Is the Holocaust Foretold in Bible?

Dear friends: 

This is the first time I ran into such an article which connects the prophecy of Daniel with Holocaust. Read and double check the Book of Daniel ( especially, Daniel 8) for your own benefits. The match is fascinating!

The Holocaust Foretold in Scripture?

During the Second World War the Nazi government of Adolph Hitler carried out what it called “the Final Solution” for the Jewish problem, and what others have since called “the Holocaust.”  Over a period of three and a half years Hitler operated death camps that he set up for the specific purpose of exterminating the Jewish people.  Six million Jews were killed. 

The camp at Chelmno, Poland—the first concentration camp built exclusively to kill everyone sent there—was established in November, 1941, and mass murder began there on December 8, 1941.  The last death camp, Mauthausen, was liberated three and a half years later in May, 1945.  (Concentration camps set up to house Jews existed before this, but camps set up specifically to carry out genocide were operational for just three and a half years.) 

Centuries earlier the prophet Daniel had foretold that an exceptionally cruel foreign ruler would hurt and kill the Jewish people over a period of three and a half years.  Did the Bible foretell the Holocaust?

Daniel lived around twenty-five centuries ago, but he received a series of visions and messages from angels sent by God to tell him about what would happen to his people, the Jews, in the distant future:

“‘Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come.’”

—Daniel 10:14 NIV

He was told to

“‘seal up the vision, for it concerns the distant future.’”

—Daniel 8:26 NIV

God’s messengers told Daniel there would be “a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then” from which “your people . . . will be delivered.” (Daniel 12:1 NIV)

“‘When the end comes near for those kingdoms, a bold and cruel king who tells lies will come. This will happen when many people have turned against God. This king will be very powerful, but his power will not come from himself.  He will cause terrible destruction and will be successful in everything he does.  He will destroy powerful people and even God’s holy people.  This king will succeed by using lies and force.  He will think that he is very important.  He will destroy many people without warning . . .’”

—Daniel 8:23-26 NCV

Does that description fit the Nazi regime of Adolph Hitler that blitzkrieged its way across Europe and attempted to exterminate the prophet Daniel’s people? 

In a related passage the angelic messenger God sent to Daniel told him,

“‘This king will speak against the Most High God, and he will hurt and kill God’s holy people.  He will try to change times and laws that have already been set.  The holy people that belong to God will be in that king’s power for three and one-half years.’”

—Daniel 7:25 NCV

The angel also indicated that shortly after those three and a half years, the Jewish people would have their own nation restored—they would receive power to rule themselves again.  The cruel ruler who was killing the Jews would be

“making war against God’s holy people and was defeating them until God, who has been alive forever, came.  He judged in favor of the holy people who belong to the Most High God; then the time came for them to receive the power to rule.”

—Daniel 7:21-22 NCV

Daniel does not speak of them first as a “nation,” but rather as a “people”—which would fit the circumstances of the Jews at the time of the Holocaust.  In fact, it was shortly after the Holocaust that the nation of Israel was restored in 1948, and the holy people of the prophet Daniel were able to rule over the Promised Land for the first time in nearly two thousand years.

Was this what the prophet had been told would happen?

Demonic enemies of God tried to block their restoration to the Promised Land by annihilating the Jewish people. That attempt was implemented through what the Nazis called the “Final Solution” and what we today call the Holocaust.  God, who sees the future, appears to have foretold this significant event through his inspired human prophets, and had those prophecies recorded in Scripture.

“Then another king will arise, more brutal than the other ten, and will destroy three of them. He will defy the Most High God, and wear down the saints [the Jews] with persecution, and try to change all laws, morals, and customs. God's people will be helpless in his hands for three and a half years.”

—Daniel 7:24-25 LB

The Nazi “Third Reich” fits this description, and its extermination camps operated for three and a half years.  Old Testament writers used the term “saints” (Hebrew kodesh = ‘holy’ or ‘set apart’) to refer to the Jews.  At Mount Sinai, according to Moses, God gave his law to the “saints.”  (Deut. 33:2)  King David called true-worshipping Jews of his day “the saints who are on the earth.” (Ps. 16:2 NKJV)

In this case the prophet Daniel was given visions of “what will happen to your people in the days to come” (Dan. 10:14 Jerusalem Bible), including “a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then” from which “your people . . . will be delivered.” (Dan 12:1 NIV)  So, when Daniel used the term “saints,” he had in mind God’s ‘holy people’—Daniel’s own people, the Jews.

