The Time-Telling Prophecies of Daniel

By Philip Mark Ames

Do you know what time it is? No, not according to the hands on your wristwatch or the digital display on your cellphone. Do you know what time it is on Gods clock? Do you know the recent events that have occurred at the precise moments for which they had been scheduled by God? And do you know the pre-ordained dates on which specific near-future events are set to occur?

Gods schedule of certain events was given to a man who spent his life serving and advising the kings of two of the greatest empires of ancient times. But he was told that those time schedules were sealed and could not be understood until the time of the end.

Now they have been opened. And the understanding of those prophetic time-tables is being made available, some of them for the first time ever, in this book. In clear, simple terms, you will learn the meanings of all the time-telling prophecies contained in the writings of the Prophet Daniel. And you will be amazed, even astonished, when you find out what time it really is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491828397

Philip Mark Ames

Philip Mark Ames was instrumental in developing realizationism in the last quarter of the twentieth century. From 1975 till now, he has authored four books and several study courses based on the Bible and has taught in the classroom, from the pulpit, and on the radio.

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© 2013 Philip Mark Ames. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/24/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2840-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-2839-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013919065

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CONTENTS

Author’s Preface

Introduction

Chapter One: The Hands Of God’s Clock

Chapter Two: The Year Jesus Died

Chapter Three: The Date Of Jerusalem’s First Destruction

Chapter Four: Seven Seasons

Chapter Five: The Last Days Of The Four Beasts

Chapter Six: 2,300 Evenings And Mornings

Chapter Seven: The Seventy Seveneds

Chapter Eight: A Long Time At The Big River

Author’s Preface

This book has been a long time in the making. It actually was begun in the mid-1990’s when I was Chairman of the Board of Christian Education at a church in Maine, and was teaching a class on Eschatology at the Bible Institute affiliated with that church. But because of other responsibilities and time constraints, this book got put on hold. Before I could get back to it, I had moved to southern California. I restarted the project there and got far enough to realize that I had to be able to determine the dates on the Roman calendar of events originally dated on other calendars from ancient times. Again, the book got put on hold while I created a computer program that would instantly transpose any date on any calendar that I might be using in my research into the corresponding date on the Julian or Gregorian calendar. The resulting software, created with no previous experience or training in such things, was revised many times over the past decade until now it will show me anything I may want to know regarding the dates of events at the touch of a keyboard or the click of a mouse. Nearly all the dates for all the events referred to in this book are available to me in that way. Meanwhile I was occupied in several endeavors including gainful employment and writing music. So I didn’t get back to writing this book right away. But this year I was given the opportunity of taking a six-month sabbatical with no responsibilities whatsoever. I decided to take advantage of the time to use the software I now had and the research resources that became available to me in order to finish this book. I thank God, and the relatives and friends who made this possible. And now the book is finally finished. Hopefully I will now have time to work on some of the others I started back in the 1990’s.

Philip Mark Ames

September 15, 2013

Introduction

How long must we wait? Will it come in our time? Does anyone know? Hope feels so much stronger when it can tell time.

When Christ promised his disciples that he would surely return, he didn’t say when. Neither do I. And yet, although He clearly stated that no man knows the day or the hour of His second coming, still some of the Bible’s foretold events which are related to His return do indeed have time-tables attached.

More than twenty-six centuries ago, God told His prophet Jeremiah that Judah and the surrounding nations would serve the king of Babylon for seventy years. That same year, a boy named Daniel was taken as a prisoner from Jerusalem to Babylon. While there, he devoted himself as much as possible to prayer and the study of God’s written word. Among the inspired writings he cherished was Jeremiah’s prophecy of Judah’s restoration after seventy years under Babylonian domination. That prophecy gave him comfort and hope.

During his exile from his original homeland, Daniel himself received from God several time-telling prophecies which extended far beyond those seventy years. One of his disclosures actually pinpointed the time of the first appearance of the Messiah; another, the modern rebirth of the Jewish nation as an independent state. Still another of his time-telling prophecies was fulfilled in the Jewish recapture of the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967. Several yet-future events are also marked on Daniel’s prophetic calendar.

A study of all the time-telling prophecies found in the book of Daniel will prove to be quite thrilling, eye opening, hope inspiring, and comforting. And that is the purpose of this book. It points to the fulfillment of prayers of all God’s chosen people. The time has now come for answers to all who ask how long they must wait for God’s promises to be reality.

CHAPTER ONE

The Hands of God’s Clock

To tell time accurately, we must have a correct starting point and accurate points of reference along the way. The face of a circular clock provides a good example. It is marked with equally spaced numbers from 1 through 12. Around the numbers a short hand moves very slowly to mark the passing hours. At twelve times the short hand’s speed a longer hand moves to mark the passing minutes. And sixty times as fast as the long hand, a very narrow hand moves to show the swiftly passing seconds. These hands may extend from concentric axles at the center of the clock.

Similarly, the sun is the central point around which the earth and moon move like the hands of a clock. The face of this great celestial clock displays constellations and individual stars and galaxies, in reference to which the movements of the earth and moon mark the passage of time.

Using the heavens and the earth as a perfect and unerring timepiece, God gave to Daniel several prophecies telling how much time would elapse between certain events. We might compare the giving of these prophecies to the setting of the alarm on a clock. When the hands reach the preset hour, minute, and second, the alarm suddenly sounds. And when the hands of God’s clock reach the preordained hour and day and month and year, the foretold event will surely occur, whether man expects it or not. (Compare Revelation 9:13-15).

