Ep 71: The Rapture is not Coming!

00:00The Rapture is something that some dudes made up that was then leveraged as a means of

00:07trying to influence people to be good, to eat their vegetables, to not touch themselves.

00:15That's just a tool, a piece of leverage that people use to try to control behavior and

00:22incentivize or disincentivize certain behaviors and it has been phenomenally harmful to entire

00:29generations. And stop it. Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan. And I'm Dan Beacher. And you are

00:40listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to the academic

00:44study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:50How are things, Dan? Oh man, I am. I'm worried.

00:55Worry. I am. I am. I am desperately concerned that all of my loved ones are going to fly away

01:03and leave me behind. And not, not on a Lenny Kravitz kind of fly away.

01:08Maybe in a little bit. I know less melodic. I don't know if it's a Lenny Kravitz sort of way.

01:17I'm going to need you to teach me that. But yes, today we're going to be talking about

01:23the Rapture and the Velocirapture, right?

01:28That's the full name. That's the best one. That's the Jurassic version.

01:32Okay. And then, and then we're going to be going over some stuff you had me, you, you went

01:40through and said, Hey, let's talk about Daniel 10. And I was like, cool. So I went and I read Daniel

01:4510. And I understood exactly none of it. So I'm very excited to figure out what the heck that

01:52thing is talking about. And you relate it to revelation. So that's going to be fun. And, and

01:59we'll just, we'll just figure that out as we go. Yeah, we're just going to go with it.

02:03No, no, we don't have to put labels on this. We could do whatever we want. It's our show.

02:07They can't stop us. Yeah. All right. Well, let's, let's get into. Oh, we didn't come up with a good

02:16name for our rapture segment. Do we have an end times? We could just, we could just call it eschatological.

02:23I love it. Okay. Eschatological. Oh gosh. The, the, the only reason I know what

02:36scatological means is because of the movie nerds. Oh, okay. Because there's, there's a part in,

02:44where they're having a belching contest. But it is introduced by a very milk toast character who

02:51says he does not like scatological things. So, all right. Well, I'm going to tell our, our

03:00editor to leave all of this in because I think that that was great. But we're, let's, let's do

03:06our first, our first segment called eschatological. So, I'm going to, you know, it's so funny. I,

03:18my other podcast, thank God I'm atheist, started because me and my friend Frank,

03:26where we went, do you remember back? I think it was 2011 when Harold Camping decided to,

03:36that he had calculated the exact date of the rapture. Right. And, and he, you know, he put up

03:45billboards all across the country. I remember seeing one here, which that's a waste. There

03:50are not enough evangelicals in Salt Lake City to put up a billboard. That's just silly. But people

03:56were ready and also freaked out because this was because the, the rapture was coming. And Frank

04:06and I did this thing called Rapture Watch on a local radio station. And we did a whole very,

04:12very silly thing where we were, you know, we pretended like our friend was calling in from

04:17Kansas City. And we were pretending like the rapture was following sort of the time zones.

04:21So it was like coming towards us. It's like Santa Watch. Yeah, exactly. Over the Atlantic Ocean now.

04:28Yeah. But, you know, since then I have spoken to, you know, we were making light of it, but I have

04:34spoken to people who have very serious rapture anxiety and people, and people who were raised

04:43with the rapture who don't even believe in it anymore, who still have terrors about being left

04:50behind, about not being caught up in in the rapture. So I think it's, you know, we've mentioned the

05:00rapture on the show before, but I think it's important that we go over what it is, who believes

05:09in it, if any, you know, and who doesn't believe in it and where it comes from and all that sort of

05:14thing. So let's start with the question of, has this has the rapture? Well, okay, let's start with

05:24what is the rapture? What are we talking about? So this refers to the, the snatching up, the being

05:31carried away of believers, of followers of Jesus, at some point near the end times, and this is where

05:41it gets kind of convoluted because there are a bunch of different theories about when this happens.

05:47Right. You know, your phrase is like post-tribulation and pre-tribulation and that sort of thing.

05:54Yes. Yes. There's pre-millennialism, there's post-millennialism, there's amillennial in

05:58this. Did you just have a stroke? It's got to be your bull and post-tribulational,

06:07pre-tribulational, and you know, the kids these days say post-trib and pre-trib and

06:13because they're cool in him. Yeah. Yeah. They've got that, they've got that Skibity, Ohio riz.

06:19That's all the, all the parents aren't sure if they should be concerned about that riz or

06:27or what, but is that the good riz? Which one's the good riz? Should I say toilet when I say

06:32Skibity? I don't know. But it originates in, in this idea that I think the idea of the rapture

06:42begins with this pre-trib idea or at least pre-millennial idea that everyone who is a follower of

06:54Jesus, who is righteous enough, is going to just be suddenly sucked up into the air

07:00and flown off to heaven, again, Lenny Kravitz style, while everyone else is left behind to

07:08experience a period of seven years or something like that of tribulation, which is followed by

07:17the millennium. And usually the second coming is what ushers in that millennium, where we have

07:25a thousand years of peace and Jesus reigning on the earth. And then at the end of that millennium,

07:31we have the last judgment. So that's a pre-tribulation, pre-millennial rapture idea. But sometimes people

07:41say you got post-millennialism, you got a millennialism. Now post-millennialism is the idea that the

07:47second coming in the rapture of the same thing that happened at the end of the millennium.

