Is the Book of Daniel the guide to modern politics?

All right, here we are with Dr. Mark Clark. I'm so excited to have a new guest on. Mark, I'm so excited to talk to you. I'm so excited to get into our topic today. Today, Dr. Mark Clark is joining us.

He is a emeritus professor of national security. Oh gosh, I already screwed it up. We practiced so much. I'll let you go ahead and introduce yourself.

Yeah, emeritus professor of political science and national security studies. I did that for 34 years, so, yep.

Amazing, well, it's pretty cool how we got connected through Dr. Hugh Ross, who hasn't even come on yet, and yet here we are talking before him, but I think that the topic today, I mean, once we spoke, you talked about your previous experience in political science, national security.

We talked about UFOs, but one of the highlighted factors was your work with Daniel, and I think I hadn't even read Daniel at that point. I read the book in a day. It was obviously very short, but just so enthralling.

I never got bored, which is typically what drives me away from the Bibles. I start losing my train of thought, and I just thought this is such a perfect opportunity for us to dive into maybe a book that a lot of early Christians overlook.

I mean, once I read it, I was talking about it to everybody, but how did you go from national security, let's back up, to studying the Bible? Tell me about your story.

From the Jesus People Movement to Marine Corps Bible Study

So it goes back a little bit further. I became a Christian in high school, but it was with the Jesus People movement. If you see the movie or seen the, I think it's a HBO or Netflix production, Jesus Revolution.

Yeah, yeah, I heard about that.

Yeah, so they spread out, and they went around, and they spread the gospel. It took with me, which surprised me. I didn't expect that, but it didn't stick, at least for a while, and mainly because I thought it was more of an emotional high at the time.

Oh.

And once the emotional kind of high, the two to three weeks later kind of wore off, I thought, well, okay, and I went about my life, but that was probably sophomore in high school, and then I went in the Marine Corps, and while I was in the Marines, God kind of confronted me with the fact that although I was really physically fit, really good, I would get, I'd get promoted all the time at every place, but there was a point at which I got really interested in the Bible.

There was a guy that came on ship. I was stationed in Japan, Yakuska, Japan, for two years, and there was a guy who was very studious about the Bible, and he studied from the ancient languages, Hebrew and Greek, and I got fascinated by that, and I started doing it, but one of the guys that he came on with by this time had become pretty anti-Christian, and he just looked at me, he goes, are you reading that?

And I won't say the right, the word he said, but junk too, and I said, nah, I'm just looking at it. Boom, turn off a light, and God held up a mirror to me and said, you're brave on the outside, but you're a moral coward on the inside, and it was like, oh my, it stunned me.

It stunned me.

What do you mean he held up a mirror, like a voice in your head?

Yeah, literally, all of a sudden, a thought, and I could see myself as a coward. That's what it felt like, and I thought, ooh, this is so discrepant. Shaking. Yeah, so discrepant with my image of myself.

So that began a process, and I actually turned that light back on, and I said, I guess I am, and he just looked at me and shook his head, so,.

But I knew I actually take it back.

Go ahead.

Yeah, but you know, it's a process. As you know, as you become a Christian, it takes a while, and I was in the Marines, and there were a lot of people where I was that were pro-Christian. They weren't anti-Christian.

They're indifferent to it, mainly, but some were very anti-Christian. So you kind of had to really learn how to defend your faith and grow, so that's how I got started, but it was being in the Marine Corps that led me to be interested in international politics, and so I went out, after Marines, went into college, studied ancient history, and then went on to study international relations, and then landed this job in national security.

So what's fascinating to me is I learned international politics, foreign affairs, national security, Russian language, all these things, but I didn't quite know how to understand politics, and Daniel became a very fascinating character to me.

Here was someone that was taken, and we'll talk more about it in a little bit, but here was someone taken out of his home, taken to a foreign land. Everything is contrary to what he grew up with and believed in, and yet he thrived politically, and so I became fascinated with the study of Daniel, and I began teaching it at church, and what I found when I taught the book of Daniel, it changed me.

It changed me in a number of ways that I can talk about, but it really changed other people as well. They began to have a higher view of God's sovereign control over history. Even though we all kind of acknowledge God as sovereign, it's an attribute, what does that mean for me personally?

