Volume 39 | Number 5 | October–December 2011

Inglés Español

Daniel: For My Day and Time


By Dr. H. T. Spence

In our last article we carefully observed how Satan became the “prince power of the air.” Although this event seems to have taken place at his fall, since then, he has endeavored to become part of the workings of man on earth. As men began increasing on the planet, various sins became prominent; some of these are exampled in Genesis 6 (the time of the Flood) and Genesis 11 (the Tower of Babel). More and more, men sought to collaborate with this “prince power of the air” in order to become greater authorities and powers in the earth. Through this allegiance, Satan became the “god of this world.”

By the time of the New Testament, one begins reading passages such as, “Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot” (Luke 22:3; John 13:27). Also, during the times of the early Church, Acts 5:3 states, “But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land?” In this circumstance, it was in Ananias’ heart to lie against the Holy Ghost through the power of the Devil. The Devil had become deeply involved in the affairs of men on earth:

Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience (Ephesians 2:2).

All must be careful to realize that Satan often interweaves himself into the circumstances of man and even within the Church.

Daniel and His Times

Following his insight concerning the warfare taking place in the heavenlies (Daniel 10), Daniel is now drawn to the final words of Gabriel found in chapter 12. Before considering these final words in this prophecy, we must first carefully view the times in which Daniel lived.

When Daniel was taken down into the Babylonian captivity, his world view had to change in the light of his contemporary. What was that world view, and what did he see for his own personal end? We must remember that Daniel was a Jew, a godly Jew in a heathen world. God had appointed his day and time in history; it was to be his appointed generation, and his appointed place to be down in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar among the rulers of a foreign culture, a foreign tongue, a foreign religion, and a foreign government.

During the Assyrian captivity of 721 B.C., not only were the ten northern tribes scattered throughout the Assyrian lands but also Assyria transplanted five nations into northern Palestine to mongrelize the Jewish population that remained. The Northern Kingdom no longer existed, and their pedigree culture, language, and religion had been destroyed. In Daniel’s time (606 B.C.) the Kingdom of Judah was being taken into captivity along with the precious pieces of the Temple. Daniel was forced to adopt the language and learning of the Babylonians. While God was judging the Southern Kingdom, appointed providences were requiring Daniel to get in harmony with his times. He had been picked up out of Judah and thrown into Babylon. Amidst God’s judgment upon Judah, the godly had to suffer along with the ungodly. Unto Daniel God gave prophecies that ranged from his own days all the way to the consummation of the “times of the Gentiles” and of the Jews.

My Days and Times

As we consider Daniel’s day and time, we must also ask ourselves what is my day and time in the light of God’s history? The Church was also to be a chosen people (I Peter 2:9), a holy nation of Christ that commenced with a calling on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2. Its beginning was a pure one. For some two thousand years the Church has gone through its troubles, its darkness, and institutionally it has come into the worst religious captivity of its history. It must be acknowledged that the Protestant movement, with greater light, has gone further into apostasy than the Roman Catholic Church. By the 1850s, nearing the end of the Philadelphia Church Age (the greatest era of spirituality), the apostasy was laying hold in a strong manner through the birth of Liberalism and Modernism. These movements within Protestantism became the powerful enemies that commenced the attack on God’s Word, the Bible, the only source of Truth that we have about God, about eternity, and about ourselves. The Bible was attacked through form criticism, which became the prelude to the English-versions movement initiated by the Liberals and Modernists. When Neo-Orthodoxy made its sweeping influences into Protestantism it deposited a Neo mood within Christianity that continued to mutate in power in all aspects of Christianity.

Just as Satan was able to enter into the authorities of man’s empires through the yielding of leaders unto his power, the same tragedy began in a religious context within the Church. This yielding to Satan’s influence happened with Rome and its leaders; it has happened within Protestantism, and we are now witnessing it in the evangelical camp, the last bastion of conservative theology. There is an important truth given in I Timothy 4:1:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron.

The Holy Spirit laid down definitely in the Word of God, in that first century, that there would be a falling away from the Faith. II Thessalonians 2:3 declares:

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.

When the apostasy began, it included frequent times of seducing spirits, leading men into error. There were teachings and instructions coming from demons, and there were human agents of these demonic powers invading the Church.

Whether we want to agree with this truth or not, the Devil has entered into the contemporary Church; his teachings are becoming first and foremost. He is in league with men such as Jannes and Jambres who are openly withstanding the remnant, resisting the truth, men of corrupt minds, reprobates concerning the faith. The Devil has gained his foothold within the Church through men. Beware of men within the Church who are influenced by the Devil!