07:51A millennialism is the idea that this millennium is figurative. It's just something that we're

07:59actually in right now, but it's symbolic. It's not an actual physical earthly reign of Jesus.

08:06And the term millennial just refers to a thousand years of whatever.

08:11Yeah, some kind of reign of Jesus over the earth on the earth, something like that.

08:17And a lot of people think that this is something that's clearly stated somewhere in the Bible.

08:25And it's not. In fact, no one talked about this thing called the rapture until the second quarter

08:36of the 19th century. It started around like 1827ish and it really gets kind of the ball gets

08:42rolling by the 1830s. Yeah, I think a lot of people would be shocked to hear that.

08:48Yeah, it's I think people who were raised with this tradition,

08:51like it just, the way that it is talked about, especially in American evangelicalism,

09:01which is basically where it lives. Yeah. I think a lot of people would be shocked that this hasn't

09:09just been what Christians have always believed. Yeah. And this is something that that plagues,

09:18I think a lot of our thinking is that we get raised and conditioned with certain frameworks

09:24and certain ideologies and certain received traditions and conventional wisdom. And because we may spend

09:31that lifetime experiencing these same things, we assume that they just go all the way back.

09:36And when we look into the past, we retroject those things into the past because we have to

09:41reconstruct what we're seeing in the past. And so we use those same frameworks to facilitate that

09:48reconstruction. And the reality is that no, this rapture idea is a creation of the early 19th century.

09:54Now, we find the word rapture in earlier literature, because it comes from a Latin term

10:03rapto, which means to seize, to snatch, to carry away. And it's frequently used with reference to

10:09theft and things like that. But in the that verb gets used in some places in the vol get the Latin

10:17translation of the Bible. And so there's probably the place where we see it prior to the 19th century,

10:25where we see the word rapture being used is in reference to Paul's reference in 2 Corinthians 12

10:31to, is as I know someone who was caught away, snatched up to the third heaven, whether in the

10:38body or not, I don't know. And that is that verb rapto and the Vulget. So people talk about the

10:45rapture of Paul has been caught up into the third heavens. And so the word rapture predates the

10:5419th century. But when we have, I don't want to get off on too much of a rent tangent. But third

11:00heaven, is that something we're gonna have to have a whole episode about? How many have any

11:06discussion? How many how many heavens are there? Well, Paul is probably referring to a kind of

11:13Greco-Roman idea about different levels in the atmosphere that correspond to different levels

11:18of heaven. Oh, so the third heaven, he calls it paradise as well. And that may or may not be

11:28identifiable with the eschatological garden of Eden, this kind of restoration of all things return

11:34to innocence again, second time I've quoted that. But yeah, there are a bunch of different levels

11:42of heaven and in medieval Christianity, you see levels of heaven as well as level levels of hell

11:49and Dante, for instance. Okay, I'm sorry. We're I've taken this off track. We can get back to

11:57raptis or raptura. If you're going medieval Latin, or reptar, if you're going Nickelodeish.

12:08But the Greek term there is harpazo, which means to steal or carry off, to take by force,

12:15to carry away by the spirit. And it occurs, the verb occurs over a dozen times in the New Testament.

12:21But the verse that was instrumental in the development of the concept of the rapture,

12:28and by the way, there's a guy named John Nelson Darby, who really created the concept of the

12:35rapture as we understand it today, even though it is kind of developed in a lot of different

12:41directions since then, he based this on 1 Thessalonians 714, where we have Paul's talking about

12:49people who have died. And then there's this worry, what's going to happen to the people who have

12:55died before Christ comes back. And in the passage, Paul says that they're going to be raised,

13:04and then let me pull it up again. Here's the NRSVUE.

13:08You said 714, but I think you mean it meant 4 or 7.

13:11Did I say 7? Oh gosh, sorry, 4 or 17. I have a little bit of the dyslexia from time to time.

13:18If we look in verse 16, it says, "For the Lord Himself with a cry of command,

13:23with the archangels call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven,

13:27and the dead in Christ will rise first." So Paul is comforting in that. The dead are going to be

13:34raised up. Okay. And then in 17 we have, "Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught

13:41up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord

13:46forever." And so... Now it's funny because when I read that, I did think of... There's all this

13:55imagery that I have seen associated with the rapture of the good people of the church

14:02being sort of, just sort of being beamed up. Yeah. And just everyone else is looking up from below,

14:10going, "Come back," or whatever. So I, like this, that scripture, to me, does call up that kind

14:22of imagery. Like that makes sense to me. Yeah. And this corresponds to something in Matthew,

14:29in the Olavette discourse where Matthew is talking about, you know, there'll be two in the field,

14:36one will be taken and one will be left. And then you also have Revelation 20. There's some ideas

14:43about the thing coming in, or about something happening in Revelation 20. And then you also

14:48got some imagery from Daniel that Darby kind of mushes together and negotiates into this concept

14:56that Jesus is going to come back and be like, "Here everybody," and then, you know, "floop!"

15:03Yeah. And you've got everybody gets sucked up into the air. The great pneumatic tube to the sky.

15:09Yeah. I'm just thinking of the treehouse of horror episode with the presidential candidate,

15:18candidates, Bob Dole, doesn't like this, where he's getting sucked up into this spaceship. And then Jesus

15:27flips a U.E. and everybody just screams off into heaven. And that's where they just get to, you know,

15:35squeal and laugh and point fingers at all the people left on earth who get to suffer under the

15:42tribulation. And if you're in the pre-trib camp. Yeah, if you're in the pre-trib camp.

