Even though all of the angel’s overview of Israel’s history from 535BC to the end of the age came to me in advance, the first 35 verses of chapter 11 have already been fulfilled and documented as historical fact as you have seen. But now, again without skipping a beat and without a word of explanation,

The angel said he had been sent to tell me what had been written in the Book of Truth, a heavenly account of history, written in advance. He began by saying that there would be three more Persian kings in a time of relative peace and prosperity,

As if the dream predicting the Messiah’s coming wasn’t enough, two years later I received another revelation. This one gave me such detail about the future of my people that in your time “scholars” who don’t believe in predictive prophecy have tried to make the claim that I didn’t really write my story at all.

In 538 BC, the first year of Persian rule over Babylon, I read in the Book of Jeremiah that our captivity in Babylon was supposed to last 70 years (Jere. 25:11-12). Jeremiah, you may remember, lived around the same time as I did and documented the defeat of Israel and destruction of Jerusalem from that end while Ezekiel and I wrote from Babylon.