Greetings everyone, and welcome. Those of you who get our monthly CDs or listen online know that I’ve been pretty hard on the Seventh-day Adventist Church lately, because frankly, they deserve it, and I want people to know that the pillars of our faith are not being presented as they should be and conference churches are not a safe place to attend or support. It doesn’t make me happy to say these things, but I say it because it’s true, and I don’t want blood on my hands by staying quiet about it.

However, over the next several months I’d like to put all that aside and focus on some of the teachings the Advent movement was raised up to give, and I hope they’ll be helpful to you and encourage you to do what you can to fix these truths in your mind so you will have the information you need to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” So, with that said, let’s pray before we get into it.

I’d like to begin by reading just one quote from the Spirit of Prophecy to stir up your pure minds a little bit, and then we’ll stick with the Bible and history to prove our point this morning.

The statement is found in Testimonies for the Church, 5:707 and I pray that these admonitions don’t apply to you, but if they do, then take heed. “I have been shown that many who profess to have a knowledge of present truth know not what they believe. They do not understand the evidences of their faith. They have no just appreciation of the work for the present time. When the time of trial shall come, there are men now preaching to others who will find, upon examining the positions they hold, that there are many things for which they can give no satisfactory reason. Until thus tested they knew not their great ignorance. And there are many in the church who take it for granted that they understand what they believe; but, until controversy arises, they do not know their own weakness. When separated from those of like faith and compelled to stand singly and alone to explain their belief, they will be surprised to see how confused are their ideas of what they had accepted as truth. Certain it is that there has been among us a departure from the living God and a turning to men, putting human in place of divine wisdom.

“God will arouse His people; if other means fail, heresies will come in among them, which will sift them, separating the chaff from the wheat. The Lord calls upon all who believe His word to awake out of sleep.  Precious light has come, appropriate for this time. It is Bible truth, showing the perils that are right upon us. This light should lead us to a diligent study of the Scriptures and a most critical examination of the positions which we hold. God would have all the bearings and positions of truth thoroughly and perseveringly searched, with prayer and fasting. Believers are not to rest in suppositions and ill-defined ideas of what constitutes truth. Their faith must be firmly founded upon the word of God so that when the testing time shall come and they are brought before councils to answer for their faith they may be able to give a reason for the hope that is in them, with meekness and fear.”

“With meekness and fear,” that’s an important point that’s overlooked many times. If we are brought before the courts to answer for our faith, we better not answer with arrogance and pride and self-assurance, but in all humility and respect for God’s power and holiness, because that’s the way to win hearts and minds just before human probation closes.

What I’d like to begin with this morning is one of the most important and convincing prophecies in the entire Bible, which proves without question that there is a God in heaven that reveals secrets, and One who is in control of world events when everything else seems totally out of control.

When considering the history of the rise and fall of nations, it may look as though things have been controlled by ambitious men who thirst for power and wealth, but behind the scenes there has been another power that has been patiently working out His own will, and this is clearly revealed in the book of Daniel. In chapter 2 we have the history of four world Empires from the time of Daniel to our present day and beyond, and each successive world power was foretold long before they came upon the scene.

Daniel 2 out of all the other 1,188 chapters in the Bible is what convinced me that the Word of God is true, so I’m a bit partial, because who but the God of heaven could foretell the future during a period of over 2600 years with 100% accuracy? And you know, if Bible prophecy is true and reliable, which it is, then all the promises in the Bible are also true, and as I have tested that Word over the past 52 years, I have found that to be absolutely the case.

The first great world Empire that ruled the world in the days of Daniel was the kingdom of Babylon under the leadership of Nabopolassar, but it was his son Nebuchadnezzar that was the reigning monarch at the time when the story we’re about to look at took place.

You can read it for yourself in Daniel 2, but I’d like to just hit some of the highlights for a few minutes. You’ll remember that one night king Nebuchadnezzar had gone to bed wondering what would take place in the future. Have you ever done that? Yes, many times, right? And many times with a troubled heart like Nebuchadnezzar. As the king was thinking about the great city that he had built, it seemed to him that it was invincible, and in fact it was, because there were no weapons of war at that time that were capable of breaching its walls. Today of course a B-2 bomber could fly over and drop one of its bunker buster bombs like what happened to Iran’s nuclear facilities and Babylon would have been no more, but there was nothing during that time that could touch it. It was humanly impossible.