15:50And this idea gets, and so Darby's British, I think Irish, and this begins to spread in England,

16:05but spreads very quickly to the Americas. And this is, you mentioned earlier that we're kind of the,

16:11this is where the rapture lives these days. It spread out pretty quickly in the 19th century,

16:17but then most other traditions have kind of outgrown it, decided this isn't really for us.

16:27And part of this has to do with critical scholarship, which is looked at this passage

16:32and finds a better kind of contextual footing in this idea that what Paul seems to be doing here

16:43is describing not Jesus coming to collect his, his people and turn around and head back to heaven,

16:52but showing up to enter his kingdom. And this is a theme we find in some literature from this

16:59time period where someone who is returning victorious from battle or his is showing up to

17:06take up their rule in a city state or a kingdom or something like that. The city comes out of the

17:14city in front of it to meet them outside of the city gate and then they usher them in. And so the

17:22idea here is to just boil, flip that, that orientation vertically and have everybody be

17:30lifted up into the air to meet the descending Jesus and then usher Jesus into his earthly kingdom.

17:37So based on the imagery, it makes more sense to understand this not as being raised up to be

17:44flown off to heaven, but being raised up so that you can meet Jesus and then usher Jesus into

17:51his earthly rule. I get like part of the essential quality of this is the idea is the notion that

18:04it seems like they had that heaven is up, heaven is in the sky. Yeah. So I mean,

18:16I can see why it's confusing to think, okay, you go up into the sky only to come back down

18:24or whatever, as opposed to staying up there. I've actually heard people pastors making

18:32both arguments. Oh, they're going up to come back down or over going up and we get to stay.

18:37And then everybody else has to be on the ground. But I do think it's interesting that all of these

18:43ideas are cobbled together from pretty scant scriptural bases. Oh, yeah. Like it's very like

18:56they're taking they're taking very small things that could mean any number of things. And just

19:01saying, well, I've decided it means X and therefore then that means that that the rapture means Y or

19:10whatever. Yeah. And this is something that in all different kinds of fields of study,

19:15you you have to try to establish certain principles and foundations on which to build other things.

19:25And so once you've established something that becomes conventionalized and we're going to just

19:32accept this, whether it's because we've proven it beyond a shadow of a doubt or because it makes

19:37the most sense to us, you then kind of build up from there. And so you can construct pretty

19:41complex constellations of ideas off of agreements. And sometimes those agreements later fall to

19:50pieces and then everything around it falls to pieces as well. And so and that's probably one

19:55of the reasons that throughout the rest of the Christian world, the rapture is as kind of fallen

20:01two pieces a bit. America is really the main stronghold of rapture ideology these days,

20:07even though there's a lot of debate about pre-trib, post-trib, a millennial, post-millennial

20:13agreement, all that kind of stuff. I think most other folks have have decided that this doesn't

20:18really make a ton of sense to them. But one of the reasons that it probably has the footing it does

20:25in America is because of the Scofield reference Bible. Yeah, what is that?

20:31So this is a one of the first study Bibles that was ever published in English. There had been

20:40others, but this was definitely one of the most popular is published. I think the first

20:43edition was around 1909 in the US by a dude named Cyrus Scofield. I think it was in the US. I could

20:51be wrong about that, but it's published by Oxford University Press. So it would have been published

21:00over there, but I think it was most popular in the US. But Cyrus Scofield was a guy who

21:06was big into dispensationalism. And dispensationalism is another $2 word that refers to the idea that

21:17God's relationship with their people kind of occurs in dispensations. And it's different in each

21:26dispensation. Does that mean just like a time period or what is a dispensation?

21:32Yeah, it's a period in which something is being dispensed. Something is being given. And this is

21:40something that Latter-day Saints will resonate with a little bit because we have ideas about

21:45dispensations as well. And there are six or seven dispensations, depending on your particular

21:52theological bent. But this thing. That's a Jurassic. And then... Yeah, and the stratospheric.

22:01But this stands in contrast to something called covenant theology, which is this idea that no,

22:12it's not dispensations, it's covenants and where you have the first covenant and then the second

22:19covenant. So basically, there was the first covenant with the people of Israel, the Jewish

22:24folks, and then Jesus came and now we're all under a new covenant. So two different main ways

22:29to organize our understanding of how relationships with God work for Christians, because they do

22:36have to kind of renegotiate what's going on because of the big difference between the Hebrew

22:42Bible and the New Testament. But the Scofield Reference Bible is filled with commentary and

22:49cross-references and stuff like that. And there is a... You have in the book of Revelation in chapter

22:5520, it talks about the day of the Lord and Scofield's notes say the day of the Lord is preceded by

23:01seven signs. One, the sending of Elijah. Two, cosmical disturbances. Oh, cosmical. And not cosmic,

23:09but cosmical. Yeah. Three, the insensibility of the professing church. Four, the apostasy of the

23:17professing church then become Laodicea. Five, the rapture of the true church. Six, the manifestation

23:26of the quote, man of sin, that is to say, the beast. And seven, the apocalyptic judgments. I

23:32don't know why it's not the apocalyptical judgments, but to each their own. And this is one of the

23:41main popularizers of this rapture ideology. Even though there was evidently there was debate

23:49among the editors of the Scofield Bible about pre-millennialism versus post-millennialism and

23:56stuff like that. But this was an incredibly popular study Bible in the early 20th century,

24:03which I think is probably responsible for the dissemination of rapture ideology in the United

24:11States and was one of the most popular editions of the King James version for Americans in the

24:1920th century. So when Scofield put that note into the book of Revelation, was he just sort of

24:28making that up? Was he drawing on a tradition that existed? Or was he like, where did that come from?