The Emerging Church

We continue to witness now in the evangelical world the “emerging church.” This new concept of a church was born in the depraved hearts of those who have turned their back on the Bible, who looked for a new set of answers, and who believed there is a different way of being a Christian. It also has included a new way of interpreting the Bible. This is to be a new form of Christianity that replaces biblical faith with a faith that says man can find his own path to God and create a perfect kingdom of God here on earth.

One of the spokesmen for the emerging church has been Billy Graham. He called America to this kind of thinking in his May 1997 interview with Robert Schuller declaring that the body of Christ included Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus all coming to Christ through their own light. He believes there must be an ecumenical pattern toward unity with other religions. The emerging church movement is also based on the existential premise of “anything goes.” Such leaders as Graham of the institutional church have been looking for a postmodern Church which they describe as a broad, diverse, and often paradoxical emerging culture that has passed through modernity and now is ready to move to something better beyond it. The emerging church cannot be defined in any way as a historic church; it is more a dialogue or conversation.

One of the first emerging-church books to come on the scene was The Church on the Other Side by Brian McLaren. In this work he states the following:

We are exploring off the map, looking into mysterious territory beyond our familiar world on this side of the river, this side of the ocean, this side of the boundary between modern and postmodern worlds. We are looking into an exciting, unmapped world on the other side of all we know so far.

In such thinking the emerging church views itself as a spiritual Christopher Columbus exploring unmapped spiritual territory. Dan Kimball, author of The Emerging Church, declares, “In a post Christian world, pluralism is the norm. Buddhism, Wicca, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or an eclectic blend, it’s all part of the soil.” Kimball explains that the basis for learning has shifted from logic and reason to the realm of experience and mysticism. Thus, the Church must ever be changing.

What is obvious now is that the whole world is in a major shift away from the historic traditions and absolutes. For the most part, we have traveled beyond tradition. We have also passed Modernism, which has brought us into the inner core of the postmodern, pluralistic world. Every major sphere of life has evolved to become postmodern: movies, literature, art, architecture, business, politics, etc. In the light of the global leadership of society the only context which has been lagging behind has been the Church, which is viewed as the last bastion of Modernism in our culture. We must realize that the world is leaving Modernism as it enters Postmodernism. Modernism is based and built upon reason; Postmodernism is the realm of existentialism and human subjectivity. The Church has been the last institution (from the world’s perspective) lingering in Modernism. The emerging church movement is endeavoring to call the Church totally away from Modernism into the Postmodern Era.

Nonetheless, now the world is calling upon the Church to reinvent and reimage the Christian Faith for the twenty-first century. The Bible is now viewed as outdated, irrelevant, and ineffective. The emerging church will be found in dialogue, not doctrine; in discussion, not in absolute Truth. While laying aside the revelation of Scripture for human understanding, everyone is searching and calling themselves “seekers.” According to their belief, God would never hurt or send to hell one who is seeking. It is the classic commentary to what Paul declared in II Timothy 3:7, “Ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

This has opened the door for media giants such as Oprah Winfrey and one of her guru teachers Tolle, to promote the practice of emptying the mind, and “experiencing” rather than thinking. Man is to meditate, to unfold his being. This is the New Age Movement, and the emerging church is escorting the Church society right on into the acceptance of it.

As Daniel, the Christian today finds himself among the rulers of a foreign culture, a foreign tongue, a foreign religion, a foreign concept of government, and a foreign concept of God. Dear reader, the old paths are gone from public acceptance, the old terminology is gone, biblical Christianity is gone, and the controlling government of man is producing the total destruction of any doctrines and absolutes with the emerging, existential church being ripened for this postmodern world.

As the church has driven Christ out, it has made itself more and more humanistically centered. The secular world motivates and drives the church on. The year 2009 was declared, “The Year of Darwin.” Man does believe he is evolving into a god. More is being sympathetically said against the true God now, and America is ripening for a new god and a new-god system. We have entered into Neo-Theism.

Daniel revealed that when the Antichrist comes he will not “regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women, nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all” (Daniel 11:37). The God of the fathers must be driven away from man’s thinking, and a fluid view of God must come to the church. In the end, mankind must become god. Thus, the growing antichrist mood on the planet will look to a god of forces, a strange god, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory (Daniel 11:38, 39).