The New Testament book of Revelation seems to include a parallel of Daniel’s Old Testament prophecy.  Consider this possible interpretation [in brackets] of Revelation, chapter 12, which also speaks of three and a half years:...

(Read the whole article by clicking the following link)

http://www.unvsil.com/holocaust.htm

Was Bk of Daniel written AFTER the events foretold?

http://christianthinktank.com/qwhendan3x.html

Daniel - A Christian Thinktank

(4th Qumran cave where most Dead Sea Scrolls came from)

… Conclusion at the end of this article in the above link.

Now, if:

1.        We have early manuscripts from DSS that virtually require a pre-Maccabean date for their exemplar (under commonly accepted 'literary diffusion' time requirements);

2.        ALL the major pre-Maccabean literature--regardless of provenance(!)--utilize elements from  Daniel;

3.        All the "possibly" to "quite probably" pre-Maccabean literature--regardless of provenance--utilize elements from Daniel;

4.        The Maccabean and post-Maccabean works of significance--regardless of sectarian perspective--utilize Daniel;

5.        ALL of the sources closest in time, expertise, and eyewitness-access to the situation [i.e., Qumran, NT, Josephus, Rabbinics] describe Daniel's writings as prophecies of the future(NOT the past!);

6.        ALL of the sectarian groups accept Daniel as canonical;

7.        Several of the documents discussed suggest a date for Daniel around the end of the 4th/start of the 3rd century BCD;

And

8.        The most probable direction of borrowing, in each case, is FROM Daniel...

Then, isn't the discussion over? Isn't that a strong enough case to demonstrate that Daniel is at least pre-Maccabean?

These references  are what's called 'external evidence' and it vastly outweighs as historical evidence that subjective area we call 'internal evidence'. We have not settled a date for Daniel, or its character (that will be assessed in discussions of the problems associated with internal evidence [i.e., historical and linguistic considerations]), but the data we have reviewed should be recognized as being quite strong that the controlling paradigm of a late-date for Daniel needs 'adjusting'...

Where this leaves us is quite clear: ALL the external, manuscript, and literary data we have supports a pre-Maccabean date for the material in Daniel.
Click the links below for related posts.

Origin of Iron teeth Beast  鐵牙怪獸的由來( the origin of this beast)
Dead Men Do Bleed!(鐵齒難醫)
Chinese version below.
鐵齒十角怪獸的由來

HOW CRITICS FARE IN THE FIERY FURNACE

HOW CRITICS FARE IN THE FIERY FURNACE

Dr. W. A. Criswell

Daniel 3:19-27

In the third chapter in the Book of Daniel, as you know, they put the three Hebrew children, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah…(Meshach, Shadrach, Abednego)…they put them in the fiery furnace.  But they were children of the Lord.  They were faithful to God.  They believed in the marvelous presence of the holy Jehovah in life.  And God blessed them. 

Now, the critic and the modern rationalist, how will they fare in the white, burning heat of historical truth and spiritual fact?  As for Daniel in the Critic’s Den, they seem to have eaten him up alive.  Under four great categories does the rationalist and the liberal attack the Book of Daniel. 

They say, first, that it is filled with historical errors and inaccuracies, mis-guesses, misrepresentations, full of fiction and imagination.  Then second, they attack it, philologically.  They say it is full of linguistic language irreconcilables.  Then they attack it prophetically. They say it’s full of prophetic impossibilities.  Then they attack it doctrinally.  They say it’s full of doctrinal aberrations...

...First, it’s in the canon, it’s in the Bible, which meant those old and ancient rabbis believed that it was written before Nehemiah, and in the days of the sixth century BC. 

All right, second, it is in the Septuagint, LXX, seventy.  The Septuagint, the most famous and most influential of all of the translations in the world is the Greek Septuagint.  In Alexandria, in the days of the colonies, some Jewish scholars gathered together, that’s where it gets its name, Septuagint, seventy, there were supposed to be seventy of them, and they translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek.  And the Septuagint translation of the Holy Bible is the one that the apostles used when they preached the gospel of the Son of God. 