24:36Revelation 20 is one of the passages that was critical to the development of the idea of

24:42the rapture for Darby and those who kind of curated that tradition afterwards. And he's got a cross

24:49reference to 1 Thessalonians 4 17 in the note. And then he's referring to a bunch of other verses

24:56along the way. Most of them, oddly enough, they're in Malachi, Revelation, Matthew, Acts, and 1st and

25:052 Thessalonians. That's most of those references are to those passages. So it's not really,

25:17it's not altering it too much. It's taking up this reading. But what it's doing is it's kind of

25:23spreading it out to an awful lot of people who it's broadening its reach to a lot more people. But also

25:31because that Bible was so popular for so long, the rapture was always there. It was, whereas

25:40in places where you did not have the Scofield reference Bible, pretty much all non-English

25:45speaking Christian communities, you didn't have that anchor there holding the rapture in place.

25:54Right. And so I think they were able to outgrow it in other parts of the world.

26:01Well, and I think, you know, boots on the ground Christian in the 1800s could be forgiven or in

26:07the early 1900s could be forgiven for like just assuming that if it's a note in the Bible,

26:14it's not just some guys cobbling together of a few sort of disparate

26:21scriptures to make up his own timeline as he sees it. You could be forgiven for thinking that like

26:28this must be what it's always been. And you know, like if it's in that and it's stated as a fact,

26:36it's not stated as a this is a potential. Here's one way it might work. It's stated as a fact.

26:41It makes sense that people would just, okay, I guess that's how it is then.

26:47Yeah. And because it's not, it's just stated the rapture of the true church to whom there it is.

26:52Now, you know, I have a little piece in the SBL study Bible where they put a little mini

27:01essay of mine in there. And so as much as I wish that, you know, that would cement that in the,

27:06in the psyche of readers of the Bible, they put my name there to basically say blame him.

27:15I think you are underestimating the power of TikTok and podcasts, my friend. You are cemented

27:22now. Whatever you say is gospel. Be careful.

27:25Well, that, and this is a, I've talked with a lot of people who think that this is, and now going back

27:33to the Latter-day Saint faith community, there are a lot of Latter-day Saints who want the church to

27:39produce a study Bible. And one of the reasons I've heard from a lot of folks who are in positions

27:46to know that that that's not going to be forthcoming anytime soon is because a lot of leaders would

27:52say if we put commentary between the covers of a Bible, that's going to be held up in gospel

27:59doctrine and in sacrament meetings and all over the place as doctrine, when really that's

28:06not incredibly helpful because people do that now with footnotes and explanatory footnotes in the

28:11LDS scriptures. And some of them are just flat wrong. Yeah. I think that if nothing else,

28:21I think one of the lessons here is that I think, you know, especially in this same community of

28:28people where, you know, talking about sort of American evangelicalism, they're not a monolith,

28:34but I think it's safe to say that there are plenty of people within that group who are Bible,

28:40who consider themselves Bible literalists. They believe that the Bible is literally true.

28:45And they don't realize that even some of their most proclaimed traditions

28:51are, are not just like their, their new innovations. Yeah, it's, it's not, you know, that's not just

29:02not obviously contained in the Bible. It's a brand new thing. Yeah. This is not original sin,

29:09which develops in like the, the fifth century CE. This is something that developed 1300 plus

29:16years after that. So yeah, it is. And I've talked about this an awful lot on, on my social media

29:23channels. You know, you, the Bible is, is multi vocal or, or poly vocal, if you want. And it's not

29:30univocal. And when you want to try to draw out unified, consistent, singular messages or perspectives

29:39or frameworks, you have to impose some kind of unifying apparatus over the text to give priority

29:48to certain things, to silence other things, to reinterpret still other things. And that's exactly

29:53what this does. This says, I want an idea about the end times, exactly how they're going to come to

30:00pass, even though when you look in the different authors, they tell, they're telling very different

30:04stories. And so what they came up with was this apparatus of, so Jesus is going to come and then

30:11going to suck everybody out of their clothes up into the sky. And you know, a bunch of seven-year-olds

30:18are going to wake up in the morning and their parents are going to be gone. And they're going to

30:21be left behind because, you know, they, they set a swear word or something like that, or the 16-year-old

30:29who masturbated once is now left behind because they're wicked. And they come up with this framework

30:38to try to consolidate all of the different messages and all of the different pieces of imagery.

30:45And then they give generations of people trauma and a complex and terror about their family being

30:54taken away, and then being left behind to be, you know, who knows what, who knows what kind of

31:00horrors their parents told them would happen to the people who are left behind. What's the guy

31:07who did the Left Behind series at Lahey? Oh, I don't remember. I don't, who wrote it?

31:13All I can think of is Kirk Cameron.

31:16So it wasn't any part of the- Yeah, Tim Lahey. Tim Lahey was the originator of the Left Behind series.

31:23I didn't read a single word of any of those books, but who knows what horrors dwell within

31:30the pages of those books. Well, yeah. And, you know, so, yeah, so many people given so many nightmares

31:38so much therapy to work through it. And it's so funny because even within that group,

31:46the fact that you were able to list off all of these sort of competing ideas within that theory,

31:52the pre-tribulation, the post-tribulation, the dispense, you know, whatever all of the things

31:58are, the millennialisms of the various, you're various in sundry millennialisms.

