Daniel Introduction Part A

Kootenai Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Well, good morning. We will be studying the book of Daniel. And that is at once going to be a wonderful and terrifying thing.

00:11

Because as I have seven, I think seven books I'm reading to work on this. Most books

00:17

I've ever had to at one time read to teach a class. And I'm really enjoying it, but there's an awful lot.

00:27

The book of Daniel is a heavy book. It's a keystone book. It is postulated by many of the commentators that I'm studying that if you want to understand the book of Revelation, you must have a basic understanding of the book of Daniel.

00:46

And so hopefully God will give you understanding of the book of Daniel despite me.

00:53

Meanwhile, let's go to prayer. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to look into another one of your wonderful books in the scriptures.

01:02

You breathed this out to Daniel, and he wrote it under the instruction of your

01:08

Holy Spirit. And it is for us to understand, and it can indeed be understood. But we will ask you to superintend and to provide instruction throughout this time,

01:20

Lord, that we might know your mind. More than anything so that we might honor you and glorify you in all that we live and do.

01:28

And so we'll thank you this morning that you're going to superintend this, that we will be recipients of your instruction.

01:34

And Father, I seek your grace as we go through this book. Thank you for penning it, and thank you for giving us this opportunity to study it.

01:43

We ask for your overall superintendence and wisdom in studying this book.

01:50

And we'll thank you for what you're going to accomplish in it and through it, in Jesus' name, amen. So as I, I'm going to give some housekeeping here because as I've been working through the introduction, which is 12 pages of small print,

02:09

I'm not gonna go fast. I welcome questions. There will probably be many times when you will ask me a question that I will have to get back to you on because I have never really studied end times prophecy.

02:21

I've been a Christian for four and a half decades and I've never really studied end times prophecy as I should have.

02:28

So this is going to be an excellent opportunity for me as well as hopefully for all of us.

02:34

But so I will, there will be times when I will make a statement and then not very far after that,

02:40

I'll develop that statement and then make the statement again. There's an awful lot in the book of Daniel that is difficult to understand but there is plenty that's very simple to understand.

02:50

Actually, it's interesting. An old wag once said, if we would just, how did he word it?

02:57

He said, there's so much in the scripture that I don't understand and so much in the scripture that I misunderstand, but there's so much in the scripture that I do understand that I ought to be busy about doing that.

03:08

And so in the book of Daniel, we're going to find that there are plenty of critics to this book.

03:16

There are numerous opinions as to the prophecies in this book and they actually take up a relatively small part, but we will study them at length.

03:26

We will study them in depth. Today, we will not actually get into the text of the book of Daniel very much.

03:35

We will be studying, we will be looking at an introduction. And so the book of Daniel was written in the sixth century before Christ by the prophet named in the book.

03:45

Remarkably, that is contested. It is written in the third person as are many

03:51

Old Testament books and indeed many works from that era. Slide two, please. Writers often wrote in the third person.

04:02

In fact, we see the Lord himself alternating between the first and the third person. In Exodus chapter 20 verse two,

04:09

I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And then verse seven, you shall not take the name of the

04:16

Lord your God in vain for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain. Daniel makes reference to himself several places in the book authenticating the fact that he wrote it.

04:27

In Daniel chapter eight verse one, he says, this is the first time that we will see in the book of Daniel, Daniel make reference to himself in the first person.

04:38

In the third year of the reign of Belshazzar the king, a vision appeared to me, Daniel, subsequent to the one which appeared to me previously.

04:47

And then in chapter nine verse two, in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of the years which was revealed as the word of the

04:55

Lord to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely 70 years.

05:02

One of the other objections to the book of Daniel will be, and we will revisit this again, that he was too accurate.

05:10

And it's a yes. It was objected to in the third century and then later in the 1700s that it couldn't have been prophecy because it was too accurate.

05:21

It had to be a history. Why? Because I said so, said the critic. Daniel chapter nine verse 20.

05:30

Now while I was speaking and praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and presenting my supplication before the

05:37

Lord my God in behalf of the holy mountain of my God and then in chapter 10 verse two, he again speaks in the first person, in those days

05:43

I, Daniel, had been mourning for three entire weeks. That is actually one of the objections that we will see raised that he spoke in the third person in most of the book.

05:56

So although modern scholars follow the lead of porphyry, I mispronounced it for those who were listening to me earlier, not periphery, as though beating around the bush,

06:07

P -O -R -P -H -R -Y. Who in the third century A .D. propagated the idea, now get this, this is a self, this is a tautology, a self -supporting false statement, a false accusation.

