear, Leopard, and Unique 4th beast provide us with a description of the parallel kingdoms -- in the form of the British Commonwealth (the Lion), the Soviet Union (the Bear), Nazi Germany (the Leopard), and the Diverse Beast that is America.

These six kingdoms precede the role reversal, whereas the 7th kingdom of the ancient timeline culminated in the kingdom of God, the 7th kingdom in the contemporary parallel is epitomized by the "falling away" (II Thessalonians 2:3), emanating out of the counterfeit resurrection power of the Little Horn (Revelation 17:11) – an entity that infiltrates and uproots its rivals, in a unique capacity as the so called "covenant nation," through a series of tumultuous events which cause the world to yield to its mysterious authority:

"…and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him? And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months" (Revelation 13:4, 5).

So far, we've focused on the identification of the Little Horn in its manifestation as the latter day state of Israel, in that it is clearly Antichrist oriented, notwithstanding its emergence as an integral part of the power structure of America – the fourth beast of Daniel 7.

However, in chapter 8 of Daniel's epic prophecies, we see another vision, in which the Little Horn is placed in the more immediate future of the prophetic sequence of events. This vision occurs in the late Babylonian kingdom, so the Persian, Grecian, and Roman Empires are still in the future at that point in time – to say nothing of the cross of Christ, and the apostate "Christian" kingdoms seen in Daniel's 7^th chapter (the Lion, Bear, Leopard, and Diverse Beast kingdoms of the last two millennia).

In Daniel 8, we see the vision of two military powers, imaged as a ram and a powerful male goat – symbols which are identified as the Persian and Grecian empires.

"…behold, there stood before the river a ram….pushing westward, and northward, and southward; so that no beasts might stand before him…" (Daniel 8:3, 4).

We've already seen that "beasts" are kingdoms in prophecy, so this sequence is relatively elementary. History records the oriental kingdom of Persia moving westward in its expansion, and the Persian military hordes, strategically deployed in overwhelming numbers, were unstoppable. Eventually, a generation after Persia had attacked Greece, the robust young son of King Phillip of Macedon arose to challenge Persia. His brilliant battle tactics, built around the idea of a fierce, smaller force that decisively moved with great speed, led him to be dubbed Alexander the Great.

"…behold, an he goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground…And he came to the ram…and ran into him in the fury of his power" (Daniel 8:5, 6).

There is no doubt concerning these identities, for the Scripture itself tells us the ram was associated with Persia, "and the rough goat is the king of Grecia" (Daniel 8:20, 21). This means the chronology is conclusively placed well before the fourth kingdom of the quartet of kingdoms seen in Daniel 2 – Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome.

Once the "king of Grecia" comes to his end, one of the most striking fulfillments of Old Testament prophecy occurs, for it is widely documented that when Alexander died, four of his generals divided up his Empire. They were named Cassander, Lysimachus, Seleucus, and Ptolemy.

"Now [Alexander] being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power" (Daniel 8:22).

Many students of prophecy know that Seleucus was based in Syria to the North of Judaea, and Ptolemy was in Egypt, to the South of Judaea. While the other two generals (Cassander and Lysimachus) faded into obscurity, the Seleucid dynasty in Syria warred with the Ptolemaic Egyptian dynasty, and control of the Jewish state and Jerusalem rotated between them. During this extended period, significant numbers of Jews turned away from the laws of Moses, and adopted the looser lifestyles of the Gentiles surrounding them.

In the first wave, the Graeco-Egyptians drew significant numbers into Egypt, where they lived as citizens of the Ptolemaic dynasty on an equal footing with the Greeks – abandoning their historic connection to the land of Judaea and Jerusalem. The historian Flavius Josephus records how these Jews preferred to live in Egypt, instead of Jerusalem:

"…there were not a few other Jews who, of their own accord, went into Egypt, as invited by the goodness of the soil, and by the liberality of Ptolemy" (Antiquities of the Jews, Flavius Josephus, Book XII, chapter I).

However, a larger apostasy was to come at the hands of the Seleucids, as that dynastic family was the agency that gradually seduced the Jews into a worldly citizenship in the Syrian vassal state Judaea had become. Thus, the Gentile Syrian state of the Seleucids fulfilled the Little Horn prophecy, which shows a catastrophic Spiritual fall of the host of heaven, as the LORD's chosen people under the Old Covenant departed from their anointed standing in the heavenlies:

"…a little horn, which waxed exceeding great….even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them" (Daniel 8:9).

When Antiochus of the Seleucids militarily defeated Egypt, the Jews voluntarily welcomed him. Again citing from the historian Josephus, we learn

"…the Jews, of their own accord, went over to him, and received him into the city [Jerusalem] and readily assisted him when he besieged the garrison [occupied by Ptolemy's Egyptians] which was in the citadel of Jerusalem" (Antiquities, Book XII, chapter III, emphasis mine).

As the Gentile rule of Judaea continued for years under Antiochus and his sons, a dispute arose over succession when the high priest of the Jews died, and a large faction of the Jewish people turned to the Gentile king to install their favourite, a man named Menelaus, into the office.

"[The Jews following Menelaus] were distressed, and retired to Antiochus and informed him, that they were desirous to leave the laws of their country, and the Jewish way of living according to them, and to follow the king's laws, and the Grecian way of living" (Antiquities, Book XII, chapter V).

As this movement was backed by the Little Horn power of Syria, the reprobate Jewish faction prevailed. After coming to pre-eminence, this power structure led the people to unprecedented apostasy. For instance, they sought to build a Gymnasium in Jerusalem, where the Gentile sporting events were performed naked. As a sign of their open rejection of the LORD, the Jewish men concealed the circumcision of their genitals, so they would be indistinguishable from the Gentiles.

As physical circumcision was the Old Covenant sign between God and Israel (Genesis 17:11), this act constituted a formal repudiation of the special standing of Israel before the LORD of glory, and it may be viewed as a Prophetic Parallel of the Abomination of Desolation. The leaders of these infidels were quartered in the Citadel, where they were mingled with the Greeks – and utilizing the position of the infamous tower which overlooked the temple (Matthew 4:5), they carried out the evil directives of the Little Horn power:

"…in that citadel dwell the impious and wicked part of the Jewish multitude, from whom it proved that the citizens suffered many and sore calamities" (Antiquities, Book XII, Chapter V, emphasis mine).

These things all occurred in the inter-testamental period after the last book Old Testament book of Malachi was written, so the believers in our time are universally unaware of these important historical events. Nevertheless, such Prophetic Parallels are striking as the Little Horn prophecies function in both timelines. This means that in the Old Testament timeline, the Jewish chosen people forfeited their birthright, and wanted to emulate the Gentile-Syrians, who were led by Antiochus. The roles reverse in the New Testament timeline, as the Christian chosen people forfeit their birthright and, embracing the so called Hebrew Roots mindset, want to emulate the physical Jews. 

In both timelines, the Antichrist power of the Little Horn "cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them" (Daniel 8:9).

----- James Lloyd

To Be Continued

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