For some reason, the fundamentalist Christians have latched on the the OT Book of Daniel as having allkinds of relevance to the modern world. For instance, they claim that the (alleged) prophecies in this book concern modern times. my question: why would God hide revelations about the 21st century in a rather obscure zot book? And why would this serve to warn people? 
Cite please? I haven’t heard of this.
I was raised in a somewhat fundamentalist household. The OP is correct, there is a fair amount of “End Times” theology that springs from the book of Daniel. It may have sprung from authors like Hal Lindsay (The Late, Great Planet Earth, etc), but I couldn’t say for sure.
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I will be watching this thread with great interest.
Geeze, I might as well just move this thread right now…
The Book of Daniel contains a lot of “apocalyptic” passages (like this, this, and this). Although many scholars interpret such passages as references to the political situation in Israel during Hellenistic times (and as having been written during those times in deliberately cryptic fashion as a sort of 2nd Century BCE samizdat), premillenarian Christians see them as references to the “End Times”, which many believe to be the present day or near future. The Book of Daniel clearly influenced the later Book of Revelation, which is very important to those Christians. (Compare Revelation 1:14 with Daniel 7:9, or Revelation 1:15 as a reference to Daniel 2:31-35.)
And of course the Book of Daniel is part of the Bible, and is thus considered by just about all Christians to be part of the “word of God” in some sense or another. It contains a number of colorful and memorable images (the “handwriting on the wall”) and stories, many of which (such as Daniel in the lion’s den and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the furnace) tell of persecution and adversity, which believers find comforting when they themselves face adversity of whatever degree or persecution (real or imagined).
…And as Nostradamus proved again later, the more obscure the passage, the more it lends itself to, ah, inspired interpretation. :dubious:
Was I the only one who opened this thread expecting it to be about the recently cancelled NBC series?
That’s why Bob Marley mentioned them in a song, “Survival.” Thrown in the fire but never get burn. All that Rasta Babylon symbolism is straight out of Daniel. Really, Daniel works way better for Rastafari than this right-wing stuff.
What’s a zot book?
Incidentally, “Survival” had one of the best rhythm tracks of any Bob Marley song. And that’s saying a lot. ;j
[quote=(such as Daniel in the lion’s den ]
I keep waiting for him to post and say “You called?”
Another thing is that fundies believe that Daniel 9 contains a prophecy that pinpoints the time of the Messiah, and that matches the details of Jesus’ life and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
By making the “weeks” into 7 years instead of 7 days, they make it 483 years (69 “weeks”) from the rebuilding of Jerusalem (~450 BC) to Jesus’ death (~30 AD) – or something like that, it’s been years since I’ve discussed this with them.