Walk With Me

From Belshazzar’s Feast To The Four Beasts

• JJ

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Hello, everybody. Welcome to today's episode of Walk With Me. I am your host, JJ. So good to have each and every one of you here. I'm so glad that you are come back again for this week's installation of our end-time Bible study. If I'm unless my count is wrong, we should be around week six. And so if I say some things that sort of seem like there should be something missing or something else uh that you may have missed, got five previous episodes you can always go back and check out. If you're watching this on YouTube, make sure to give a like or subscribe to the channel so that you can be updated when new episodes load and you can share it with other people. If you listen to this uh on the iHeartRadio app, go ahead and give a like and subscribe, and you can even send me a text through the app. So that's really happy about that. Uh, any other uh things we got to talk about our sponsors. I'm so often so anxious to get into today's content. I don't want to miss any of these housekeeping things. Two bars lyricist, thank him so much for the intro and the outro music and exquisite creations who is still making the cups, these are tumblers. I keep saying they're cups, but they're actually tumblers, 24-30 ounce tumblers, they're really nice. Um, and if you have any questions, you can also text me uh for the uh the pictures uh for the tumblers and everything like that because the website is being really redone and stuff like that, so it's gotta be a while for that. So, no further ado, we are going to get into today's uh content for the uh end time Bible study. Now, keep in mind we have a lot of ground to cover. Some of y'all listen and be like, Oh JJ, you're not this ain't got nothing to do with the end times and stuff like that. Please understand I'm kind of laying a foundation as to why the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation are sister books when it comes to talking about the end time. We're gonna talk about other books too, because Jesus Himself spoke a lot about how the end was gonna go. So, but let's lay the foundation, and we were talking about uh Babylon, and we were talking about the end with uh Belshazzar with the big party that was a no-go, and I wanted to kind of wrap that up before we got into our our next aspect of what the end times would be. But before we remember that we had the the writing that appeared on the wall, which was Mine Mine Tekal Perez, Mine Mine Tekal Perez. Now, what that really means uh was God had numbered the the days of the kingdom and it was over, said it twice. In other words, you you're lacking something, and Perez is that the kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians. Now, how did that division happen? Um to kind of kind of draw a picture of what Babylon really looked like. Um well, you know what? Let's not do that yet. Let's talk about what Belshazzar messed up with, and I'm not saying Belteshazzar because that was Daniel's Babylonian name, but Belshazzar was Nebuchadnezzar's grandson. So Belshazzar, he was drinking and not paying attention while the enemy was already at the gates of the city. Now, this kind of speaks to um a sort of drunken debauchery that he was so into himself that he wasn't leading his city. Now, I can stop here and talk a lot about of our churches today, and how and because he was doing this, he was very presumptuous, he was very arrogant, he kind of thought he couldn't be touched. He was he knew that the Mes and the Persians were outside, he knew that, but instead of you know handling business, he decided he wanted to take some time off. This is because he had a false sense of security, and you're gonna we're gonna talk about why he had that sense of security. And even though he knew that there was a huge army, two huge armies outside of his gates, he didn't even want to humble himself. And the weird part about Belshazzar, and I want to make sure I touched on this, Belshazzar saw what Nebuchadnezzar went through with God. He saw it, he was there. But when you're royalty, you're in the inner circle, so you kind of know what's going on, and this sort of speaks to a deeper sort of uh spiritual mental condition that you think that other people can go through things that you cannot go through. And I don't want to get off on that, but this is a very serious thing, even Nebuchadnezzar, having seen God, got humbled by God and then realized that God was real and was brought back to finish out his reign. Belshazzar saw all of this and still refused to humble himself, and I want to get off on that. But what really made it so bad was that Belshazzar, after after having seen all of this, became very blasphemous. And this was the most serious of the sins. When you went into the temple and took all the vessels of God that God had consecrated, and began using these sacred vessels and cups and stuff like that that God had already ordained, he literally used them in a situation where he was worshiping his idols with what God had already consecrated, and this was blasphemous to God. So this is where God stepped in and wrote on the wall, Mine Mine Paris Tech or Teco Paris, Mine Mine Techoparis. And Daniel had to come in and give the interpretation, and then right about that time was when everything fell. Now, what was Babylon? Babylon was not like, you know, I don't know if anybody watched, you know, like Wild West or you know, cowboys and stuff like that, westerns. Like I do. Um, it wasn't like Fort Carson where they had like a wooden uh picket fence, and you know, you had a couple soldiers standing