Herbert W Armstrong

   Anyway, he chose to speak this afternoon because his favorite Bible is not with him, not that that's necessary. We do appreciate your presence here on this day. The fact that there has been this... The loyalty that takes us through the trials of the 1970s.

   I would like to mention a few things with respect to the 1970s, for they obviously do impinge upon the meaning of this particular Holy Day, which is not only the beginning of the new year, of a civil year, also the festivals, that pictures, the culmination of events. To end 6000 years of human civilization or its absence. And in this sense, we have gone through a number of experiences in this decade that should teach us some lessons of importance.

   We are in a period that is indeed a transition, and it has been a period of unexpected events also in the church. This year, 1979-1980, is a significant year internally in the history of the church in terms of how we come to grips with the problems that have been presented to us.

   It's also important at this time, since we are ending at this point the 1970s, to reflect on what has happened. I did recently present to some in private and sometimes in public a view of what it was like to look at the 70s from the point of view of the 1950s. And I would like to address that, but before I do...

   Now I mentioned the importance of this year from another perspective, so we see a little of our roots. This is the beginning of the year for the Hebrew calendar. It's also the beginning of the year 5740 on that calendar. And since we have some people who have given heed to outside ideas pertaining to the Hebrew names cults, I would like to explain a few things in this connection, which many of you may be aware of, some may not be.

   From the Jewish point of view, this year 5740 beginning today, which is the civil year, represents so many years from Creation Week as accounted in Genesis 1. Now the Jewish scholars today would recognize that this is a rabbinic tradition, unverifiable. The Jew, therefore, in general has two compartments when it comes to this matter: one that holds the traditions, the other which evaluates the material that does not conform to those traditions.

   This is the year 5740 of the Hebrew calendar. This is not the year 5740 of civilization or of human experience. That is, the Hebrew calendar did begin with the year 3761 to 3760 B.C. The reason we observe it today is because the calculations on which this festival, this day has been established, go back to traditions, shall we call them, because they are not directly written in the Bible. That passed through the period of the exodus, through the period of Abraham, through the flood, to the lifetime, of course, of Adam and Seth and Enoch.

   What we perceive from this picture is that when God gave time to man, God did not reveal to man a solar lunar calendar as we have it. He told man that the moon and the sun would be for signs and for seasons. We have the implication in those seasons that we would have the passage of years. But to integrate those years into a solar lunar calendar as the Hebrew calendar is, will take some time.

   Now, Mr. Armstrong has perceived, as many other writers through the centuries, that it looks as if there were initially a calendar of 12 months that was essentially solar, having 30 days to a month, an arbitrary calendar, if you please, a calendar that today we might call a businessman's calendar. The ancient Egyptians, to my knowledge, were the only people who ever preserved both a calendar of 30 days to a month, 360 days to the year, and 5 days outside of the year, along with a solar lunar calendar. And it is my judgment that indeed the Egyptians in their wisdom did preserve both that which man started with and that which man acquired after a few centuries.

   In other words, it was not possible for man at first to truly understand the nature of the heavens. But as I have discussed with our friend that many of you do know was for years the Registrar of Ambassador College, Mr. Herman... It is possible if you remember the number of years that have elapsed, that is season to season, if you remember the number of months that you see going by, and if you happen to know the days of the week and you don't lose the weekly cycle... It is possible, it is possible in just a little over 200 years to determine the length of the month, which is what our Hebrew calendar is based on.

   You don't have to have any astronomical tools. You only have to be careful in how you keep a record of the Sabbath, how you keep a record of the number of months that go by, and the number of seasons which represent years. And you need not have anything more than a whole day. And it is possible by the year 3761-3760 to come to a point very clearly. You can determine the length of a month is 29 days and 12 hours, and if we had our minutes and seconds, we would call it 44 minutes and 3 1/3 seconds. That's just by knowing a little addition and subtraction, multiplication and division without any further astronomical need.

   Mr. Herman was persuaded that that was indeed feasible. And it is significant, therefore, that the Hebrew calendar is not pictured as a calendar that begins after the flood, but before. And it begins very early in human experience. The Egyptians had a solar lunar and a solar calendar also before as well as after the flood.

   It's also interesting that we are told that the exodus, the departure of the children of Israel from Rameses occurred 430 years even to the self same day that something else occurred before. In this case, the 99th year of Abraham's life, Genesis 17. And in that instance, the implication is that the children of Israel had a knowledge and a working knowledge of a calendar that bridged the period from Abraham to the exodus.