32:02The fact that they can't even agree on how or when this takes place should be an indicator that this

32:10is not solid, set, obvious stuff, that they are working through things, that they're processing this,

32:19that it is almost like, I don't want to say guesswork, but like a project of creation.

32:28Absolutely, yeah. It is a productive endeavor. They're trying to create something. And, you know,

32:36it's not like you come up with an idea and all of a sudden bells are ringing or something like

32:42that. And everybody's like, oh, turns out that's the right one. It's just who can produce the

32:48argument that wins the most support. And that's the one that carries on or who can produce the

32:55argument that gets enshrined in the most popular study Bible of the century. And so that's the one

33:02that gets carried on. So yeah, in short, the rapture is something that some dudes made up

33:11that was then leveraged as a means of trying to influence people to be good, to eat their vegetables,

33:19to not touch themselves. That's just a tool, a piece of leverage that people use to try to

33:26control behavior and incentivize or disincentivize certain behaviors. And it has been phenomenally

33:34harmful to entire generations and stop it. Right. Yeah. All right. I think that's a great message.

33:42Let's let's then switch gears a little bit. We'll say, you know, we're going to downshift

33:49rocket to in the in the Porsche. Okay. But we're going to stay. Well, we'll call this a chapter

33:58in verse. Okay. So this chapter in verse is is Daniel 10. We're we're keeping it sort of end

34:09time Z. Well, rather, well, kind of, except that it's not it kind of is kind of isn't. I don't know

34:16what we're talking about. Keeping an eschatological. Right. Yeah. There's a whole bunch in this in

34:23this Daniel chapter 10. And my eyes glazed over because I couldn't figure first of all,

34:30the first thing that happens in Daniel chapter 10 is that it starts out in third person talking

34:35about Daniel. And then the second verse switches to first person. And that really messed me up.

34:40It starts out with like in the third year of King Cyrus of Persia, a word was revealed to Daniel

34:46who was named Belte Chazar. The word was true. And it was concerned and he understood the word.

34:54So it's like this third person thing. And then verse two starts at that time, I Daniel had been

35:00mourning for three weeks. I had eaten no rich food, blah, blah, blah. And that that took me a little

35:07minute to Okay, I guess we're just bouncing around. Yeah, you've got you've got somebody.

35:13Let's check in on our main character. So then so then Daniel now and I love that that they

35:23have to be like, remember, this is the Belte Chazar guy. Yeah. So don't forget, that's same person,

35:30same person. These are not two different distinct people. So they're not definitely different

35:35people. They are the same same guy. And they're me, by the way, the first two, they are me. It's

35:44I am me and I am talking now. And third year of King Cyrus of Persia, by the way, who comes after

35:50Darius within the timeline of the book of Daniel, but in real life came before Darius.

35:58Okay, yeah, you'll recall from the movie that we watch that we lampooned on another podcast

36:08on the God awful movies podcast. Okay, so what what you wanted to talk about were these

36:18princes that happen later in in the thing. Yes, two princes standing here before you.

36:25One, I'm just kidding. So that's spin doctors, of course, but in verse four, we have on the 24th

36:32day of the first month, as I was standing on the bank of the Great River, that is the Tigris.

36:38I looked up and saw a man clothed in linen with a belt of gold from Uphaz around his waist. So

36:44we have this kind of apocalyptic vision motif. This is what we see in Ezekiel, when Ezekiel's in

36:51Babylon by the Great River, and then suddenly this vision unfolds to Ezekiel. Daniel says here,

37:01I Daniel alone saw the vision. The people who were with me did not see the vision through a

37:05great trembling fell upon them and they fled and hid themselves, which is my one of my favorite

37:11things is that right after that, he says everybody ran away and he says, so I was left alone to see

37:16this great vision. My strength left me and my complexion grew deathly pale. Well, how did you

37:21know that, Daniel? Yeah, I had the presence of mine to pull out my compact and be like,

37:29I wonder how my complexion is at the moment. I quickly switched my phone into selfie mode to see

37:35what my cheeks looked like. Yeah. And when I heard the sound of his words,

37:41I fell into a trance face to the ground, but then a hand touched me and roused me to my hands and

37:47knees. So not, I'm not getting all the way up. Just put me on all fours. Yeah.

37:54He said to me, Daniel, greatly beloved, pay attention to the words that I am going to

37:59speak to you, stand on your feet for I have now been sent to you. So while he was speaking this

38:04word to me, I stood up trembling. And he said to me, do not fear Daniel for from the first day that

38:09you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words have

38:14been heard. And I have come because of your words. And then here we got this interesting statement

38:20in verse 13, but the prince of the kingdom of Persia opposed me 21 days. Oh, you know what we

38:28skipped a verse. Oh, it's like, I thought he described the person. Yeah, we got to get hit verse six.

38:36And this is also in keeping with the vision in Ezekiel, his body was like barrel. B E R Y L.

38:45Yeah, what is that? A semi precious stone, something like, what is the KJ the KJV has barrel as well.