06:21

He propagated the idea that the prophecies of Daniel were far too accurate and therefore could not be prophecies.

06:28

They must actually be a history written after the fact and therefore he dated it to the

06:34

Maccabean period, 168 to 165 B .C. 400 years later than it was actually written.

06:41

Why? Because it was too good. Yeah. He was ably refuted by Jerome in his commentary,

06:50

Jerome's commentary on the book of Daniel, and the heresy was put to rest until the late 1700s when it was revived by liberal theologians dedicated to the philosophies of the

07:00

Enlightenment period. Well there is plenty of internal and external evidence that Daniel was written around 530

07:07

B .C., but because the prophecies are particular and accurate, those with a low view of scripture reject that date and date it to the second century

07:17

B .C. Let's look at some of the things that were happening around the time the book of Daniel was written. Next slide. Well, actually

07:29

I don't have that on the next slide, but that's a good slide. So what was going on?

07:36

The prophet Daniel lived in the sixth century before the birth of Jesus. During this time period, construction on the

07:41

Acropolis in Athens began. The Mayan civilization flourished in Mexico.

07:49

Aesop wrote his fables around this time. Confucius and Buddha lived.

07:54

Wonderful people who were very, very confused. Greek art began to truly excel around this period.

08:02

The Phoenicians made the first known sea journey around the Horn of Africa at this time.

08:07

And the Greeks, this is very important, very important, the Greeks introduced the olive tree to Italy.

08:16

Daniel describes events of the second century before Jesus essentially and especially the period 175 to 164

08:22

B .C. with such precision that critics believe it had to have been written after that period during the time of the

08:30

Maccabees in between the Old and New Testaments. Supposedly the purpose for writing Daniel at that time was to inspire

08:36

God's people onto victory during the Maccabean Wars. So the first one to suggest a

08:42

Maccabean date for Daniel was the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyrus of Tyre, the third century

08:48

A .D. He couldn't believe the prophecies, so he suggested the later date. Again, as mentioned earlier,

08:54

Jerome and his commentary on Daniel spent much of his time refuting these arguments. Then, and so the arguments were put to rest.

09:01

We'll look at some of Jerome's commentary because he does an able job of refuting it. But the commentaries, the work of Jerome put this heresy to rest for 1 ,400 years and nobody seemed to raise any of those objections for 14 centuries.

09:23

In 1771, influenced by enlightenment, academics began to revive the old Maccabean date theory about the

09:29

Book of Daniel. They all agreed that every accurate prediction in Daniel had to have been written after the events took place because they were too accurate.

09:39

Therefore, circularly reasoning, it must have been written after that date. Three times, simply believing the scripture to be true, however, yields the fact that the book was written by Daniel himself, often in the third person, written between probably 540 and 530

09:55

B .C. Daniel would have been in his 80s and had served a long time under Medo -Persian kings.

10:03

Many allege a much later date, which is 165. And three times, so we're gonna look at these, the reasons for these different dates.

10:12

Three times, Daniel is mentioned by his sixth century counterpart, Ezekiel, as an example of righteousness.

10:18

That's the wonderful slide we have here. Ezekiel 14 .14. Even though these three men,

10:25

Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in its midst, by their own righteousness, they could only deliver themselves, declares the

10:31

Lord God. And then in Ezekiel 14 .20. Even though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in its midst, as I live, declares the

10:37

Lord God, they could not deliver either their son or their daughter, they would deliver only themselves by their righteousness. And then in Ezekiel 28 .3.

10:45

And Ezekiel was a contemporary of Daniel. His prophecy and his work was at the same time period.

10:54

Behold, you are wiser than Daniel. There is no secret that is a match for you. One of the interesting heresies that was propagated was that this

11:02

Daniel was from 1400 BC and was some sort of Baal worshiper. Yeah. That the

11:09

Lord God would put in his scripture as a man to uphold and to emulate. It was ably refuted.

11:16

But that was one of the, I mean, when people are looking to discredit the scripture, anything will do. Anything will do.

11:24

Interestingly enough, as I was talking to Jim this morning, he's going to be, in the very near future, you can't preach when your arm's broken, so he's gotta wait until his arm's fixing.

11:33

Because you can't, there's none of this and none of that, and you know, so. Anyway, he's going to be going through, in Sunday school,

11:41

God wrote a book. And the fact is, every objection that is raised to the book of Daniel simply emulates or mirrors all of the objections that have been raised to the scripture in general.

11:52

Well, it can't be real, because there isn't a God, therefore it's not real. Well, you've been everywhere and seen that?

