The SECRET Origin of the Apocalypse

Football is back, and PrizePix is bringing out their best offer yet. On PrizePix, you can make all the picks you want, all in the same app. And now, PrizePix is available nationwide. Lock in for kickoff, because everyone and everything is on PrizePix. What you want? Download the PrizePix app today and use code SPOTIFY to get $150 instantly in lineups if you win your first $5 lineup. PrizePix. Run your game. Must be present in certain states. Visit prizepix.com for restrictions and details. You probably already know about the Book of Daniel, even if you've never opened it. You got a guy in a lion's den. That's Daniel. Three men thrown into a furnace who just don't ever burn. Also Daniel. A giant hand floating around, writing a message on a palace wall in the middle of a king's party. Maybe you haven't heard of that one, but also Daniel. And these are just like Sunday school classics, right? A guy in the lion's den. It's everywhere. Be brave. Trust God. The bad guys lose. But here's the thing about what you heard on the Sunday. School version, that's only half the book, because if you flip to the back half of Daniel, the whole thing just falls off a cliff. I mean, suddenly there's monsters climbing out of the ocean. There's a beast with iron teeth and ten horns, an ancient figure sitting on a throne made of fire with a river of flames pouring out in front of him. There are angels with actual names, which is pretty rare. There are armies fighting in heaven and the dead start clawing their way up out of the dirt. So how does one book go from be brave kids and trust God? To the dead shall rise and every empire on earth is secretly a sea monster? Well, the crazy thing is that's not even the weirdest part. The weirdest part of the whole book is the predictions and the details and how correct the predictions are, kind of. Because right at the very end, the prophecy that nailed everything, the kings, the wars, the betrayals, all of it suddenly gets a big thing wrong. And that single mistake might be the key to figuring out when this book was actually written and who actually wrote it. So that's what we're trying to figure out. We're trying to figure out today, what is the book of Daniel? Is it a prophecy? Is it a history book in disguise? Is it the original blueprint? Is it a source code for every apocalypse that comes after it all the way down to the book of Revelations and the end time countdown charts that people are still drawing on today? If you are interested in apocalyptic literature and in biblical history, well, this is the episode for you. So sit back, relax and welcome to Religion Camp. What's up, dude? And welcome back to Religion Camp. My name is Mark Gagnon. And thank you for joining me in my tent where every single Sunday we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from every religion from all time forever. Yeah, that's what we do here. Yeah, baby. Welcome to the show. That's what we're all about. We're trying to figure out what everyone believes. There are billions of people on this planet, and many of them all have different gods. They all worship different versions of God. Maybe they're all worshiping the same God with different flavors and different cultural lenses. I don't know. I don't know. But what I do know is that I want to know the core of everyone's religion and everyone's faiths. And I take all the stuff that I think is cool and admirable about their faith and I apply it to my own life. I'm not saying all roads lead to heaven. I'm saying if I see people praying a lot, I'm like, man, that's cool. I like that practice. I should pray five times a day. You know, why not? I should pray more. I should be more in touch with God. Things like that, you know. Now, full bias, I am Catholic. I grew up Catholic. You know, that's my background. That's the lens that I view the world. And we don't only do, you know, Christian stuff. Today, we're kind of doing a hybrid. We're doing the book of Daniel. This is a fascinating one. You'll find it in the Bible, of course. But you'll also find it in the Hebrew Bible. This is an element of the Old Testament that is connected to the Tanakh, as the Jews will call it. And it's a fascinating book. I mean, apocalyptic literature is one of my favorite things because you read it and you're like, what's going on? The book of Daniel is fascinating. It's truly a lot. But before we jump into it, I just want to say thanks. Thanks to you. Yeah, dude. I want to say thanks to you for tuning in. Because every time you click, comment, like, subscribe, anything to do with our channel, you help it. If you're ever like, man, I really like this show and I want to pay it back, just by clicking and being here, you're doing enough. Okay? A comment here and there. It doesn't hurt. And maybe a subscribe. Maybe sharing it to 10 friends. Who cares? All right? All I'm asking is that you just show up. It truly means the world. You help the show grow. You help my dream stay alive. You keep the lights on in the tent. You keep the fire burning here at the campsite. Now, I also need to thank my good pal next to me. He's an old soul. He's an orthodox legend. He's the Greek freak himself. His name is Christos Kornikopias. How are you? Kornikopias is new. That's a new one. That's a new one. How are you, pal? I'm doing great. You had a great weekend. Stellar. That's what you said. You said you had an amazing weekend. And it turned out, when I explained it, it was just average. And, yeah, I mean, it just was like you weren't completely stressed. You were like, yeah, I just, I slept and I ate and now I'm here. Played pickleball. Anyway. Anyway. Guys, that's a topic for a different episode. Okay. Christos' Pickleball Habits. Now, we got to talk about the book of Daniel. The first thing we got to know about this book is that it doesn't feel like a singular book. Because it's not really. It feels like two books. Because the two halves of Daniel have such different vibes. The first half of this book, chapters one through six, are basically stories about Daniel's life. You know? And it's a pretty kind of straight up and down Bible story. Right? He's a hero in a foreign court up against the devil. Against the odds. And we'll touch on more of those stories in a second. And scholars have a name for this kind of thing. They call them court tales. Which literally just means like stories about a faithful outsider who ends up serving inside a powerful foreign government. And keeps on outsmarting, outpraying, and like outlasting everyone around him. Again, this is not a court like a court of law. This is like how a duke or like a prince would have a court. Like literally like his internal government that keeps the day-to-day functionings of his life. You can think about like Joseph in Egypt. Right? Kind of same type of vibe. But the second half, chapters seven through twelve, different story. No more like court narratives with like easy to follow kind of, you know, arcs. We're talking like the story becomes like a first person nightmare with visions and symbols and coded numbers and beasts and like the end of the world. It's kind of like Revelation before Revelation. The second half of Daniel. And this is what we call apocalyptic literature. And we're going to spend most of the episode talking about that. Because the second half. Is where the book of Daniel gets really weird and really interesting. And where it literally changed how all of like ancient Judaism and ancient Christianity viewed themselves in the future and kind of everything. But real quick. I just want to clarify that word apocalypse. If you saw our episode on Revelation, you probably already know this. But when most people hear apocalypse, they think the end of everything. Right? They think like fire raining down, the end of the world, everything's done. But that's actually not what the word means necessarily in this context. Like when we say