38:55The N E T says yellow Jasper. Oh, yes, his body is rock like his face like lightning, his eyes like

39:06flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze. Yes. And the sound of his

39:14words like the roar of a multitude. And so, and then the gleam of burnished bronze in some of the

39:21ancient Greek translations that it's talking about glowing bronze. So like, if you take the

39:27metal and you stick it in the fire, oh, she blows white hot. And so this is basically what we're

39:33describing here is a prototypical deity, who in in literature from this time period was,

39:40was understood to glow have this brilliance, this shininess, which in Mesopotamian literature,

39:48the shininess signaled their deadliness. This is someone who can mess you up. Right. So, you know,

39:55tremble in fear. Right. And in the Bible, though, we get this idea that this is the the covet of God,

40:01the glory that it itself is deadly. If you look directly at the shininess, the shininess will mess

40:09you up. And so this is why, you know, you have, I think that's, that's why the the Jack Nicholson

40:17movie was so scary. The shining. That's what what left him frozen out in the in the garden.

40:25You look overnight. Don't look. Hey, look, you can't can't look directly in it. We saw what

40:30happened to the to the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. You know that old tale from the

40:38sea. So the idea is that this is a divine being. And there's some some texts from ancient Mesopotamia

40:48that also talk about gods not only having bodies like stone, but also being gigantic. So there's,

40:57there's a tradition there as well that doesn't come through too frequently in the Hebrew Bible,

41:02but is definitely there. So what, who is this person that's all burnished and bronzed and

41:12and so this is probably the son of man. Oh, okay. The son of man, if we're talking new

41:20Testament is Jesus. Is that is that who is that? Is this Messianic in some? Is that what we mean

41:28when we say the son of man? We're we're talking about somebody who was introduced in Daniel seven.

41:33So in Daniel 713, as I watched in the night visions, I saw one and the NRSVUE says like a human

41:40being. And this is translated in the KJV one like the son of man. And and so in in the Hebrew Bible,

41:49son of man is a is a phrase that just means a human. You know, like son of the prophets is a

41:54prophet. Son of the gods is a god. Son of man or humanity is a human. Right. But the son of man

42:02comes with the clouds of heaven and then came to the ancient one and was presented before him.

42:08But in some ancient Greek translations, this the preposition changes to from hails to hosts.

42:17And so instead of came to the ancient one, says he came as the ancient one. And so it kind of

42:23conflates whoever this mediatory figure is with God. And so this is one of the ideologies that I

42:31think contributes to the conflation of of Jesus's identity with God later in Christianity.

42:37But here it seems to be this this figure who is mediatory between God and humanity.

42:42Because they're going to go on to talk about how the the prince of the kingdom of Persia opposed

42:49me 21 days. And here we're getting into a little bit of history. This is about it's about warfare

42:55between Persia and Judah, because the idea of the prince of Persia and later on, we're going to

43:03have the idea of the prince of Greece. These are references to guardian angels. And if we go back

43:11to you were called Deuteronomy 32, eight and nine, we have the most high dividing up the nations and

43:16distributing them to the banalohim, the children of God, which reflects the idea that every nation

43:21on earth has a patron deity who is sovereign over their nation. And Jacob, Adonai's portion is

43:28is Jacob, Israel is the his share of the inheritance. And so the God of Israel is sovereign only over

43:37Israel. But once we get the universalization of Adonai, which I argue is the work of Psalm 82 and

43:44some other texts, where Adonai goes from being sovereign only within the nation of Israel to being

43:51directly sovereign over all the nations. Now we have to renegotiate the idea of patron deities.

43:57And what happens is they get squished down from the full deity status, second tier banalohim,

44:03sons of God status, to angelic status. Very much, Monty Python foot comes out of the heavens,

44:12sport. They're now all angels. And so they're not, they're obviously not the patron deities over

44:19the nations. They're just angels that have been assigned to guard the nations. They're now

44:25guardian angels. And we're calling them princes. Yeah, they're princes of Egypt.

44:32Oh gosh, that damn movie. So yeah, no, it's not a movie. It's a video game. Prince of Persia.

44:41It's a totally different thing. Actually, there is a movie though. There's a movie. Okay.

44:45Um, where so we've got the, the Prince of Persia here is, is fighting with the son of

44:54man. And it says, uh, so Michael, one of the chief princes came to help me. And I left him there with

44:59the Prince of the kingdom of Persia. And so Michael is probably the guardian angel over the nation of

45:05Israel, who's considered one of the chief princes. So he's our arch angel, would you say? Is this

45:12Archangel Michael? Is that what? Isn't that a thing that? Yeah, that's who the references to, but, uh,

45:18no, I, we got one of the angels of the, the heads. So the, uh, the Aramaic is head angels. Let me

45:29see if we have his tone, our hometown tone proton. Yeah. So we've got one of the first rulers in the,

45:37um, okay, in the Greek, but this is, this is where you, yeah, this is where you get the idea of arch

45:45angels because he's one of the, one of the chief angels. Right. And so the, the son of man is like,

45:50here guardian angel of Israel, you take over fighting the guardian angel of Persia. I've got to go

45:56talk to this dude by a river. Okay. Right. And then it says, uh, I left him there with the Prince of

46:03the kingdom of Persia and have come to help you understand what has to happen to your people at the

46:08end of days. For there is a further vision for those days. Whoo. And then, yeah. And so I, I just

46:19think this is, uh, this is a fascinating little bit of Greco-Roman Jewish, uh, geopolitical theology,

46:27basically that we've got, um, these different guardian angels representing the different nations.