11:59

Well, no, but there isn't. Why? Because they said so. So the very same objections, essentially, that are raised against the book of Daniel are raised against the entire scripture, and I'm sure

12:09

Jim will be dealing with that. So, the writer is Daniel, and in many cases, he reverts to the first person, and we can see this clearly in chapter 8, 15.

12:20

Would you go to the next scripture? Next slide. So there we had those, and I'm not going to read through them all.

12:27

The last one, chapter 12, verse 4 and 5. But as for you, Daniel, the Lord is speaking to him, conceal these words and seal up the book until the end of time.

12:35

Many will go back and forth, and knowledge will increase. Then I, Daniel, looked, and behold, two others were standing, one on this bank of the river, and the other on that bank of the river.

12:42

Daniel wrote in the first person when it was necessary. So there are two different processes for dating this book.

12:51

Those who date it to the late second century see this work as historical fiction.

12:59

Yes. Did you know that? Very interesting. And why do they see it as historical fiction?

13:05

Because it works better for their worldview. They won't have to face the judgment of God because there is no

13:11

God. Next question. That would be how they would say it. Designed to encourage the resistance movement against the tyranny of Antiochus Epiphanes, who was a very wicked ruler.

13:22

Some argue that Daniel must have been late because it was placed among the writings of the Hebrew scriptures instead of the prophets.

13:29

But many of the books in the writings are very old, like Job and the Davidic Psalms and the

13:36

Solomonic writings. Therefore, a placement in the writings does not determine a late date, especially when at Qumran, in the

13:45

Dead Sea Scrolls, they discovered ancient references to the Psalms and to Job and to Daniel. And so the liberal scholars acknowledge, okay, the

13:56

Psalms and Job, we will not date them late like that. We will date them much, much earlier, much, much older, excuse me, but not

14:04

Daniel. They didn't apply the same logic to Daniel because it would acknowledge that the prophecies were true and that they were prophecies, and it's really that simple.

14:16

The date of 168, here's another one of the supposed problems, the date of 168 matches the evidence spoken of in Daniel 11, 31 through 39.

14:26

Therefore, it is assumed that the book must have been written soon after that time. This was a specific prophecy about the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes.

14:33

Would you go to the next slide? This is the prophecy. Chapter nine, chapter 11. Forces from him will arise, desecrate the sanctuary fortress, and do away with the regular sacrifice, and they will set up the abomination of desolation.

14:47

By smooth words he will turn to godlessness those who act wickedly toward the covenant, but the people who know their

14:53

God will display strength and take action. Those who have insight among the people will give understanding to the many, yet they will fall by the sword and by flame, by captivity and by plunder for many days.

15:04

Now, when they fall, they will be granted a little help, and many will join with them in hypocrisy. Some of those who have insight will fall in order to refine, purge, and make them pure until the end time, because it is still to come at the appointed time.

15:18

Then the king will do as he pleases, and he will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will speak monstrous things against the god of gods, and he will prosper until the indignation is finished, for that which is decreed will be done.

15:32

He will show no regard for the gods of his fathers or for the desire of women, nor will he show regard for any other god, for he will magnify himself above them all.

15:40

But instead, he will honor a god of fortress, a god whom his fathers did not know. He will honor him with gold, silver, costly stones, and treasures.

15:48

He will take action against the strongest of fortresses with the help of a foreign god. He will give great honor to those who acknowledge him and will cause him to rule over the many and will parcel out land for a price.

15:58

Do you see all the specific prophecies there? And we will get to those probably in July of 2025, when we get to Daniel chapter 11, or whenever.

16:10

Those who hold to a low view of Scripture say those couldn't have been prophecies. They're too accurate.

16:16

That's what we're gonna be dealing with whenever we deal with those who oppose to Scripture. Number four, most who hold to a late date for Daniel emphasize it as being apocalyptic in nature.

16:27

See, the higher critics say that apocalyptic literature hadn't come about at the time of Daniel, in 530

16:35

BC. And yet it had, and we'll see that. While all, most would agree that there are apocalyptic elements in Daniel, this does not require that it be modeled after all aspects of apocalyptic literature.

16:49

Some aspects of apocalyptic literature which Daniel is accused of are, it is pseudepigraphic.

16:54

In other words, a false author is attached to the book to give it credibility. So whoever wrote this book in 165 attached the name of Daniel to it to give it credibility.

17:07

That's what the false, that's what the low theologians, or the higher critics, if you will, say. The prophecies, another thing they say, are after the event.

