I just read it. I thought he made many good points and I may be inclined to switch back my interpretation of Daniel's 4th Beast to Rome rather than the Islamic Jihad that took over the M.E. due to his observations on the LBL Beast. Some of the time periods that he came up were amazing, however I have a few questions:
1. Although Skolfield admits that Islam overran Jerusalem in the 630s, he places the "woman fleeing" (Rev 12:6) at 688, which is the start of the Dome of the Rock (DotR) construction. The only reason apparent to me for doing this is to arrive at the date of 1948 for the end of her fleeing. On the other hand, by all accounts, Jews started to return to Palestine in the middle of the 19th Century, and the British controlled it from basically the end of WW I. Any thoughts?
2. Although Skolfield treats the 2 1/2 times, 1260 days, 1290 days and 42 months, he doesn't address the 1335 and 2300 days; to your knowledge, does he have an explanation for these? The 1335 days seem particularly problematic to me under his construct:
Dan 12:11-12, From the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1,290 days. How blessed is he who keeps waiting and attains to the 1,335 days!The 1290 and 1335 are linked; if its 1290 years from the regularly sacrifice ending when the Jews were taken captive to the AoD in 688, does he say something significant happened 45 Hebrew years (44.3 solar years) later in 722 AD?
3. I find A-Millennialism to be less supported in scripture than Pre-Millennialism due to all the scriptures (particularly OT) regarding the Messiah reigning over His people, the nations of the earth streaming to Israel, the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus showing up physically to deliver Israel from the Gog/Magog attack, etc. Skolfield strenuously argues for the faithfulness of God to fulfill his promises to Israel, yet has time ending at Yeshua's return. His argument out of Rev 10 of "there will be
time no longer" that this means the 'end of time' is untenable, particularly coupled with his Rev 20 argument that the 1000 years are symbolic of the Christian age (typical A-Mill argument, granted) when he has gone to such great lengths to exactly define the various time periods of scripture. There a literally hundreds of objections I could come up with, so it may not be productive to discuss this, however do you have any thoughts on this topic? It seems to me that much of what Skolfield discovered does not need to be jettisoned over A-Mill vs. Pre-Mill, or does it?
4. His conversion of 3-1/2 days to 3.5 x 365.25 = 1278.4 years is inconsistent with his other interpretations... it ought to be 3.5 years; am I missing something?
5. Near the end of his book he switches up "the bad guy" to be a 10 part division of the globe when the "Scarlet Beast" reigns for 1 hour (he says 15 days; I think he's pushing his 'day for a year' methodology too far) rather than an Islamic Beast, which is clearly the end time invader of Israel, I think because he has convinced himself that there was a great turning point in 1967; have I misunderstood him?
Truly there was much I liked; he is very insightful. I could come up with some other questions, but that's enough for now.
I've got a blog at
http://prophesite.wordpress.com/ I waver between historicism and futurism. I like the continuous fulfillment understanding of scripture, although I don't see myself switching from pre-Mill. I am firmly post-Trib, and I do agree with Skolfield on his understanding that of when the Trib started and that the AoD has occurred. In my view the AoD basically began with the national Jewish rejection of its Messiah and was made evident with the destruction of the temple and the construction of the DotR. I do agree the DotR is built on the wrong rock!!
Take care,
Kurt
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