I was looking for merged Daniel/Revelation timeline charts on Google (dynamic, interactive, manipulatable 3-D full color versions not yet a technical reality thus far); but was a little discouraged because so many included interpretive views rather than a straightforward sequence of events.  A couple of them were great in terms of a simple/decluttering format.  But I would have had to “white out” 75% of the labeling that included Papal references to the Revelation Beast and names of Ottoman Sultans assigned to the ten horns.  I finally found one that was simple and seemed to be a rather unbiased statement of the facts.  When I was running down the copyright, I discovered that it had been created in the late 19^th century! 🙂  But I think it has stood the test of time.  Nevertheless, I was curious about the man who had created the timeline chart so I wiki’d him.  The chart was created by Clarence Larkin.  He was trained as a Mechanical Engineer, but became a Baptist Minister in his mid-thirties. Larkin’s first pastorate (1886) was at Kennett Square, Pennsylvania; his second was at Fox Chase, Pennsylvania, where he remained for 20 years. His study of the Scriptures led him to adopt many of the tenets of the premillennialist theology that was gaining favor in conservative Protestant circles in the Gilded Age. He began to make large wall charts, which he titled “Prophetic Truth,” for use in the pulpit…Larkin disliked the tendency of writers to say uncharitable things about each other, so he sought to avoid (all critical analysis in his writings, merely) presenting his understanding of the Scriptures. During the last five years of his life, the demand for Larkin’s books made it necessary for him to give up the pastorate and devote his full-time to writing.  He died on January 24, 1924.¹ 

Anyway, Larkin’s attached timeline summarizes key events in both Daniel and Revelation, and also has a few arrows which, ironically, address a point of convergence that we have already discussed!  My plan over the next few weeks is to review Daniel’s timeline, then the Revelation timeline, and then add some more arrows to produce a Converged Timeline. 🙂

Probably the most prominent feature of the chart is the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream which Daniel interpreted:  Daniel 2:31-35 As you, O king, were watching, a great statue appeared. A great and dazzling statue stood before you, and its form was awesome. The head of the statue was pure gold, its chest and arms were silver, its belly and thighs were bronze, its legs were iron, and its feet were part iron and part clay. As you watched, a stone was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay, and crushed them. Then the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold were shattered and became like chaff on the threshing floor in summer. The wind carried them away, and not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that had struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

The ref des’s directly under the statue represent the Babylonian Kingdom, and three other kingdoms that emerged over the intervening centuries and decades until Jesus came down to earth:  the Medo-Persian Kingdom, Greece, and Rome.  (Note: all subsequent citations are from Halley’s Bible Handbook.)  “From the days of Daniel to the coming of Christ, the world was ruled by these four empires, exactly as Daniel had predicted.  In the days of the Roman Empire, Christ appeared and set up kingdom that started as a grain of mustard seed, passed through many adversities, and became a universal and everlasting kingdom, blossoming into full glory at the LORD’s return.”²

The statue vision, detailed in Daniel, Chapter 2, was given when Daniel was a young man, occurring “in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign as sole ruler, which means that Daniel was still a young man, having been in Babylon only three years.”³

The vision of the four beasts, detailed in Chapter 7, represents the “continuation of the prophecy of Chapter 2, which was spoken 60 years earlier; four world empires, and then the kingdom of God…In this chapter these same four world empires are represented as a lion, a bear, a leopard, and a terrifying beast.”⁴  Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, and the Babylonian empire were a thing of the past when Daniel had this vision.  Daniel had successfully survived the Lion’s Den and he was serving as the lead governor of Darius’ Medo-Persian empire.