What does that mean for me politically? What does it mean for international politics? And if you think about what's going on in the world today, China's on the move, Russia's on the move, Iran, North Korea, battles are going on, war with Hamas and Israel.

The US seems to be diminishing in power. How do we think about that? And so Daniel captivated me because he was someone that lived in the middle of it and succeeded in a foreign empire, two empires, Babylon and then Persia.

And so that actually, like I said, it changed me in the sense that you mentioned Hugh Ross. He's president, CEO, now he's retired of that, but of reasons to believe, and he asked me early on in my career to be his co-host on his television show, and I think I told you this line.

He was trained in physics, astronomy, mathematics, quantum mechanics. I was trained in international politics, national security, Russian language. So I consider myself, but the point was, he would get questions or he would develop ideas and show how it related to faith.

And then I would have to be able to repeat it so that the audience would understand it. So I called myself the intellectual crash dummy for Hugh Ross because, you know, quantum mechanics, I mean, I was able to handle it and manage it and give it back, but after that, driving home, it's like, I could not repeat it.

It was so alien to the way we think.

UFOs, the Occult, and a Christian View of Extraterrestrials

And you also, so tell me more about the TV show because you guys talked about some pretty hot topics. I mean, UFOs is a pretty hot topic. How did that play into the biblical conversations?

Sure, that's interesting. Actually, you know, Hugh had been in ministry as well as teaching and as well as astronomy. He eventually became the evangelist at our church in Sierra Madre. And he would go out to groups and visit people.

And of course, the subject of UFOs would come up all the time. The occult, UFOs, cultic things. We eventually co-wrote a book together on that topic. And this was in 2002. We didn't name it this, but this is what the publisher named it.

Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men, a rational Christian perspective on UFOs and extraterrestrials. So I was asked to come in because he could talk about the science. Is it possible, you know, space travel?

We brought in Ken Samples who really knows the occult. He knows the paranormal. He used to research for Walter Martin, Bible Answer Man. And I was brought in because I knew the government and I knew military stuff.

Is the military hiding things? Are they reverse engineering technology? So that was our, that's how we got to write that. And of course, then we've done and published a number of blog pieces on it as it continues to evolve.

So that was our collaboration back in the day. So early 90s, I was his co-host. Early 2000, I wrote that. And then last six years now, I'm called a scholar, member of the scholar community for reasons to believe.

I think we have over 200 PhDs, THDs, JDs, people like that, MDs that are a member of this group.

It's an amazing movement that Dr. Ross is starting. I'm so excited that he's introduced me to you and the future people that we're already meeting just because his message is so, I'm in academia, I believe in God.

There's no reason my intellect to this level can't be translated in understanding God.

To a certain level.

And I just, I hope that we can share this with more people because I agree that it's at such a high level. But I've also met a lot of academia and a lot of academics who are very secular and they kind of, it diminishes that spiritual aspect of learning.

It only goes to a certain depth. And then once it hits God, it kind of like, I don't know, bottoms out.

You know, it's interesting you say that. I'd say there's more people in academia who are Christian than you would know.

Really?

The anti-Christian voice, the secular anti-Christian voice comes from academia, but that's how it trickles down to society. But there's, I know in my department alone, there's

That's amazing.

Four of us, three are evangelical, one's Catholic. Maybe there's a fourth or fifth now, I should say.

Oh, that's such good news.

Oh yeah, and that's just in our department. In math department, there are more as a percentage of the department. Yeah, but they're not, we tend not to be as outspoken as radical about our beliefs. We tend to be, and I think it's in part, you know, 1 Peter 3 .15 tells us, commands us, always be prepared to give a defense for the hope that's in you, yet with gentleness, reverence, respect, and a clear conscience.

And so our approach is not to be confrontational. I mean, some are, some Christians are, let's just face it. Some Christians are pretty obnoxious, you know, they hit you over the head with a 98 pound Schofield reference Bible, but that wins no one to Jesus Christ.

So that's not what we do. So anyway, I would say there's more out there than you know, but you're right, I would say predominantly, the dominant narrative, both in academia and in our culture is naturalism and non-religious, I should say.

