I am excited to announce that this book has now been published and is available as an eBook and in soft copy from all major online bookshops including Amazon and can be ordered by any bookshop. Published by Balboa Press it is available on their website http://www.balboapress.com as an eBook for $US9.99 and in softcover for $US33.99.
Taking 686 pages, it is not a quick read, but a serious study and reference book. It is a theological work which gives insight into history, God’s nature, plan and purpose and whose outcomes seriously impact our lives. It supplies a radically new perspective and if read carefully will challenge aspects of every existing work on the book of Daniel. Everything is laid out carefully and in detail, so that the understanding can be tested and the fundamental assumptions examined. The goal is to understand God and His ways as accurately as possible.
Some of the posts on this website already present aspects contained in the book. However, the book will give you a comprehensive understanding of the root ideas in those posts. You will see the rise and fall of five civilisations who had authority over Jerusalem for substantial periods of time, but also see that the nation of Israelites, although small, survives them all sometimes through periods of suffering even until the present day just as Jeremiah had prophesied in his chapters 30-31.
You will see how Daniel’s understanding grew as his life unfolded and how influential he was in the courts of both the Babylonian and Persian Empires. You will see how prophecies he received about his own time were gradually fulfilled and therefore the prophecies he received about the future even until the end of the age carry compelling authority. You will see the precision in his understanding and how all the visions he received were anchored in the present that he knew. It is a book that gives remarkable insight into those ancient times.
Then you will see how Jesus understood the book of Daniel and how this understanding informed His prophetic words in the New Testament. Then you will glimpse how The apostle Paul was informed by Daniel too. To appreciate how Daniel influenced the book of Revelation you will have to wait for Volume 2, but this website does give snippets of understanding.
If you have studied the book of Daniel, you will be familiar with the phrase a “time, times and half a time” which occurs in Daniel 7:25 and 12:7 and also in Revelation 12:14. As well as being a symbolic phrase meaning 3.5 and a period of time which is trying to complete by reaching 7, but is cut short, it is almost universally believed to be 3.5 years. The conviction that it is 3.5 years is so entrenched in our thinking, but rarely questioned. We show that the two “time, times and half a time” in Daniel are two consecutive periods of time forming a symbolic complete period of 7 and that both are literally in excess of 1200 years in a way which we believe will be very hard to refute. When combined together they span the whole of history from the return from exile to the end of the age. This perspective devastates existing end time theologies as strongly as Copernicus devastated the idea that the earth was flat and revealed how the earth moved around the Sun about 500 years ago.
Overall, one of my goals is to see end time confusion in the world wide church resolved. Since that confusion correlates with the ambiguities in the Hebrew text and English translations of Daniel 9:24-27, the famous seventy sevens prophecy I have hope. This is because this book shows how the better foundation for end times understanding is in Daniel’s final vision in his last two chapters. This final vision is narrative prophecy and is so historically accurate that some scholars believe that it must have been written after the events described. This book shows why this is not possible. The beauty of basing our end time understanding on this vision is that it is not hard to understand like his earlier visions which are written in an apocalyptic style, and so should have fewer interpretive difficulties.
The Time Is Near! 