   And the Jewish tradition would certainly tell us that the principles spoke of observation, that's the Pharisee rabbinic method, and the principles of a fixed calendar which is the traditional methods that the priests used and the later rabbis after the Romans prevented observation, that all these go back to the days of Moses.

   Now not only is this then an important day in prophecy, but I would like to have us realize that it is a significant day in another sense, that is the only Holy Day of the year that actually begins the calendar. Every other holy day falls somewhere within the calendar.

   Now, there are people who have given heed to Hebrew names who say you must not speak English when it comes to God, when it comes to anything else you can. There are people who have followed some men who believe this, who think that Paul made a mistake when he wrote 'Theos' instead of 'Elohim' in the New Testament, when he wrote 'Kurios' instead of 'Adonai' in the New Testament, and these people therefore believe the New Testament is wholly corrupt, or corrupt in parts, and they themselves know not what part, which of course is the fallacy of their ideas.

   They are also the people who go back to an earlier tradition who say we must observe the new moon. But they're not in Jerusalem to be sure, and you may not always see the new moon in Hawaii the same time you do in New York, for it appears earlier in the west and later in the east. It's possible to think in Hawaii that the new moon is today and in India that the new moon is tomorrow.

   And in a great round earth such as we have, God led the Jewish community to recognize that unless we are in a fixed place where we can all see it together and immediately communicate, we must not go by a calendar today of observation where each one maybe a month off or a day off, but a calendar that is based on averages, which is what it is, the average length of a month.

   And therefore it is suitable for an entire world because even observation will not answer our question for the simple reason that it's all right to observe it in Palestine if all the church had ever been in Palestine, but if you were scattered elsewhere, there would be another day. And that's the reason the Jews today in general keep two Holy Days in a row, except for Atonement, because they go back to this tradition that was imposed on the Jewish community after the death of Jesus and the overthrow of the rule of the Pharisees, the rule of the Sadducees, who were the priests, and the Pharisees who were of the house of Judah, not the house of Levi, dominated and imposed that kind of calendar, which was observation for a temporary period.

   Now, in our day, therefore, we should know that Mr. Armstrong, when writing for the Bible Advocate of the Church of God 7th Day, was invited to write an article, and did, and to explain to the brethren that the Hebrew calendar is the only one that avoids confusion in today's world. And from that time on, the Churches of God 7th Day who have not followed the Hebrew names cult have basically observed - there may be a few individuals who do their own thing - but they have basically observed a calendar, taken note of a calendar that is the Jewish that we follow.

   And I think it is significant that Mr. Armstrong himself established that in the early 1930s, in an article that he wrote in the Bible Advocate when the Church in Eugene, Oregon, from which this work sprang was linked up with the Oregon Conference of the Churches of God 7th Day. And I think it is important that we do not overlook this significant fact.

   Now the New Testament does indicate that the churches of God in the later part of the 1st century and for the next, into the 4th century, let's say roughly 300 years, was subject... So let us make it plain so there's nobody who can say something to overthrow our practice. It was then subject to a calendar governed by the rules of observation only, not calculation as we have it today.

   And this is indicated by the fact that Paul in Colossians speaks of Holy Days and new moon and Sabbath in a unique way that the church at that time had to take special note of the new moon. Throughout church history, we are told for this period that the Jews did have authority over the calendar, and that it was governed in all Jewish literature by observation.

   But in 359 A.D., the Jews came to a conclusion that once the Romans forbade the public announcement month by month of the calendar to keep the people informed, in 359, the Jews said that henceforth, the rules of the calendar that we now know are those that are basically to determine our religious conduct and heritage.

   Moses gave the children of Israel, according to Jewish tradition, both the knowledge of how to observe carefully and accurately and what to expect, as well as the knowledge of a fixed calendar as we have it today. You don't have to believe it. It just happens to be that you're under the authority of either one or the other anyway. And in this case, we are under the authority of a fixed calendar until Christ shall change it if he chooses. That is a calendar governed by averages and not by the peculiar perturbations or variations of the moon and its movements.

   I think it is important because there are people in the church from time to time who have attempted to say that we have been wrong in this matter. In this round world, you and I know we could not get to the brethren in the New Hebrides of the Solomon Islands or Tonga. People in Tonga observe the Sabbath approximately 22 hours or so before we do, and if we make the decision after we see it, their day has already gone by, you see.

   And this is why from the point of view of administration, I give no heed, no heed or credence to anybody who comes up with any other idea. And I want to lay that to rest. I thought we should do it because this is also a unique year in another sense.