So that's, and it has been since the enlightenment and it's gotten progressively more so that way. So anyway.

That's really positive news. And before we get too far, UFOs, do you think that aliens are reeling on earth and contacting us?

Maybe I'm one. No, I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

That's a complex subject. What I would say is the vast majority of UFO sightings, the vast majority of UFOs, our thesis or our hypothesis is that we have what's called the R-UFO, the residual. What I mean by that, what we mean by that is 99 .5 of everything that's considered a UFO will eventually be an IFO.

That is, it'll become identified with enough time and research. So it's either manmade stuff, military secrets, or it's spoofing of sensors, or it's natural occultations in the atmosphere, or it's balloons.

I mean, the Chinese spy balloon a year ago, remember that? But there's a variety of things. Drones now are crowding the airspace. So long story short, I do not believe aliens from another planet are visiting us.

However, we are being visited, but they're not friendly. And there you are, and I'll leave it at that. So that's for another time.

Oh, oh my gosh. That's amazing. That's such a great place to end. Okay, let's get into,.

Because if we don't stop now, I won't.

That's amazing. Okay, wow, I'm intrigued. Let's get into Daniel. So I always like to approach characters in the Bible from a very human approach of who were they at that time? What was going on in the world at that time?

What was he doing? Where was he at in society? Kind of, let's humanize him in a 2024 context. Would he be lower middle class, upper middle class? What kind of job would he be working? Just so we can kind of put ourselves in his shoes.

Help me paint the picture.

Daniel’s Royal Background, Exile, and Trauma

Okay, well, it's highly likely that Daniel was a descendant of Hezekiah. We see it in Isaiah 39. Hezekiah invites, at this time, this is pre-Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon. This is 100 years before. There are some envoys that come to Judah, and Hezekiah, the king, allows them to visit the temple.

And it's really in violation of the temple laws. And he's showing the wealth. He's proud of what's happening. And Hezekiah was otherwise a very righteous king, one of the last of the righteous kings of Israel, or of Judah.

But as a punishment, Isaiah tells him, God promises that because of what you did, some of your descendants will be taken captive to Babylon. And along with that, a lot of the temple treasure was. And that happened in 605 BC.

Daniel was taken, likely he and his three friends were taken in 605 BC. Let me give you a little bit of, go ahead, did you have a question there? I don't wanna interrupt.

Were they just them? Or was it like a whole mass of people were moved out of the city and they were included?

It was likely just those four, the early stages.

Really?

That's 605. But in 597, there's another migration. Now it's a lot more people. In 586, there's a bigger one because Nebuchadnezzar gets fed up with Judah's rebellion and comes and conquers Judah again, destroying Jerusalem and the temple and takes a lot of people back.

Now, why I say that is there's a couple of major players, political players internationally going on. Around 722, there was this big empire up to the north called Assyria, A-S-S-R-Y-A-I-A. Assyria was this massive empire.

And in 722, it conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the 10 tribes, so there's only two left. And it deported all those. What Assyria's policy was, to take people from the conquered territories and redistribute them throughout their empire.

And that way they would never launch a rebellion. Babylon was different when they conquered in 605. They, along with the Medes, destroyed the last remnants of Assyrian empire in 620, probably about the time Daniel was born.

But Babylon had a little bit different policy. They only took people they needed for work projects. So they took them in small increments. And the reason for this makes sense. If you think about mass migrations, I mean, we have this problem in the United States and in Europe, around the world.

You can't house them, you can't bring them into society very effectively. Babylon decided to do it in very small increments so they could assimilate into the culture, into the society, have jobs, work on projects.

So Babylon was a different policy than Assyria. They also did the same thing to prevent rebellion, but they were more selective about how they did it.

So Babylon came into Judah and took a few people to start assimilating because they wanted, they needed them for specific projects to help boost their economy. But Babylon came in to Judah, took a few people, and then later took a lot more people.

Correct.

As Judah continued its rebellions. Not just Judah, but it was also Edom and other surrounding territories. So in the whole Levant, yeah, in the whole Levant, all the way into Egypt, probably took some Egyptians.

And this is what's interesting about Daniel and his friends. They would have been just captives like all these other people. And what Babylon wanted to do, at least in this first round, at least that's what the text of the Bible says.

