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Particulars of Christianity:
314 End Times Prophecy (Eschatology)

Prophetic Symbols: Daniel 9 and 10 (Part 3)

Prophetic Symbols: Daniel 9 and 10 (Part 1)
Prophetic Symbols: Daniel 9 and 10 (Part 2)
Prophetic Symbols: Daniel 9 and 10 (Part 3)
Prophetic Symbols: Revelation 13 (Part 1)
Prophetic Symbols: Revelation 13 (Part 2)
Prophetic Symbols: Revelation 13 (Part 3)

Articles 7-12
Articles 13-18
Articles 19-25
Articles 26-29

So far, we have established the following.

1) That resurrected (glorified) humans, including Jesus Christ, are according to Jesus himself, "equal to angels."
2) That both Jesus Christ and those who rule with him during the Millennium will do so with resurrected (glorified) spirit bodies that make them "equal to" or "as the angels."
3) That there are fallen angelic princes, which rule over the nations now, including past princes such as the princes of Persia and Greece.
4) That when the religious leaders of Jesus' day crucified Jesus, they were carrying out the will of the adversarial principalities, powers, and rulers of this world.
5) That these angelic princes, and particularly the prince of the Romans, orchestrated the death of Jesus Christ, even as spoken of generally by Paul in 1 Corinthians 2.
6) That even after their fall, God has continued to rebuke and converse with the fallen adversarial spirits with the desire to make known to them his wisdom and righteousness, including through veiled statements in the prophets of the Old Testament.

All of the above points we have established thoroughly from the scriptures. But by now the question you are no doubt asking yourself is, "Why? What's the point of all this?"

Keeping in mind that according to Irenaeus, the sentence upon the fallen angels was contained in the writings of the prophets but make clear in the words of Jesus Christ, we will now read the following parable from Matthew 21, which can also be found in Mark 12 and Luke 20. Here is the parable in its entirety.

Matthew 21:33 Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country: 34 And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. 35 And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. 36 Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise. 37 But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. 38 But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. 39 And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him. 40 When the lord therefore of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto those husbandmen? 41 They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons. 42 Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? 43 Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. 44 And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder. 45 And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard his parables, they perceived that he spake of them.

Notice first of all that this is a parable about "the kingdom of God" as verse 43 plainly attests. But what is the kingdom of God? Daniel 2:44 is the origin of that phrase.

Daniel 2:44 And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.

As we have already seen, according to Daniel 2:44, the kingdoms of the Gentiles would come to an end when the Messiah came and set up the kingdom of the God of heaven, which would never pass away, and unlike the Gentile kingdoms before it, would not pass to other people.

Now, while the Matthew account of this parable records that the hearers were the ones to suggest that what the owner would do to the tenants, the Mark and Luke accounts inform us that it was Jesus himself who actually said this first to them.

Mark 12:9 What shall therefore the lord of the vineyard do? he will come and destroy the husbandmen, and will give the vineyard unto others.

Luke 20:15 So they cast him out of the vineyard, and killed him. What therefore shall the lord of the vineyard do unto them? 16 He shall come and destroy these husbandmen, and shall give the vineyard to others. And when they heard it, they said, God forbid.

Notice clearly from the Luke account that in verse 16 the people are not said to voice a response until after Jesus has answered his own question, to which they respond, "God forbid." What is significant about this is only that the Mark and Luke accounts affirm that this idea that God would remove the wicked tenants and replace them with obedient tenants was not only the idea of the hearers, but Jesus himself confirmed that this is, in fact, what the fate of the wicked tenants would be.

In this parable, Jesus speaks of "husbandmen" or tenants who are given charge over a vineyard while the owner is away. In the parable, the owner is clearly God. As the time draws near for the harvest of the vineyard, God begins to send servants to the tenants. These tenants are depicted as have a long history of murdering the messengers God sends to rebuke and speak to them. And, when God finally sends his son, the tenants decide to murder the Son as well. And why? Because they hope that by murdering God's Son, they will obtain the inheritance for themselves. The end result is that when God returns, he will remove those tenants from power, destroy them, and replace them with tenants who will tend the vineyard obediently.

Now, while this parable does certainly apply to the Pharisees, just as the Pharisees themselves perceive and just as verse 43 records, it also depicts the exact situation with these angelic rulers whom God set as stewards over the earth, who God has rebuked and make known his wisdom to, who rebelled against God and orchestrated the death of the prophets and of Jesus Christ his Son. This is particularly true since in John 8, Jesus clearly states that the Pharisees were carrying out the will of their father, the devil.