America, Its Historic Demise, and Islam

The last identified Christian nation is America. Germany is gone; Britain is gone; Northern Ireland is capitulating to Rome. Even South Korea is in the throes of the neo-powers leading it into the emerging church movement. One of the great powers of the Neo-Theism emerging in the world today is that which has infiltrated Western Civilization in a very subtle way. For several years now we have stated that America is becoming a Muslim nation and the final takeover could be in a few years. It was only about five years ago that the government of Germany revealed staggering demographics concerning the rise of Islam in their own country that awakened many to Islam’s encroachment throughout the world. The Christian must realize that the world is fast changing; the global future that our children will inherit will be vastly different than it is today.

In order for any culture to maintain itself for another twenty-five years, it requires a fertility rate at 2.11 children per family; with any rate less, that culture will decline. No culture has ever reversed itself when the fertility rate reached 1.9. A rate of 1.3 is virtually impossible to reverse; it would take at least eighty to a hundred years to attempt to revive. There is no economic model that can sustain a culture during that time period. In other words, if two sets of parents each has one child, there are half as many children as there are parents. If those children have only one child there are one-fourth as many grandchildren as grandparents. If only one million babies are born in 2006 it’s hard to have two million adults to enter the workforce by 2026. As the population shrinks, so does the culture. Note the following fertility rates from 2007:

  • France1.8
  • England1.6
  • Greece1.3
  • Germany1.3
  • Italy1.2
  • Spain1.1
  • European Union1.38

Historical research implies that these numbers are impossible to reverse.

In a matter of years, Europe as we know it today will cease to exist. However, the population of Europe is not declining! Why? The answer is clearly because of immigration—Islamic immigration. Of all population growth in all of Europe since 1990, ninety percent has been Islamic immigration. Although the fertility rate in France is 1.8 children per family, it is 8.1 children per Islamic family living there. In southern France where there are more professing Christians (mainly Roman Catholic), there are now more mosques than churches. Thirty percent of children age twenty and younger are Islamic. In the larger cities such as Nice, Marseille, and Paris, that number has grown to forty-five percent. By 2027, one in every five Frenchmen will be Muslim. In just thirty-nine years France will be an Islamic republic.

In the last thirty years the Muslim population in Great Britain rose from 82,000 to 2.5 million, a thirty-fold increase. There are over a thousand mosques in Great Britain; many of them were former churches. In the Netherlands, presently fifty percent of all newborns are Muslims; in fifteen years half of the population will be Muslim. In Russia there are over 23 million Muslims; that is one out of five Russians. Forty percent of the Russian army will be Islamic in just a few years.

The German government, the first to reveal this dilemma publicly, recently released a statement, “The fall in the German population can no longer be stopped. Its downward spiral is no longer reversible . . . It will be a Muslim state by the year 2050” (German Federal Statistics Office). Three years ago there were 52 million Muslims in Europe; the German government has estimated that number to double in the next twenty years to 104 million.

In Canada, where the fertility rate is 1.6, Islam is now the fastest growing religion. In America the present fertility rate is 1.6; with the increase of Latino immigration into America, this rate has increased to 2.11 (the base minimum to sustain a culture). In 1970 there were 100,000 Muslims in America; in 2008 there were over 9,000,000. There are well over 10,000,000 today. Three years ago there were twenty-four Islamic organizations that met in Chicago. The transcripts of those meetings reveal their plans to evangelize America through journalism, politics, education, and other mediums. They said: “We must prepare ourselves for the reality that in thirty years there will be fifty million Muslims living in America.”

The world in which we live is not the world in which our children will live. The Roman Catholic Church has announced that Muslims have surpassed their numbers in global population. Although we tend to view such people coming into our country as a part of our eclectic workforce, the Muslims view themselves coming into a country as propagandists of Islam.

It is interesting to note how quickly the Burger King fast-food restaurant chain will change its menu and advertisement to avoid offending the Muslims; it fears their violent reactions. However, if Christians boycott the same over offensive advertisements, Burger King knows they will not respond violently. Even Islam knows this. This is just one example of the climate of intimidation we are now in. Because of such fear, lamps are going out over the world.

Conclusion

Has America ever won a war in the past sixty years? As a nation, we are in the classic signs of civilization exhaustion. We have lost our will as a nation; we are not willing to use our powers. The Muslims know this! Even a Russian Muslim will be much more motivated than a communist. Daniel prophesied in 8:19–25 that the geography of Media and Persia is coming back in the time of the end, and it is evident that their religion is also.