   This begins in the Hebrew calendar, unrelated to the calendar, let's call it Hebrew practice, the sabbatical year, beginning with the Day of Atonement. Remember the trumpet was blown on the Day of Atonement, announcing the introduction not of the civil year but whether that year was sabbatical or a jubilee. 1979 to 1980 in Jewish tradition is a sabbatical year, which brings me now to another question that I would like to answer at the beginning of this autumn Holy Day season.

   For we look more closely to the festival itself. Why does the Church of God not have a jubilee or a sabbatical year that everybody follows at the same time? I asked the question, why did the Jews not have a jubilee? Does Herbert Armstrong merely pick and choose what he wants out of the Bible and toss the rest out? This was the argument of those who basically left in '74 that we picked and chose from the Bible those things we wanted to do and what we found inconvenient, we didn't bother with.

   I should like to answer this once and for all, apart from the question of the laws of Moses pertaining to the temporal and the sacrifice and circumcision. I'm talking about those things that govern society. We do not pick and choose. We happen to know what our responsibility is. The Jews also happened to have learned what their responsibilities and limitations were, so that when the Assyrians invaded the land and stripped a number of tribes of their territory and took over the authority to determine who owns what land and who has to be ousted and others replaced... The other nations have done that since, some of whom are their own descendants.

   The Jews from that time on have never observed a jubilee in the manner in which Moses prescribed. So let me state the following so we understand. From the days of Joshua to the days of the Assyrian invasion in the 8th century B.C., a sabbatical sequence and a 50-year sequence was observed. There were 2 such cycles in a century. That is you have 7 7s and then a 50th and then 7 7s and 100, 7 7s and 150 and then 200 and so on.

   When the Assyrians came in, ordered some people off the land, ordered other lands confiscated and people placed in their stead, the Jews found it was no longer possible to administer the jubilee. They did observe a sequence of 7 years. This is why we find that when Zedekiah came to the throne and the beginning of his reign, which is the 4th year, and the beginning of any man's reign isn't the 4th year... It is the 4th year of a seven-year cycle, and why we find there is a sabbatical year during the time of the final siege of Jerusalem related in the book of Jeremiah.

   It is possible to note and to reconstruct a series of 7 without a jubilee. Then came the period of Babylonian captivity when the Jews observed neither sabbatical year nor Jubilee. And we come down to the time of Darius, and God says in the days of Darius, He says, 'Henceforth I'll begin to bless the land.' Up to this time it hadn't been blessed, still lying essentially subject to drought while it rested for a period of 70 years.

   From that time on, a sequence of 7 only without a jubilee has been observed by the Jews for the simple reason that the Jews have never had full and absolute authority to determine who owns what property. That has been divinely allocated. That sequence, of course, has continued so that we know the year in which Alexander came to Jerusalem in 332 to 331 is a sabbatical year. The year before the fall of Jerusalem, 68 to 69 is a sabbatical year. There was no sabbatical year in the ministry of Jesus Christ. In 1979-1980 is.

   But the Church of God is not the Jewish community. The Church of God, therefore, has also recognized that you are called into a spiritual organization that we do not have custody over the title to decide the title of property holdings of the church. But furthermore, even when you own land, much of it is from borrowed money and you don't always have the say on what shall happen to the land if you're a farmer. Many of you rent, and further, some of you come in one day and some another spiritually speaking to the knowledge of the truth. You may be baptized in January or February or March or April. You may learn of these things in May, June or July and August.

   You come into a spiritual relationship in which we have reviewed the matter and have come to the conclusion that administratively, we do not impose for the whole church the 3rd tithe on the same 3rd and 6th year, or a sabbatical year on the same 7th or a jubilee on the 50th. It is an administrative decision. It is not a question of picking or choosing. It is the fact that we teach it shall be done, and the World Tomorrow is going to be based on this and not the economic policies today.

   And any society such as the one in which we live that does not do it is suffering the consequences. That's why we have our great periods of depression, roughly every half century. I repeated this so often, but it should lay to rest the foolish idea that we pick and choose.

   I tell you clearly that when a society does not observe a jubilee to equalize the fact that there are some of you who would get most of the money and others of you would have most of the debt... In the church, that's what happened in the world, it does. So God says every 50 years we have a little shakeout, but instead of calling it a recession or a depression, we call it a jubilee. Now that's the positive view of life. And all the land you thought you had acquired returns to its rightful owner.

   But because the world does not do that today, we live in a situation where we've had great economic crises in the industrial sequence that go back to the 1780s, the 1830s, the 1880s - remember Grover Cleveland's depression - the 1930s, Hoover and Roosevelt in that terrible period of depression, and now ahead of us to the 1980s.