We don't know outside of that. It could have taken more, but the only four that are mentioned are Daniel and his three friends. So they take them and they introduce them to the court of Babylon. And then they, you know, but let's think about what happened.

Daniel was probably around 15. The reason why we surmise that, we don't know. He could have been 13. He could have been 18. But Daniel continues in power until about 539, 538 BC. So he was an 80 plus year old man by the time he ends his time and he's writing the book of Daniel.

So he couldn't have been too old by this time. So you asked earlier, would he have been employed? Probably not. He was still, you know, just attained to maturity.

And he was stripped from his family.

Stripped from his family, his culture, his religion, forced march 900 miles, given a pagan name, which should have been anathema to a religious Jew. And then, and this is harsh. A lot of commentators shy away from talking about it.

He was probably emasculated. So his testes would have been cut off. This is typical of ancient empires that when they put people in the court, they stripped them of their manhood so that they couldn't interfere with the harems and things like that.

Now, as you can imagine, that would create a lot of trauma. And I don't, we'll get into that a little bit later, but you know, even without the emasculation part, which we don't know for sure, but it doesn't say in the Bible.

I think losing your family is like pretty bad trauma.

Yeah, there's a lot going on here. So, and I think that's one of the things I would say about the book of Daniel. If you want to read it, read it, try to read it, not like a kid's story, but like a grownup story, a real historical character, someone that suffered very severely, and yet he flourished while his time was there.

Yeah.

And so he and his three friends, their forced march, what I think is that how he managed to, and the reason why I say, I think he avoided the trauma of captivity is that we do not see evidence anywhere else in the whole book of Daniel that he displays the kind of character or behavior that's consistent with someone who experiences trauma.

Trauma is typically defined as someone who believes the past is an ever-present reality.

And let me They're a victim to it.

Victim, they're still a victim, right? They haven't somehow taken agency over.

They're stuck in that victim mentality of what was me, this happened to me, rather than a victor, and I survived it.

Right. So let me give you a quote from Psalm 137. It's one of the more interesting psalms in the Bible. And this is, the psalmist here is at least indicated in the text that I've read. He's likely back in Jerusalem.

So he's already been released, and yet the past still haunts him. And he says this, by the rivers of Babylon, we sat and we wept when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars, we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us to sing for songs of joy.

Our tormentors demanded songs of joy. They said, sing to us one of the songs of Zion. But how can we sing the songs of the Lord in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill.

May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy. Remember, O Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. Tear it down, they cried.

Tear it down to its foundation. And this is true. Edom were mortal enemies of Judah at this time. O daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us.

He who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. This is in the Bible.

This is just Major revenge.

Yeah, this is someone who's living as if the past is still an ever-present reality and harbors revenge. We do not see this from Daniel anywhere in his life. Nor do we see it from his three friends. So there's something unique going on with Daniel and his friends.

I don't think it's just because he was a royal, you know, descendant of royalty, but he might've had something going on in his life that was, he had a lodestar, like he had a north star. And in fact, my thesis from my study of Daniel and maybe for our talk here today is that because Daniel led an exemplary life of faith during historic political events because he committed to God's kingdom purposes for his day.

Because he did, he models how we may live exemplary lives of faith by committing ourselves to God's kingdom purposes for our day, even in our troubled political times, not just domestically, but international.

So I think he's a, you know, the book of Daniel is not a didactic book. Have you heard of that term? It means a teaching book. It's not prescriptive. It's not teaching you, it's not giving you commands.

This is how you should behave. It's an example of how we might want to think about behaving. So it's a, does that make sense?

Kind of like Job, would you say?

Yes, although there's some, yeah. And you have to be careful with Job because there's some things they say, right. And some, not Job, but his friends, there's some very good things they say are right, but they have a very different perspective than Job.

Yeah, yeah. No, that's a great way to pick up Daniel is kind of, you know, if I were to live a good Christian life, this is what it would look like because of the way that Daniel just like lets the governance of God take over every aspect.

Like with trauma, he didn't fall victim to that. He overcame that when it came to, you know, his political relationships, he governed it so, so I want to say Christianly, but you know,.