apocalypse. I know that it has kind of like a colloquial connotation. But the word apocalypse literally comes from the Greek word apocalypsis. And it just means an unveiling. It's literally a revelation. Like you pull like a tarp off of a car and you're like, that's a brand new Corvette. That is an apocalypse. Especially for a guy. If you're like having a midlife crisis, that is also, it kind of has a double meaning in that regard. But an apocalypse originally isn't about the world ending. It's about getting knowledge. It's about knowledge being shared. So a human being can suddenly see. See the hidden workings behind reality. It's kind of like Wizard of Oz, right? You pull back the curtain, you see who's actually in charge, what's actually going on. So we've got a book with a big split in personality. You got bedtime stories up front and then cosmic horror, apocalyptic literature in the back. It's like the mullet of Bible books, right? That's the way you can look at it. You're like, hey, up front, these guys are pretty straight up. This is business like in the back. Woo. That is a party. Okay. So why is the book of Daniel? Well, like I said, it's half the life story of Daniel, right? And then he launches into this apocalyptic vision that he had. So it's kind of like Daniel's story, his life and his visions, which is why it's all kind of smushed together into one book because it's all ultimately pertaining to this character, Daniel. But before we get into like all the apocalypse stuff, I just want to go over what's in the first half of the book of Daniel so you can get an idea of who the guy is and what kind of life he lived. And his story opens up with a disaster. Because before Daniel gets thrown into a lion's den and before he sees any monsters, he's just a kid who's ripped out of his home and being marched into the most powerful city on earth at the time. So the book of Daniel is typically attributed to being written by Daniel himself, although we don't know exactly who the author is. But it takes place in Babylon, the superpower of the age. Okay. They are the big boys. Okay. And they basically roll over the kingdom of Judah. They sack Jerusalem and they loot the temple. Now you have this king, King Nebuchadnezzar, and he is the king of Babylon. And he doesn't just take the gold when he goes in and destroys the temple and takes, you know, all the stuff. He takes the kids. Specifically, he took like the smartest, most promising young nobles from Judah. And he hauled them all back to Babylon and put them through basically like imperial reeducation. So he takes all these kids and he teaches them a new language and new books and new food. And, of course, they worship new gods. They're no longer worshipers. They're worshiping the gods of Israel. And they are all given new names because their old names are in Hebrew. So they need Babylonian names. It's part of like how empires historically stomp out culture. You know, like you take any of the survivors or the people, you might not, you know, you kill all the men. You take the women and children, give them all different names. So our guy Daniel gets renamed. His new name is Belteshazzar. And then his three friends also get names. And you've probably heard of their names, ironically enough. I know I've heard of them going to like Sunday school. And their names are Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Abednego. Now, the whole first half of the book is basically these four guys trying to figure it out, right? Fish out of water situation. They are basically refusing to fully belong to Babylon while still serving the court. So they refuse to worship the new gods and all that stuff, but they're still serving the court and the king loves them, like especially Daniel. And so Daniel's first act of rebellion is that he refuses to eat the king's food. And that's kind of like his first stand. And to be clear, the text never actually tells us why he refuses. People assume it's about kosher laws, but Daniel himself doesn't, he doesn't specify that in the text. It would probably be obvious to the audience that would be reading this in the context. Like they would be like, oh, obviously, but we don't know for certain. It could be a purity thing. It could be that the food was offered to idols. It could just be that he didn't want to owe the king anything, but the book just kind of leaves it open-ended. But there is a pattern here that the book starts setting up and it's kind of important. Daniel thrives inside the empire without ever fully capitulating to it. But then as time goes on, the empire kind of starts like pushing him and really like testing his limits in different ways. And the first way is actually through dreams. So here's what happens. Nebuchadnezzar has a nightmare and makes an insane demand. He orders his wise men to tell him what he dreamed without him telling them and then interpret it. And of course, no one can do it because it's impossible. He literally wakes up and he's like, all right, what did I dream guys? And what does it mean? And they're all like, bro. I don't know. What's your dream? Like they're so confused. And so what does he do? He orders all of them executed. Truly. That's just what the story says. And then Daniel steps up and he says that the dream came to him in the night and gives credit to God and then describes it perfectly. And this is what he describes a giant statue, a head of gold, a chest of silver, belly of bronze, legs of iron and feet made of iron mixed with clay. Then a stone that no human hand cut comes flying and smashes the. statue basically at the feet. And then the whole thing collapses into dust. And that stone grows into a mountain that then fills the entire earth. It's a pretty crazy dream. So Nebuchadnezzar's listening. He's like, well, all right. Yeah, you basically nailed it. Now, Daniel's interpretation. Each metal is a kingdom. Empire after empire after empire. Each one thinks that it's going to last forever, but then each one crumbles. And that stone that grinds all of them to powder that basically destroys the whole statue. That's a kingdom set up by none other. Then God. That's the one that never falls. Now, remember that vision, that dream, right? That statue, those four metals, four kingdoms. We're going to see those exact four kingdoms again a little bit later, except next time they're not going to be a shiny statue. It's going to involve a lot of monsters, but we'll get to that in a second. But for now, the court sort of tails, as they call them, just keep on escalating. So then we get the furnace. Nebuchadnezzar builds a giant golden image and orders everyone to bow to it. Now, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they refuse. He has them thrown into a furnace so hot that it kills the guards who are literally getting too close. And what's crazy is that according to the story, they just kind of post up in the furnace. They're just kind of chilling, just like, you know, it's kind of hot, but they're just fine. It's kind of like a sauna, you could think. And the king looks in and he's freaked out because he's like, hey, there's four figures in the fire, not three. And why are they not dead? Now, quick honesty check, because a lot of people are taught fourth figure is Jesus. It's difficult, right? Here's the deal. Nebuchadnezzar first calls him something like the son of the gods, and then later just says that God sent an angel. So the idea that it's Jesus is obviously a Christian reading that's laid on top of it centuries later. Obviously, the Jews that would be reading this text are not going to interpret it as Jesus Christ. But it's a pretty beautiful reading from a Christian perspective, right? Three people are thrown in the fire, then they look in, they see four figures in there. Now, it's not directly what Daniel says, to be very clear. So, I mean, it's not directly what Daniel says, to be very clear. So, I mean, it's not