17:17

The Latin is vaticinia ex eventu, or prophecies after the event. The sensational events in chapters three, five, and six are necessarily writing conventions like those which were employed by non -canonical literature of the intertestamental period.

17:31

So there's other types of literature in the intertestamental period between Malachi and Matthew that employed these same conventions of literature.

17:42

Therefore, it must have been written late because they didn't write like that 500 years before Christ. And then, and this is one of the observations that conventional or that modern conservative theologians have mentioned or have noted, often there is a hermeneutical presupposition against predictive writing.

18:02

In other words, if you go into the study of the book of Daniel with the assumption, with the worldview, that God cannot predict the future, you must come up with an early date for it, or I guess a later date.

18:16

Because if God can't predict the future, then this must be a history. It's circular reasoning at its best, but that's all they have.

18:25

And often, there is a non -miraculous presupposition against narratives like Daniel three, five, and six, the lion's den, the fiery furnace, and other things that are mentioned in the book of Daniel.

18:36

Therefore, if your worldview is that miracles can't happen, then this had to have been written after a fact, and these aren't really miracles.

18:45

They're just something that happened, and well, what really happened? Well, I don't know, but they're not miracles. Why? Because I said so.

18:53

So, some of the major reasons why we look at this book as written in the early 6th century.

19:01

Number one, manuscript evidence. Manuscripts discovered at Qumran, and one of the most important, or if not the most important, which we will get to, is the

19:11

Lord Jesus Christ quoted it as prophecy, and either he was right or he was wrong.

19:18

He was right. Manuscript evidence discovered at Qumran, the florilegium found in a cave 4q, which date from the

19:25

Maccabean period, make it very unlikely that the book was written during the time of the Maccabees, since it would have taken some time for it to have been accepted and then propagated and included in the canon.

19:35

Stuff didn't get around like it does today. You write something, email today or on the internet, and it is in Turkey in 12 .0

19:43

nanoseconds. In this era, if you wrote something, it could have been a century before it made it very far outside of its own locale.

19:53

Much of scripture took that much time to propagate, even in the New Testament period.

20:01

So, one of the evidences is that it was found at Qumran. Therefore, it couldn't have originated when the

20:09

Dead Sea Scrolls originated, because it would have had to have been propagated and then copied, and these were copies. They weren't originals, they were copies.

20:16

Number two, Aramaic. Daniel's Aramaic, the book was written in both

20:22

Aramaic and Hebrew, and I'll go over, some of the stuff you're gonna hear me go over twice, I think it's very important.

20:28

One of the reasons Daniel was not included in the book of the prophet writings, but rather the writings,

20:34

Daniel was not a commissioned prophet like Ezekiel or Isaiah. He was a government official, and his writings often were to the citizens of the

20:48

Persian Empire, of the Babylonian Empire, and so therefore, he was included in the writings.

20:54

When he would write to those, when part of his book was written especially for the people of the

21:00

Babylonian Empire, he wrote in their language, Aramaic. Those portions of the book that were specifically designed to be written to the

21:08

Hebrews, to the Jews, were written in Hebrew. This often happens. Daniel's Aramaic demonstrates grammatical evidences more for an early date, more associated with the 7th and 6th centuries

21:20

B .C. than with the 2nd century B .C. Great linguistic scholars have studied his writings.

21:28

Much has been studied. I mean, this is, what is this? 2 ,500 years after Daniel was written.

21:33

A lot has been, a lot of water has gone under the prophetic bridge. And great hermeneutic and linguistic students have identified the different types of Persian and Aramaic that occurred at different ages.

21:48

This Aramaic is at home in the 7th and 6th century B .C. It is remarkably out of place in 2nd century

21:56

B .C. Persian loan words in Daniel do not necessarily argue against an early date for the book since Daniel, who lived under the

22:06

Persians, could have placed material in its final form later in his life. So how many of you have written,

22:15

Jenny, you've written books. Did you edit them before you finally published them? Did whole chapters sometimes get rewritten?

22:21

Did new information that you discovered about a particular thing that happened in the 1920s change the way this vignette should have happened?

22:29

Yeah. Daniel was a writer under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and God wanted it accurate.

22:36

Therefore, he could have put it in a different form later in his life when he finally published, if you will, the book.

22:43

Number, oh, I don't know what number it is. I do that all the time. Four of the 19 Persian words are not translated well by the

22:50

Greek renderings of about 100 B .C., implying that their meaning was lost or dramatically changed, meaning that it is very unlikely

22:58

Daniel was written in 165 B .C. The words that were translated at that time had a different meaning in 165 than what

23:06

Daniel intended in 530 B .C. And we'll look at these in detail as we go through the text.