Like God focused.

And even with the way that he spoke to people in the face of people trying to throw him in a den of lions, he still had so much respect and gentleness and love and patience and peace in him.

And that's, as you can imagine, that's really hard, especially when you're being abused, you know, the way he was. What's interesting to me is Daniel didn't take his stand. He didn't fight Babylon on anything except he wanted to remain set apart.

And that's why he, in Daniel chapter one, asked for this restrictive diet of vegetables. And then he's brought into other things. So he develops this great respect for authority.

Yeah.

You know, the scriptures in the Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, that's the ancient literature, the Tanakh, rebellion is considered something like a sin of divination. It's considered evil. If a child rebels against their parents and is a consistent, unrepentant, rebellious person, that could be considered a candidate for stoning at some point.

So Daniel shows high regard for, you would imagine, his family, though we don't have a record of it, but he certainly does a Babylonian authority.

Who captured him, he has high regard for.

Yeah.

And we have trouble respecting our own president who's never even met us.

Yes. And yeah, a lot of our political authority, not just our president.

Exactly, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So when I approach a book like the book of Daniel, and I think in our preparatory discussion, one of the things that you asked was how do we read the book like a book of Daniel or any book?

I begin to ask a series of questions. And I always read, even if it's apart from the Bible, I ask with a series of questions. What can I learn from this? What new things can I gain? How can I, what can I infer that will be useful for my life?

But with this one, especially with the book of Daniel, how would I have reacted to what he went through if I lived in his sandals, if I walked in his sandals?

Yeah.

How did he survive the trauma of captivity? That one is very interesting to me. How did he succeed? How did he flourish in a very alien environment? I mean, a foreign land that was pagan.

Yeah.

So it's those kinds of questions you can ask about any of the books of the Bible. You know, probably the closest person he resembles is Joseph, who was sent into captivity in Egypt and flourished and then saved the family later on.

So yeah, there's some really good things from the book of Daniel.

Daniel 1: Faithful Separation and Respectful Wisdom

And I think that even just like jumping right into the book, you know, in Daniel one, I think, you know, I think that he governs very well. I think that he survived trauma very well. But I don't think that we should overlook that his gifts that came out and kind of led to his success of being able to interpret dreams without being told the dream itself or surviving lions, essentially because he appealed and was obedient to God at the beginning, they tried giving him, let's say they tried giving him fast food and alcohol and beer.

And he said, I don't wanna eat fast food and beer. I just want water and veggies. I'm gonna appeal to you. The first appeal in Daniel one 11, it says Daniel one 17 to these four young men, God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning.

And Daniel could understand visions.

And dreams of all kinds.

So that knowledge and that ability that caused his success wouldn't have happened had he not been obedient and submissive to God and what God asked at the forefront.

Yeah, I would agree. Let me go back one more thing though, just before we get into that, because I don't know that we can understand his giftings apart from his, what was God's purposes, God's kingdom purposes in his day.

Jeremiah 25 writes about it. If you go to, when you go to Babylon, he writes a letter, this is a little bit later, but he had prophesied the conquest by Babylon. Daniel knew that Judah was being disciplined by Babylon for their rebellion against God.

He knew that. And then Isaiah had this great kind of

It's so weird to think of countries as people being disciplined.

Yes, absolutely. Especially God's covenant people, okay? In the Old Testament, in the Tanakh, God's covenant people were Israel and then Judah. And then since the New Testament, since Jesus Christ, it is then Christians.

And there's not one nation, we don't associate. In fact, we're called a nation of priests now. We're not a nation of kings, right?

So when we punish a nation, it's the nation of Christians, not a physical

It's actually Christianity. It's Christians themselves.

Wow, that's a total mind shift.

Okay. Well, let me just throw this in because there's this remarkable prophecy, but it's kind of a statement of God's kingdom purposes for Judah. And this is where I think Daniel latched onto this, particularly maybe on his trek to Babylon, maybe before, certainly by the time he gets there.

Isaiah 49 .6 says this, it is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. And I will make you a light to the Gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.

Now that was for Judah. But Daniel, I think, took it to heart because if we look at all of his stuff, that what he does, he lives by this. It's sort of his version of Matthew 28 .19. Go out and make disciples around the world and then the end will come.