directly So, I mean, it's not directly what Daniel says, to be very clear. So, I'm not here to tell you what to believe. I'm just telling you what's on the page. So, Nebuchadnezzar kind of looks inside the furnace, and he's pretty impressed. He's like, I threw these three guys in there. They didn't worship this statue idol that I built. They don't die. It even says that their clothes didn't even smell like smoke. And so then, from that point, Nebuchadnezzar was like, all right, well, your God is real. So, no one can speak poorly about your God ever again. So, your God is protected, because obviously, he's legit. And then, it just says that they get promoted in the province of Babylon. And then, that's the last we hear of him. Now, it's also interesting, because in this chapter, Daniel is absent. Like, it never specifies that Daniel bows or doesn't bow to the statue. Now, we presume that he didn't, because he was, you know, pretty hardline against the court and to the idols of the court. But we don't ever know what happens to him and why he doesn't get thrown in the furnace also. And that's just kind of how it ends. Now, the next chapter is Nebuchadnezzar getting humbled. He struts around bragging about how great Babylon is. And he kind of loses his mind. Like, literally, he ends up living outside like an animal and like eating grass. And like, it says his hair is basically growing out like feathers and his nails look like claws. And for years, he's just kind of like going feral until he finally admits that God, like, you know, capital G, God of Israel is actually the one that's in charge. And then, chapter five, you know, this is the writing on the wall part. This is basically the party from hell. There's a new king. His name is Belshazzar. And he throws a massive feast. And to show off, there's, you know, a bunch of drinks that come out and everyone's drinking wine from these sacred cups that got stolen from the temple in Jerusalem. Remember that temple that got looted by Nebuchadnezzar? Well, now everyone's drinking out of those, like, sacred cups. That's a bad move because a disembodied hand appears and writes four words on the wall. The wall, the words on the wall are mene, mene, tekel, parson. No one can read it. Now, here's a little genius detail that a lot of people miss. Those words are basically units of money. A mina, a shekel, a half. But Daniel reads them as verbs, like numbered, weighted, divided. Literally, so, like, your days are numbered and they've been weighed on scales and you're coming up a little bit light. Your kingdom is basically getting divided up and going to be handed to someone else. That's basically what this prophecy that gets written by this disembodied hand on the wall says. And that same exact night, Belshazzar dies. Fellas, this episode is sponsored by Blue Chew. Look, life is about preparation. 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Daniel opens his window, and he prays anyway, the same way that he had always prayed to his god. What do they do? They see him. They say, hey, you're not praying to the king. You're getting the death penalty. How do they do it? They throw him to the lions. They toss him in the lion's den. They come back the next morning, basically, to go take his body out, and they just find him there. Not a scratch. That's basically it. Every single one of these stories runs on the exact same kind of engine. You have a ruler that's demanding to be treated like a god, or people in the court basically trying to trip up Daniel, and Daniel, as a faithful person, says no. Everything looks hopeless, and then a higher power steps in and basically flips the whole thing. The king, who thought that he was on top of the universe, is now forced to admit that he is actually subservient to the god of Daniel. That's basically the message in the front half, and it's a pretty easy read. There's a court above the throne room, and that's the god of Daniel, and Daniel is a faithful servant that's basically holding the line. It's nice, right? That could be the end of the book, except at exactly halfway, the camera stops pointing at the kings and now turns to Daniel and kind of like inside Daniel's mind. What Daniel sees is so disturbing, it literally makes him sick. Here's the hinge of the whole book. For six chapters, Daniel's the guy who explains other people's dreams. He's got like this divine gift. He's the interpreter. He's like the calm, level-headed person in the room, and then chapter seven, we go into his dreams, and the storytelling just flips. We go from like once there was a man named Daniel to Daniel himself being like, I was there, I can't sleep, I saw this crazy stuff, and here's what's going on. Now, a little kind of like a detail here that seems like irrelevant, but it does matter. The language of the book literally changes as well. If you're reading it in the original text, there's big chunks of the middle that are written in Aramaic and then other parts in Hebrew, which is one of the first clues that scholars point to when they say like, hey, this book wasn't written all at once by one guy in one sitting. It was probably assembled and kind of put together. Like remember that two books in one, that's kind of where this idea is coming from. So what does Daniel actually see? What are these like apocalyptic visions? Well, he's standing by a churning sea at night and four beasts come crawling out of the water one after another. First, he sees a lion with eagle wings, and then he sees a bear kind of, you know, lopsided with like ribs in its teeth. And then he sees a leopard with four wings and four heads. And then there's a fourth beast. And the text doesn't even try to describe it. It literally just says like, it's scary. Iron teeth, bronze claws, crushing and devouring everything. And it has 10 horns. And while Daniel is staring at it, the little, horn pushes up between the others, like a tiny little horn with human eyes. And there's a mouth that just is like gloating and prideful and just won't stop bragging. Now, here's where you might be tempted to check out because it sounds like he's like tripping or something like, okay, sea monsters and like a magic horn with a mouth. Don't because Daniel does something that a lot of these ancient texts doesn't do. Like if you read the book Revelation, it's just kind of like all these crazy visions that ostensibly John of Persia has. Patmos is telling us. And you just hear the visions and none of, none of it's really explained. Daniel is different because he actually tells you what it means, or at least what it means to him. And we can interpret that as like what it actually means, like the capital T truth. So right there in the chapter, an angel spells it out. The four beasts are four kingdoms and the horns are kings. So this isn't a prediction about like a literal Godzilla rising up out of the Mediterranean. It is sort of like political science. Satire. It's the same trick as like drawing Russia as like a bear, like the USA is like a bald Eagle, like interpreting empires as animals that you might see in like a political cartoon. That's basically the ancient version of that. Now, remember the gold statue that we talked about in the sort of first half of Daniel, you have four different metals and four kingdoms. This is Nebuchadnezzar's like nightmare that he has Daniel interpret. Well, this is now the sequel. So four kingdoms and they look a little bit different. So chapter two, you see the throne room, and empires look like glittering statues and gold and silver and bronze. And it's all majestic. Well, we go to chapter seven and we see them from below from the point of view of the people getting crushed. Those same empires are not precious metals or majestic. They are predators. They are things with teeth, things that like eat you and want to destroy you. And that's the whole political imagination of this book in one image. And it's pretty brutal and