23:12

This is an introduction. Pardon? And I'm on page four.

23:20

Page four. Who remembers that? Okay, none of you. The Persian words that are cited in Daniel are specifically old

23:31

Persian words dating from around 300 B .C. or earlier. This argues very well against the 165

23:38

B .C. date. The Greek, three Greek words, three Greek loan words, and Daniel need not argue for a late date since there may well have been

23:45

Greek writing prior to Plato, 370 B .C. where these words could have been used and since they are the names of musical instruments, and we'll see those, which are often circulated beyond national boundaries, and since Greek words are found in the

23:57

Aramaic documents of the Elephantine era dated to the 5th century B .C., these need not argue against an early date.

24:06

Apocalyptic evidence. The themes of the prominence of angels, the last judgment, the resurrection of the dead, and the establishment of the final kingdom are not themes that are limited to later apocryphal literature but have their roots in earlier biblical literature and even in Zechariah, and we'll see that.

24:23

Literary evidence. The reason the development of history seems to stop with Antiochus IV is not necessarily because that was when the writer lived.

24:33

It is probably for literary theological reasons and it best foreshadows the coming

24:38

Antichrist, the Antichrist to come. As he was writing the history or the information about what was to come, that was the stopping point for his purposes.

24:49

Predictive evidence. The fourth empire in Daniel 2 was not that of the Greeks as those who hold to a late date affirm.

24:54

This is substantiated by the vision in chapter 7. By the way, it would be good for us all to read through the book of Daniel, and then as we're studying each particular chapter, read through that chapter prior to the study each

25:08

Sunday that we have it. Those substantiated by the vision in chapter 7 where the second empire is not

25:14

Media and the third empire is not Persia, but is Greece, which divides into the four. The Persian empire never divided into four parts.

25:21

This is also substantiated in Daniel 9 with the vision of the ram and the he -goat with one horn and then four horns, a divided

25:28

Greece. And we'll see that as we study it. That's gonna be much, much later. The author speaks mostly in the third person, except for Daniel 8 .1,

25:38

Daniel 9 .2, Daniel 9 .20, Daniel 10 .2, where he speaks in the I Daniel form. However, as we mentioned, it is customary for ancient writers to speak in the third person even when writing about themselves.

25:49

The one Old Testament exception is the book of Nehemiah, which is in the form of a personal diary.

25:56

Some interesting tidbits, and I wrote this before I heard this news.

26:02

How many of you have seen the news that China is requiring the Bible to be rewritten to favor communism?

26:10

Well, at times, decades ago, communist governments prohibited preaching from the book of Daniel because it reveals

26:19

God's knowledge of the future, and it shows that in the end, the Lord, the

26:25

Lord God and his people win. So they prohibited preaching from it because it might encourage resistance.

26:33

Daniel contains more fulfilled prophecies than any other book in the New Testament, in the

26:39

Bible, excuse me. Daniel contains more fulfilled prophecies than any other book in the Bible.

26:44

In New Testament prophecy, Daniel is referred to more than any other Old Testament book.

26:51

Slide six. So this is the location, the geographic location of the kingdom that Daniel lived in,

26:59

Babylon, which has been identified, and many ancient cities there have been excavated. So there, you can see some of the cities,

27:06

Babylonia, Der, Akkad, Kish, things that you've probably heard mentioned in other scriptures, names of other cities,

27:14

Sumer, where the great library was found, and others. Now, if you'll go to the next slide, you can see where that is in modern day terms.

27:24

It's right in the middle of Iraq. That's the real reason for those wars.

27:29

No, I'm just kidding. So it's just about 50 miles, I think 50 miles south of Baghdad is where the ancient city of Babylon.

27:39

The Babylonian Empire of Daniel's day covered an area that stretched east -west from Turkey to Iran, and from north -south from Armenia to Saudi Arabia.

27:49

At its peak, it controlled nearly 194 ,000 square miles. That sounds like a lot.

27:56

This would be about 73 % the size of Texas, to give us an idea of how big the

28:02

Neo -Babylonian Empire was. Or about the size of the states of Idaho and Nevada combined.

28:09

But that's a huge area. Think about it. How long does it take to walk to Las Vegas? Now, in the winter, with no stops along the way, no 7 -Elevens, no

28:22

Kmart, well, not Kmart, that shows my age, no Walmarts, no gas stations, you're walking.

28:28

It was a big empire. Babylon endured for millennia with massive ups and downs in both size and influence.

