Dear Brother Mattingly,

Thank you for sending me your paper. I appreciate the amount of time and study that obviously went into it. It is evident that you have spent many hours thinking through these passages and attempting to harmonize Daniel, Revelation, and the New Testament into one coherent picture. I also appreciate your desire to begin with Scripture rather than treating uninspired historical sources as the final authority. Every Christian ought to be committed to letting the Bible speak first.

After reading your paper carefully, however, I am not persuaded that it proves what it claims to prove.

My concern is not primarily with your conclusion that the New Testament was completed before A.D. 70. Rather, my concern is with the method used to reach that conclusion.

Throughout the paper there are a number of places where conclusions are presented as though they are demanded by the text, when in reality they are inferences built upon previous inferences. There is nothing wrong with drawing inferences from Scripture. We all do it. The question is whether an inference should be treated as certain doctrine or as a possible explanation.

For example, much of your argument depends on identifying the six objectives of Daniel 9:24 as a chronological action plan extending all the way to the completion of the New Testament, the cessation of miraculous gifts, and the anointing of the heavenly sanctuary. I do not believe Daniel explicitly makes those connections. The text certainly speaks of God’s redemptive work through the Messiah, but the additional conclusions appear to come from the system being built rather than from the words of Daniel themselves.

The same concern arises in your treatment of Revelation 10. You identify the little book with the completed New Testament, the mighty angel with the Holy Spirit, the command to seal the seven thunders with the end of inspired revelation, and the fulfillment of the mystery of God with the completion of the New Testament canon. Those identifications may fit your overall framework, but the text itself never identifies them in that way. They remain interpretations rather than demonstrations.

I also found your repeated use of syllogisms interesting. Logical reasoning has an important place in Bible study. Scripture itself often reasons from premise to conclusion. Yet a syllogism is only as strong as its premises. If the premises are themselves interpretive judgments rather than explicit biblical statements, then the conclusion cannot be presented as established fact. Logic cannot supply certainty where the premises remain debatable.

One of the statements that gave me pause appears near the end of the paper, where you conclude that the study has “proven” the completion of the New Testament before A.D. 70. I do not believe the paper reaches that level of certainty. It presents a thoughtful interpretive model, but a model is not the same thing as proof. There is a difference between saying, “This best explains the evidence,” and saying, “This is what the Scriptures unquestionably teach.”

I also wonder whether the paper dismisses historical testimony too quickly. I agree completely that uninspired writers are not our authority. Scripture alone is inspired. At the same time, historical evidence has value when it is used in its proper place. We routinely use historical information to identify kings, cities, customs, manuscripts, and chronology. Such evidence should never overrule Scripture, but neither should it be rejected simply because it is uninspired. The Bible itself often records and expects us to recognize historical events.

Please do not misunderstand these observations. I appreciate your commitment to Scripture and your desire to think carefully about prophecy. Those are strengths. I also agree that many approaches to Daniel and Revelation have been driven more by tradition than by careful exegesis. We should always be willing to reexamine our conclusions in the light of God’s word.

My encouragement would simply be this: allow the text to establish every major conclusion. Whenever a conclusion depends on several interpretive steps, acknowledge that distinction. Doing so does not weaken your argument. It strengthens your credibility because it clearly separates what the Bible explicitly says from what you believe is the best explanation of the evidence.

Thank you again for allowing me to read your work. I appreciate your willingness to invite criticism for the sake of truth. That attitude is commendable, and I hope you will receive these comments in the same spirit in which they are offered.

May we both continue to search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things are so (Acts 17:11).

Your brother in Christ,

Ed Rangel

Dear Brother Mattingly,

I received your response and have read it carefully. Thank you for taking the time to answer my concerns so thoroughly.

Let me first answer the question you asked about my position. No, my earlier statement did not mean that I agree that the New Testament was completed before A.D. 70. It meant that I did not need to settle the date in order to evaluate whether your paper proves its claim. When someone claims to have proven a proposition, showing that his premises have not been established is sufficient to answer that claim. The critic is not required to prove the opposite proposition.

After reading your response, my original concern remains. Several of the disputed conclusions have been repeated as established facts, but the biblical connections necessary to establish them have still not been demonstrated.

Daniel 9:24 certainly presents purposes God decreed concerning Daniel’s people and holy city. The repeated use of “to” shows that these are things God would accomplish. It does not, however, prove that the six statements are separate stages arranged in chronological order. It does not prove that the first three were accomplished together, that the last three were accomplished one at a time, or that the fourth objective continued for decades until the last New Testament book was written.

Most importantly, Daniel never identifies the writing of the New Testament as a sub-objective of bringing in everlasting righteousness. That identification comes from your argument, not from Daniel’s words. The New Testament writings reveal and preserve the truth about God’s righteousness in Christ, but that does not make the production of a twenty-seven-book collection the fulfillment of Daniel’s statement. Romans 3:21-26 speaks of the righteousness of God as already manifested through faith in Jesus Christ. The apostles proclaimed that righteousness before every New Testament book had been written.

Therefore, even if I granted for the sake of argument that all six statements were completed by A.D. 70, your conclusion concerning the New Testament would still depend upon this premise:

“The New Testament was completed before or when the fourth objective was completed.”

That is the very proposition that needs to be proven. Daniel 9:24 does not state it. Placing it inside a syllogism does not turn it into an inspired premise.