46:34And you only go, you only get to Greece. There's no one after Greece, Persia, Greece, uh,

46:40obviously because the text was composed, uh, during the Hellenistic period during Greco-Roman

46:46period. So, uh, they don't know about Rome. So when people talk about that statue and say,

46:51oh, that one's Rome and that one's the toes or the United States or something like that. That's,

46:56that's nonsensical. Um, while he was, while he was speaking these words to me, I turned my face

47:02toward the ground and was speechless than one in human form. So it's on a manish one who looked

47:10like a human touched my lips. Now we're getting, um, Isaiah six, where Isaiah is in the temple and

47:17the seraph comes with the coal from the, from the altar and touches Isaiah's lips. And I open my mouth

47:23to speak and said to the one who stood before me, my Lord, because of the vision, such pains have

47:28come upon me that I retain no strength. How can my Lord's servants talk with my Lord, for I am

47:34exhausted. No strength remains in me and no breath is left in me. So Daniel's like, look, I've had a

47:38long day. This is hard. I don't have the mental. Uh, you know, I've got too many forks in me

47:46right now. Uh, I don't know if you know this, but you're super scary and I am freaked.

47:53And then, uh, the one in human form, again, touched him and strengthened him. Uh, he said,

48:01do not fear greatly beloved. You are safe, be strong and courageous when he spoke to me. I was

48:04strengthened and said, let my Lord speak for you, have strengthened me. Um, so he had a snack,

48:09have a, had a snack, had a nap. Um, we're, uh, we're back to where we need to be. Then he said,

48:16do you know why I've come to you? Um, I assume for the reason you just explained, but says,

48:21now I must return to fight against the Prince of Persia. And when I am through with him,

48:25the Prince of Greece will come. So Daniel 10 21 is the last verse in the chapter. Uh, so he tells

48:33him, look, I got to fight Persia. And then, and then Greece is going to show up. And then just so

48:38you know, Michael is the only one with me, Michael being your prince. Uh, got a big seal upon his

48:44jacket. Um, and, uh, yeah, that is, that is the story of, uh, what someone who appears to be the

48:53son of man visiting Daniel while he's standing by the river and scaring the crap out of him

48:59before saying, Hey, I left this battle because you've got to know something that you're not really

49:04going to understand. And then I got to go back. Uh, so my guess, because we talked about the book

49:12of Daniel, uh, in general, uh, several months ago, and it sounds like all of this is a way of saying,

49:21is it is a contemporary author going back and, and saying that this, that everything that was

49:32happening in that author's time period was predicted. Is that, is that kind of what's happening here?

49:39Yeah, probably. Yeah. The, the idea is to, um, it's almost like a, you know, you could think of

49:44Daniel as like a found footage thing where we've got these stories about, um, Daniel and all these

49:54apocalyptic visions that are telling stories about things that the people who are actually reading

49:58or hearing this text know about that happened long before. So it would be like if somebody unearthed

50:06some plates, uh, that had some writing on them and they were, and they prophesied of the, the

50:13establishment of, uh, of a republic on, uh, in the new world. And then, and then there was, uh,

50:20there was this great war that was civil in character that, uh, that, uh, resulted in the

50:26abolishment of the, uh, you know, the enslavement of, of, I'm going to point out that you're the one

50:32that's saying all of this. It is not me. This is not me doing this. And, uh, and so that's, that's, uh,

50:41basically what you've got going on with Daniel, but the further back into time the authors look,

50:47the less sure they are of the history. Right. So we're getting, we're getting mixed up timelines

50:53and stuff like that. So tell just briefly, can you sort of go through? I mean, I don't know the

50:59history that well. I don't know the Persians and the Greeks and like how all of that happened. I

51:06know that there was a Babylonian empire and, and that, you know, we've talked about the exile of,

51:12uh, the Israelites or the Judah heights or whoever into, uh, by the Babylonian empire.

51:20Right. But I don't know. I, what, so what are we talking about historically speaking and how much

51:26is true and what, yeah, that sort of thing. So what we have, uh, at the beginning of the sixth century

51:32BCE, uh, culminating around 587 BCE, the Babylonians cart destroy, uh, Judah and cart off the Judah heights

51:41to forced migrates and, uh, into Babylon. And then unlike what happened with Assyria and the northern

51:49kingdoms, uh, the, uh, Judah heights are allowed to kind of stay together and to maintain their

51:56identity. And then in 539, you have Cyrus the great who comes in with the Persian kingdom and

52:01conquers the Babylonians takes over and basically just says, okay, I have a flag. This is all now

52:09Persia. Uh, and in during the Persian kingdom, uh, the Judah heights were allowed to return to

52:17the land of Israel. And so, but we also had a bunch of people who stayed behind stayed in Babylon.

52:22And then, uh, there are several Persian kings, uh, that, uh, rule we have what's called the

52:30Aquamanid kingdom, which is kind of a, a later iteration of the Persian kingdom. And then, uh,

52:36in the late 300s, uh, BCE, we have Alexander the great who comes through and says, I have my flag.