28:35

It was founded around 2300 B .C. It grew in size under Hammurabi between 1792

28:42

B .C. and 1750 B .C. The Neo -Babylonian period that Daniel was involved with spanned the years, next slide if you would, the years 626 to 539

28:53

B .C. There's the Babylonian Empire in a little bit different form, so you can kinda see what it covered. And during those years,

29:02

Babylon became the most powerful kingdom in the world at the time. This is the Babylonian Empire that Daniel served the kings of.

29:11

So we're gonna look at some of the kings and events. We're gonna kinda go through it quickly. If anybody wants these charts,

29:17

I can send them to you. Go to the next slide, please. Kings and events. So this is the time period that Daniel would have been involved with, not the entire 2300 years.

29:28

For our purposes, we're more focused on the Neo -Babylonian Empire that occurred between 612 and later.

29:35

Nineveh falls in 612 to the Neo -Babylonian Army. Now, just really quickly,

29:41

I would like to look at Daniel chapter one. In the third year, verse one, of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it.

29:55

So we'll see how these dates fit in. Nineveh falls in 612 to Nebuchadnezzar.

30:02

In 608, Pharaoh Necho marched to Carchemish to halt the expansion of the Neo -Babylonian power, and Josiah, king of Judah, tries to stop him.

30:12

The death of Josiah and assumption of the throne by his son Jehoahaz in 608, and Jehoiakim, another son of Josiah, replace

30:20

Jehoahaz on the authority of Pharaoh Necho within three months. Then Palestine and Syria are under Egyptian rule, and King Josiah's reforms, the good king, one of the good kings, his forms dissipate.

30:34

605, Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar is Nebuchadnezzar's father. Sends troops to fight remaining

30:40

Assyrian army and the Egyptians at Carchemish. Nebuchadnezzar chased them all the way to the plains of Palestine, and then he got word of the death of his father, so he returned to Babylon to retrieve the crown, to receive the crown.

30:53

On the way back, he takes captive Daniel and his friends and many other of the cream of the crop of the

31:01

Jewish people. So that's what we will see. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand along with some of the vessels of the house of God, and he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his

31:11

God, and he brought the vessels into the treasury of his God. Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, the chief of his officials, to bring in some of the sons of Israel, including some of the royal family and of the nobles, youths in whom was no defect.

31:22

These are the captives that he brought back when he went back to the capital to assume the crown, to assume kingship.

31:31

So then 605 to 538, this is when Daniel would have served. Babylon in control of Palestine, and then in 597, 10 ,000 are exiled to Babylon.

31:43

586, Jerusalem and the temple are destroyed and another large deportation, and then in 582, because Jewish guerrilla fires killed

31:50

Gedoliah, another last large deportation occurred. So Nebuchadnezzar had to keep coming in and putting down the revolts and deporting people to Babylon.

32:00

Then there were successors. Next slide. I always read evil

32:07

Merodach, and I thought, there's an evil guy named Merodach. No, that means it was

32:13

Amel Marduk. It was just a name of his god. He was a student or a son of Marduk, one of the gods of the

32:22

Medo -Persians. He released Jehoiakim, who was in the true messiahic line, from custody, and then was the king

32:30

Neriglasar. Now, some of these pronunciations I worked on, some of them

32:35

I didn't, so I'll try to look down so I don't spit over the front row. I'll spit on my book. 556,

32:41

Lebowski Marduk, again, a reference to their god, Marduk, reigned. Then the Barnabas in 556 to 539.

32:48

All of this would have been during Daniel's period. Spent most of the time building a temple to the god Sin. This earned enmity of the priests of Marduk, the internecine, internecine god fighting, if you will.

33:01

He spent the rest of his time trying to put down revolts and to stabilize the kingdom. The kingdom of Babylon was in upheaval during this time.

33:09

He moved to Timah and left the affairs to his son Belshazzar. How many of you have heard of Belshazzar?

33:15

The writing on the wall. Belshazzar spent most of his time, his time, trying to restore order.

33:22

Babylonians then, at the time, their great threat was media. Then is the rise of Cyrus. Next slide. Cyrus Astyages was king of media and Cyrus II was his grandson.

33:41

Cyrus II was a vassal king and he revolted. Now Barnabas, to restore a balance of power, made alliances with both

33:48

Egypt. Oh boy, that didn't line up very good, did it? And Crecus, which is the king of Lydia at the time.