Surrounding the walls of Babylon was a moat formed by the river Euphrates that also flowed right through the city, and there were probably  crocodiles swimming around in it, I don’t know, but at the place where the river passed through the city there were large gates that extended down into the water right to the bottom, and behind those initial gates were walls lining the river with more gateways that allowed access into the city from the river. So even if someone was able to pass beyond that first gate, there was still no access to the city unless those secondary brass gates were open.

So while Nebuchadnezzar was pondering about the future and if his kingdom would last forever, he fell asleep, and while he was sleeping he had an impressive dream, no doubt a dream that was given him by God, but in the morning after he woke up he was puzzled about what it all meant. Since he was wondering about the future of Babylon before he fell asleep, he was pretty certain it had to do with that.

According to the Bible he assembled all the wise men and asked them what the dream meant, but nobody could give him the answer, and he got angry and ordered their arrest and was fixing to have them all executed. After all, these wise men were being paid for their expertise, and when they couldn’t answer the king, he must have thought, “what good are these men and why am I supporting them if they can’t even tell me the meaning of my dream? They claim to be able to foretell the future using astrology and other means, so what good are they.” And guess who was included in this illustrious group of wise men? That’s right, Daniel and his three friends that had recently been captured from Jerusalem and taken to Babylon.

If you recall, in Daniel 1 he and his three Hebrew friends were found to be 10 time wiser than all the rest of the wise men in the kingdom after drinking only pure water and eating a vegetarian diet and refusing to eat the unclean food and wine that came from the kings table, and so that’s why they were considered to be among the other wise men, but they were new to the kingdom and were overlooked during the initial summons by the king, and when they found out that their heads were also on the chopping block, Daniel asked for a little time so he might be able to give the king the answer he was looking for, which thankfully was granted. And you can bet Daniel and his three young friends had quite the prayer meeting that night since their lives were also on the line. And of course, because of their faithfulness God gave Daniel a vision in the night and revealed to him what the king saw in his dream and also what it all meant. And I’m sure he said, “Thank you Lord!”

And I want you to notice something, Daniel was faithful to all the truth he understood. Had he not been, he would have asked in vain and shared the fate that would have come to all the other wise men were it not for Daniel, and it’s no different with us. If we expect God to answer our prayers, especially in a time of crisis, we must also be faithful to the truth we understand, and not only that, but faithful to what we could have known, but failed to learn because of our own indolence. And our diet is one of those things my Adventist friend. Are we as faithful as Daniel when it comes to what goes in our mouth? We could spend a lot of time talking about that, but we need to move on, but I hope you will at least think about it.

In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, he saw an image of a man with a head of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron, and feet made of a mixture of iron and clay, and then finally there was a great stone that hit the image and smashed it to pieces and the wind came and blew it all away, and the stone that struck the image became like a great mountain that filled the whole earth. And then Daniel proceeded to tell the king what it all meant, and he was very careful to give God the credit.

When Daniel was brought in before the king and the king asked him if he could make known the dream, Daniel indicated that he could not, and right then I can imagine what the king might have thought, “what is this? I gave this young man time to figure this out and now he can’t do it. He’s just wasting my time, and he’s no better than all the rest.” But then Daniel was quick to add that there is a God in heaven that knew what the king’s dream was all about, and it was He, using Daniel, that would explain the dream to the king. Daniel came before the king with “meekness and fear,” didn’t he? And because of that, God was with him, and it went well with Daniel, didn’t it.

Then Daniel began by telling Nebuchadnezzar that in his dream he saw a great image, and that Babylon, with Nebuchadnezzar as king, was represented by the head of gold, which according to history reigned from 605, some say 606-539 B.C. Next was Medo-Persia represented by the breast and  arms of silver, reigning from 539-331 B. C. Next were the belly and thighs of brass representing Greece from 331-168 B. C. Next were the legs of iron represented by Rome from 168 B. C. – 476 A. D. And lastly the feet of iron and clay, which represents the ten nations that descended from the western Roman Empire from 476 A. D. to the coming of God’s kingdom.

Those ten kingdoms represented by the ten toes of the image, are the Alemanni, or modern day Germany, the Franks or France, the Burgundians or Switzerland, the Suevi or Portugal, the Vandals were exterminated, the Visigoths or Spain, Anglo-Saxons or England, the Ostrogoths, also exterminated, the Lombards or Italy, and the Heruli who were also exterminated. These are the ten kingdoms of which three are no more, and we’ll find out why a little later, but these are all historical facts, and the God of heaven revealed it to Daniel long before it all took place; amazing!