up there. That's not what Babylon was about. Babylon was the huge, huge city. And matter of fact, it had been a huge city since Nimrod, who was the great grandson of Noah, founded. Now, over the years, and with all the marauders and the wars and stuff that happened, they had built it up and fortified it, and it was huge. And it was literally thought to be an invincible city. Now, why was it thought to be invincible? It was built on top of the Euphrates River, which means the river Euphrates ran right through it, which uh technically and and militarily or tactically speaking, you already had a fresh set of fresh source of water, which is crucial when it came to sieges, because you would die of thirst long before you died of hunger. So, and in with that Euphrates River, it ran almost right down the middle. So it the city was divided on two equal sides by the Euphrates River. The walls that surrounded uh Babylon is said to have been so wide that you could put four chariots side by side and ride them comfortably on top of the wall. So you're looking at a typical chariot with six feet wide, you're looking at about 25 feet wide, given the little spokes things never never touched, so 25 foot thick walls and go up and down um around the walls of Babylon. So this was no slouch, and those walls went down a some of the historians say about 35 to 40 feet. So there was no digging under those walls, there was no tunneling like like we see in Lord of the Rings, where they they ran up to the exhaust thing and maybe the exhaust the uh the drainage pipe with a with a bomb and blew a hole in it the size was Texas. No, this this these walls were 30 feet deep, 35 feet deep. So it was in these sort of fortifications that uh Sazar felt like, oh, I you can't touch me. God, I can show you you can't touch me. So, and that's what put him in this sort of state to where he had uh he allowed himself to have a drunk feast while the enemy was already attacking the city. And Darius the Mead, remember this is going to be uh divided into the Medes and the Persians, and Darius was the Mead, and he conquered Babylon while Belshazzar was still inside the temple acting crazy. And how did Darius do this? He actually diverted the water of the Euphrates into the moats that surrounded the city. That way, instead of being forced in through the gate, they walked in over boats that they had built or platforms they had built, where they could have basically attacked the city from all sides. So understand that one of the biggest lessons we should learn, especially when we're considering the end times, that it's easy to think that we are sort of immune. Even people who listen to this platform, you go to church every week or whatever happens, you don't want to get to the point where you get so you start feeling so uh insulated, you start feeling so invincible, you start feeling so spiritual that these things will not affect you. So that's very, very close to being blasphemous because you start relying on things of this world when God has already judged you, and judge me too. So I wanted to make sure we cover that before we get into the next point we want to make about the book of Daniel. All right, now that being said, love y'all here. Uh, we're gonna talk about Daniel's dream and vision, and the best way to do this one thing I have not said in a couple weeks, and I apologize for that, is that we have a rule on this podcast. If we talk about a particular scripture, read the verse or two above or the verse or two below, but preferably the whole chapter. No more is this more appropriate when talking about the end times. As a matter of fact, today we're gonna start around Daniel chapter 7, and we're gonna go possibly into chapter uh Daniel chapter 8. Now, what's very significant about these two chapters, these are Daniel's visions. Chapter 8 would be the description of the visions that Daniel himself had received from God. Now, this actually began during uh the initial year of Belshazzar's reign, and the second one is during the third year of the ruling of Belshazzar. Now, the problem is since Belshur was not associated with his father, who was Nebuchadnezzar for more than a three-year period, Daniel was now had to be about 85 years old, and this is when he had received that first vision that was different from the dreams that he was talking to Nebuchadnezzar about. So let's talk about Daniel chapter 7. First, verses 1 through 6 is gonna be the night vision of the third beast, 7 and 8, uh, the night vision of the fourth beast, the judgment vision 9 through 12, and the Son of Man in his kingdom, verses 13 to 14, and the interpretation of the visions will be 15 to 28. So we're literally gonna go through the entire chapter. We won't we probably won't get all of this done in one episode, but just kind of bear with us here, okay? Now, please understand something. You're gonna see some themes in during these uh during these visions, and these mean these these uh themes sort of may mean something that we could sort of more relate to than Daniel could. For instance, when you talk about the term sea, um, a lot of times in prophetic terms, it is not talking about water, and a lot of times it's talking about conflict because the sea is often very tumultuous, wind can get whip up a sea very quickly. So now this is sort of revealed in Revelation when the waters which I saw is which is Revelation 17 and 15. Remember the rule though, but we're gonna talk about Revelation 17 and 15. The waters which you saw where the whores sit are people and multitudes and nations and tongues. So the people are not gonna be sitting in water, they're gonna be sitting