33:56

Cyrus marched against Sardis in 547 and captured all of Asia Minor. Gobias, who's probably

34:03

Cyrus, took Babylon without resistance and then in Daniel chapter five, Belshazzar, Nabonidus' co -regent, also

34:11

Gobias, probably Darius the Mede, excuse me, not Cyrus, Darius the Mede. I get those two mixed up as I was reading this.

34:17

That's when they took Babylon without resistance. And then October 11th, and it's interesting we have that exact date, 539,

34:24

Cyrus entered as liberator from Nabonidus' moon goddess, Zin. Then Cyrus' successors, next slide.

34:33

Cyrus' son succeeded him and then the reign of Cambyses. They added

34:38

Egypt in 525 to the Medo -Persian Empire. Darius I comes to rule in 522 to 486.

34:45

Now this is after Daniel and so we'll quickly hurry through this, but some of this figures in the predictions in the book of Daniel.

34:53

That's why we're going through it. He organized the Persian Empire along Cyrus' plan of satraps.

34:58

Satraps were governorships and it would be much like what we have. We have the state of Idaho and then we have the counties and in each county are county commissioners, et cetera.

35:10

So these would have been the governors of provinces of the Medo -Persian Empire and they had a great deal of power.

35:16

They had a great deal of responsibility and a great deal of authority. He set up coinage like Lydia's, that king.

35:23

Then is Ursus I, which we read about in the book of Esther, and they put down an

35:29

Egyptian revolt. They intended to invade Greece, but he was defeated at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480.

35:34

Remember, this is the king who the weather would not cooperate with him to build a bridge across that narrowest part of that area and so he went out one night with a whip and whipped the water.

35:49

He was gonna calm that water down. How'd that work out for him? Not so well.

35:55

Only the Father, only God can control the weather. They intended to invade

36:01

Greece, but they were defeated. Okay, 480 is the Battle of Thermopylae. Then Artaxerxes II, which we read about in Ezra 7 through 10 and in Nehemiah and in Malachi.

36:12

The Greeks continued to advance until confronted with the Peloponnesian Wars and those wars lasted about 20 years.

36:18

During this period, the Jewish community is reconstructed and then Darius II, he authorized the

36:25

Feast of Unleavened Bread in the Elephantine Temple, Artaxerxes III, 404 to 358, excuse me,

36:31

II, then Artaxerxes III, 358 to 338, Arsus, and then Darius III. Then we get into the

36:37

Greek Empire. Go to the next slide. Much of the, when we look into the prophecies, we'll be involved with some of this.

36:47

Philip of Macedon built up Greece. He was assassinated in 336 and then how many of you have heard of Alexander the

36:53

Great? Yeah, that's 336 to 323. He routed

36:59

Darius II at the Battle of Isis and then he died in 323 of a fever after conquering the

37:05

Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. We can all, even the greatest of us, can be brought down by the simplest of things.

37:14

Alexander's then generals divided his empire at his death and this is part of some of the prophecies that we'll look at. There was

37:19

Cassander who received Macedonia and Greece, Lysimachus who took over Thrace, Seleucus I, Syria and Babylon, Ptolemy, Egypt and Palestine, and Antigonus, a small part of Asia Minor.

37:33

Then the Seleucids, that would have been the Seleucids. Yeah, the next slide, please.

37:42

Palestine was under Ptolemy's rule for 100 years during the period of the

37:47

Maccabeans, Maccabeans, 175 to 163. Antiochus Epiphanes wanted to Hellenize the

37:53

Jews. He constructed a gymnasium. He constructed pagan altars. Priests were mistreated and this is the one who sacrificed the pig on the altar.

38:02

I'm sure we've all heard about that. December 13th, 168. Some consider this to be the abomination of desolation.

38:10

Then in 167, if any of you have read 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Maccabees, this is a history of the

38:17

Maccabean Wars that occurred during this period right now. It's not scripture, but it is history. It's very interesting.

38:24

Mattathias and his sons rebelled. Mattathias is killed. Judas took control. Judas Maccabeus wages successful guerrilla warfare.

38:32

We might get through this whole introduction. These are some of the rulers and their names.

38:41

Next slide. Some more, just some more dates, all the dates

38:47

I was going through. Next slide. Philip of Macedon.

38:54

And that'll be enough slides for an hour. So that's kind of the history that we'll be looking at, and we'll make reference to it as time, as the exposition requires.

39:07

Daniel opens. We're going to look at the very opening of Daniel, and we'll probably stop there.

39:13

We've got four minutes. Why don't we do that? Let's look at Daniel chapter one, and we'll read the first seven verses.

39:24

Daniel chapter one. I've already read some of it, but let's read it again. In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it.