This is explained in more detail in Daniel 7 & 8, which we’ll touch upon a little later as well, but again, these four kingdoms are all facts of history, and all the kingdoms that succeeded Babylon were all foretold long  beforehand. In other words, the book of Daniel was not written after the fact, as some would have us believe, but before all these things took place, and the more you dig into the details, the more amazing it becomes and the more certain that it was directed by the hand of God.

Now, we know that there have been many ambitious men through the years who tried their best to unite the various nations of Europe represented by those feet and toes of iron and clay, like Charlemagne, Charles V, Louy XIV, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Adolph Hitler, but they all failed, and even though they got close at times, they all failed because of 15 little words that the God of heaven inspired Daniel to write down in chapter 2:43, which says, “They shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.”

There would never be such unity that would bring these ten nations back together so they would become as one. God said it wouldn’t happen, and it has not happened for better than 1500 years, nor will it happen in the future. But you say, “what about the European union?” And my response is, was there unity during both world wars? No! And then there was Brexit just a few years ago when Great Britain and Northern Ireland withdrew from that union. And so again, there has never been lasting unity to bring the European nations together as one, and there never will be. It may look like it at times, but nothing lasting. And just as there is no strength from a mixture of iron and clay, it means that none of these nations would ever be a worldwide dominating power like Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome were.

And here’s something else to consider: generally speaking, it’s the superior kingdom that conquers an inferior kingdom, right? But in the prophecy of Daniel 2, we have just the opposite taking place. In the image that king Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream it’s important to recognize that the history of the nations progressed from the head to the feet, indicating that each nation represented by the various metals would be inferior to the one before it, and again, this shows that God knew ahead of time that it would happen out of the general order of things. Not because Babylon was militarily weaker than the next in line, but that it was the inward corruption that would be the key to the downfall of each successive nation.

The weaker nation should not have been able to conquered the stronger, but God knew that wickedness is what weakens a nation, even though they may have great wealth and military strength. And of course this makes me think of the United States of America and all the wickedness going on in our own country, and how the God of heaven may have to deal with us, and every other nation for that matter, but that’s a subject for another time when we’ll be talking about the last dominant nation mentioned in Bible prophecy, and it’s not any one of the divided nations of Europe. They will still be here, but as I said, none of them will ever be a dominant force in the world just prior to the Lord’s coming, but guess who will be? If you’re thinking it might be the good old US of A, you would be correct.

You know, most people don’t realize that the United States is mentioned in Bible prophecy, not by name like Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, but by certain characteristics, and also the time frame of how the Bible describes these things in the book of Revelation. In fact, it would be surprising if the Unites States, as the last world superpower wasn’t mentioned, because this nation plays a significant role in last day events, and is already in the process of fulfilling those prophecies, but we’ll also get to that another time, so stay tuned.

In Daniel 5 it tells us, by name, that it was the combined forces of the Medes and Persians that overthrew the first world Empire of Babylon, and not only did the Bible predict it before it happened, but it foretold how it was going to happen. More than a century beforehand the Lord revealed through Isaiah, even the method by which Babylon would be defeated and under whose leadership it would take place before that leader was even born.

Notice what it says in Isaiah 45:1, 2 regarding how Babylon would be conquered over 100 years beforehand, “Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings (that’s an important point), to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut (another important point); I will go before thee (Cyrus), and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron.”

Notice, in verse 1 God said of Cyrus, “I will loose the loins of kings,” and remember what happened to Belshazzar, the last king of Babylon when he saw a bloodless hand writing on the wall? In Daniel 5:6 it says Belshazzar was so afraid when he saw it, “that the joints of his loins were loosed (just like Isaiah said), and his knees smote one against another.” And Isaiah also says the gates of Babylon would be left open.

So, under the leadership of king Cyrus the Persian, along with the army of the Medes, they diverted the waters of the river Euphrates during the night when they couldn’t be seen, hoping to gain access to the city by way of a dry riverbed. But even then, their efforts would have been unsuccessful had not the brass gates been left open and unprotected by careless security guards who weren’t doing their job while the king and his nobles were feasting and getting drunk.

It’s just amazing to think that over a century before Cyrus conquered Babylon, Isaiah wrote it down and called Cyrus by name long before he was born as the one who would conquer Babylon and how he would be able to enter into the impregnable city and take it.