   It's almost as if inevitably we know there's going to be some economic crisis coming in the 1980s, not in 1980, I don't believe, not in 1981 either, though it may be shaping up by then. I would doubt, brethren, that it will be later than 1982 for reasons of my sermon today. But before we get to that, I think we should take note that this tells us that if we don't observe what God gave us, that society suffers the consequences.

   But you and I as individuals cannot impose on society what is the societal matter, and the Jubilee, the sabbatical year, the same year for that tithe, that's a societal matter that should have been regulated, shall we say, by a church state. It's the way God began. We do not pick and choose. We know rather our limitations.

   And on this period of time when we're beginning this interesting year, which is in one sense a sequence of 7, we're going back to the days of Zerubbabel the people. The church that was called out and separated from the synagogue and the temple does not impose this, but leaves it to each individual at this time because you're not called as a part of an ongoing community in which your ancestors all played a role. You are called as individuals from time to time, from year to year. And there is no way adequately to administer these laws that take their toll in the world until the coming of Jesus Christ.

   I mentioned 1982. I would like to take a little time today again to repeat what I have from time to time, given in other areas and here, but this is the Festival of Trumpets and tells us something of the crisis at the close. And I think we should have a perspective or a view so that we take a look at world events.

   There has been a tendency in the church to say at these times of the year when we begin to expound on the close of God's plan, that so and so and so are the two witnesses, and so and so is the beast. But when we don't know. The we is all inclusive, doesn't exclude any of you, because it is a decision that God makes. And he has not yet revealed it to anyone in the church that he has absolutely made it.

   As I said, we came through a period of crisis at the end of the II World War when we approached the early 1950s that shaped our thinking for the 1970s. Stalin believed in the late 1940s that he would have India by 1955. Twenty-four years later, India is still not communist. The Russians miscalculated by a quarter of a century and by much more, possibly right now they're glad they never got it... big headache. I won't speak for their thinking.

   But they miscalculated, anticipated far in advance what was to happen and it didn't. Later, the far left in this country assumed that 1972 would be the time they would be able to create a revolution sufficient to tear this country apart within. And they hoped to have brought about world communism by the middle of the 1970s. And this was the thinking that went back to the 1950s and early 1960s. It was not a doctrine of the Church of God completely in isolation.

   But '72 to '75 was a critical period. The extreme right, the opposite view... If there shall be a revolution in '72, there shall be a counter-revolution in '72, and we have articles quoting that very year. They looked upon 1972 as a period similar to 1932, which brought Hitler to power, the party to power in Germany and Hitler, of course, became the Chancellor in the beginning of 1933. You know, you have elections before the transition.

   So that was before those events that took place in the secret chambers which President Nixon laid out... a conspiracy more clever than the communists ever dreamed, and worked their way into the new left and discerned what the new left was up to and woke it up. And for that, he was driven out of the presidency because a part of his plan involved preventing the far left from capturing the Democratic Party and hence Watergate. That's all part of the story that most people don't realize. Watergate was not an attempt to see who was at some party at the Democratic headquarters. It was far more serious.

   And then came the blow in 1967 which completely altered the shape of the Middle East, in which we could say that although we in the church or I did not perceive it then... What happened in 1967 was not the forerunner of an immediate series of events in the early 1970s. It was the releasing of tension by the Israelis that so shattered Arab unity that they are not going to get together in the entire decade that we are now ending. And all the dreams of the communists and the far right and our own dreams and anybody else's dreams took on new shape.

   And further, we really didn't understand Daniel 4 because we had assumed in our thinking... Since I wrote the article, I said I'm taking responsibility also to correct it. We have assumed that Daniel chapter 4, the story of that great tree in 2520 years' time. Remember the fall of Babylon, the things we learned from Daniel 4 and 5, that this was somehow to end by 1982. And therefore we must have 3 1/2 years tribulation before. And so some thought the spring of this year was the beginning of it, had its problems.

   When you live in a fool's paradise, do you think this is all the devil can do? Actually, it's, I may say so, we've had a lot more peace and harmony within the church as a result of the crisis than we had before. It wasn't a tribulation, it was a solution. Now Germans do like solutions. But it was a solution to an ongoing problem. The people who fought to do otherwise were dissolved from out of the body.

   What we didn't understand is that Jesus, when he said that Jerusalem will be trodden down until the times of the Gentiles were fulfilled or be fulfilled, we tried to apply that to Daniel 4. Like the Protestants who study the Bible, like the British Israel World Federation, we never realized that what we said about Daniel 4 contradicted what we clearly were saying in the United States and British Commonwealth and prophecy.

