Excerpts from “THE DAILY SACRIFICE!” ML# 2902 7/93
(TO MAMA:) Honey, in your letter to me you more or less briefly summarise the “Wave” vision & what you understood it to mean, & then you present your question. Here it is: “There’s one thing from a Biblical standpoint that I’m not clear on, so others may likewise be unclear on this point. If we are in the first 3-&-1/2 years of the Antichrist’s reign, how do we fit in the verses in Daniel about the daily sacrifice being stopped at the time of the revealing of the Antichrist, when the Tribulation begins?”
You’re always speaking for the Family, Honey, you voice their questions. Our teaching on this, which has been the same as most Bible prophecy students, has been that since the daily sacrifice is stopped by the Antichrist (Dan.9:27; 8:11), it must have been resumed some time previously. And our standard conclusion has been that therefore the Jews’ temple must have been rebuilt so they could begin having the daily sacrifice which the Antichrist stops when he breaks the Covenant. That’s a step-by-step logical interpretation. However, just because that’s the way it’s been interpreted by us & most Bible students, including Scofield & a lot of others, it does not mean that it’s necessarily going to happen that way! Again, I’m talking about the interpretation or theory that in order for the Antichrist to stop the daily sacrifices, the Jewish temple has to be rebuilt in order for their daily sacrifices to have been resumed. That is simply a theory.
(Mama: But that’s what we’ve taught most of the time.) (Dad continues:) The problem is that people so often take some of our interpretations of Bible prophecy as outright fact, the only way it could possibly be, when sometimes the interpretation is just a theory. We have taught this particular one as a possibility, because how else could the daily sacrifices be stopped unless they had first been started? And how could they have been started unless the temple & its altar had been rebuilt? But just because a theory sounds logical doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily so. I know that I can be pretty definite in my theories sometimes, but I still try to make it clear that they’re just that, theories, what I happen to believe or how I happen to interpret things.
That has been our theory because what else could it be? How could the AC stop sacrifices if they hadn’t been started? And how could they have been started unless the temple was rebuilt in which they sacrifice? Well, that has been the standard theory of nearly all evangelical Bible prophecy interpreters, led by Scofield & his Bible.–Which if in this case he is wrong, he’s wrong again, as he has certainly been wrong about a lot of other things!
(End excerpts of David Berg’s talk to Maria)
Comments from the webmaster:
David Berg taught the Antichrist will be a single individual in the Endtime who arises 7 years before the coming of Christ, makes a covenant with the Jews, allows them to rebuild their temple of Solomon, stands in the Temple 3.5 years later proclaiming himself to be God, and sets up the image of the beast, the so called abomination of desolation. I now believe these doctrines were first promoted by Cyrus Scofield who taught John Darby’s dispensationalism – false teachings that originated from two Roman Catholic clergymen, a Jesuit priest by the name of Francisco Ribera and Cardinal Bellarmine during the late 16 th. century. They intentionally misinterpreted Daniel 9:27 to say that the Antichrist will make a covenant with the Jews during the last 7 years of the rule of man on earth. They did that to get the Protestants’ eyes off the Pope as the Antichrist! To a man, all of the Protestant reformers held the interpretation that Jesus Christ already fulfilled the Covenant during His Ministry to the Jews (the first 3.5 years) and His Apostles’ ministry to the Jews the next 3.5 years. To a man, the early Protestants all believed that the papacy is the fulfillment of the Biblical Antichrist! The “Covenant” is really the covenant of grace God made with Abraham, the same covenant mentioned in verse 4 of Daniel 9! The Protestants of the 17th century rejected Ribera’s interpretation of Daniel 9:27, but it found root in Protestantism from the time of John Darby, then Scofield, and then ultimately in the Dallas Theological Seminary.
David Berg himself was not sure about the interpretion of Daniel 9:27. He wrote: “Our teaching on this, which has been the same as most (contemporary) Bible prophecy students, has been that since the daily sacrifice is stopped by the Antichrist (Dan.9:27; 8:11), it must have been resumed some time previously. And our standard conclusion has been that therefore the Jews’ temple must have been rebuilt so they could begin having the daily sacrifice which the Antichrist stops when he breaks the Covenant. That’s a step-by-step logical interpretation. However, just because that’s the way it’s been interpreted by us & most Bible students, including Scofield & a lot of others, it does not mean that it’s necessarily going to happen that way! Again, I’m talking about the interpretation or theory that in order for the Antichrist to stop the daily sacrifices, the Jewish temple has to be rebuilt in order for their daily sacrifices to have been resumed. That is simply a theory.
For more information, please see: The 70th Week of Daniel Delusion
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family
