Biblical King-of-the-North (KON) and King-of-the-South (KOS), and GOG and MAGOG, too!

[ComfortMyPeople]

1 hour ago, JW Insider said:

And if Jesus was allowing for a second fulfillment , or completion of the fulfillment in those years, then do we have the right to go beyond what Jesus said and also make it about who the King of the North and King of the South should be in all the future years after Rome?

Yes, at some point the character is no longer a Seleucid king, not even a Roman, because nothing of the next verses happened in past times:

(Daniel 11:45-12:2) . . .And he will plant his royal tents between the grand sea and the holy mountain of Decoration; and he will come all the way to his end, and there will be no helper for him. 12 “During that time Mi'cha·el will stand up, the great prince who is standing in behalf of your people. And there will occur a time of distress such as has not occurred since there came to be a nation until that time. And during that time your people will escape, everyone who is found written down in the book. 2 And many of those asleep in the dust of the earth will wake up, some to everlasting life and others to reproach and to everlasting contempt.

Evidently, at some point the prophecy abandons the past and tackles the future. The problem is knowing where to cut!

 

[JW Insider]

55 minutes ago, ComfortMyPeople said:

• 1. Everything was fulfilled at the time of the Hellenic kings who influenced Israel, mainly Antiochus IV Epiphanes
• 2. Much of what we believe has already been accomplished is still in the future and must be fulfilled.

I largely agree. But I think that there is another way to look at the original historical events for MOST historical events found in the scriptures. I look at them like this:

(Romans 15:4, 5) . . .For all the things that were written beforehand were written for our instruction, so that through our endurance and through the comfort from the Scriptures we might have hope. ⁵ Now may the God who supplies endurance and comfort grant you to have among yourselves the same mental attitude that Christ Jesus had,

(1 Corinthians 10:1-11) . . .Now I want you to know, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea ² and all got baptized into Moses by means of the cloud and of the sea, ³ and all ate the same spiritual food ⁴ and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they used to drink from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock meant the Christ. ⁵ Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the wilderness. ⁶ Now these things became examples for us, in order for us not to desire injurious things, as they desired them. ⁷ Neither become idolaters, as some of them did; just as it is written: “The people sat down to eat and drink. Then they got up to have a good time.” ⁸ Neither let us practice sexual immorality, as some of them committed sexual immorality, only to fall, 23,000 of them in one day. ⁹ Neither let us put Jehovah to the test, as some of them put him to the test, only to perish by the serpents. ¹⁰ Neither be murmurers, as some of them murmured, only to perish by the destroyer. ¹¹ Now these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for a warning to us upon whom the ends of the systems of things have come.

In other words, the specifics are not applied to certain classes of Christians any more than they are applied to certain specific rulers or kingdoms. We don't have a Korah, Dathan and Abiram murmuring class who put Moses to the test in a specific way, for example. But we do learn a lesson for our instruction that no one, or no group of people, should put the words of Jesus to the test, or try to usurp, or take away from the authority of Jehovah's arrangement, who put Jesus as head over the congregation. So when Pharoah tried to attack the Israelites going through the sea, we don't need a new fulfillment of "Pharoah" every few decades. We don't need to identify the specific "Pharoah" of the 1st, 2nd . . . 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.

I think this is also true of the King of the North, for example. We have a specific person who Daniel had in mind for the great king whose kingdom was broken up to the four winds. We know that this great king was Alexander the Great. We don't need a new Alexander for each generation of history, or each generation of Jehovah's Witnesses. That's where I can personally see the LESSON of the "King of the North." We can always look at an event of history and say well that was the Pharaoh of this-or-that time period. Or that was the "abomination of desolation" of this-or-that time period.

I'm thinking, therefore, that Jesus wasn't identifying a "new" [Seleucid] king of the north when speaking of the Romans who would surround Jerusalem.

Jews of that generation would already have identified Caligula with Antiochus Epiphanes, for example, when Caligula had ordered the erection of his statue in the Temple at Jerusalem -- something that directly led to the revolution in Judea that resulted in the fulfillment of Jesus prophecy about the surrounding armies. This was all too similar to what Antiochus had done a couple centuries earlier. But this didn't mean that Antiochus was Caligula, only that the lesson was appropriate. There would be nothing wrong with saying that Caligula was being "an Antiochus," but not in the sense that he was the specific fulfillment of a prophecy.

All this makes sense to me up to a point, and I explained it OK. But it doesn't make sense completely, and I think this is where you are already coming from. For example, Paul in Thessalonians was very specific about identifying an end-times "antichrist" using the same terms as found in Daniel. This is part of the argument found here, too:

https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/daniel-11/

[ComfortMyPeople]

4 minutes ago, JW Insider said:

Jews of that generation would already have identified Caligula with Antiochus Epiphanes,

https://enduringword.com/bible-commentary/daniel-11/

Yes, I see your point. And I also think that Jews and Christians thought they were seeing the fulfillment of the prophecies (and also many of us).