52:45Now, um, this is all I don't, I don't know if, uh, he identified himself as Macedonian or Greek

52:52or what, but basically the, the Hellenistic empire came through, uh, and took over, uh, everything

52:59in the name of, of that empire. And then, uh, in the wars of succession that followed after that,

53:05after Alexander the great drinks himself to death in some way, shape or form, his generals and others

53:11are fighting over who gets to control the land. And we, and that's called the Diodoki, um,

53:17the wars of succession. And we get the Ptolemies who, who take over, uh, the part of the Hellenistic

53:23empire that is in Egypt, we have the salutesids who take over Syria, uh, and the land of Israel,

53:29and they kind of fight over, uh, their borders. And it goes back and forth. And so by the time we get

53:36down to, uh, the, uh, early second century BCE, specifically the one sixties, which is when a lot

53:44of the book of Daniel is probably coming together and being completed, you basically have the

53:50salutesids trying to stamp out the Judean way of life, uh, which is sometimes referred to as

53:56Judaism and some translations, but scholars today would say, um, it probably isn't close enough to

54:03how we understand the concept of an ism to, uh, to be Judaism. Uh, but they're there. Would you

54:10say it's like a more, more a cultural idea that rather than a religious idea or, uh, I think that

54:16would be a way to understand it. Yeah. That, that this seems to be more about, um, socio-cultural

54:21conventions and, and identities than it is about, uh, beliefs about a relationship of, of the

54:29people to God. But you, you have particularly Antiochies, um, Antiochus, the fourth epiphanies

54:36who is credited with, uh, with this harsh suppression and oppression and trying to stamp out,

54:41uh, the Judean way of life that, that results in the Maccabean revolt and then the, uh,

54:48successful fighting off of the salutesids that results in the rededication of the temple

54:55and the establishment of the Hasmonean kingdom. So you don't have an independent

55:02Judah Heights Jewish slash Israelite kingdom from five, eight, five 87 BCE until like 165 BCE

55:11and then in 165 BCE with the establishment of the Hasmonean kingdom, suddenly you've got a

55:17marginally autonomous independent kingdom all over again. And as we've talked about in other shows,

55:24that's probably when the Torah becomes widely known and the rules and regulations become

55:31implemented as a way of, of kind of, um, creating this cultural identity now that we have our freedom

55:39back. Right. And so Daniel is, is coming probably right before the defeat of the salutes, uh, when

55:47everything is, is looking kind of rough. Uh, and it is trying to create a sense that God is working

55:54behind the scenes, that God is in control, that, you know, the son of man is like, okay, I came

56:00from the battle with the, the, the, uh, Prince of Persia, I got to go back to battle, the Prince

56:04of Greece, but just to let you know everything's cool, we're going to win. Okay. Bye. And goes back.

56:09And, and so it's, it's trying to comfort, bring comfort to the people and, and say in the end,

56:15God is going to win. Our people are going to, uh, to be, uh, you know, exonerated. And, uh,

56:23everybody will be happy and, uh, we will clasp hands and sing, um, by, uh, right. Do we want to,

56:31since I teased it earlier, do we want to quickly tie that into, uh, revelation? Uh, well, what,

56:37what are the main things that happens in revelation? Because revelation is doing the exact same thing.

56:41It's another apocalyptic vision. Only this time it's Rome. That is the oppressive power. And so

56:48we're having all these visions about, uh, we're going to have all these visions about what's going

56:52to happen. But remember the, the son of man came as the ancient of days. And now we have Jesus,

57:01who is the son of man, according to the gospels. And, uh, Jesus is, is kind of subtly, uh, I,

57:09Jesus identifies them sell or himself as the, uh, the alpha and the omega, the first and the last.

57:15And then by the end of the book of revelation, God says I am the alpha and the omega, the first

57:20and the last. So it's kind of a wink, uh, at saying, just like the son of man came as the

57:25ancient of days, Jesus is coming as the first and the last, the alpha and the omega, but Jesus

57:31appears with a girdle. Um, and, and I love the, I don't remember exactly what the King James

57:37language is, but he's gird about the paps. Oh, yes. I remember, I remember the paps. Yeah,

57:43which basically means he's hiked as belt up to his nipples. Um, and, uh, but he's described in, uh,

57:50in much the same way, he's got glowing white hair, his eyes are like fire and, um, you know,

57:57his, his skin shines like, uh, like glowing hot bronze and all his feet were like burnished bronze

58:04refined as in a furnace. And his voice was like the sound of many waters, which exactly what

58:10Daniel says about the, the voice of this one who looked like a human being. So we're basically,

58:16we want folks who are familiar with this imagery to be like, I remember that guy. And, um, only this

58:23time it's Jesus and doing the same thing saying, look, we're going to peel back the fabric of reality.

58:28And it's grotesque, but God is, is in control. God is the one who, uh, who is working behind

58:36the scenes. And in the end, everyone who remains faithful to God, uh, will be vindicated, will be

58:43saved. Uh, only, you know, it's, it gets a lot bloodier in revelation than, than it did in Daniel.

58:50Yeah. Revelation is, uh, I mean, we've talked about it. It's, it's spooky. It's a, it's a little

58:57wackadoo. I mean, right, right after, uh, the son of men's voice being, uh, the sound of many

59:04waters, uh, we got a, we got a two edged sword emerging from his mouth. So it's like, we know,

59:12you know, some stuff's about to go down. Yeah. This, this does not bode well.

59:17When you see the sword, uh, coming out of the mouth, when the dude regurgitates a sword,

59:25you're, you know, some stuff's about to happen. All right. Well, I, that's very interesting. Uh,

59:31and I think that's a lot of fun. So I guess, I guess the, the, uh, the, the, the takeaways are,

59:40don't worry, the rapture is not going to happen. And, uh, and also, um, I don't know if you want

59:47to write prophecy, make sure that you write it after the fact because you'll be a lot more accurate.

59:52Yeah. It's a lot easier to get it right. Yeah. All right. Well, uh, hey, if you would like to be a

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