like pretty obvious. So the question here is now, who are these kingdoms? And what is like the arrogant little horn with human eyes? Like who is that king? Because he's not a metaphor for evil in general. It's like a real guy with a throne and like a body count. And now the most common ways that scholars will line it up is they'll say, okay, the beasts are probably Babylon and then Medea and then Persia. And then the great, big, terrifying fourth one is none other than the empire of the Greeks. This is basically like, you got to think like Alexander the Great, like the world that Alexander leaves behind when he dies. Now, this puts like that little bragging horn in the middle of one of the ugliest chapters of ancient Jewish history. So keep that in mind because we'll get to exactly who that person is in a second. But first, before we go down to earth, Daniel's vision keeps on getting crazier into a throne room that's not even on this plane. So, right in the middle of all these monsters, the scene kind of cuts. And suddenly Daniel isn't at sea anymore. He's in a courtroom, like a heavenly court. And there's all these thrones and basically someone comes in and sits down. And the text calls him ancient of days. And the image here is pretty unreal. So there's like perfectly white, pure clothing. It says like as white as snow and hair that looks like pure wool. And there's a throne blazing with fire and wheels of flame. And a river of fire pouring out in front of this being. And thousands upon thousands are serving him. Books are getting opened. And basically like this court is in session. Now, again, not to over literalize, like this isn't Daniel claiming to have like a photograph of God. He doesn't have like a handy cam, like filming heaven. Every detail here is saying something. So like the white hair means ancient and wise, older than all these empires that think that they're eternal are going to last forever. Fire means purity and judgment. The books mean like everything that's ever been recorded. Like, hey, nothing ever gets forgotten. Nothing ever gets forgotten. Everything is on the record and it exists in this place. And the verdict comes down instantly. That arrogant fourth beast, the one with like the loud like little horn is killed. The body is destroyed and it's thrown into this fire. So the whole book up until this point, you have all these empires that get brought up and all these kings that look unstoppable. And then in this, this heavenly court scene, it takes like two sentences and they're all basically destroyed. And then comes an image that might be the single most influential couple of verses in the whole Old Testament. Daniel looks up and he sees someone coming basically with the clouds of heaven. And this someone is described as one like a son of man. That's what it says. It describes one like a son of man, which in the original son of man, it basically means a human being, like one who looked human. And that's kind of, a shocking line because every other power in the vision comes up out of like this, like chaotic sea and they look like a monster. And then one comes down from heaven looking like an actual person. And he's brought before the ancient of days and he's handed everything. He's handed authority and glory and a kingdom. One that unlike every beast before it, it never actually ends. That kingdom is actually eternal. Now this is big and we got to be careful and try to be as like honest with this section because this passage has been fought over for literally, 2000 years. Who is this son of man that comes down from heaven? In the original context, scholars debate it. Some say like, he's a symbol. He's a stand-in for the faithful people of God who finally get vindicated after being chewed up by these beasts and being crushed by all these empires. Others think that perhaps it's an angelic being, maybe connected to the archangel Michael. Here's what you shouldn't do off the rip. Like I know, you know, if you went to Christian school like me, you're like, okay, that's obviously Jesus. Daniel didn't write, this is Jesus. He just said the son of man. Now what actually happened is huge. Centuries later, there's a Jewish teacher walking around Galilee who keeps calling himself the son of man. This is the most interesting part to me that literally at the trial of Jesus Christ, according to the gospel of Mark, Jesus tells the high priest that they'll see the son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. Like Jesus is literally quoting Daniel 7 to like the priests, like to their faces at his. So this one image, a human figure riding the clouds, receiving an everlasting kingdom becomes one of the master keys that early Christians use to explain who Jesus is. So to be completely fair, it's not Daniel predicting Jesus by name. It's more so predicting a figure. And it's possible that people are mapping this person to that identity. And Jesus himself is very familiar with the book of Daniel is even quoting it at his own trial. Now, football is back and prize people are back. So this one image, a human figure riding the clouds receiving an everlasting kingdom becomes one of the master keys that early Christians use to explain who Jesus is. is bringing out their best offer yet on prize picks. You can make all the picks you want all in the same app. And now prize picks is available nationwide. Lock in for kickoff because everyone and everything is on prize picks what you want. Download the prize picks app today and use code Spotify to get $150 installing and lineups. If you win your first $5 lineup prize picks run your game must be present in certain states visit prize picks.com for restrictions and details. This is the moment where we have to talk about the game. We have to talk about the beast with that little horn, you know, the most arrogant king, the one that you know, that really the whole book is kind of pointing towards. Now, what's interesting is that he's probably not a symbol. It's probably not a demon. It's probably not the Antichrist, at least not in the original context. He's a Greek king who lost his mind and tried to erase an entire belief. So in order to understand who this, you know, very arrogant king is on the, you know, the horn of this giant, monster monstrosity, that is the empire. We got to go to Alexander the Great. So Alexander the Great conquers basically the known world. And then he dies pretty young in 323 BC without having a clear succession. He doesn't have a clear air. So his generals basically carve up the empire. And so little Judea with Jerusalem in him ends up getting stuck in the worst possible spot right on the border between two of those Greek successor kingdoms. So to the south in Egypt, you have the and in the north in Syria, you have the Seleucid kingdom. And for over a century, Judea is kind of the rope in this violent tug of war between this northern and this southern kingdom. So who is this arrogant king? Who is the little horn that comes up on this beast? Well, according to scholars, his name is Antiochus IV. Now, here's the first thing that you need to know about this guy. He epiphanies, which means, and I'm literally not exaggerating, God manifest as in like God visible I'm God in person I am God so naturally people start to make fun of him because behind his back his own contemporaries changed one letter of his title so instead of you know God manifest epiphanies they call him epiphanies which means the mad one the lunatic literally God manifest becomes the madman just by changing one letter and it's kind of like a funny sort of satire that the people of this Seleucid empire where he's the king of are kind of mocking him about and honestly they have a point because there's a historian Polybius who describes this guy ditching his bodyguards to go wander the streets and like crashing random parties hanging out in like silversmith shops handing out gifts to total strangers showing up at