Daniel’s Answer to the King, Briton Rivière, 1890
A few interesting comments on Adventism and prophecy …
Starting on the SDA2RC blog:
Adventists could easily respond to the author’s primary critiques, including his charge that the Adventist prophetic paradigm is unnecessarily Western-centric. For instance, prophecy might focus on the West because it alone is relevant to end-time movements, whatever the breadth of the Mongol or Ottoman empires, for instance.
Huh? Is being Western-centric a product of being Western, or a product of God’s love for the white man? (No, that’s not my response to Hugo, that’s my reaction to the idea that the West is the only place relevant to these prophecies, which was not his, but his example of how Adventists might respond.)
For instance, Adventism’s “Western-centric” obsession with Rome and the United States ignores Daniel’s interest in “your people” (12:1; the Jews), “the beautiful land” (11:41; Canaan) and “the beautiful holy mountain” (11:45; Zion) at what the text terms “the time of the end” (11:40).
… Adventism’s prophetic paradigm is 7,000 miles too far West (and perhaps, 2,000 years too far future) to make sense of it.
They quote the Sabbath School for a New Generation blog:
The fact of the matter is that our notions of prophecy are very Western centric. You will notice that most of our interpretations center on Europe and the United States. The world is quite a bit bigger than that. …
Our church has maintained that there will be no significant empires after Rome. As Carlos points out, there have been several empires. …
Our ideas about prophecy seem to have been inherited from the wars between Catholics and Protestants, when Protestants were using the Bible to demonize their opponents. …
And they in turn quote Spectrum Magazine:
The traditional Adventist interpretation of the statue that Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream (Daniel 2) has obvious difficulties. According to that interpretation, the prophecy teaches that no other world empire would arise after the end of the Roman empire and before the second coming of Christ. However, historical evidence indicates otherwise. …
Any unbiased reader of history can follow the sequence of empires in biblical lands and other parts of the world until the twenty-first century without finding any hint that Rome was the last empire.
Certainly proper nourishment for the itching ears of prophecy buffs.