Shortly after the “beast vision,” Daniel had another vision that was chronicled in Chapter 8.  It was interpreted by Gabriel, and referred to Alexander the Great’s Kingdom.  The vision revealed a ram and a feisty goat that was rapid and dangerous with a capital D.  The multi-horned goat attacked the ram and totally trounced it.  A horn emerged from one of the goat’s four horns—this new horn is generally thought to represent Antiochus Epiphanes (“The Mad One,” who did his best to annihilate the Jewish religion).  “Yet the repeated phrase ‘time of the end’ (vv. 17, 19) may mean that along with the near view of Antiochus there may have been in the distant background of the vision the ominous outline of a far more terrible destroyer (v. 26) who would darken the closing days of history and of whom Antiochus was a symbolic forerunner.”⁵ 

The seventy weeks are introduced next in Chapter 9:  70 weeks (symbolizing 70 years) during which Israel was a slave in Babylon; then 70 weeks between the Jewish people’s return to Israel until Jesus came down to earth. The second “70 weeks are generally understood to mean 70 weeks of years, that is, 70 times 7 year, or 490 years (seven times longer than the period of exile.  These) 70 years are subdivided into 7 weeks, 62 weeks, and 1 week (vv. 25, 27).  It is difficult to see the application of the 7 weeks, but the 67 weeks (62 + 7) equal 483 days, which, according to the commonly accepted year-day theory (Ezekiel 4:6) means 483 years.  This 483 years is the period between the decree to rebuild Jerusalem, and the coming of the Anointed One (v. 25).  The decree to rebuild Jerusalem was issued in 458 B.C.  Adding 483 years to 457 B.C. brings us to A.D. 26, the very year in which Jesus was baptized and began His public ministry…Further, within 3.5 years Jesus was crucified, that is, “in the middle of the ‘seven’” (in the middle of the week) “the Anointed One” was “cut off…”  A most remarkable fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecies, even to the year.”⁶

There are other interpretations of this, and various permutations of calculations.  But the general consensus is that Daniel accurately predicted Jesus’ arrival five hundred and twenty-seven years in advance!

Last night I saw a sermon on TV and heard a radical testimony on-line, both of which talked about other extremely accurate timelines that God had created.  The sermon was about a fallen preacher who had lost his church, family, and ministry. He was broken-hearted and inconsolable about failing God.  A couple of years later, he was visiting a friend’s church, and a man approached him weeping; this man asked the fallen preacher if he could pray for him.  During the prayer, waves of God’s Love, Mercy, and Grace overflowed and overwhelmed the preacher; and this manifestation brought him to the point where he could finally forgive himself.  It turned out that the weeping man had been given a vision of the preacher’s face twenty years earlier.   God had set things up in advance, before the preacher had ever preached his first sermon.  The LORD moved a willing, and extremely patient vessel into position, so that He could do a deep heart healing…at just the right time.

In the second instance, a woman was visiting out-of-town and received a phone call that her daughter had been murdered!  When she was racing home, she felt that the LORD told her to pull the car over and pray.  Sitting in the car, the woman forgave the murderer and ultimately submitted herself to God’s will—which was that, going forward, she treat that man as her son (she wrestled with God on that one!).  At the very time that she was praying in her car, the murderer (who had been in a drug-induced frenzy), was attempting to commit suicide.  The gun wouldn’t fire the bullet when he pointed it at himself, but fired in the air when he tested it after the failed attempt.  Three times.  

The woman was instrumental in negotiating the murderer’s sentence from death to 24 years in prison.  Today, they preach the Word of God together as a team.  

God’s timelines are always perfect.  He knows the times and the seasons (Acts 1:7), declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done (Isaiah 46:10).  It’s a guessing game for everyone else, but God knows just when the curve will flatten.  He will protect us in the meantime, and—although we can’t understand how it could possibly happen—turn tragedy into triumph.

++++++++++++

¹Wikipedia:  wiki/Clarence_Larkin

²Halley’s Bible Handbook, ed. Ed van der Maas, 25^th edition. Grand Rapids, (Michigan: Zondervan, 2000), s.v.  “Dan. 1  DANIEL.”

³Ibid.

⁴Ibid., s.v. “The Four Beasts Daniel 7:1-14.”

⁵Ibid., s.v. “Dan. 8 THE RAM AND THE GOAT.”

⁶Ibid., s.v. “Dan. 9 THE SEVENTY WEEKS, OR 70 ‘SEVENS.’”