   Because we said that in the last century, the birthrights came to a people who spread all over the world. And it was the time of the British and the French and the Dutch and the Americans and the Belgians and the Danes. So this group of people dominated, if you please, communication by sea and ultimately by air, dominated apart from South America where we had in Central America and parts of South America, banana republics, we practically dominated the whole of Africa.

   We dominated the shores of Asia, and we certainly dominated the ports and the commerce of all South America, and it was not the time of the Gentiles, it was the times of Israel's blessing. And if we had seriously thought that we should have known there was something wrong in our view of Daniel 4 that said that same time was the times of the Gentiles, it was not.

   Jesus said Jerusalem is going to be trodden down with armies. That's what he's talking about. And many centuries Jerusalem wasn't trodden down with armies. I grant that there might have been Turkish feet or Arab feet. There were also Jewish feet there, but that's not what the issue is. The times of the Gentiles is to come and it most certainly would parallel the events of a 3 1/2 year period at a minimum.

   We have defined and then in Revelation chapter 11 and chapter 12 in parallel verses. But here in Daniel, chapters 4 and 5, I want to go into briefly some thoughts that will guide us in terms of the future. This is the Feast of Trumpets. It is a time of the crisis at the close.

   Now, when could the crisis of the close begin? Well, what we know is that we really don't know when it could begin, but we could clearly see when it couldn't begin before. How much afterwards is up to the man who makes decisions in each of these great countries and the God who determines what that man is able to do.

   In Daniel chapter 4 and chapter 5, you should take time to read them during this period of time. We have the story of a message that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon sent to all peoples and nations and languages that dwell in all the earth. But that's the message for everybody. And Nebuchadnezzar never preserved this in any way by himself or his people. It happened to be that the Jews preserved it for him.

   He recommends that everyone consider what God has done in his life and its implications. How Nebuchadnezzar had a dream, and in this dream he was greatly puzzled. And no one could make known in verse 7 the meaning. And in verse 8, Daniel was brought before him, whose Babylonian name was Belshazzar, who by the way does appear in the Persian record of the Babylonian kinglet, which is an interesting fact, therefore, of history, that Daniel was not an invention of Jews in the 2nd century after they had experienced Antiochus Epiphanes, which is what the higher critics would like to say, but Daniel was a historic figure.

   He was told the dream. Nebuchadnezzar says, 'I told him the dream,' verse 8. And Daniel, therefore, Nebuchadnezzar says, gave an interpretation. You should know already the basics of this dream. It is a giant tree, very strong. Its top reaches to heaven, verse 11, and ultimately a decree was issued that the tree should be cut down and its branches lopped off verse 14. The root and the stumps were to be left in the earth bound with a band of iron and bronze amid the tender grass of the field, verse 15.

   And somehow, it appears that the tree is looked upon as a person. 'Let him be wet with the dew of heaven and let his lot be with the beast in the grass of the earth.' I'm reading from the Revised Standard Version at the moment. 'Let his mind be changed,' and here obviously you see the tree is pictured as a man.

   Daniel then gives the explanation. Verse 20, 'The tree you saw,' verse 22, 'it is you, O king, who have grown and become strong.' Now you will discover that the decree, verse 23, which says 'hew down the tree,' means that a decree is coming in which verse 25, 'you will be driven from among men till you learn that the Most High rules in the kingdoms of men, give it to whomsoever he will.'

   And all this came upon Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of 12 months, he was walking and now we have the third person used, not the 'I.' This might be viewed here as a Daniel's editorialization. Nebuchadnezzar, however, continues in verse 34, 'At the end of days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven and my reason returned to me and I blessed the Most High.' 'My counselors and my lords sought me,' he says in the last part of verse 36, 'and I was established in my kingdom.' 'Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right, his ways are just, and those who walk in pride, he is able to abase.'

   Now this chapter is not so difficult to understand because Daniel already explains it basically. But like many things, Daniel didn't tell it all. Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that in this dream, there would be this period of time, the 7 times, 7 years. And for 7 years, Nebuchadnezzar was driven from his throne.

   Nebuchadnezzar, we read in Daniel chapter 2, is the type of the kingdom of Babylon. Remember the story of the great image, the head of gold. Daniel says the head of gold is the first kingdom. Daniel says the head of gold is the king. So we perceive here that the tree is both Babylon and its ruler because it was a government of absolute authority.

