In Search of the Prophesied Ten Kings–Part Two: A Coming Geopolitical Shift in Global Power (Resources & Notes)
[Note: It is commonly believed that there are no current nation-states or cultural and ethnic groupings that would represent the descendants of the ancient Commonwealth of Israel, with the exception of the current nation-state of Israel. Consequently, it this assumption—in part—that leads expositors to conclude that the four great beasts of Daniel’s vision symbolically represent the four successive empires that anciently dominated the region of Palestine.] [Note: The kingdom of Judah was a vassal kingdom of Assyria, and we see some evidence of this in the fact that King Ahaz of Judah bought off the Assyrian advance by attempting to instigate the overthrow of Syria. Noting also that King Ahaz went to meet with Tiglath-pileser III after the fall of Damascus (II Kgs. 16:7-10).] [Note: With the reign of the vassal King Nabonassar we have the beginning of an astronomical era in regard to Babylonian chronology (Nabonassar Era), which was adopted at some time by Hipparchus, by Berosus and by Ptolemy.] [Note: Ptolemy is known for his Canon of Kings (sometimes called, Ptolemy’s Canon), which was a record of astronomical observations placed in conjunction with the reigns of kings who ruled from the time of Nabonassar to the reign of Alexander the Great.] [Note: The first of a series of tablets collectively called the Babylonian Chronicle, composed and compiled in the Achaemenid period, records events beginning with the reign of Nabonassar. The Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemy started an era with the first year of Nabonassar’s reign (Nabonassar Era), calculated to New Year’s Day in the Egyptian calendar (c. 747 BC, Julian calendar). The chronological reckoning began with Nabonassar because it was the earliest reign that included an astronomical observation known to the Babylonians.] [Note: It cannot be chronologically confirmed that Nabonassar is the Baladan mentioned in II Kings 20:12, noting that Merodach-Baladan, the son of Baladan, was the Babylonian ruler who sent ambassadors to King Hezekiah of Judah.] [Note: Nebuchadnezzar II was married to a Median princess for whom it is said he built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and it is thought that by this marriage the king of Babylon had gained an alliance with the Medes.] [Note: Achaemenes is considered to be the ancestor of Cyrus the Great, and it was Cyrus who established the Achaemenid Empire that conquered Babylon proper in c. 539 BCE.] [Note: Scripture does not support the conclusion that there were to be ten revivals of the Classical Roman Empire. However, Scripture does indicate that there will be ten rulers initially associated with the fourth kingdom of Daniel’s vision, noting also that there will be another ruler who comes to power among the ten rulers because Daniel said: “I was considering the horns [that is all ten], and there was another horn [numbering to 11], a little one, coming up among them [that is among the 10], before whom three of the first horns were plucked out by the roots” (Dan. 7:8).] [Note: The belief in ten successive Romanized governments was founded on the assumption that Daniel’s “great beasts” represented the kingdoms of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome, and this conclusion was then interpreted in the context of the day-for-a-year principle in determining the duration of some prophecies found in Scripture. An example of which may be observed in the works of Uriah Smith who composed a two-volume work in the 1800s, which was republished in the 1940s entitled: The Prophecies of Daniel and the Revelation.] [Author’s emphasis throughout.] [Note: It can be historically confirmed that the Eastern Roman Empire was the successor to the Western Roman Empire after 476 BCE. Therefore the Heruli, Vandals, and Ostrogoths were not revivals of the Classical Roman Empire. They were, however, part of the destructive waves that brought an end to Rome’s rule and influence in the region, noting also that in The History of the Byzantine Empire, Mother of Nations, by Enno Franzious, 1967, p. 55, we read that: “Odovacar slew Orestes… deposed little Romulus [Romulus Augustulus, the last supposed emperor of Rome], and sent him to live with relatives (476). They elected Odovacar king…. He remitted the imperial baubles of Romulus to the Eastern Emperor Zeno, whose suzerainty he acknowledged, requesting for himself recognition as Patrician in Italy.”] [Note: Historically the Roman Empire continued uninterrupted with the Byzantine Empire, which was absolutely Roman, and Constantinople was indeed the seat of the Roman Empire before the fall of Western Rome (generally Italy). The political and economic move eastward by Constantine I assured the survival of the Roman Empire for several more centuries, and the Eastern Roman Emperor was the successor of the Classical Roman Empire, with Theodosius I being the last Roman Emperor to rule over an undivided empire. A conclusion that finds support in the landmark work: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon.] [Note: Napoleon’s empire did not represent a revival of the Classical Roman Empire, but Napoleon did bring and an end to the Holy Roman Empire when he annexed the territory that became the Confederation of the Rhine.] [Note: The Holy Roman Empire was not a revival of the Classical Roman Empire.] [Note: It was the last emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Francis II, who dissolved the empire as a result of political pressure from the French. Consequently, Napoleon was not a successor to the Holy Roman Empire.] [Note: We can define some interesting typological patterns—in some measure—respective to the “kings” associated with the visions given to Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel and the Apostle John. Noting that the early emperors of the Roman Empire appear to reflect some characteristics in regard to these visions. For we see that Jesus was a contemporary of the Roman Emperor Octavian, called Augustus, who by some accounts had himself proclaimed “god,” and it was Octavian who was the initiator of Pax Romana—the Roman Peace. His rule began after the Second Triumvirate, and after the death of Julius Caesar. Therefore we have five successive emperors starting with Octavian (first emperor of the Classical