public baths with the commoners and then even trying to run for like a local city office while he's literally the king so picture like a Greek emperor with the ego of a God and the impulse control of like a kid and he's about to collide with Jerusalem Antiochus wants Judea to be unified right he wants it to be a Greek and a loyal sort of state of the Greek empire some Jews are into Greek culture some aren't and to be fair it was never like a clean like evil Greek empire versus like good faithful like you know citizens of Judea there are you know Jews in Judea there are Jews in Judea there are Jews in Judea there are Jews in Judea on multiple sides of this fighting each other about how Greek they should be and you know the real history is always going to be messier than like the movie versions but then Antiochus goes nuclear and around 168 BC he decides to just outlaw the Jewish religion he like cancels it he bans the Sabbath he bans circumcision on penalty of death he's like hey if anyone's circumcised like they gotta go he orders copies of the Torah to be destroyed and then the big one he marches into the Jerusalem temple the single holiest place in the Jewish world and he sets up an altar to Zeus and by multiple ancient accounts he sacrifices a pig on top of it literally a pig and if you know anything about Jewish kosher laws like pigs you can't you can't do that so a pig in the holy of holies is like massively sacrilegious to the ancient Jews of the time and Daniel has a phrase for this moment he calls it the abomination that desolates literally like just a desolate abomination like and I and I think it's important to remember that phrase because it doesn't stay in Daniel it actually gets picked up by Jesus Christ in the gospels and it even shows up in the machinery of Revelation and like I said we did a whole episode in Revelation so you should go check that out but in the moment this isn't symbolism this is a real desecration of a real building and the people are really dying for refusing to go along with it and just let their religion get wiped out there are stories from the exact period in the book of of an old scribe that's tortured to death rather than eat pork, of a mother that's forced to watch all seven of her sons get executed one by one because none of them would break and they all kept their faith. That is the pressure cooker that we're talking about. And this little horn that's waging war on the holy ones, that is literally like, that is who it is. That is what scholars attribute it to. It's the fourth beast. It is this, you know, late sort of like Greek empire and Antiochus is the little horn that is, you know, destroying the believers. Hey guys, we're going to take a break really quick because I want to tell you about ultra focus pouches. Now, if you know anything about me, I love nicotine. I also love caffeine. Now, the thing that I didn't consider with nicotine is that around workouts, I'm actually doing myself a disservice because nicotine is a vasoconstrictor. It literally narrows your blood vessels, which gives you a little boost. You feel good, but it actually restricts oxygen delivery and it can raise your heart rate, which is the exact same thing. So, I'm going to take a break. I'm going to take a opposite of what I want when I'm going to the gym. 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New customers can even use the code camp, C-A-M-P, to get 15% off at takeultra.com. That is takeultra.com for 15% off with the code camp. And after you purchase, they're going to ask where you tell them that Mark and Christos here at the campsite sent you. Now, let's get back to the show. Now, out of this horror and this persecution, there is a family that fights back. It is a priestly clan known as the Hasmoneans. And it's led by a guy named Judas the Hammer, literally, Judas the Hammer Maccabeus. And he launches a guerrilla revolt against the entire Seleucid Empire. And somehow, they win. And so, by 164 BC, they take back the temple. They tear out this altar to Zeus. They purify the place. They take back the temple. And rededicate it. And that rededication, that is the origin of Hanukkah. The word literally means dedication. And it's crazy. Like, the real history of Hanukkah is wild. We should absolutely do an episode on that because it's fascinating. So, now you know who the little horn is. It's not a demon. It's not literally the end time Antichrist. It is a specific, arrogant, kind of unhinged Greek king in the 160s BC, which raises a really strange question. If the back half of Daniel is all about Antiochus, this is a guy that lived 400 years after Daniel supposedly lived. How did Daniel know? How did Daniel write this 400 years before with such accuracy? Well, this is the part that makes people either lean in or they kind of get a little bit uncomfortable and skeptical and sometimes both. The book of Daniel says it's set in the 500s BC in Babylon. And then, of course, in the later Persian Empire. And you have Nebuchadnezzar and all that. But the events that it's most obsessed with, like Antiochus and the temple and persecution and desecrating the temple, those happen in the 160s BC, literally four centuries later. Now, if you believe Daniel is straight up, you know, like supernatural prophecy, that's not a problem at all. Like, God knows the future. End of story. He could have shown Daniel a vision and Daniel wrote it down and he completely, like, nailed it. And that is a They ask a different question. Not like, is prophecy possible? The question that they ask is, when did this book actually get written down into the form that you and I are actually, like, holding and reading? Like, and when they look closely at this, they notice something that's really interesting. Chapter 11 of Daniel is incredibly detailed. It is a play-by-play of wars between the king of the north and the king of the south, back and forth and marriages and betrayals and retreats and invasions and all that stuff. And when you line it up with actual history, it actually matches the story. It's a play-by-play of wars between the king of the north and the king matches the Seleucids and the Ptolemaics almost perfectly move for move. Like, someone reading a history textbook. Like, if you just take, like, the actual, like, written recorded history that we have of these two kind of, like, warring Greek empires and you take the prophecy of Daniel, it is so specific that it almost reads less like a vision of the far future and reads like a recap of stuff that has already happened or is straight up happening in real time. Right up to the very beginning of Antiochus, it describes him dying in a very specific way in a specific place between the sea and Jerusalem. And according to the actual ancient kind of first-hand accounts, it's not how Antiochus dies. He actually dies in the far east on a campaign in Persia. That is what the recorded historical literature tells us. So if you go by the biblical account, the prophecy kind of misses. So why does Antiochus die in a very specific way? Well, Antiochus dies in a very specific way. He dies in a very specific way. Why does it get everything so accurate? All the, like, all the back and forth, all the betrayal, all that stuff lines up with the historical record perfectly. But then when it describes how Antiochus dies, it's wrong. Well, maybe the miss is actually a tell. Because think about what it means. Everything up until a certain point is dead accurate. And then right at the moment of the king's death, it's suddenly inaccurate. And that's exactly what you would expect if the writer was living through the crisis, writing down recent history as prophecy up until that moment, and then making a real genuine prediction of the future. about how it would end. And the prediction then isn't exactly accurate, which then allows scholars to date that book with an eerie precision. It looks like the final form of Daniel was written