Actually, as it turned out, history tells us that things had been going wrong in Babylon for some time, and the people were discontent with Belshazzar and the king before him. And so the people weren’t too upset about the overthrow, and Cyrus was looked upon more as a deliverer from tyranny than a conqueror. Nevertheless, Medo-Persia conquered Babylon and by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Daniel foretold it all long before it ever happened.

But Medo-Persia was also conquered, wasn’t it? and the same with Greece under Alexander the Great, and finally Rome fell because of its own wickedness just like the rest. Yes, there was political strife, economic problems, epidemics, famine, and things of that nature in Rome, but the decline of the Roman Empire was more so because its societal values and morals went into the toilet to put it kindly, and that was the deciding factor in its downfall. And again, I think of America, because who can say that this nation has not also declined in its societal and moral values since its founding? We will soon be celebrating 250 years as a nation, and what’s to celebrate when we are more divided than ever and have more moral decay than ever?

We have sexual perversion that rivals Sodom and Gomorrah; we have the LGBTQ+ community, which I call the alphabet people, because they claim there’s as many genders as there are letters in the alphabet; we have doctors chopping off the body parts of young people if a boy wants to be a girl or a girl a boy, and all without their parents’ consent; we have thousands of abortions ever year, even up to the time of birth; we have rape and murder running rampant in our large cities; and we have a drug epidemic that claimed over 300,000 lives this year so far. It’s truly insane what’s going on, and it’s an indication that the Holy Spirit is slowly being withdrawn from the earth, and things are about to take a drastic turn for the worse in America and in the world at large.

Even though President Trump has solved eight wars since he’s been in office the second time, and I commend him for that, and even when talk of world peace is in the air, we need to be aware of what the apostle Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:3. When speaking of the day of the Lord, or the time just before Jesus returns, Paul said, “For when they (national leaders) shall say, Peace and safety; then (what happens?) sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” I wish it weren’t so, but that’s what the Bible says. And just as God’s prediction in Daniel 2 has been fulfilled to the very letter, so will the prophecies regarding America be fulfilled to the very letter.

America, and every other nation involved in the type of sins I’ve just mentioned, are going to be judged and suffer the consequences in the end. We won’t get into it today, but when we get to Revelation 13, we’re going to see that America will end up repudiating every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and Republican government, and if we’re paying attention, we can see that it’s already heading in that direction.

But getting back now to the subject at hand. We know from history that because of the moral decline of the Roman Empire, various barbarian tribes represented by the ten toes, invaded the land and had no problem sacking the city, and finally the Germanic leader Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor in 476 A. D. with those 10 tribes warring against Rome and each other, three of which would disappear, the Ostrogoths, the Vandals, and the Heruli, leaving seven that still exist today. And we’ll talk more about why these three tribes were totally annihilated and disappeared a little later, but suffice it to say that the next kingdom to be set up, according to Daniel 2, is the kingdom of God represented by that stone that was cut out without hands that destroyed the image and will one day soon fill the whole earth. Then Daniel ended by telling the king, “The dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.” In other words, you can take it to the bank, because everything is going to happen exactly as God says, and it has, and it will.

Now, when we read Daniel 7, we find that these four world Empires are represented as various beasts rather than parts of the image that Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream, but they are the same. Babylon is represented as a lion, Medo-Persia as a bear, Greece as a Leopard, and Rome as a beast so terrible looking that Daniel couldn’t describe it through any beast on earth that he had ever seen, and rather than me telling you about this fourth beast, let’s just read it, Daniel 7:7, 8. “After this (after he saw a description of the first three beasts) I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. (Same as the image that had ten toes) I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: (that would be the Ostrogoths, the Vandals, and the Heruli) and behold, in this horn (this “little horn” power) were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.”

And then if you would, skip down to verses 19, 20, because Daniel is curious about the fourth beast and the little horn and says, “Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast, which was diverse from all the others, exceeding dreadful, whose teeth were of iron, and his nails of brass; which devoured, brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet; and of the ten horns that were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell; even of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows.”

And then let’s back up and read verse 17 where it says, “These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth.” And these four kings are the kings of the same four kingdoms in the image in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream: Baylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome.