in the middle of a conflict. The Great Sea almost always meant the Mediterranean Sea. There's some times where it means something else, but right now it generally means because at that time that was what they knew. The Great Sea is the Mediterranean Sea. Now, the four winds that that strove is generally what they call conflict, strife, and commotion. Now, these things kind of when it's talking about the four wings coming from every direction, that means they're coming in to a common, um they're coming in from every direction to a common target. Now, how does that mean? Because generally, if you if the wind is going from the east to the west, it's going from the east to the west, it's going from the north to the south. In other words, it's always flowing in one direction, from one direction to another direction. But now we should have the winds coming in from all four directions, from all four sides. In other words, you are being surrounded by these things that are coming to do you harm. So let's talk about the four beats, and I wanted you to clip that on your mind because this will start to explain some things. So let's talk about the four beats. The lion with the eagle's wings. Now, a lot of writers say that this is Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar. When you hear eagle's wings, it sort of means uh swiftness and conquest, which means it which means if that's the case, when those wings are plucked, it means that there was some sort of revolution that took away the the ability to conquer, the build the ability to enjoy conquest. So that means some of the provinces have had to have gone through a revolution. Now, when you have the bear, a lot of people like to say, Oh, this is Russia, this is Russia. No, this is more closely related to the Mes and Persian Empire. Now, since Persia was more powerful, the bear is is sort of raised on one side. Now, this sort of three-sided uh aspect is is sort of an indication that it had overcome three great world powers, so it was more along the lines of showing the elevation of the bear over the three other powers. Then you're gonna see um later on something about the leopard. Now, a lot of writers and historical references would generally kind of refer to that as Alexander the Great. That leopard also had four wings, so it also was very swift. He attacked, he attacked swiftly, and he he took care of business. But there were four heads on that leopard, and what does that mean? That means that instead of it having a unified leadership, it had four different styles of leadership, which is a division to the empire after Alexander's death. Now that at the time it was the Syria under Seleucius, and you had Greece under Simachus, Ros under Cassander, and Egypt under Ptolemy. Now, you've probably heard of some of these names before, maybe pronounced a little bit differently, but this is this these are the four heads of the kingdoms that split out under Alexander's empire, which after he died. So I'm we're moving kind of fast here because we're gonna go back and talk about each one of these. So now the fourth beast that is referred in Daniel's vision is a dreadful, terrible, and and strong being. Now, the problem is it doesn't really have a name, it just says this thing is dreadful and it's terrible, and it has iron teeth, and it stomped out everything else before it. Now, and it also this fourth beast had something that no one else had, it had ten horns. Now, and as Daniel thought about these horns, there was a little horn that came up and took out three of the bigger horns. Now, it seems to me that this fourth beast would be the last horn of the Gentile world. Now, that would actually be beginning with the Roman Empire, and the little horn would be the sin which would actually take out three of the other empires. So, what is that little horn? The land of sin, which would be the Antichrist. Now we're getting into that end time thing that everybody wants to talk about. Ooh, the Antichrist. We're getting into that, but this first makes his first appearance in the book of Daniel. This is why it was important to go over Daniel, and then you could talk about Revelation. In Revelation 13, it talks about that same beast rising out of the sea, in other words, that same beast rising out of conflict, great conflict, and that this little horn is gonna take out three other horns, which means it's gonna be whoever, whatever this little horn is, is going to be considered like a superman, like a like a person who fixes everything, and it a lot of people are going to enjoy living under this little horn. In Revelation 13, again, John saw the same beast, and the ten horns with crowns are the same ten horns with crowns that we see in Daniel chapter 7. Remember, I said Daniel and Revelation are sister books, written thousands of years apart, but they are in fact sister books. John saw the same things that Daniel saw. Now we find that the same leopard, the bear, the lion are also mentioned by John, but the order is reversed, and we see that these same creatures are mentioned in the exact same way. Now, the reason for that is because Daniel was looking toward the future, while John in his revelation was seeing things that had happened in the past. So I don't know if you've ever watched someone take a picture. Um, uh, like if you take a picture in the mirror, someone has a mole, the mole is going to be on the opposite side of the person that actually have it. For instance, if I have a mole on my the left side of my nose, if I'm using a mirror image, I'm I'm still the same person with the same mole, but the mole is going to be on the right side. And we all kind