Joe Heschmeyer addresses misinterpretations of the prophecy in Danial 2, while presenting a balanced view of it’s relationship to the Catholic Church.

Transcription:

Joe:

Welcome back to Shameless Popery; I’m Joe Heschmeyer. If you were to ask Christians whether or not the Catholic church makes an appearance in the Bible, you’re probably going to get two answers. non-Catholic Christians like Protestants are going to say no. The Catholic church didn’t exist at the time of the New Testament. So either we don’t see any appearances of the Catholic church in the Bible, or if we do, it’s in prophetic passages warning us about the church rise. For instance, the horror of Babylon in Revelation chapter 17, Catholics on in their hand are going to say, no, that’s not true. The church is found all over the pages of the New Testament. It’s just going to be a few decades before the Church of the New Testament starts to be known more popularly as the Catholic Church. But what if I were to tell you that both Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church are actually prophesied in the Old Testament in a passage that many Christians overlook?

And what if I were to tell you that this passage is actually the key to settling some of the biggest theological controversies between Catholics, Protestants, seventh Day Adventists and Mormons? So today I want to introduce you to that passage, and then I want to consider some of the ways that this passage is misread as the prophecies misunderstood by modern skeptics, by Mormons, by Adventists and by Dispensationalist. So without further ado, what prophecy am I talking about? I’m talking about the prophecy of Daniel chapter two. Now as a little bit of a refresher, in case you don’t remember it, king Nebuchadnezzar has a dream and this dream is hard to interpret and his own men are unable to interpret it. They don’t even know what the dream is. Daniel is able to successfully interpret it, and the dream is of a statue, something like an idol and an idol in which the top part is gold and then silver and then bronze.

Those of you who just watched the Olympics, this may feel very familiar. And then the bottom part is iron and then iron and clay, as Daniel explains, the head is a fine gold. The breast and arms are of silver. The belly and thighs are of bronze, the legs of iron, its feet, partly of iron and partly of clay. Now, he then explains that this refers to four successive kingdoms. The first one he tells us what it is. It’s kingdom, Nebuchadnezzar’s own kingdom, the Babylonian empire, and then it’s going to refer as to the successive kingdom, a kingdom that will arise after him, that’s the kingdom of silver, and then a third kingdom of bronze and a fourth kingdom of iron. Pretty straightforward, right? So what does this mean? What are these four kingdoms of Daniel chapter two? Well, the first one, as I say, has already been given to us in the ancient Jews and the early Christians had no trouble figuring out who the other three were as John Bergman and Brat Petri point out since the time of the second temple period, this is around the time of Christ a little before and then up to 70 ad that’s the second temple period.

The four kingdoms symbolized by the metallic image and Daniel two have been interpreted as four consecutive empires. Babylon, the Mato Persian Empire. This is the Meads and the Persians kind of coru, then the Greeks and then the Romans. And significantly they mentioned there, this is true also in what’s called Jewish apocalyptic literature like fourth Ezra, second Baruch, that other prophetic texts, ones that we don’t consider canonical but are still important because they give us an insight into how Jews of the time were understanding what Daniel II was about, pointed towards Babylon, Mato, Persia, Greece and Rome. With Rome being the fourth empire. This is going to be really important for reasons that are going to be clear in a few moments. So those are the empires. The Roman empire is the empire of iron and clay. Now, Lawrence de Tomazo points out that this identification was consistent throughout late antiquity in both rabbinic Judaism and patristic Christianity.

So during the second temple period, this is how people understood it. And then a little bit later, as you have the beginning of what’s called the rabbinic period of Judaism, the temple’s destroyed, and then you start to have rabbis who are really influential. They’re interpreting it the same way, the Patristic period, meaning the early church fathers, the early Christians, they interpret it the same way. So it isn’t just like up to the time of Christ, this is how it’s understood. It continues to be understood that way after this. In fact, Steve Mason points out that during the Greco-Roman period, it was interpreted unanimously as referring to these four kingdoms with the fourth kingdom being Rome. And now I mentioned this because modern skeptics, including Mason himself, are going to think this is actually a misidentification. But we’ll get into why Saint cereal of Jerusalem is one of many examples.

Who says this kingdom is that of the Romans, meaning the fourth kingdom is that of the Romans and that this is how the church has always interpreted it. He says that in about three 50, but he’s pointing to the fact that he’s not the first to interpret it this way. There are a bunch of interpreters going back to at least politics in the one hundreds who interpreted in the same way. So why does this matter? Well, it matters because God makes special promises for what he’s going to do during the time of the fourth kingdom. What are those promises? In the vision? It looks like this. As Daniel recounts to the king, a stone cut out by no human hand might see image on its feet of iron and clay and breaks them into pieces so that not a trace of them could be found.