Now, we already know that the fourth beast, which represents Rome, and those ten horns, same as the ten toes, and especially that “little horn” that came up among the ten is what Daniel wanted to know about. In other words, out of the divided nations of pagan Rome comes up another power that would prevail over God’s people for a period of time, namely 1260 years, better known as the dark ages, and I’ll speak to that in a few minutes.

But in Daniel 7:21 we are given some details about what this little horn would do. Daniel says, “I beheld, and the same horn (that “little horn”) made war with the saints (with God’s people), and prevailed against them.” And so, this “little horn” is clearly a persecuting power we’re talking about at this point in history, and what power would that be? The Bible says it came up among the ten, which would be in the same geographical area as the western Roman Empire, and history tells us that the “little horn” is papal Rome, because it was papal Rome that succeeded pagan Rome, and it’s clear from history that papal Rome was the power that persecuted and killed people during the dark ages; dark because the Bible was withheld from the people, which time takes in the Protestant Reformation.

Now let’s follow this thought through for a minute. During the first century the persecution of Christ’s followers began in earnest with the stoning of Stephen in Acts 6, and for 300 years afterward that persecution kept the Christian church relatively pure, because no one except those who were willing to die for the truth and for their faith would remain steadfast for fear of being killed. But when Constantine became the Roman Emperor and had a nominal conversion to Christianity, meaning that Constantine became a Christian in name only because it was politically expedient for him to do so in the early part of the fourth century. That’s what opened the way for error and apostasy to come into the church, and from that point forward things went rapidly downhill, because that’s when the church in Roman began to incorporate into its teachings many of the ceremonies and various superstitions of paganism to help facilitate bringing people into the church.

In other words, the church was willing to allow people, with their pagan beliefs, to become members of the church to increase their numbers, and with those people came false teachings. Church leaders were willing to compromise by Christianizing pagan beliefs, and this mingling of truth and error is what corrupted the faith of many of the professed followers of Christ. And by the way, this mixing of truth and error together is what defines spiritual Babylon in the last days.

So what are some of those pagan teachings and superstitions that came into the church of Rome for which there is no Scriptural authority? How about the teaching of purgatory, where through a process one can pay the penalty for their own sins, or have their relatives pay the priest to pray them out of there a little sooner, which does away with the necessity of the sacrifice of Christ in our behalf. How about the teaching that Mary becomes our Saviour; the Queen of heaven they call her, because we’re supposed to pray to her so she can then plead with Jesus for us? What about indulgences, whereby we can be forgiven beforehand for the sins we want to commit? What about disregarding the seventh-day Sabbath and replacing it with Sunday worship? You may not realize this, but it was through the Roman Emperor Constantine that the first Sunday law was enacted in 321 A. D. to help facilitate bringing pagan Sun worshipers into the church. What about the apostle Peter as the head of the church and that his position has supposedly passed down to succeeding popes to our own day when there’s only one head of the church, which is Christ. What about Christmas, or Christ-mass and Easter that came in through the worship of the fertility goddess Ishtar with colored easter eggs and chocolate bunnies?

Now I don’t mean to be an old scrooge, because whenever you can get people to think about the birth and resurrection of Jesus, that’s a good thing, and we ought to take advantage of it however we can, but we should know where these things come from and that Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th at all, but is a spin-off from the birth of the unconquerable pagan sun god. These things were all brought into the church and Christianized through pagan beliefs.

What about confessing your sins to another sinful human being that sits behind a partition wall, when we’re told plainly that as Christians, we can have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus? The Bible says, we are a “chosen generation, a royal priesthood” and have no need to confess to an earthly priest who is many times more sinful than the one who makes confession. These things are nothing more than Catholic superstitions that have their origin in pagan beliefs. And we could go on with things like “all saints day” when all people in heaven are to be celebrated, when in reality they’re still in the grave awaiting the resurrection, and then “all souls day” that follows with prayers being offered for the dearly departed who are still in purgatory. It’s amazing to me that Christians can be so fooled that they would accept such things as Bible truth when the Bible teaches no such things.

And this is not to say that God does not have faithful souls in the Catholic church, because He does. It’s not the people, but the system that is corrupt, and through that system people are fooled into believing things that are not inspired by the Holy Spirit. That’s why there’s a call out message in Revelation 18:4 that must be given to those that are involved in churches that are teaching error, and it’s not just those in the Catholic church, but in every church that’s teaching a mixture of truth and error, because that’s what Babylon represents in these last days.