This is their version of it. And Daniel exemplifies this because everyone that comes in contact with Daniel recognizes he serves the sovereign God. And he makes him, so God made him a light to the Gentiles.

In Daniel chapter nine, he does one of the appeals that we won't talk about, but he appeals to God for the restoration of Israel. And that begins the process. Cyrus the King, who conquers Babylon, starts writing an edict that restores Judah to its homeland.

And it takes about 100 years for it to complete. It doesn't ever fully complete. Many people, many Jews still continue to live in Babylon and actually scattered even eastwards from there. But I think that's a key thing for Daniel.

If that's his lodestar, if that's his frame of reference, then he decides everything around that.

In the New Testament

Which is how we should.

Jesus himself said, seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.

I think that's what I love so much about Daniel as like, I'm just gonna call myself an early Christian because there's so much I don't know. I've been a Christian for years, but still I don't know this.

And the whole Bible to me, it seems like is like, do this, don't do this, do this, don't do this. And then there's Daniel that's like, if you wanna know what that looks like, here's a perfect example.

And that's what makes Daniel so good is it's this is how you handle God at the centerpiece in trauma, in relationships, in difficulty, conflict, government, your job. Like, how should you be a good Christian at work?

Read Daniel. You know?

Yeah, yeah. So let's get to Daniel chapter one and we'll talk about that. So, yeah. So Daniel one, he's confronted by this fact that he's gonna have this diet and it's the choice food from the king's table.

Now, a lot of modern commentators who are Christian look back and they interpret that through the prism of the New Testament. And because Paul talks about it, because to the Jew, eating pig meat was anathema, Levitical laws.

And then there's this idea that, well, it's okay now. But we don't really know what the court food was consistent of. It could have been that. We don't know when kosher or koshering came about in Jewish history, but it might've begun here in, it might've happened before, according to Levitical laws, but it probably certainly happened after this.

Now, what's interesting about this is that wine is not considered against the Bible. It's okay. So why did Daniel choose to eat vegetables and no wine? So part of it is, and if you notice, he tells his leader, let me not defile myself.

The way he phrases it is brilliant. It's not, you're defiling me. He's not putting it in an offensive way. He said, let me not defile myself and ask for them to test. And this is where I think he shows great amount of respect.

He allows the guard to judge whether he looks fair or fatter, is the way that King James puts it, than the others. And he and his friends, they, one, pray about it and they commit to it, and they looked healthier than everyone else.

Now, I think what's really interesting, certainly wine was not prohibited. Perhaps there was pig serve, but really the key thing to me is in the Old Testament and the ancient world, and in many parts of the world to this day, when you go to someone's house, when someone invites you in and gives you their food and you share a meal, you identify with them.

You're saying, I'm one with you. And something like this with Daniel, he would have been identifying as a king's man, right? So how do you remain separate? He didn't reject being called Belteshazzar, a pagan name.

He didn't reject being forcibly captured. He didn't reject if he was emasculated, but he changes the thing and he allows them to judge him. So it's a very respectful way in which he does this.

He doesn't put his foot down and say, I'm not gonna do that and draw a boundary. He more so says, oh gosh, how would you put this? He more so says, I'll let you do this, but let's try a different way in a way that he finds a middle ground.

Really, really well.

Yes, and that's the brilliance of Daniel. This is why in Ezekiel, he's called one of the top three most wise and righteous people in the Bible. He finds a very practical solution that alleviates the guard's fears.

Cause if the guard sees Daniel suffering, the king does, the guard will be put to death. So he has respect for the guard, for the whole system there. And he allows the guard to make the tests. And that way it elevates God's sovereignty, right?

It shows that God can take care of Daniel. He doesn't need the king's choice food. Oh my gosh. Now think about that. I mean, we're called to be separate part of, in, but not of this world. This is the example where Daniel does that.

He lives in Babylon, but he's not of Babylon. He's not part of the culture. He's gonna be seen as separate the whole time he lives. In fact, if we get, when we get to Daniel chapter six, when he gets tossed in the lion's den, his practice is to pray publicly, faces towards the temple in Jerusalem and prays publicly three times a day.