Considering that Jesus refers to Daniel as a "prophet", and that many of his prophecies culminate in the "time of the end" (for example Daniel 2:44) it is still very interesting to investigate where, in Daniel 10 to 12, we could discover specific events of our era.

 

 

[ComfortMyPeople]

3 hours ago, Pudgy said:

If I have full and complete understanding about everything there is to know about these two subjects. Or know nothing whatsoever … what’s the practical, applicable difference in a normal person’s life and daily activities?

we have no control over any of it. 

You're right. Nothing in our Christian life should change if the prophecies (such as those of the KoN) were fulfilled, are being fulfilled or will be fulfilled. If we serve Jehovah out of devotion we will continue to worship him no matter what the end comes tomorrow or in a million years.

In fact, not giving prophecies too much emphasis protects us from disappointment. But what happens to me is that since a good part of the Bible consists of prophecies, I can't help but "take a look".

(2 Peter 1:19). . .So we have the prophetic word made more sure, and you are doing well in paying attention to it as to a lamp shining in a dark place (until day dawns and a daystar rises) in your hearts. .

 

By the way, I love your cartoons

[JW Insider]

46 minutes ago, ComfortMyPeople said:

Evidently, at some point the prophecy abandons the past and tackles the future. The problem is knowing where to cut!

Yes. I see your point. It becomes difficult to keep trying to see who the original characters were, and then making them only the OBJECT LESSONS of the time of the end.

The only way to do that is to spiritualize the lesson. By "spiritualizing," I mean that these enemies to Jehovah's people really are dead to us, because we have warred with Jehovah's enemies and "conquered the world" according to scripture. Of course, we must also continue to conquer, but Christians are in effect already raised up, and his enemies are already condemned to death. In other words there is a sense in which the King of the North already "came to his end in the land of decoration."

And the reason I'm looking into spiritualizing the lesson would be because I think we know (deep down) that this is also the way to understand Revelation, Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21. We know that Jesus had in mind the destruction of Jerusalem in 70, and called it, in effect, "a time of distress such as has not occurred since there came to be a nation until that time." When Jesus added, "nor will ever occur again," now we must move it forward again to the final parousia, not just the time of judgment on literal Jerusalem.

Also, Revelation says that Daniel wasn't really in the time of the end, and thus the scrolls were sealed up, but it's because Revelation was written in the time of the end that it was then time to unseal Daniel's words. We resolve that in the WT publications by saying that John wasn't really in the time of the end, but that he was moved in a vision to the 1914 era. But this does not fit the introduction to Revelation before John is swept away in vision, and it does not resolve the issue of what almost every letter in the Christian Greek Scriptures includes (plus Acts): the fact that they also were written in what had just become the time of the end, the last days. It's even in the quote from 1 Cor 10, above:

they were written for a warning to us upon whom the ends of the systems of things have come.

[Pudgy]

I’m surprised that all these people that are extrapolating things from the book of Daniel have not somehow invoked the infamous “ManBearPig” of “Climate Change”, previously known as “Global Warming”.

[Pudgy]

I see the Dmitar has engaged in another mindless spasm of down voting.

[Space Merchant]

Well one thing is certain - What was said about China several years ago up until now, is true.

[Pudgy]

1 hour ago, Space Merchant said:

Well one thing is certain - What was said about China several years ago up until now, is true.

So ….. under those silk robes with the dragons on the back and sleeves they really ARE held up by compressed helium?

and …. and …. Inside those huge droopy sleeves they keep hamsters?

[Space Merchant]

12 minutes ago, Pudgy said:

So ….. under those silk robes with the dragons on the back and sleeves they really ARE held up by compressed helium?

and …. and …. Inside those huge droopy sleeves they keep hamsters?

In short, the US and their allies are ad odds with Russia and their allies. Secondary allies on the US side either went neutral or, in this sense, changed teams. The UN being the referee, in this case.

[Patiently waiting for Truth]

On 3/18/2022 at 2:09 PM, Pudgy said:

So ….. under those silk robes with the dragons on the back and sleeves they really ARE held up by compressed helium?

and …. and …. Inside those huge droopy sleeves they keep hamsters?

DOG, Why do you need to add rubish to a serious topic ? Is it because you feel out of your depth ?  Are you insecure ? 

And then SM chirps in with politics. Oh dear @JW Insider I was beginning to enjoy reading your thoughts here, not that I fully understand it all.  I have no thought of my own on these things, i admit to it all being beyond me. 

[Pudgy]

I hope it is NOT RUBBISH, but is a non-sequiter visualization joke … but humor is an individual thing.

The comedian and TV LATE NITE host Johnny Carson had 16 joke writers, and about half his jokes bombed ………. But he stlll made about $16,000 a minute for 30 years or so doing that schlock.

What I am looking for is a gig that pays $2,000,000 a minute, I work 30 minutes, and then move to Florida.