around 164 BC, after the temple was desecrated, but before Antiochus actually dies, like right in the middle of the storm. Now, there's a word for, you know, this that people love to throw around. And I actually think it's the wrong word. And people would say like, forgery. What's actually going on is a recognized ancient prophecy. And it's actually going on in the middle of the storm. Scholars call it vaticinium ex eventu. It's kind of just like a fancy Latin word for like prophecy from the event. So almost like prophecy after the fact. So you write in the name of a wise holy figure from the distant past. So Daniel, obviously a real legendary exile. And then you predict history that has, from your standpoint, already happened. Why would anyone do this? Is this to like trick people to like, give them money, like get money is like to be a liar to get hope from people. And then you write in the name of a wise holy figure from the distant past. Is of death. You cannot practice your religion. Your friends are being executed. There's a pig on the altar and there's a crazy person on the throne who thinks that he's literally God. And now here comes this book that says, listen, a wise man saw all of this coming centuries ago, the rise of Babylon, Persia, Greece, all of it, even this exact nightmare that you're in right now. And none of it is random. None of it is like catching God off guard. It's all on a divine timeline. And the timeline says this beast has a limit and it will end soon. So you should hang on. It's not a con. It's a message smuggled to people in a literal war zone during a persecution, telling them that their suffering has an expiration date. And that promise that your suffering will end, that there is a deadline, that desire to know exactly when it ends, that's about to send Daniel spiraling into the strangest, most argued over numbers in the whole Bible. So the back half of Daniel is haunted by two things. A lot of angels and a lot of math. So we'll do the angel part first because they're a bigger deal than they look. Earlier in the Bible, angels are generally anonymous. So like an angel of the Lord shows up, does a thing, leaves. There's no name ascribed to it. Daniel really changes it. Here, the angels have names. So Gabriel shows up to explain the visions. Michael shows up as a warrior, a kind of guardian assigned specifically to Daniel's people. And there's one specific moment in chapter 10. An angel finally arrived to talk to Daniel, and he basically apologizes for being late. He says he got held up. He had some stuff going on. He literally says that he was fighting the prince of Persia for 21 days until Michael came to back him up. So think about that. That's what the angel says when he pulls up on Daniel, like, whew, sorry, I had to schlep here. We were fighting a war. Michael came in for reinforcements. What's fascinating about that detail from the text is that it's basically telling Daniel and telling the reader that everything that's happening on earth, like Persia, Greece, all of these, there are mirrors and there are battles happening in an unseen world that correspond to the battles happening in ours. So every empire has a spirit behind it. And history is basically like wars happening with two different floors. And that single idea, it goes on to shape Jewish angelology. It goes on to shape Christian spiritual warfare, the entire concept of named archangels fighting demonic powers, and a huge amount of that traces back to this book. So the angels play a really important part and really kind of change how the ancient Jews are really even looking and sort of interacting with angels. And it gives them names and kind of descriptions and jobs and really shows the duality of, you know, warfare and oppression that what's happening on this earth, don't worry, there is a spiritual dimension, and good will always win in the spiritual realm. Now, there's the numbers. This is where Daniel becomes like an obsession machine. Like if you have like, like a schizophrenic disorder, or like some other type of like, OCD sort of like pattern thing, Daniel is not good for you. Or maybe it is good. Maybe it's exactly what you want, you know, but like, basically, the book keeps on giving you time codes for the end. And they don't exactly match. It's pretty strange. So one vision says, a time, two times and half a time. Another one says 2300 evenings and mornings, another gives you 70 weeks, and then the very last chapter throws out 1290 days, and then weirdly, 1335 days. And people have spent thousands of years trying to understand these numbers and trying to force these numbers into an equation that then spits out a date to help us understand the end of the world. And here's like the scholarly perspective. And I think it's really interesting. Those numbers probably don't all like match perfectly, because they were written likely at different moments. And scholars would say probably by different people who predicted different deadlines, and those deadlines can be very different. And so, you know, so as this specific persecution against the specific people continues to go on, there's different football is back and prize picks is bringing out their best offer yet on prize picks, you can make all the picks you want all in the same app. And now prize picks is available nationwide lock in for kickoff because everyone and everything is on prize picks what you want. If you win your first $5 lineup, prize picks run your game must be present in certain states visit prize picks.com for restrictions and details. The first you know, the end is in x days it comes and goes nothing happens. So then someone recalculates and they add and they try again. And you can almost feel the anxiety in the numbers like you can read it and feel like oh, there are people here that are desperate for this to be over. And they're doing the math and testing the math over and over and over again. And here's the thing about the 70 weeks line, especially because that one never went away that single prophecy. Daniel's text is all over that worldview. But hold on, because underneath all the math and anxiety, Daniel drops something in chapter 12. That is genuinely one of the most important moments of the whole Old Testament. And most people don't know that. So Daniel drops something in chapter 12, that is genuinely one of the most important moments of the whole Old Testament. So Daniel drops something in chapter 12, that is genuinely one of the most people kind of skip past it. Here it is. For most of the Hebrew Bible, death is basically the end, you go to a shadowy place, typically, in the Old Testament described as shield, the grave, and that's it. There's not a big scene of heaven and hell, there's no final reward, no final punishment. And that's how most of the Old Testament kind of talks. But then Daniel 12 says this, many of those sleeping in the dust of the earth will wake up some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting shame. What? That's kind of like a resurrection kind of thing. Like that's the dead coming back to like face a verdict. And it's one of the clearest, some would say the clearest statements of personal resurrection in the entire Hebrew Bible. And notice why it shows up right here in a book kind of born out of persecution and martyrdom. Think about the problem that Antiochus was basically creating. You have all these faithful people, right? Like that mother whose seven sons are killed, like the old scribe who's killed. They did everything right. You know, what are they doing? What do they get for doing everything right? They get tortured to death. So if justice only exists in this life, then the bad guys just win. The tyrant kills all the faithful people, and the faithful get tortured for their faithfulness, and the tyrant dies happy. But this line, this resurrection line is the answer to that. It's the claim that the story isn't over just in the