And to be sure, there are parts of this parable, which do not accurately refer to the Pharisees. For Jesus clearly tells us that when the tenants see the Son of God coming, they recognize him as the Son of God. The Pharisees did not recognize Jesus as the Son of God. Instead, quite the opposite was true. They believed his claims that God was his Father were false.

John 19:7 The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.

John 19:7 makes it perfectly clear that far from recognizing Jesus was the Son of God and killing because he was, the Pharisees actually denied Jesus was the Son of God and killed for claiming falsely to be so.

Furthermore, Jesus states in the parable that the tenants killed the Son specifically because, recognizing that he was the Son, they decided to kill him in order that they could seize the inheritance for themselves. But did the Pharisees kill Jesus in order to obtain his inheritance as the Son for themselves? Did they have any clue that Jesus had the inheritance of God's Son? Not at all.

So, whose thoughts were these? Who were these tenants that recognized Jesus as the Son of God? While the Pharisees most certainly failed to recognize that Jesus was the Son of God, the Gospels clearly tell us that the devils, which Jesus cast out, did recognize him as the Son of God.

Matthew 8:29 And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?

Mark 1:24 Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God.

Mark 3:11 And unclean spirits, when they saw him, fell down before him, and cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God.

Mark 5:7 And cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not. 8 For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.

Luke 4:34 Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God.

Luke 4:41 And devils also came out of many, crying out, and saying, Thou art Christ the Son of God. And he rebuking them suffered them not to speak: for they knew that he was Christ.

Luke 8:28 When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not.

And who were these tenants who killed Jesus for the specific reason of gaining his inheritance as the Son of God? As we have seen, the Bible plainly tells us it was the chief adversary and his angelic princes, who in the hopes of preventing the coming kingdom of God, which would put an end to all their reign, decided to try and kill the Son of God and obtain the earth for themselves in the process.

1 Corinthians 2:7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: 8 Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Likewise, just as the parable says, God not only spoke concerning these angelic tenants through the prophets using parables and allegories as Irenaeus attests, but God will also replace those angelic tenants with resurrected humans who will rule and reign with Christ being "equal to angels" once they have been resurrected. God is replacing the fallen angels to whom he delegated authority over the kingdoms of earth with redeemed and glorified men, who God makes equal to the angels through the resurrection and then delegates to rule the kingdoms of the earth with Christ in his Millennial reign.

We have now completed a survey of Daniel 2, 7, 8, 9, and 10 as well as a survey of the New Testament regarding angelic princes. Collecting what we have learned from these surveys, we can assemble them into the following points to create our symbolic map legend.

1. A series of unfolding historic empires can be represented collectively using a single, symbolic entity (such as the statue of Daniel 2.)
2. The phrases "out of the earth" and "out of the sea" are used interchangeably by Daniel and, therefore, no great significance should be attached in the effort to distinguish between them.
3. Daniel 2, 7, and 8 all depict the same succession of empires starting with Babylon, then Media-Persia, then Greece, then Rome (along with another nation represented by the clay), and finally the coming of the kingdom of God, when the saints possess the kingdom.
4. Something of the Roman kingdom exists in two time periods, the time period of the legs before the clay is introduced into the statue and in the time of the feet and toes after the clay is introduced into the statue.
5. Beasts represent two items, both kings and their kingdoms.
6. Horns also represent kings and, unless specified by the text, horns represent contemporary kings, not a succession or line of kings.
7. Although horns represent kingdoms that arise out of an empire that precedes them, the kingdoms represented by those horns do NOT have to be situated geographically in the same region as the preceding empire. The kingdoms represented by the horns can migrate significantly away from the geographic location of their imperial predecessor.
8. A beast with multiple heads represents an overarching political entity and the political powers that come from it.
9. Angelic princes rule over the kingdoms of men, and specifically over the empires described in Daniel 2, 7, and 8.
10. The "prince of the people" who "destroyed the city and the sanctuary" is NOT the Antichrist, but the angelic prince who ruled over the Roman Empire.
11. Putting all of this together we can see that Daniel's writings recorded and anticipated a succession of the following empires: Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece, Rome, another yet unknown represented by the clay, and finally a Jewish empire or kingdom ruled over by Jesus Christ the Jewish Messiah, the Prince of princes.