   This could really be good drama. I've often been amazed at what Hollywood chose as the themes instead of the really vigorous things. I mean if they want to have something that is, you know, far out, why don't they picture Nebuchadnezzar during these seven years? You can imagine, you know what that would be like on the screen or the stage. But they haven't done these things to dramatize because they don't understand these biblical records and revelations.

   What we know is that this chapter precedes the next chapter. Now that isn't hard to discern, chapter 4 and then you have chapter 5. Now, the next chapter is what throws some light on the previous one. Now you know that this is the story of Nebuchadnezzar. We are certainly in the year 562, when he wrote this, this is B.C., and then we read that King Belshazzar made a great feast and we jumped to 539. Over 20 years. Maybe 23 years had elapsed and there were things that happened in between that are missing here.

   The juxtaposition of these two chapters should tell us that perhaps something in chapter 4 is better understood when we read chapter 5. Belshazzar made a great feast for 1000 of his lords. The Persian armies had already overrun the countryside, but what was that? Babylon had its walls protected. And it would only be a matter of time in which the incursion of the Persians and the Medes would be forever over.

   And he wasn't concerned. His father was elsewhere in the kingdom and a battle had yet to take place. Belshazzar was a king. He was 2nd in command. His father Nabonidus was first, or whose army was to be gathered near the Euphrates, but he had previously been in Arabia. They sat down on this occasion, ordered that the vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple be brought out so they could use these gold and silver vessels to drink to their gods, verse 4.

   And when they drank this delicious wine, praise to gods... A hand immediately appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace opposite the lampstand and the king saw and of course this is the famous handwriting on the wall, which means things are about over. Nebe, sorry, King Belshazzar was greatly alarmed. This doesn't ordinarily happen in the king's palace. Spiders may be there, but not a hand like this writing on a wall.

   And the lords were perplexed. They were probably also drunk, and the queen now suggests that it would be advisable to call someone in who can interpret. And the one most likely to give the explanation of such a mysterious thing as this was Daniel.

   So Daniel was called and he was asked to give an explanation. He was offered this to be the 3rd ruler in the kingdom, at the end of verse 16. Now Daniel said, 'I am not interested in your gift, but I will explain the enigma on the wall.'

   And now he begins to explain how Nebuchadnezzar had to learn a lesson, how he was deposed from his kingly throne. You see how verse 20 ties in with the previous chapter. Here is a clear reference that Nebuchadnezzar's experience should have taught the nation something, but the nation didn't learn or its succeeding ruler. And how he was fed grass like an ox and his body was wet with the dew of heaven.

   'Now you, his grandson,' says his son here, but that's a common Hebrew expression. Belshazzar has not humbled your heart.' He was actually a grandson of Nebuchadnezzar on the mother's side, not the father's. And you know all that. And you lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven and brought all these vessels. Then from his presence sent from God's presence we saw all this and this writing was inscribed on the wall.

   Now, in the language of the day, Aramaic, a Semitic dialect - Hebrew is another one - you have the consonant, and if you only have a single word, it may have more than one potential reading or meaning. So, this is Daniel says, the way I read it to you now: 'Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.' I'm reading from the RSV.

   This is the interpretation of the matter: 'Mene' means God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. 'Tekel,' you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. 'Peres,' your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.

   So you already have one enigma why Daniel said 'mene tekel upharsi' when the message was 'mene mene tekel upharsi.' So this interpretation was only one possible one, and he even didn't bother to include the last letter, which was what we see as a letter N or nun. 'mene mene tekel pharsin' or it starts in the King James with a U in front of it 'upharsin' or however it's written in the various forms, but this is the modern English way of expressing the Hebrew vowel pointing.

   Now Daniel was telling them a message for that day. The message for that day was the kingdom was numbered. Why did he say it only once? Well, because the kingdom is also going to be numbered again. 'Mene, mene.' But, he didn't tell the whole story. And he says instead of 'parsin,' we just call it 'peres' and it means your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians. 'Peres,' you know, the 'p-r-s,' Persian because the words or 'pars' P-R-S is the same root as you have here and the 'IN' will just have been a kind of plural form.

   This isn't the whole story. We'll come to the implications momentarily. Then Daniel was commanded to be clothed with purple and a chain of gold. The proclamation was made that he should be the third ruler of the kingdom and after that was done that very night, it says, King Belshazzar was slain. Darius the Mede received the kingdom while the ruler of Persia went to meet Nabonidus in battle. And finally, he returned in triumph in the month of October in 539, and Babylon belonged to Cyrus, the King of the Persians, and Darius, the king of the Medes.