The stone struck, the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. That’s the prophecy that a stone not formed by human hands is going to come and establish a new heavenly kingdom. That’s the idea and that this kingdom will be worldwide. He explains in the interpretation in verse 44, in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people. It shall break in pieces, all these kingdoms and bring them to an end and it shall stand forever. Now, it doesn’t take an interpretive genius to understand that during the time of the Roman Empire we see this fulfilled. We see the stone not formed by human hands come into the world. We see the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, and he in fact sets up a kingdom and he entrusts this kingdom to St.

Peter and the giving of the keys and this kingdom, the church on earth as kind of the key to the kingdom of heaven, spreads throughout the whole world and lasts forever, will never be destroyed, will never be left to another people. This is a pretty clear interpretation that points both to during this time period, very specific time period during the time when the Roman Empire is controlling Judea, that we’re going to see the Messiah come into the world and establish the kingdom of God on earth and that it will spread worldwide. That’s a prophecy, which as I say is a prophecy both of Jesus Christ and of the Catholic church. So given how clear that seems to be given how obviously that seems to point to the Catholic church, you might wonder, well, how do non-Catholics interpret that? How do they avoid coming to these very Catholic sounding conclusions?

I want to look at several of the major ways. The first and almost certainly the most popular is the way skeptical scholars do. Now, they make this prophecy not about the Roman Empire as everybody understood it in the past, but instead about Greece instead. So Robert Gurney points this out. Now, gurney is one of these people who thinks it refers to Greece. Nevertheless, he says, radical authors always identify the four kingdoms as Babylon media, Persia and Greece. Notice there, rather than the Persians and Meads being treated as one empire, this move splits them up. So the Meads become the second empire and the Persians become the third empire, the bronze one, and then Greece becomes iron. That’s the idea, that’s the move. Whereas conservative authors, and you’ll notice they’re supported here by the consensus of ancient Jews and ancient Christians and identified in the way that I described.

I want to give a really good example of this, but before I get there, gurney explains one of the reasons why these radical scholars tend to settle on grief rather than Rome is because they believe that Daniel isn’t really from the time of Daniel, that the book of Daniel’s actually from the second century BC and that the author isn’t actually predicting anything. He’s instead describing current events that the reason he’s able to describe things accurately and in great detail about the events of the Roman Empire is because he’s living through them. Now, I just want to make that extremely clear. The presupposition behind this is Daniel isn’t really a prophet. He couldn’t be a prophet because prophets don’t exist as this skeptical theory goes. Therefore, if we see these accurate predictions of the future, they must not be predictions of the future. They must actually be descriptions of current events or of the past.

That’s the move. It’s presupposing that the prophetic literature couldn’t possibly be what it claims to be. A good example of this is the German theologian, Caterina Brock who says Daniel’s four world eras consist of the kingdoms of Babylon media, Persia and Greece. So she’s very clear the fourth kingdom must be Greece. Now why must the fourth kingdom be Greece? And she points out that the earliest Christian commentators like Saint A politics interpret it instead as Rome, and she takes it for granted that hippos actually knows it should be Greece and is just making it about Rome. Even though everybody Jewish and Christian thought it was about Rome, everybody secretly knew it was about Greece. That’s her argument. She says he’s faced with the challenge that the contemporary world empire that is the Roman empire, does not appear within the sequence of kingdoms, which the editor of the book of Daniel had in view.

And how would he know this? Well, on the basis of modern, historical critical exegesis, we know the Roman Empire could not have been in view because the Final redaction of the book of Daniel took place at the time of Antiochus epiphanies IV around 1 64 BCE. In other words, she’s assuming number one, that Daniel is finally composed or redacted in about 1 64 B, C or BCE to use her language. Number two, that therefore it can’t have anything to say about the Roman empire because that hadn’t happened yet. And how could anyone possibly be a prophet? That would be miraculous or something, and hip politicians and the early Christians must realize this, right? They must be familiar with modern historical critical ex of Jesus. Now you might notice this is on his face kind of an absurd view. It’s presupposing, its conclusion, it’s presupposing. Daniel’s not a prophet, none of this is real, and then arriving at a conclusion that it couldn’t possibly have gotten the future right Now, you’ll see people do this with the New Testament all the time.

Jesus predicts the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and so they say, well, therefore later disciples must have made this prophecy up and it must have been made up after the temple was destroyed in the year 70. Now, as others have pointed out, I think Father Dwight Longnecker actually has an article about this. Even if Jesus weren’t a prophet, which is a ridiculous starting point, but even if you weren’t, it wouldn’t be shocking that someone in the thirties might foretell, Hey, once before when we rose up against the imperial power dominating us, they destroyed our temple. I see a lot of zealots wanting to rise up against the Roman empire. I wonder if they’ll destroy our temple. It’s not shocking to envision that like a creative author, a smart person, a person who can read the room, can maybe make an accurate prediction of the future, even leaving aside the supernatural element.