39:38

Remember, that was after his father had sent him. And the Lord gave Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, into his hand, along with some of the vessels of the house of God.

39:48

And this, and he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his

39:54

God, and he brought the vessels into the treasury of his God. Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, the chief of his officials, to bring in some of the sons of Israel, including some of the royal family and of the nobles, youths in whom was no defect, who were good -looking, showing intelligence in every branch of wisdom, endowed with understanding and discerning knowledge, and who had the ability, who had ability for serving in the king's court.

40:15

And he ordered him to teach them the literature and the language of the Chaldeans.

40:21

And the king appointed for them a daily ration from the king's choice food and from the wine which he drank, and appointed that they should be educated three years, at the end of which they were to enter the king's personal service.

40:32

Now among them, from the sons of Judah, were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah.

40:38

Then the commander of the officials assigned new names to them, and to Daniel he assigned the name Belteshazzar, to Hananiah, Shadrach, to Mishael, Meshach, and to Azariah, Abednego.

40:51

Those were all variants of some of the gods of the Babylonians, and we'll look at the names and meanings later on.

41:00

So Daniel opens with a description of the aftereffects of the defeat of the Egyptian army at Carchemish, at Nezer in 605

41:09

BC. In August of that year, King Nabopolassar Nebuchadnezzar's father, died in Babylon.

41:21

As Nebuchadnezzar traveled home to receive the crown and claim the throne, he took with him the very best of the young men who lived in Israel, and some of the sacred vessels of the temple in Jerusalem.

41:31

Among those young men were Daniel and his friends. Nebuchadnezzar ascended to the throne September 6, 605.

41:38

Daniel would have been a teenager, probably a young teenager, 14, 15, 16, somewhere in there.

41:44

And already, he and his friends were considered the cream of the Israel crop.

41:51

Of course, the victorious Nebuchadnezzar took the vessels that he had confiscated from the temple in Jerusalem and placed them in the temple of Marduk, who was the main god of the

42:00

Babylonians at the time. This would have been the first of three deportations Nebuchadnezzar accomplished in Judah.

42:07

In 597 BC, Nebuchadnezzar invaded, this would have been what, eight years later?

42:13

Invaded Judah again, this time taking captive young Ezekiel, as well as many others. And then in 586

42:19

BC, the third invasion occurred when Mattaniah, whom Nebuchadnezzar had renamed Zedekiah, rebelled by making a treaty with the pharaoh of Egypt.

42:28

An 18 -month siege occurred, in which Jerusalem fell. Nebuchadnezzar put Zedekiah's eyes out and killed his sons, and he took he and many captives to Babylon.

42:38

So we're gonna have to close with this, and we'll finish the introduction in a couple of weeks. But there's much, much that is going to be looked at as we go through this, because it's rich with history.

42:50

And as, hopefully I didn't go through the slides as well as I would have liked to, but there was a period there that much of this prophecy is going to cover.

42:59

And these things happened 200 years after Daniel wrote them. And those prophecies were fulfilled in minute detail, specific detail.

43:08

Only the hand of God could have done this. And it is for those reasons, that reason and some others, that people reject the early date of the book of Daniel, simply because it was too accurate.

43:21

It was too good to be true, they say. But the scripture is not too good to be true. It is penned by the hand of an all -seeing, almighty, sovereign

43:30

God. And His word is true. And I would like to close with this, and the most important reason we accept the book of Daniel, among all the historical evidences that we'll look at, among all the linguistic evidences, among all the language, among all the archaeological evidences we have, the most important is that the

43:55

Lord Jesus Christ put His stamp on it. And He is God in human flesh. And if He said it was true, then brothers and sisters, it's true.

44:04

And it's a remarkable book. And it's going to be an interesting dive through it.

44:10

We won't even get started on it for at least two more weeks. But if you have questions, please ask them.

44:17

As again I said, if I can't answer them, I'll write them down and study them. We have others, and Jim has studied the book of Daniel.

44:24

Jess has studied the book of Daniel, right? You're going to this week though, aren't you?

44:33

It's a remarkable book. It is pinned at the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and we would do well to understand it.

44:40

Let's pray. Father, thank You for this book, for this rich history, for this opportunity to spend more time in Your Word and to be delighted by what

44:49

You have done and what You have said and what You will do. For You are the God of all creation, and to You belongs all glory, all honor, and all power.

44:57

And it is demonstrated ably in this book and in all the historical reverberations that have come down through time that show that You are the

45:07

God of all flesh. We thank You for that and look forward to hearing from You in this book.