Just as God confused the language of those who were building the tower of Babel, so it’s a confusion of ideas that is represented by spiritual Babylon. And before Jesus comes, these people must be given an opportunity to make an intelligent decision to accept or reject the truth, because God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Praise the Lord!

Now getting back to Constantine: He was the first one to set the example of waging war in the name of Jesus Christ, and later on we have the Catholic crusades between the 11^th and 13^th centuries to try to reclaim the Holy Land from Muslim rule. One of the reasons we can know that Constantine was not truly a Christian, is because he continued on with pagan practices his whole life. He held the title of Pontifex Maximus throughout his reign, which was the title of the chief high priest of the traditional Roman pagan religion. He also continued to mint coins featuring the sun god Sol Invictus, Latin for “the Unconquered Sun god” that I mentioned a moment ago, and his Arch of Constantine that was built after his supposed conversion contains pagan images and symbols rather than Christian symbolism.

The truth is, Constantine was politically motivated to embrace Christianity because the Roman Empire had become fractured, and by the 4th century the Christian population in Rome, some true Christians, some halfhearted, had become a sizable and influential group of people, and he thought that by uniting paganism and Christianity it would be a powerful political maneuver that would unite his kingdom and assure his own position, but it did neither.

And lastly, Constantine wasn’t baptized until he was on his deathbed, just in case this thing called Christianity had some validity, but rather it’s evidence that he never fully committed to the Christian faith during his lifetime. And remember what Jesus Himself said, “by their fruits you shall know them,” and that’s not being judgmental, that’s just the way it is.

In the beginning, as the church of Rome incorporated pagan practices into Christianity in order to gain adherents, each church had a bishop over it, and the prestige and dignity of the bishop was in direct proportion to the size of the church he headed, and with the seat of the Empire being in Rome, the bishop of that church was naturally the most prestigious position. And with the Emperor Constantine being a nominal Christian, the authority of the bishop of Rome tended to increase, and over a period of time that bishop came to exercise more and more  authority and control over the church as a whole, and thus we have the history of how the “little horn” power, or the Catholic church came to be, with the bishop of Rome, or the pope at its head.

But eventually, in spite of Constantine’s efforts to maintain unity, there was a division in the church of Rome in regards to a certain doctrine. On one side of the controversy was a man by the name of Arius of Alexandria, and on the other side was the pope, and the majority were on the pope’s side, except for three of those ten nations represented by the ten toes of Daniel 2 and the ten horns of Daniel 7. These three nations, as I mentioned earlier were the Ostrogoths, the Vandals, and the Heruli, which subscribed to the doctrine of Arius. So, what was the doctrine of Arius? Perhaps you’ve heard of the word Arianism. This is the teaching that Jesus Christ was created by God the Father and is therefore not coeternal with Him; that He is not self-existent, and does not have a divine nature like the Father, and I believe Jehovah’s Witnesses still believe this doctrine, as well as a certain element within Adventism, by the way.

Now, without going into great detail about this, it’s true that the doctrine of Arianism is false, because Jesus is just as much God as the Father is God and coeternal with Him. If not, then God did not give His best to save us, but gave a lesser god of sorts, which is totally false.

However, so also is the doctrine of the Catholic trinity false, claiming that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all of the same substance and not three separate and personal beings. And that’s all we have time to say about this right now, but if you want more information you can search through the various sermons on the platform your listening to right now and listen to the sermon titled “Jesus said, I Am.” Parts 1 & 2, and I hope you’ll do that, especially if you have questions about how the Son of God could be equal with the Father.

So, to make a long story short, those three Arian nations out of the ten that no longer form a part of Europe today are the same as the three horns that the “little horn,” or the papacy, plucked up by the roots that we read about in Daniel 7:8; the Heruli, the Vandals, and the Ostrogoths, fully driving them from power by 538 A. D., soon afterward completely disappeared from history.

At that point then, in 538 the way was opened for the “little (papal) horn,” to reign supreme, and the prophetic time clock of Daniel 7:25 began ticking away where it speaks of “a time, times, and a dividing of time,” which is 1260 years. How do we know that? We know that because the word “time” according to the Hebrew represents a year, and a year when Daniel wrote this, was calculated as 360 days, not 365 like today. A “time,” or a year of 360 days represents 360 years in Bible prophecy, always, and we’ll see why in a minute, and “times,” plural represents two years or 720 days, and “a dividing of time, or half a year, represents 180 days. When you add it all up we have 1260 days, or years. And what happened 1260 years after 538 A. D? Pope Pius VI was taken prisoner by Napolean’s general Berthier in 1798 and he died in exile the following year. At that point it looked as though the papacy was done for and would never regain its former power, but it has, why? Because Revelation 13:3, which speaks of the papal beast, predicted that its deadly wound would be healed, and certainly it has been, because the papacy today is very popular and powerful, which will be part of our subject next time.