   Now what is significant about this is that we know that at this very point, it was only hours away that the city fell and weeks away that the whole kingdom was finally absorbed and it happened that fast. Note also that it is said that the kingdom is numbered, it is weighed, and it is divided.

   Now, we have perceived and others have perceived before us... Now this is significant in another way, not merely that the morals were weighed. Not merely that the kingdom was its days were numbered. And that it was cut up for other people, Persians and Medes. But that we have here not only this interpretation but another.

   'Mene mene tekel upharsin' or 'parsin' as it's given in the RSV could just as well be weights. Since Babylon is the head of gold, Persia is silver. The Babylon is the head of gold, and 'mene mene' could just as well have been read 'mina mina.'

   A mina is a half of talent, a mina of gold had 50 shekels to a mina. So you actually have a mina of 50 shekels and another mina of 50 shekels, and then you have a half a mina, which is teta, and you have a peshel, which is the Aramaic form of the Hebrew shekel. The sh for shin has become a pe sound. So you have actually 2 minas, a half a mina and a shekel.

   And if you divide it up, it says you see you weigh it and then you divide it, you number it. And so if you were to weigh all this, you would have 126 shekels. That's the weight in gold. Now if you divide it all up into the minimal part, we read, of course, that all the Middle East follow the same procedure. Exodus 30:13, a shekel had 20 gerahs.

   So if you divided the mina, if you divided the other mina and the shekel, and the half a mina, the peres, you would have altogether 126 shekels and now 20 parts for each one or 2520 gerahs. The lowest division would be 2520. And it is interesting, you see, that just as 7 times 360, I hope you've already done the math, equals 2520. So the 7 times was the symbol on the wall indicates that if you were to weigh the worth of this gold kingdom and to divide, and cut it up into the smallest figure, you would end up with 2520 parts, divisions.

   And this is an indication symbolically that just as Nebuchadnezzar had 7 times pass over him, so the kingdom of Babylon would have 2520 years pass over it, beginning in 539.

   It is an absolutely fixed and firm date confirmed by later historians, confirmed by contemporary business records, confirmed by the nature of the Babylonian calendar of the time, which has its sabbatic, sorry, which has its intercalary months just like the Jewish calendar today does. And it's possible to reconstruct all the intercalary months so that we have no doubt from buried archaeological documentation from business records.

   The known date of the 13th month, the Babylonians had a Hebrew kind of calendar. In other words, the solar... It is impossible to have any doubt whatsoever that in the late summer and the beginning of autumn, in 539, the kingdom of Babylon fell.

   So that Daniel chapter 4 is not an interesting history that should tell us about Nebuchadnezzar and we forget it, but it is the background of chapter 5 that is essential for us to understand. Chapter 5, and then in chapter 5, we have the story of Babylon and the fact that Babylon in that year ceased to rule the nation. And 2520 years should pass over it. It was the head of gold.

   Now, what we never really perceived before was that when John writes and when Jeremiah much earlier wrote, when Isaiah wrote, they didn't speak of the final power as Persia the Great, Media the Great, Macedon the Great, Greece the Great, Rome the Great. It's called Babylon the Great. You ever notice that? The last power that God deals with is to close the civilization is not called by the name of any interim government. It is, if you please, a final revival of a system that terminated 2520 years before.

   Therefore, we would have to conclude that Babylon politically could not rise before 2520 years is up. So 1972 would be too early, 1975 is too early, if you please rather, and 1979 is too early. If you're going to have 3 1/2 years, it's already September. Tomorrow is the beginning of autumn. Probably less than 3 years to the end of 2520.

   But instead of seeing what we thought that Daniel 4 was telling us that 2520 years would bring about the cause of the tribulation, it will be over by that time. The implication is that when the tree was chopped down and the bands were put around it was to be protected because the same system would rise again just like Nebuchadnezzar was restored to the throne. And at the time that would elapse would be 2520 years.

   And so 1979 for its beginning is too early, 1980 is too early, 1981 is too early. Now you know why I mentioned 1982. Now if your math is not too difficult, you can add 539, add to 1982, and you get 2,521. You subtract 1 because there's no year zero, and we have a [inaudible] problem, so we end up with 2520 years.

   And when Mr. Armstrong says this does have some time to go, he was not amiss. When he said that when he was preaching in the 30s and 40s and 50s and into the 60s of the book of Ezekiel, he was a man before his time. And it is the charge of the church today not to neglect the book of Ezekiel and accompanying prophecy.