But notice that this is presupposing the falsity of scripture. It presupposes scripture’s not true. The prophetic text couldn’t possibly be prophetic and then working from there. So that’s one level of critique that to accept the kind of Greek theory, you should realize that people arguing for it are presupposing the falsity of the Bible. That’s not something they’re proving. It’s something they’re assuming that either the book is actually ancient and accurately foretells the future. But if you can’t accept that, then you have to invent that. It must be much more recent and you have to invent that the four kingdoms end with Greece, but there’s additional problems with the skeptical view. The skeptical view doesn’t make sense of Daniel itself because remember, the skeptical view says the four kingdoms are number one Babylon. Everybody agrees on that because Daniel says it outright. Number two, the meads, number three, the Persians.

Why is that a problem? Because in this view, you treat the Meads and the Persians as two separate kingdoms, two separate empires. Look at Daniel eight and Daniel eight. There’s another prophetic vision. This one’s of a he goat going up against a ram with two horns. Now it’s very explicit in Daniel eight verses 20 to 21 that the ram with two horns is the kings of media in Persia. Notice it’s not treated as two kingdoms in Daniel. The meads in the Persians are treated as one two-headed kingdom. Hope that makes sense that the two horns are two horns of a single kingdom and they’re facing off against the he goat, the Greeks.

Additionally, there’s some other details that are Daniel eight is going to be very helpful in understanding what’s going on in Daniel two. In Daniel eight, this he goat, which we know to be the Greeks came from the West across the face of the whole earth. Remember that language because in Daniel two, the third kingdom, the kingdom of bronze is described as ruling over the whole earth or ruling over all the earth. In other words, the same language is used to describe the Greeks as the third kingdom. So we can compare Daniel two and Daniel eight and realize that these skeptical scholars are just wrong here. The fourth kingdom couldn’t be Greece because the Meads and Persians are treated as one kingdom, the two horned ram of Daniel eight, that’s the silver kingdom. The Greeks are treated as the bronze kingdom which will rule over the whole world in both Daniel two and in Daniel eight.

That means that the fourth kingdom, the kingdom of iron and clay must be the kingdom that comes after the Greeks, which we know historically is the Roman empire. Now, I will say this, what this gets right at least is it acknowledges the skeptical scholars, the kind of academic crowd that believe any of this is true, at least recognizes the basic point that this is a prophecy about four kingdoms. Now, that may not seem like much, but wait until you see some of the other ways the text gets misinterpreted. Let’s look to the second misinterpretation. This is about making it about Europe or maybe America and then adding some extra kingdoms. This is sort of the Mormon interpretation. The President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Kimball in the 1970s presents an interpretation of Daniel two, that this is all actually not about the coming of Jesus during the time of the Roman Empire, but about the coming of Joseph Smith in the 1830s in America,

CLIP:

The church of Jesus Christ of latter-Day saints restored in 1830 after the numerous revelations from divine source and this kingdom set up by the God of heaven would never be destroyed, superseded, and the stone cut out of the mountain without hands would become a great mountain and would fill the earth.

Joe:

Now, you might notice a few problems with that interpretation. The first is how are you possibly getting from Babylon media, Persia, Greeks, Romans to America, and 1830 you’re off by 1800 years. And what empires are we talking about here? What kingdoms are we talking about here? Well, Kimball and many other Mormon apologists and exe have some creative ways of making Daniel two work as a prophecy of America. But let’s just see if these ways work

CLIP:

Then came the interpretation. Nebuchadnezzar represented the king of kings, a world power representing the head of gold. Another kingdom would arise and take over world domination. The interpretation included the domination of other kingdoms, Cyrus the great with his meads and Persians to be replaced by the Greek or Macedonian kingdom under Philip and Alexander and that world power to be replaced by the Roman Empire and Rome to be replaced by a group of nations of Europe represented by the toes of the image having delineated the history of the world in brief. Now came the real revelation and Daniel said, and in the days of these kings, that is the group of European nations 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.

Joe:

So notice that a couple things happen for the Mormon view. First you introduce a fifth kingdom, you make the toes into a kingdom or really a set of kingdoms like maybe 10 different European nations, and there’s a lot of exegetical problems with that. First, how do European world powers have anything to do with the situation of Israel? Right? In Daniel two, these are successive kingdoms that rule over the Jewish people that rule over the Israelites. And so there’s an obvious sequence from the Babylonians to the per meads or the Meia Persians to the Greeks, to the Romans because one after another rules over the people of God. What does any of that have to do with European world powers? You’re not on the right continent. You’re not in the right time period. Also, Daniel too is about the coming of the Messiah, the stone not formed by human hands.