Methods of Time Keeping

In order to know when each of these prophesied time periods was to end, we need to know exactly when the event occurred which marked its beginning. For this purpose, it will be necessary to establish an accurate schedule or calendar of events as far back as Daniel’s lifetime. In order to do this, we must first give consideration to a variety of methods which different societies have employed for recording the passage of time.

One of the most common methods has been to refer to an event as taking place in this or that year of a particular king’s reign. This made it important to also keep a record of how long each king reigned. This was usually done by Bible writers as well as many other chronologers of ancient times, though some of those records have been lost. Since most of the dates during the time period we will be considering are determined according to the years of rulership of the kings of Judah, Babylon, and Persia, we need to first consider the methods which were used in referring to their terms of kingship.

Accession and Regnal Years

Both the sacred Hebrew calendar and the Babylonian (or Chaldean) calendar were luni-solar and began with Nisan, the first month of spring. The Chaldeans calculated their kings’ reigns as beginning and ending with the calendar year. This is called the regnal year. From the day a king began to reign until the first day of the calendar year on Nisan 1, he was considered to be completing his predecessor’s term of rulership. This practice was sometimes followed by the Persians also, who had a similar calendar. However, (except for Daniel, who lived in the courts of Babylon and Persia) most of the Hebrew historians considered the length of a king’s reign according to its actual beginning and ending points. Thus, counting from a king’s acceding to the throne at the death or removal of his predecessor, the term of his reign is calculated according to accession years. This dual system of designating the term of a king’s rulership needs to be considered by the reader of the various histories. In this work, I will try to make clear which method was used in each calculation. Thus, where necessary, I will specify either accession year or regnal year.

Olympiads

Another method of dating was developed by the Greeks; it was based on the regular recurrence of the Olympic Games. They were held during the summer every four years. For a long period of time, the Grecian years began with the first new moon of summer. Later, a calendar reform changed it to the first new moon of autumn. In each case the year was luni-solar, staying fairly close to the true tropical, or seasonal, year. Each four-year span was known as an Olympiad. The year of the games was the first year of the Olympiad, which was followed by the second, third and fourth years of that Olympiad. The fifth year was the first year of the next Olympiad, when the games were again held. So any event could be located in history by stating the year (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th) of the particular Olympiad (9th, 72nd, 183rd, etc.) in which it occurred. Eventually, this method was adopted and used by the Romans, who, like a sponge, absorbed the Grecian or Hellenistic civilization.

The Roman Era

But the Romans also had their own system, which dated events according to the number of years which had passed since the founding of the city of Rome. The traditional date for that founding, and therefore the start of the Roman Era, was calculated to have been on April 21 during the third year of the 6th Olympiad. That year was deemed to be the year 1 AUC (Ab Urbe Condita, which is Latin for From the Founding of the City). Before the city of Rome was founded by Romulus, the ancient Latin or Alban calendar had a full tropical year, beginning with spring and consisting of only ten months of varying lengths. Romulus continued the same calendar with only minor changes. But the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, added the two months January and February, making 12 near-equal months. This new form of luni-solar year was to begin on January 1st with the celebration of Saturnalia, marking the winter solstice. But there still was room for improvement. This calendar did not accurately keep pace with the precession of the seasons. By the time of Julius Caesar, the winter solstice was occurring on December 25th rather than on January 1st. And since the pagan celebration of Saturnalia was tied to the occurrence of the first day of winter, December 25th marked the time for those festivities.

Julius Caesar determined to prevent any further drifting of the calendar in relation to the seasons. So in the 708th year of the Roman Era, in the third year of the 183rd Olympiad, with the help of a Greek astronomer named Sosigenes, who lived in Egypt, Caesar developed a strictly solar calendar. This calendar called for each year to be 365 days in length; but every four years one extra day would be added to harmonize with the earth’s movement around the sun. Thus the Roman months would always occur during the same seasons each year, but would no longer be tied to the moon. Julius Caesar effected this important change in the Roman calendar as of January 1, 709 AUC. But even this calendar had a slight flaw, and within 500 years, the winter solstice was occurring on December 21. Meanwhile, world-changing events took place that would have a dramatic effect on the way we keep track of time.

AD and BC

Within two years after reforming the calendar, Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides (15th) of March in 710 AUC. A thirteen-year struggle for power ensued. Then a grandnephew named Octavian, whom Julius had adopted as a son, was victorious over Marcus Antonius (and Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt) in the battle of Actium. He thus became sole ruler of what had become the Roman Empire. Augustus was the name he took for himself, knowing that it had been previously used only as a title for a god.

During the reign of Octavian Augustus Caesar, Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea. The historian Luke indicates that after the age of thirty, Jesus was baptized and began his ministry. (Luke 3:23) Meanwhile, Augustus had died in August of 767 AUC, two years after elevating his stepson Tiberius to co-regent of the Roman Empire. Luke states that the prophet John, the man who baptized Jesus, began his ministry in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. (Luke 3:1) The Greek word used by Luke and translated as reign is hegemonias.

About 500 years later, a Roman Catholic monk named Dionysius Exiguus invented a new method of designating years. By then, the Catholic Church had Christianized the pagan culture and had given new meaning to some of its former practices. The celebration of Saturnalia on December 25th was carried on as the anniversary of Jesus Christ’s birth and had been renamed Christmas. Believing that Luke had referenced the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar’s sole emperorship, or 782 AUC, which year began with January more than 14 years after the death of Augustus, Exiguus took that for the year in which John had begun preaching and baptizing.

According to the literal translation of the Greek text, Luke had written that Jesus was as if of years thirty when he began his own ministry after being baptized by John. That