of look, oh, that's fake. No, it's not, it's just a mirror image based on the perspective of the person who is seeing it. Daniel's seeing it to the future. John is looking at it as if it was from the past. So let's talk about this little horn, because everyone wants to talk about the little horn, the antichrist. Everyone wants to talk about it. So let's talk about it. 2 Thessalonians 2, verses 3 through 8. So 2 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, sorry, chapter 2, verses 3. Let no man deceive you. This is out of the King James Version. As a matter of fact, I can actually read it out of the New Living Translation because it actually is uh a little bit better. Don't buy, don't be fooled by what they say. For that day will not come unless there is a great rebellion against God, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, which is one who brings the destruction. He will exalt himself and defy everything that people call God and every object of worship. He will even sit in the temple of God, claiming that he himself is God. So now we're talking about the man of sin, the son of perdition, and that wicked, all in those three verses, those five verses. So, what does that mean? So then you have to go to first John chapter 2, verse 8. Sorry, verse 18. Again, our new living translation, it gets the point across where there's this little warning about antichrist and antichrist plural. Dear children, the last hour is here. Now keep in mind they were looking for the antichrist back then, but we are still looking for the antichrist now. That doesn't mean the antichrist will not show up, doesn't mean that not only that more than one antichrist will not show up. But again, John chapter 1 John chapter 2, verse 18. Dear children, the last hour is here. You have heard that the the Antichrist is coming, and have already many such antichrists have appeared. In other words, this is these are two different things, these are two different entities. We have the main antichrist that everybody keeps looking for. Meanwhile, we have a whole bunch of antichrists already running around. These people left our churches, but they have never really belonged with us, otherwise, they would have stayed with us. When they left, they proved that they did not belong with us. I do like to read verse or two above and verse or two below to fully understand what is going on here, who these antichrists are. It's not just I'm a big fan of the left behind series, but it's just not it's just not that one Nikolai Carpathian type guy. There are many people who will follow the Nikolai Carpathia type guy, and those are the the antichrists, not well, they are those are the many antichrists that have left, that have fallen away, that have backslid and turned their back on God and started following things that are anti-God. It is the Antichrist that everyone keeps looking for, which is the Nikolai Carpathia, but that's going to be the person that's going to round up all these quote unquote many antichrists. I know it's a little familiar, it's like a little weird thing, but it's kind of like um it's kind of like think of it like this. You call yourself a Christian. I call myself a Christian, right? But if I start saying things that are anti-biblical, if I start believing a thing that God does not believe in, and I start pushing a a narrative that Jesus did not push, or push something that was totally against what Jesus said, I would now be an antichrist. Not the antichrist, but I would now be an antichrist. Now, the antichrist would come and now say, JJ, you did a good job. Come and join us. As a matter of fact, I use you as a voice. That would be the antichrist, and I'm still an antichrist for the antichrist, just like you are a Christian living for Christ. So understand, even if these people think that they're antichrist and they're atheists and all that, they are still following a religion that is antichrist. So, and this is who John was talking about in Revelation 13, and he was having all the combined abilities of the power, the powers of the leopard, the bear, and the lion, gentile kingdom. In other words, he's going to possess all the abilities of Nebuchadnezzar, Nerces, Alexander, and Caesar, because Caesar was the last Gentile uh Empire that would be the Roman. He's gonna possess powers, he's gonna dominate the political scene, and he's going to literally chew up all of the uh empires before. Now, on that note, I hope I I fully um ask that you go back because we covered a lot today. Remember what I told you? We were going to get into the meat and potatoes of this thing, but I wanted you to have your egg drop soup first, your appetizer first. So we are in the meats and the meat and potatoes of this now. So I don't feel bad if you gotta go back, you gotta replay some stuff. Everything I'm telling you is in the Bible. And if you have questions, if I'm going too fast, if I'm covering too much stuff, please email me. Walk with me, Bible study at Gmail. Walk with me, Bible study at Gmail. As a matter of fact, this is why this entire study is up now, because I had a lot of people asking me about end time. All right, so I love questions. Please understand that y'all. I love questions because I love you guys. I love you. God tells me to do this thing, so I do this thing. All right. I love each and every one of you. I'll see y'all on the next one. Like said, like, share if you're on the YouTube page, like, share, comment. If you're on iHeart page, um, go ahead and like it. You can send a text through that app as well, and I get it on my phone. I love each and every one of you. See y'all in the next one. God bless.