Now, why does a day in Bible prophecy always represent a year? We’re going to see that this day for a year principle is critical for a proper understanding of time prophecy, and if we don’t follow it, we’ll get all mixed up and misinterpret last day events as many are doing today.

When dealing with prophecy, or a future prediction that has a time element to it, a day always represents a year. Why? Take a good Bible concordance like Strongs, which is basically a dictionary that defines in English what the Hebrew and Greek words mean, and look at the word “time” in Daniel 7:25. And you’ll also find this same time prophecy in Revelation 12:14, which connects these two books together, one is a prophecy, the other a revelation, and you will see that it represents a year. The concordance says a “time” is “typically a year.”

Also, there’s the story of Nebuchadnezzar in Dan 4:23 where it says he ate grass “with the beasts of the field, till seven times pass over him,” meaning seven years. And besides this there are two other verses of Scripture that plainly establishes this day for a year principle, one in Ezekiel and the other in the book of Numbers. In the book of Numbers we have the story of when twelve men, one from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, spent 40 days spying out the land of Cannan and afterward brought back an evil report of unbelief of what they found.

In Numbers 14:34, God says to Israel, “After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.” This is a time prophecy that began Israel’s 40 years of wandering in the wilderness because of their unbelief, each day for a year. And so, whenever there is a time prophecy mentioned in the Bible, a day always represents a year.

Then let’s look at Ezekiel 4:6. This is when the siege of Jerusalem was portrayed through an analogy that Ezekiel was to play a part in. God told Ezekiel to lay on his left side for a number of days, and verse 6 says, “And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee (what?) each day for a year.” And so, here’s another time prophecy where one day represented one year.

Now, I need to wind this down, because our time together is about gone. So, what I’d like to do is close by giving a brief recap of what we learned today so we can know without question that the end of all things is at hand and that Jesus is soon to come.

What we’ve seen in Daniel 2 & 7 is a description of a chain of events that leads down to the coming of Christ, when all the kingdoms of the earth are to be broken in pieces and blown away like chaff on the summer threshing floor. And if we want to know whether or not the coming of Christ is at hand, we just have to ask, Where are we at the present time in this chain of predicted events! How much of this prophecy has been fulfilled? The Bible says there were to be four world Empires, namely Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, and history verifies that that was the case.

Afterward pagan Rome was to be divided into ten kingdoms, of which three were to be destroyed by the “little Horn” that came up among them, which is the papacy, and that “little horn” would then persecute God’s saints for 1260 years starting in 538 A. D. Then at the end of the 1260 years the papacy was to receive a deadly wound, which happened right on schedule in 1798 during the French Revolution. Then afterward that deadly wound was to be healed, and that process began when Benito Mussolini signed the Lateran Treaty in 1929, restoring the papacy’s lost power, and as a result it’s almost completely healed now and ready to fulfill its last-day role as described in Revelation 13 as the first beast mentioned in the first half of, and then the United States of America will fulfill its role as the second beast in the second half of that same chapter as it forms an image of the papal beast, and we’ll be covering that in more detail another time. But do you remember what Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar after explaining his dream? He said, “The dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.”

Nothing can be more clear than that the interpretation has been sure up to the present time, and that we are now living when the very last events predicted previous to the setting up of the kingdom of God are even now taking place. Daniel 2:44 says, “and in the days of these kings (the modern nations of Europe) shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.”

Alright, I know I’ve presented a lot of inspired history for you to digest this morning, but remember this one thing, because what we’ve covered is to be a faith building experience: the God of heaven can be trusted when He tells us about the future, because He has been dead on when it comes to the past and there’s not a lot of time left now, when compared to the past, before the climax of the great controversy between Christ and Satan will have reached its fulfillment.

And so, judge for yourselves my dear friends, whether we are on the very borders of the heavenly Cannan or not. And as you consider these things I hope you’ll agree with me that it’s time to make Jesus first and last and best in everything, that we might be ready, working to spread the truth, and eagerly waiting for “that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;  Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” Titus 2:13, 14

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