How does that refer to Joseph Smith? Now I know he sometimes calls himself, for instance, in his own biography, he calls himself a rough stone rolling, coming from on high, but he seems to stop just short of claiming he’s the messianic figure. Daniel too is describing additionally, even if you’re going to say the toes are a group of European nation states or something, we don’t really know why these, what 10 are we talking about? How are you getting from the Roman Empire to later European kings? You’ve got a 2000 year gap you’re trying to span there. Well, Joseph Smith doesn’t actually come from Europe, so where are you getting to America? So you can see a few issues here. So notice you’re adding a bunch of other kingdoms. This is going to be a common theme of people misinterpreting the text. You have to add a bunch of kingdoms to make it not about Jesus and not about the Catholic church.

In Daniel two though, in verse 40 notice it says, there should be a fourth kingdom. It never says there should be a fifth Kingdom or 10 more kingdoms or anything like that. It says there shall be a fourth kingdom strong as iron. And then he says, and as you saw the feet and toes partly of potter’s, clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom. That is it, meaning the fourth kingdom that the Roman empire, the fourth kingdom will be a divided kingdom, which of course it was, was constantly in a state of political flux, even though it was externally this fierce, powerful force that was like a kingdom of iron dominating the whole world internally, it was plagued by constant in fighting. You have massive civil wars and all sorts of divisions within the empire, most famously the division between the Eastern and Western Roman empire.

But by no means is that the only one. So that’s Daniel two verse 40 to 41. But then the other problem is, as I mentioned in verse 34 to 35, it says that a stone was cut out by no human hand. It smelt the image on its feet of iron and clay and broke them in pieces. How does the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints do that? Did it arise in Europe? No. Did it overtake the whatever European empire we’re imagining existed after the Roman Empire? No. There’s no sense in which the prophecy of danieli is fulfilled. But what’s more, if you think about this prophecy of the four kingdoms is going Babylon, media, Persia, Greece, Rome, and then you randomly are adding 10 European nations. You’re not enumerating which 10 and then saying somehow you’re then getting to America and Joseph Smith, what was the point of the prophecy?

It was clearly not about four kingdoms, then it was about dozens of kingdoms. We don’t know how many and then none of those kingdoms matter. The kingdoms ruling Israel have nothing to do with this. The European powers have nothing to do with it. The real actions taken place in America, which doesn’t appear at all in the prophecy. That’s a very strange misinterpretation of Daniel too. And while many Protestants aren’t going to be sympathetic to the Mormon misinterpretation, a great many Protestants make a very similar set of misinterpretations. So the last category of misinterpreted text I want to look at are the ones that say this is not about Jesus Christ coming into the world, and it’s not about him establishing the kingdom of God on earth in his first coming. Rather they make it about the second coming of Christ and remove any reference to the church.

I want to look at a few examples of this. This is pretty clear in the official Seventh Day Adventist Bible commentary. It looks at Daniel 2 44 and acknowledges, many commentators have attempted to make this detail of the prophecy, a prediction of the first advent of Christ. It means when he came in history in the first century and the subsequent conquest of the world by the gospel, but this kingdom, it puts it in square scare quotes, was not to exist contemporaneously with any of those four kingdoms. It was to succeed the iron and clay phase, which had not yet come when Christ was here on earth. So the Adventist argument is that you have the four kingdoms. We’re good up to the Roman empire. Christ comes then, although that’s apparently not an important detail, then the feet and toes are a fifth empire, which it describes as the various nations that grew out of the fourth empire.

So again, you have four kingdoms, none of them matter. Then you have the various nations that grew out of the fourth empire, and then at some point in the future you have the coming of Christ kingdom. So what did the four kingdoms have to do with anything that turned out nothing? Daniel two is a prophecy about nothing. There’s going to be four kingdoms. None of them are important. This isn’t going to be some other kings. We don’t know how many 10 toes, but it’s not going to be 10 kingdoms. And then sometime after that, the coming of Christ will be with his messianic kingdom. That’s a prophecy allegedly according to the Adventist view. Now you’ll notice that’s not really a prophecy of anything that shoots means. Sometime after the Roman Empire, there’ll be some other stuff and then some other stuff will happen after that totally unfalsifiable prophecy because it could be anytime in the future.

There’s no window of time specified at all other than sometime after the Roman Empire. And so you’ll notice the coming of Christ in history is not even a factor like the stone not formed by human hands has apparently nothing to do with the birth of Christ. It’s just not mentioned in this. So that’s the Adventist view. There’s a surprisingly similar view taken by dispensational Christians. If you’re familiar with the left behind series people talking about the rapture, that’s a sign of this movement called dispensationalism. It’s the 19th century vision... Read more on Catholic.com