All of these events coming at the close of Western Civilization may be an indication that we are nearing the end of the times of the Gentiles. The Gentiles are in their last frontal assault upon God (Psalm 2:1–3) championing the Neo; they must get rid of everything and anything associated with the true God. Sad but true, America will never go back to its former days. We are in a postmodern era both religiously and politically. God is giving us over to a foolish shepherd in leadership, certainly a forerunner of Antichrist to pave the way for the new religion, the new god, and the new society. The White House executive declaration that the month of June is “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month” has gone beyond any other country with such a proclamation. The Bible has become a banned book in the public schools. All concepts of morals are drastically changing. We will never go back to the former America of God or Christianity. This has happened because Christianity in America has collapsed; the concept of Christianity we view today is a Neo-Christianity. No Reconstructionist movement, no Vision Forum will change our country; it must fall into the feet and ten toes of Daniel’s image. Yes, we are at the hour of new gods, new language, new government, and new lifestyles.

As for the most biblical movement in the twentieth century that stood against the apostasy of Neo-Christianity, historic Fundamentalism is publicly dead. We are in a new era of its history. The Young Fundamentalists have entered their leadership with neutralities, com-promises, new terminology, and an open disgust (via their blogs) for the historic Fundamentalism. Their appearance and standards have now changed, and they are taking their colleges and universities with them in the changes. They will never go back to former days. Once the mind and heart are set on the changes and mutate into the Neo world, there are no absolute footings to go back to for recovery. The sad thing is that all of these students being taught the new ways, the new versions of the Bible, the absence of dress standards, and toleration for the Contemporary Christian Music are returning to their local churches with this postmodern Fundamentalism and destroying local churches.

The Neo-Evangelicals left the Fundamentalist movement and commenced their own movement. The new Fundamentalists choose to remain and change Fundamentalism rather than leave it. This is what apostasy does; it takes that which is true and changes it without discarding the label of it. Perhaps some founders of schools prayed in their lifetime for God to burn down the buildings if the school ever changed; however, God probably will not do this. He will, after many warnings, let them go their way into a delusion, into error, and finally into their own perdition.

Is there any hope of a godly movement to rise within Funda-mentalism? We must remember that Fundamentalism has been made up of various theological systems and labels. If such systems and labels remain preeminent in the thinking, they will not let a remnant come together to combat the apostasy. When this is the case, it means that we view our theological system greater than Christ, greater than the Scriptures, and greater than the true body of Christ. Though there may be pockets of fellowship here and there transcending the systems and labels, by and large such systems will ultimately maintain the schism.

All of this consciousness must be acknowledged from God’s perspective: every individual must stand on his own as Daniel did. Every wife ultimately will be on her own, every husband, and every young person, for each will stand before God individually. No one can stand for another on that crucial day at the Judgment Seat of Christ. My battles may be fewer than Daniel’s, but I must fight my battles of life as he did. Even Daniel’s three companions will have to stand without the presence of Daniel (Daniel 3). We are in the throes of the deepest apostasy of human history. The deepest life in Christ is now needed to face the deepest apostasy. We cannot afford to be living a shallow Christian life now. Our only hope is the coming of Christ in a secret rapture. To the Jew their hope was the coming of Messiah’s open advent to bring an end to the times of the Gentiles. Our hope as a Christian in this generation is the Rapture.

There are three prophetic periods that are dealt with in the last chapter of Daniel in regard to how long it shall be to the end of these wonders. These days are viewed from the middle of Daniel’s Last Week. In 12:7, Daniel is given 1260 days that will take history to the end of the Last Week. In 12:11, there are 1290 days that bring history to the end of the times of the Gentiles (the battle of Armageddon). In 12:12, Daniel is told 1335 days to the beginning of the Millennium. It is in the last number of days that Daniel was told that he would stand in his lot, his inheritance, at the end of the days.

Daniel had a prayer life with God that encompassed the world, the Jews, and even the powers of the heavenlies. May God make us such men of prayer in the times in which we live. Our days are numbered as well, and we must be ready for the trumpet to sound, and the cry from the Commander in Chief to come up. Christ stated in John 14:2b, 3:

I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

This is definitely not the open coming of Christ (Revelation 19) where His feet will touch the Mount of Olives. These words of Christ in John 14 are declaring that He would “come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” The reference here is to Christ’s receiving us unto Himself, rather than His coming to us. Likewise, William Williams (1717–1791) chose to end his hymn “Guide Us O Thou Great Jehovah” with the cry, “Come, Lord Jesus! Take thy waiting people home.” This too is our Blessed Hope! “Even so, come, Lord Jesus”!