...Now the Septuagint was translated in Alexandria about 300 BC.  And many scholars say that by 275 BC, that the translation was complete.  Yet, these critics say that the Book of Daniel was written in 165 BC, when the Book of Daniel is in the Septuagint, which was supposed to have been translated 300 BC.

...1Maccabees, one of the noblest, one of the noblest pieces of literature in the world.  In the first chapter of 1 Maccabees the author quotes the Book of Daniel.  And this is the time when Daniel was supposed to be forged.  He quotes the Book of Daniel as being inspired Scripture. 

And, in the second chapter of the Book of Maccabees, old, venerable, dying Mattathias, the priest who moved in and challenged the Greeks under Antiochus Epiphanes who was trying to make the temple of Jerusalem a part of Jupiter’s temple and offered a pig, a sow, on the altar and spread its juice, took its juice and carried it all over the temple and spread it around to defile it all, old Mattathias, an aged venerable father, dying in the second chapter of the Book of Maccabees, calls his boys around him, and he addresses Judas Maccabaeus, from whence it gets its name the Maccabees, “the hammer”, he addresses his son, Judas Maccabaeus, and Simon and the rest of his brethren, and he urges them to be true to the faith.  And he cites, as an instance of loyalty unto God to death the three Hebrew boys named in the Book of Daniel.  He cites Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah and he tells the story of Daniel in the lion’s den.  That’s in 1 Maccabees, written about the time they say the forgery of Daniel was composed and pawned off. 

...When Alexander the Great approached with his great army to destroy the city, he was met with a glorious procession of Jaddua, the high priest and his fellow priests; and then all of the people of the city distressed in pure white.  And when Jaddua met Alexander the Great, he had in his hand a copy of the Word of God.  And Jaddua opened it at the Book of Daniel and showed Alexander the Great, out of the Book of Daniel, how Daniel had prophesied his coming and his great victories. 

...Then Josephus tells how Alexander the Great bowed and then went up to the temple and called on the name of Jehovah God and offered sacrifices in His name.  And when was that?  330 BC.  Yet the critic said the Book was written in 165 BC, as a forgery.  Just following the history of the Book of Daniel.  Of course, they say Josephus is a liar.  And that this is fiction, too.  But this fact remains that can’t be denied, Alexander the Great burned to the ground every city in Syria that was friendly to Darius, the king of the Persians.  But he spared Jerusalem and favored honored upon it.  Why?  There has to be some answer.  And the answer is found in Josephus and the story that Josephus told.

,,,Qumran, just a few years ago, they discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls in those caves at the north end of the Dead Sea.  And the oldest copies that we had of the old Bible were written about 900 AD; and they found there scrolls of the Bible that were written before Christ, which took back the Old Testament Scriptures more than a thousand years.  And in the Qumran Scrolls, they found Isaiah.  And in the Qumran Scrolls, they found Daniel.  And those scrolls date back in their writing and in their copies, you know, when they were copying, those scrolls date back to the time when they say the forgery of Daniel was composed.  There it is upon the Word of God. 

Allow me one other word by summary.  We have had thousands, and we have had thousands of years to see for ourselves whether or not the prophecies of Daniel are true.  We’re not shut up to what a critic says.  We have thousands and thousands of years to test whether or not the prophecies of Daniel are true or not.  Are they true?  Daniel said the head of gold is Babylon.  And the arms and the breast are Media and Persia; and the thigh is Greece, Alexander and his kingdom; and the legs of iron are Rome, east and west.  And thereafter, Daniel says, there’ll never be another world empire.  It is broken up into clay and iron in the toes of the image.  Is it true?  Or is it not?  We have had thousands of years to fix it.  Is it of God and only God could know the future?  Is it or is it not? ...( Please click the link below to read the whole article)

http://www.wacriswell.org/index.cfm/FuseAction/Search.Transcripts/sermon/2146.cfm
Also click the following link for some summaried details.

Daniel's Amazing Prophecies