grave, that a tyrant can take your life, but he can't get the last word, that ultimately God is in control. That's the wise, who kept the faith. They will shine like stars. And the idea that death itself will be reversed, that there's some type of judgment beyond the reach of any empire, that for Judaism and specifically Christianity crystallizes right there in a book written by people dealing with persecution and like ultimately washing their whole community get basically wiped out. And then the book of Daniel just ends, like soprano style. It's just like kind of like black screen. Daniel asks an angel, okay, how does all of this turn out? And the angel basically says, it's sealed, not for you, go rest. Even Daniel, the guy who the whole book literally is like named after, doesn't get a full answer, which is maybe the most honest ending that it could have had because no one truly knows, even the ones that know more than the rest of us. So just to take a step back and look at like the whole book, right? It's a bunch of little pieces, right? You have symbolic beasts, named angels, this heavenly courtroom, you have heroes that you have a bunch of math and numbers and this line about like resurrection and like facing shame or reward in the afterlife and like this judgment. And it basically fuses them all into one kind of template. Now, Daniel isn't the only ancient Jewish apocalypse. There's another one from around the same time that is called the book of Enoch. And this is fascinating. It has angels basically falling and cosmic secrets and a whole thing. We've done a bunch of different check those out. But Daniel is the one that actually makes it into the Bible. Enoch is technically non-canonical. It does show up in like the Ethiopian Bible, but for most Christians in America, it's not in our Bible. So Daniel is the one that everyone read. And so Daniel is the one that kind of sets the pattern for what comes next. So you fast forward a couple hundred years, there's a different crisis and a different empire. And now this time it's Rome and Rome is crushing the early Christians. And someone writes a new apocalypse to get through it. And that is the book of Revelation. And Revelation is basically like the sequel to Daniel in a way. It's like Daniel is this apocalyptic text for the Jews against the Greeks. And then Revelation is this apocalyptic text for the early Christians against the Romans. Revelation has a beast rising out of the sea. And when you actually read it, the beast is this mashup thing. It's like a lion and a bear and a leopard and like this fourth beast from Daniel seven stitched into one creature. So now you have kind of like the same structural DNA. You have like the cosmic symbolism, you get angelic guides, you have judgment on an empire and like the conviction that the powers that look invincible are ultimately going to fall and they've already been sentenced and that ultimately God is in control. So it's the same kind of mechanics, but a new crisis for a new people. And it doesn't stop with Revelation, of course, like that line that we talked about one, like a son of man, basically descending from heaven. It becomes central to how Christians talk about Jesus literally, forever. The abomination of desolation gets quoted by Jesus himself, that little horn that arrogant king who exalts himself against heaven and against all the believers becomes the raw material for the entire concept of the Antichrist. And we have a whole episode on the Antichrist and where that whole understanding comes from. And it really kind of starts with this trail with Antiochus. So every other tradition runs on this same kind of template, the idea of a final deceiver, a last battle, a great judgment. You see versions of it echo throughout the religious world. We've talked about the Islamic end times before. So you get the Dajjal, you get the return of Isa bin Mariam. And once you know Daniel, you kind of see the fingerprints of this text everywhere. And that's really the legacy of the book. It's not one prediction. It's not one date. It gave the entire world a language for talking about power and suffering and how to deal with suffering that ultimately these empires that are persecuting you will end. And it gave like an understanding of the apocalypse. And it gave an understanding of the apocalypse that we are still using to this day. Now, I find this type of literature fascinating. And I'm not here, again, I'm kind of going through it with like a scholarly perspective because I want to present it like in the most like unbiased kind of like academic way. I think it is possible that Daniel maybe did prophesy all this and God truly, you know, gave Daniel a template for understanding the future and accurately predicted 400 years in the future what was going to happen to the people of Judea with, you know, the Seleucid Empire. Sure, that's possible. But not only am I fascinated by it, but I'm also fascinated by the fact that Daniel fascinated by it. And if you're watching this up to this point, I'm sure you're also fascinated. There's another guy that's also fascinated by this that you might not expect. And that's Isaac Newton. Yeah, the same Isaac Newton that did like gravity and calculus, like one of like the fathers of like science in many different ways, literally like the father of like physics. In his private papers, the ones that he never published, Newton spent years, arguably more time than he ever spent on physics, obsessing over the prophecies of this book. He took Daniel's book, The Seleucid Empire, Daniel's numbers, like the time, times and half a time. He did all the math. He treated each prophetic day as a year and started like plugging in dates. And Isaac Newton actually came out with a date that he says was sort of emblematic of the apocalypse. And that year is 2060. Isaac Newton calculated the world as we know it would end no earlier than the year 2060. Now, here's the thing that should make you feel a little bit scared. Newton didn't do this because he was afraid. He didn't do this because he was afraid. He did it in his own words to shut the cranks up. He was disgusted by all the people around him constantly predicting the end of the world. Because again, at the time, just like now, there's people standing around being like, the world's going to end. We all got to get together. And they would all come around and gather on a mountaintop for Jesus Christ to come back. And then they were wrong. And they would make the whole thing look ridiculous. So he wanted to put a stop to it. And I'm quoting him here. He wanted to stop the rash conjectures of fanciful men. So literally, the smartest dude of his time did the exact thing that Daniel numbers have always made people do. He tried to solve the puzzle and tried to find a date. And that's the thing about the book of Daniel. For over 2000 years, it has been whispering the same temptation for everyone that opens it like, hey, you can figure it out. The answer is in here if you can just do the math properly. And early Christians did the math and they saw Nero and reformers did it. Maybe they saw the Pope and people did it with Napoleon and then Hitler. People are doing it right now with charts and timelines, absolutely certain that they're the one of them so far has been wrong. And maybe the book was never meant to be lockpicked. Because remember how Daniel ends. Daniel himself, the wisest man in the story, the guy that God literally gives all this information to, he asks how it all ends and when. And he's told that it's sealed and to stop asking and to go rest. And the whole point of that ending might be the thing that we never really consider. That every generation that's certain that the beast is at the door is really going to be the last one to go forever. And somewhere someone's doing the math again. And eventually, someone's going to be right. I just, I hope it's not anytime soon. So that, ladies and