The same problem appears in your treatment of “seal up vision and prophecy.” Daniel does not define that expression as the closing of the New Testament canon, the immediate cessation of every miraculous gift, or the termination of all inspired writing. Those meanings must be demonstrated rather than assumed.

Revelation 10:4 does not provide that demonstration. John was told to seal up what the seven thunders had spoken and not write those particular things. The command is specific. It does not say that God was sealing all prophecy or ending every spiritual gift. In the same chapter John is told, “You must prophesy again” concerning peoples, nations, tongues, and kings (Revelation 10:11). Later he is told, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book” (Revelation 22:10). The immediate context therefore does not treat Revelation 10:4 as the universal end of inspired revelation.

Nor does the text identify the little scroll as the completed New Testament or as the last New Testament book to be written. John receives and eats the scroll before being commissioned to prophesy again, recalling the prophetic commission given to Ezekiel in Ezekiel 2-3. You state that first-century Christians knew Revelation was the final inspired book because John told them. Where does John say that? Revelation contains no statement identifying itself as the last book that would be written.

The proposed anointing of the heavenly sanctuary presents another unproven connection. Revelation 15:8 says that the temple was filled with smoke from the glory and power of God. It never says that the temple was anointed. Exodus 40 records the anointing of the tabernacle and later records the glory of God filling it, but the appearance of similar imagery does not prove that an unmentioned anointing occurred in Revelation. The glory also filled Solomon’s temple in 1 Kings 8:10-11. A glory cloud by itself is not an inspired statement that Daniel 9:24 has been fulfilled at that moment.

Hebrews also presents Christ as having already entered the greater and more perfect tabernacle through His own blood and as already appearing in the presence of God for us (Hebrews 9:11-12, 24). No passage says that the heavenly sanctuary awaited a later formal anointing during the seventh trumpet or at the destruction of Jerusalem.

Your paper originally said that this anointing was “suspected.” Your response now treats it as an established fact capable of verifying the syllogisms. But Revelation 15 does not provide independent verification. The syllogism is used to identify the smoke as evidence of anointing, and then that supposed anointing is used to verify the syllogism. That is circular reasoning.

There is also an important distinction between the revelation of God’s mystery and the finishing of what God purposed. Paul said that the mystery had already been revealed and made known through the apostles and prophets (Romans 16:25-26; Ephesians 3:3-6; Colossians 1:25-27). Revelation 10:7 says that the mystery of God would be finished in connection with the seventh angel. It does not say that the finishing of the mystery means that the last New Testament document had been written. In your response you correctly distinguish the completion of the New Testament from the later fulfillment of the mystery. But once those are distinguished, Revelation 10:7 cannot date the completion of the New Testament without another inspired statement connecting the two.

I agree that miraculous gifts were temporary and that they ceased. That agreement does not mean that 1 Corinthians 13 supplies the date of the New Testament’s completion. Paul wrote that the partial would be done away “when the perfect comes.” He did not write, “when the New Testament is completed.” Even if one concludes that “the perfect” includes completed revelation, the passage does not identify the final book, give its date, or say that every gift disappeared at the instant the final word was placed upon a manuscript. Those additional conclusions remain inferences.

Your treatment of historical evidence also remains inconsistent. You rely upon historical testimony to identify the destroying army as the Romans under Titus and to place the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. You also quote Homer Hailey when his conclusions support portions of your interpretation. There is nothing wrong with using such evidence in its proper place. The problem is rejecting uninspired historical testimony in principle when it weighs against your position while using it when it supports your chronology.

Consulting Irenaeus or another ancient writer is not comparable to Saul consulting a medium. A historian is not an occult source, and historical testimony is not divine revelation. It is fallible evidence that must be weighed. It cannot overrule Scripture, but neither must it be discarded merely because it may affect our understanding of a biblical book.

The most serious matter is not that you hold an early date for Revelation. Christians may examine the evidence and reach that conclusion. The serious matter is calling the date a “matter of faith,” demanding that every contrary conclusion be repudiated, and saying that those who disagree do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God. That binds upon Christians a conclusion that Scripture itself never explicitly states and that your argument has not established by necessary inference.

We can know that the apostolic foundation was laid, that the faith was delivered once for all, that miraculous gifts served their temporary revealing and confirming purpose, and that Scripture is complete and sufficient without claiming that the Bible gives us the precise calendar year in which its final book was written. Not knowing an unrevealed date does not leave us with an open canon or modern prophets.

For your argument to rise above a possible interpretive model, the text itself must establish these propositions:

1. That completing the New Testament writings was a sub-objective of bringing in everlasting righteousness.
2. That “seal up vision and prophecy” means the closing of the canon and cessation of every spiritual gift.
3. That the little scroll in Revelation 10 represents the final New Testament book.
4. That the heavenly sanctuary was anointed during the seventh trumpet.

At present, each proposition is inferred from the system and then used to support the system. Their agreement with one another may make the interpretation appear coherent, but coherence is not the same as biblical proof.

I appreciate your willingness to continue examining these matters. My disagreement is not an unwillingness to study Daniel or Revelation. It is an unwillingness to call something a necessary conclusion when the governing texts do not make it necessary.

May we continue to examine the Scriptures carefully and refuse to go beyond what has been written.

Your brother in Christ,

Ed Rangel