   That we must take note that a generation has come and gone who heard his message. And a younger generation has made up which has heard only in part and seen in part on TV or read in part the real emphasis that Mr. Armstrong used to give and that we used to give, you remember the Plain Truth of the 50s and the Radio Broadcast.

   That was the time of drought that things were looking as if they were coming to such a climax. There were droughts in the 1950s was of serious proportions affecting the church, affecting our grain. We had them even into the 60s. And then we've had the blessings that we've never really counted in the 70s, so many that we can afford to sell all our grain that's extra to our enemy and to keep our enemies from having revolt in their own way so that they may continue to arm themselves.

   I used to ponder how it is that Moses could describe our enemies eating up our grain before they ever have entered our land. I remember, you know, thinking of those things in the 1950s, and that was the period of the Cold War. We would have never thought of selling the Russians what we are now selling. So what we do is when the product is in heavy quantity on the market, then we arrange to sell it at the low price to the Russians. After it is sold, then the price goes up because we have so much left, and then we buy it in this country. That's the way it's done. You want to know why they think capitalists are fatheads? Well, this is a good explanation.

   What we have now is a picture. So when Mr. Armstrong said indeed that the church today has a duty that it cannot forget to continue what he was able vigorously to do in the 40s, and the 50s and into the 60s, to warn this nation that the message of Ezekiel is for now and for coming years. That he set the standard for a generation that would not be the crisis at the close that has been dying off in the 50s and 60s and 70s. People who knew in the II World War and the depression, the tragedies, the adult life... We didn't know how it was all going to end.

   They have heard, and in the resurrection, those who remember, most of them, of course, in the second, will know that what they had heard did come to pass even if it were later than we all thought. And they could have avoided the second and been in the first resurrection if they had at least given heed to the moral of the story, which is fear God and keep his commandments, for this constitutes the whole man.

   And if our time frame was obscure because we did not understand either Revelation 3 or Daniel 4 and 5, God is adjusting that so that our vision becomes clearer. We do have a responsibility. What we now perceive very clearly is that we are going towards the close, the time of Israel's death. And we are approaching the time, not yet beginning, when we shall have Jerusalem trodden down of the Gentiles, and all international decisions will be made by the Gentiles of the nations.

   Now, I would point out that if you want to know how those things take place, you must take note of Daniel chapter 11. There are references also in chapter 8. May I just give a word of warning in conclusion. Nebuchadnezzar did not found Babylon. Napoleon did found the French restoration. Hitler did found the German restoration. Mussolini in reality did not found the Italian restoration, but he did come as a vigorous, shall we say, Prime Minister who created an empire for a time. In that sense, he did found an empire.

   But I would take heed through all the experiences and to point out what Jesus implied, to take note of that person of Antiochus Epiphanes. It is said, 'In his place shall rise a contemptible person,' Daniel 11:21. Royal majesty has not been given, and he shall come in without warning and obtain the kingdom by flattery. Operate from the premise of peace.

   I do not at this moment draw the conclusion that 1982 will see necessarily a final ruler who will clearly restore in his own authority and power and suddenly leash on the world a tribulation. I think if we carefully read these chapters to which Jesus said in Matthew 24, that he who reads, let him understand, and when we read Revelation 17, we may well find that a restoration of a political power in Europe which has character in a way that the European Parliament does not now have may be precipitated by economic stresses of the early 1980s. Political activity precipitated by economic threat.

   But I draw attention that the man who is the final beast in Revelation 17 does not create the power, but the power is given to him by others who have created an institution. Take note of that. That man received certain powers that others have established. How long it shall be before he steps on the scene, whether a contemptible person like Antiochus Epiphanes is characteristic of either man we have watched in Europe.

   Otto von Habsburg, a man of Royal Majesty... Franz Joseph Strauss, if you please, the most brilliant German, not the most contemptible of his time. I just say before we draw the conclusion and slap labels on individuals, we should take note that this is 1979. Many things can happen. Presidential election in 1980, the German election in 1980, an economic crisis. Political power in the hands of a group of men recreating a kind of Europe, not before a certain time, if Daniel is correct.

   And here is the prophet, and Mr. Armstrong says, 'We have some years to go.' He's not mistaken. And the beast himself does not create the system that is created by, having power given to him. Which would clearly indicate that a 3 1/2-year period of the time of the Gentiles and tribulation, however you perceive it ending whether in the spring or in the autumn, would take us well into the middle of the 80s at the earliest for the end of human civilization.

   Before you decide that if it isn't going to end now, you're finished, you better rethink your responsibility. This church is told to have patience for any number of reasons, one being that it isn't over yet.