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On this page, an index to several series of lessons follows a general introduction to prophecy.
Signs of the times
Harmonizing imminence with signs (the Bible teaches both that Christ's
return is imminent and that signs will precede His coming)
Signs at the beginning of the Church Age
History of prophetic study
Evidence that we live on the verge of Christ's return
Thirty signs already fulfilled
The signs of the church prospering
The signs of Israel's rebirth
The signs of globalization
The signs of apostasy in the church
The signs of corruption in society
Things to come
The Antichrist
The rapture
Commentary on the Book of Daniel
Chapter one
Full commentary with introduction and bibliography
A century ago, the teachings of the psychotherapist Émile Coué gave rise to the popular saying, "Every day and in every way the world is getting better and better." People then were giddy with optimism that modern technology and laws would soon eradicate the ills of mankind. They believed that progress was the normal tendency of human history.
But as people today look about them, they see that the world is not getting better and better. It is getting worse and worse. Poverty is swallowing up new millions every year. Economic insecurity is creeping even into the middle classes. And violence fills the earth. Every day brings news of more bloodshed from war, terrorism, social unrest, or sick crime. Besides the disasters that man is inflicting upon himself, every kind of natural disaster besets the world. Starvation is stalking through many lands. Hurricanes and other storms are becoming more frequent and severe. Earthquakes are causing more death and destruction. Summer brings extreme heat and winter brings extreme cold. New scourges like AIDS are emerging from nowhere, and scourges long suppressed, like tuberculosis, are reemerging in more virulent forms. Everyone waits apprehensively for the next flu pandemic.
No wonder that people today are anxious about the future. To what bleak end are all these troubles leading us? What is the outlook for mankind? Can any oracle tell us what is going to happen? No scholar or soothsayer can give us satisfying answers. In all the world we find only one reliable source of information about things to come. That source is the Bible, the book which the Creator Himself bequeathed to mankind as a revelation of His workings in history. Fully one fourth of the Bible consists of prophecy. In fact, the Bible gives a detailed account of the events at the end of the age in which we live. So, to find out what lies ahead, we need only consult the Bible.
The claim that there are only general signs of Christ's coming has come onto the scene fairly recently. It is a new twist in Bible interpretation. My father's generation firmly believed both in the imminence of Christ's return and in the anticipation of His return by a series of specific signs, and they saw no contradiction between these two beliefs. Which view is correct—the older or the newer? For four reasons I side with my father's generation.
For more than a thousand years before the French Revolution, all nations of the Western world had professed allegiance to the Christian religion, acknowledging its supreme authority in all questions moral and metaphysical. But the rebels against the Ancien Regime in France set up tyrannies which, for the first time in many long centuries, married civil power to an anti-Christian world view. The new leaders tried to remake society along lines congenial to rationalistic philosophy and dared even "to change times and laws" (Dan. 7:25). But their political experiments bred cruelty and terror. To many believers, the vicious regimes created by the Revolution seemed like a foretaste of the bestial world government that would immediately precede the coming of Christ. In Napoleon, many believers saw a type of the Antichrist himself.
Such events prompted many Christians to take a new interest in Bible prophecy. When they saw that current history was shaping up like the end times pictured in the Bible, they realized that the return of Christ could not be far off. A general expectation that Christ was coming soon swept through the church in the latter half of the nineteenth century and remained strong for over a hundred years.
But in the last twenty years, the expectation has waned. Believers have been losing confidence that Christ will return soon. Now, the sentiment they often hear from pulpits and lecterns is that we cannot know whether Christ will come tomorrow or a thousand years from tomorrow. It is true, of course, that no one should try to predict the date of Christ's return. Yet, as we will show, there are many signs that His return is drawing near, very near.
The number found worthy to escape the Flood was exceedingly small—only eight out of the millions then alive on the earth. But some were found worthy. Faith had not vanished altogether from the race of men. So it will be in the years just before Christ's return. After a long period of spiritual zeal and missionary enterprise, the church will go into a steep decline, continuing until the possessors of true faith become alarmingly few. It is this near extinction of true faith that Christ foresees when He asks, "When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8). The question expresses the Bridegroom's tender concern for His Bride. But, as in Noah's day, a few will resist the pull of an evil world and stand firm in their commitment to righteousness. When many others are deserting the ranks of true Christianity, a few will remain loyal. How large will the remnant be? We do not know. We need not suppose that the remnant will be exactly eight persons, as in the Old Testament type. Perhaps the number who still espouse true faith will be hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions. But even millions would be a negligible portion of the world's population today.
Besides the many signs that appeared to the church in antiquity, many more have emerged in the last two centuries, especially in the last fifty years. God has furnished these signs of the times to alert us that the Lord is at hand. He stands at the door, waiting to enter this world again. His return cannot be far off.
In James 5:7-9, the writer is clearly saying that the Church Age would continue until there is a final period of growth to balance the growth at the beginning. Then he tells us what will happen after the latter rain. The waiting will be over and the husbandman will come. Where do we stand in history? In the worldwide evangelism of the last two centuries, we have seen the latter rain. The rain has fallen for generations, but now it is subsiding. Missionary work is being scaled back. The churches in many countries are at some stage of drift into apostasy.
The founding of the state of Israel in 1948 greatly strengthened the conviction of Bible-believing Christians that these are the Last Days. But has the church correctly understood prophecy? Has prophecy been fulfilled through the return of Jews to Palestine and the rebirth of a Jewish nation? Has God planted these events in history to serve as signs that the Church Age is winding down? To see whether the modern history of the Jews has prophetic significance, we must start with what Jesus Himself taught about the future of His people.
One of the most important signs that we have entered the Last Days is the emergence of world government. The first halting steps in that direction followed World War I, when the nations weary of defending democracy banded together to form the League of Nations, intended to prevent another world war. Although the first experiment in world government failed, the second—the body known as the United Nations, founded after World War II—has established itself as a major force in world politics.
Unfortunately, on many questions concerning the future, students of Bible prophecy do not agree. They differ, for example, on what the state of the church will be when Christ comes to gather His saints. Some say that He will find a victorious church; others, that He will find the church defeated. In an effort to resolve this question, we will look closely at what the Bible says about the last stages of church history, and we will show that our own age precisely matches the description.
Jesus in the Olivet Discourse draws a comparison between the days before His return and the days before the Flood. A study of the antediluvian world finds four characteristics replicated in our own time: 1) eating and drinking; 2) marriage and giving in marriage; 3) growing power of evil forces; and 4) violence. Jesus also highlights wars and rumors of war as features of the end time.
The idea that the Antichrist will come from Iraq is not a fanciful concoction influenced by recent events in the Middle East, but a sound deduction from Scripture. The many modern expositors who have named Syro-Iraq as his place of origin include S. P. Tregelles, George W. Davis, Arthur W. Pink, William L. Pettingill, Arthur Petrie, and Philip R. Newell. Most expositors during the early centuries of the church held the same view.
Now we come to the most important question you will ever face. This is it. Are you ready for Christ to come? Are you watching for Him always? Are you praying always that He will find you worthy to take? Or have you turned your eyes downward to see only the things of this world? Are you living for the sake of the next good meal, the next good time, the next good video? Is your mind constantly agitated by problems in the family? Or is the theme of your thoughts the hope of soon meeting the precious person of Christ?
The prophecies in the Book of Daniel are the most specific and comprehensive to be found anywhere in the Bible outside the Book of Revelation.
The following lessons present the commentary on chapter one. The entire commentary in PDF format is also available.