gentlemen, is a brief summary of specifically the apocalyptic side of the book of Daniel. I mean, it just a fascinating text. I love reading apocalyptic literature because I get that same feeling of like, I want to figure it out. It's fascinating. And the Isaac Newton thing is all football is back and prize picks is bringing out their best offer yet on prize picks. Lock in for kickoff because everyone and everything is on prize picks. What you want to do is use code Spotify to get $150 installing in lineups. If you win your first $5 lineup prize picks run your game must be present in certain states. Visit prize picks.com for restrictions and details. Also fascinating. Again, if you don't know, we did a whole episode on Isaac Newton over on history camp. And if you would ask Isaac Newton, Hey, what is your job? Like, what do you do? You would expect him to say like, Oh, I'm, I'm a mathematician. You would expect him to say, I am a physicist. He probably would have said theologian. He spent so much of his time trying to decode ancient texts, biblical writing, revelation, the book of Daniel. And that prediction where he says like, okay, the end of the world is in like 2060. It's not exactly that. That's like the sensational part. You'll probably see people say on Facebook, he calculated 2060 as the earliest likely endpoint of a major prophetic period, like described in Daniel. So he doesn't say the world ends in 2060. And he was actually against any side of any sort of like date seeking. Like I said, you know, the errors of fanciful men, you know, he's not trying to say like, it's going to end. And the calculation that he came up with, this is how he came to 2060 being like, you know, no sooner than 2060. It might be, you know, he has different predictions saying like 2100. So like 2100, he said, as other predictions saying like 2300 using different math. But the way he came to the math is basically this. And we should probably do a whole episode on this. But like, just from my kind of like, brief understanding, the way he did it is he said, Okay, I'm going to and I'm going to add 1260 years. And that brings you to 260 AD. So where does the where does that come from? Well, he looks at Daniel, and he says a time times and half a time. Now, Newton interprets a time as a year. And so then times is two years, and then half a time is half a year. So he gives that at three and a half prophetic years. Now he uses the ancient schematic calendar of 360 days for a year. Again, we use 365 today, in the ancient days, they were using 360. And so 3.5, right, times 360 is 1260 days. And he noticed that that number comes up actually in Revelation a lot. So Revelation 11 talks about 1260 days, Revelation 12 says 1260 days, Revelation 13 says equivalent to 42 months, which is 1260 days, roughly, approximately. So now, Newton was using a common interpretive principle that he calls the day year principle. And this is basically saying one day in a prophecy is one historical year for us. So 1260 prophetic days is actually 1260 actual years. So that's where you get the 1260. Where does 800 come from? Well, that's kind of where Newton's using his interpretation, because Newton believes that Daniel and the book of Revelation are describing periods in which the Christian church is corrupted, and obtains like political power, that's when it stops being a church for the people and starts becoming really like a an entity for political and like government control. And so he associated the beginning of that period with the rise of papal supremacy. And he eventually chose like 800 AD, because that's when Pope Leo the third crowned Charlemagne, the basically the Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day in the year 800. So Newton basically says, this is the moment that Christianity was corrupted. And so it starts at 800. So let me get 800 plus 1260 years. And that gives us 2060. And so Newton actually wrote, it may end later, but I see no reason for it ending sooner. That's what his actual like text says. So he's like, like I said, it might end and, you know, 2100. He doesn't say like, hey, it's going to end January 1, 2060. That's not what he's saying. He's saying like, my interpretation of Daniel based off the math I did is that the world is going to be fine. And we're not going to have apocalypse until at least this date. So a little more nuanced, you know, it's not as exciting, but it's pretty fascinating that that's kind of how he broke it down. There's a lot of other stuff in his writing, again, a lot of stuff that I don't even know or understand. But to my understanding, that's not his only prophetic calculation. He uses a bunch of other numbers and kind of ways to like find math and numerology in the text to then find all the other prophecies. We should absolutely do an episode on all of Newton's end time prophecies based off the book of Daniel. That's a great idea, dude. I know that's what you were thinking right now as you're driving your car. You're probably like, man, Mark, you should do that. I'm gonna. Anyway, what do you guys think? What do you think about the book of Daniel? How do you interpret this? This? This literature? Do you think that it was written by Daniel as a prophecy? Do you believe that it was written by someone later kind of ascribed to Daniel to give the people hope that they were, you know, that this torment that they were experiencing by the Seleucids would end? What do you think about Judas Maccabeus and his nickname being The Hammer? That's awesome. I mean, I would just love to know your thoughts. Please comment, YouTube, Spotify. I read all of them. Chris, anything you learned? Anything you thought was interesting? I just love that King Nebuchadnezzar asking his wise men what his dream was. That's like what the most annoying guy always does. He's like, oh, I had a dream last night. Guess what it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he just offs these guys because they can't guess it. Yeah, I mean, it's wild. This is like classic girl at a bar energy. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, when's your birthday? And she's like, guess. What do you think I am? Now, imagine that girl puts you into a furnace for that. And then she just kills everyone. Yeah. She's like, yeah, I'm getting you guys all executed. I don't know. Is it Capricorn? You think I'm a Capricorn? You really think that? Why would you say that? I think you're annoying, actually. That's what I really think. If I had to really put a label to it, I think you're really starting to pee me out. Yeah. It means pissed off. Old King Nebuchadnezzar. Yeah. Which sounds like a slur. Yeah, Nebuchadnezzar's been in my neighborhood. You know? It's a new code word. It got cut off on the highway. Oh, it looked in the car. Obviously, it's a Nebuchadnezzar. You know what? If you're part of our secret society, comment Nebuchadnezzar right now. You know who you are. You're my Nebuchadnezzar. It sounds worse and worse. Now you're getting close. Now you got to say Nebuchadnezzar. All right. Anyway. Sorry, guys. This is getting off the rails. Anyway, God bless you all. I appreciate you for tuning in. If you like history content, like I mentioned the Isaac Newton episode, you should absolutely check that out. Historycamp.com. Historycamp.com. Whoa. Historycamp. I don't even think we have the domain. It's just Historycamp on YouTube. You can go find it. Or Spotify. You got what I'm saying. And if you like mysteries and conspiracies and other end time prophecies, well, great news. Campgagnon. Campgagnon.com. I think we actually have that one. Anyway, I'm getting in the weeds here. Yeah. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. I appreciate you all dearly. Go to church. Believe in something. Life is better with belief. I'm telling you. Pray. Be connected to the divine, whatever that is for you. God bless you all. And I'll see you next Sunday. Peace. Peace.