Daniel Lesson 2

Education in the Kingdom of Man – Daniel 1:3-7

The book of Daniel divides into three parts; chapter 1, Daniel enters Gentile politics; chapters 2-6, Daniel’s career in Gentile politics; chapters 7-12, Daniel learns the outline of history and its connection with his people. In 2 Chronicles 36:15 we have the divine commentary on the fall of the nation and the disaster that struck in the sixth century; it also involved Daniel, his family and his loved ones. “The LORD God of their fathers sent to them,” that is both nations, northern and southern kingdom, “sent to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending, because he had compassion on His people, and on His dwelling place. [16] But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and misused His prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against his people, till there was no remedy.” In other words, the crisis of sanctification had reached such a point that sanctification could not proceed without drastic measures.

This same principle holds in our Christian life, you can have sanctification hang-ups and these things will go on and on and fester until the Lord Jesus Christ decides that the only way to straighten you out is to slam you up against a wall, and He will do this, and these severe forms of sanctification we see around us, sometimes they manifest themselves as mental illness, other times it’s physical illness, and they’re not mental and physical illness primarily, they are simply discipline from God.

Turn to the book of Daniel and we’ll begin the exegesis of the first chapter. We started with verses 1-2; we found a lot about the history. We found that the nation Israel in 930 BC had a civil war, the northern kingdom from that point forward called the house of Israel or Ephraim, lasted until 721 BC when the Assyrians destroyed Samaria. The southern kingdom, called the house of Judah, lasted until 587-586 BC and the fall of Jerusalem under the Neo-Babylonian forces of Nebuchadnezzar. Both parts of the nation went down according to order. Although it looked chaotic, and when the disaster struck from the human observer’s point of view, it obviously looked like no one was in control, but someone was in control for God had specifically said, in Leviticus 26 and in Deuteronomy 28, that the nation would have to suffer these specific forms of discipline if they continued to persist in negative volition toward the authority of God’s Word.

And so it was that a man by the name of Nabopolassar who appeared out of nowhere, nobody knows much about this man’s background, but he was able to unite the Chaldean feuding tribes, and in a few short years, 625 BC he appears out of nowhere, by 612 BC Nineveh, the capital of Assyria falls. By 609 BC he ascends his son, Nebuchadnezzar, to a place called Carchemish. Carchemish was a strategic point from a military viewpoint; it was the place where if you captured it you could control trade routes. As we will see later, the Babylonian Empire fought desperately to control trade because they had a national budget that was always in deficit situations. They were always spending more than they took in, like another country we can name. As a result, this weakened them to the point on the evening of the destruction of Babylon, the famous night when the handwriting appeared on the wall, by that time the national economic structure had been so weakened that they were a pushover militarily for Cyrus and the Persian army. In 609 BC the first battle was fought; the battle was fought between the rising powers of Babylon and to the southwest, Pharaoh.

In 605 BC we have a second battle; at this battle was decisively handled in favor of the Babylonians, and it was that time that hostages were taken. Nebuchadnezzar, coming back down after the battle stopped off at Jerusalem and he couldn’t trust the Hebrew kings because he knew they were double crossers, they were people who double crossed his enemies, and when you have someone who double crosses your enemy never trust them because they’ll double cross you. So he couldn’t trust them so he simply took hostages to guarantee that they would submit to Babylon.

This is how Daniel, as a young teenager, was taken into captivity. Daniel’s age at captivity can be estimated at less than 14 years old. Daniel, when he went into captivity, was Junior High age or less, which shows you the tremendous amount of Bible doctrine that his parents…we’re not really introduced to his family life, but his parents were faithful in teaching their child the Word of God, and his parents had to stand there and watch their child as a son of nobility imprisoned and carried away, probably never to see their son again. And you can imagine the crisis this had on both mother and father. But mother and father apparently were very strong believers for reasons which we’ll see in the text, and they knew one thing, that if they, in the early years of their child’s life taught them systematically the Word of God in the home, that the character of that child would be so molded that it would never be twisted again, that they had first crack at influencing the soul of their child.

This is why certain, very pompous educators today through Head Start and other programs want to take children out of the home, because they believe they are more competent than the parents are to teach them, and they recognize that the earlier you can get to a child the more strategically you can influence the child for the rest of his life. Daniel represents one of the most famous examples in the world of what you can do with a young child at an early age; that by the time the child reaches Junior High he basically has his spiritual foundations one way or the other. And people who fall apart in college and fall apart in their teenage years are basically children who never had the Word in the first place. That is, they never had it and obeyed it and developed systematic habits of obedience.

Now in verses 3-7 we have Nebuchadnezzar’s brainwashing program. It is the most fascinating study in education and it shows you some of the forces that are involved in the educational process and why great leaders in history have always recognized that you must control the educational channels if you are to control your people. Nebuchadnezzar, in these verses, is going to try to absorb Daniel into the Babylonian culture with his brainwashing program; that’s his objective, Daniel must be absorbed. Daniel represents an exclusive group of Jews that don’t fit and Nebuchadnezzar’s job is to design a brainwashing program that will make Daniel fit.

It starts in Babel, and that should tell us certain things about the whole program. Notice in verse 2 the word Shinar, that’s the location, Shinar. It’s an ancient name and the Holy Spirit, by including the noun Shinar in verse 2 intends that we revert back to where Shinar occurs earlier in Scripture. Also in verse 1 in the original it does not say “Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.” In the original text it reads: “Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babel.” Now turn to Genesis 10. This place is known in history and will be known in future history as a very significant spot on the face of this earth. The two geographic poles of conflict are Jerusalem and Babylon. Certain Christian apologists have suggested it is Jerusalem and Athens; that’s true to a small degree but to a basic degree it is Jerusalem versus Babylon.

In Genesis 10:11, “Out of that land he went forth,” talking about Nimrod, and from that land Nimrod “went forth to Asshur, and builded Nineveh,” and all the other cities. Notice Nineveh was a late creation of Nimrod. In other words, the base for the Assyrian civilization was formed after something else had been formed. What was the “something else?” The previous verse, verse 10, “And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel,” now Nimrod is the first king over a kingdom that the Bible records in history. This is the kingdom of man, and from this we have the norm and standard throughout the rest of Scripture; from this point forward Babel represents apostasy. Always Babel has that connotation; it represents the best, the greatest, and the most powerful anti-Christian movement in history. The roots of anti-Christian began at Babel. It began with an attempt to form one-world government, which attempt was destroyed.

In Genesis 11:2 it says, “And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. [3] And they said to one another, Come, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly.” And notice they made brick for mortar, “And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.” And the tower of Babel was originally, if we are to trust extra Biblical tradition, was invented to act as an insurance policy against another flood. Josephus records the fact that Nimrod sold the people on the building project as an attempt to bypass a judgment of God. So you can see the fist shaking in the face of God, because if God is going to judge us we will conveniently design some system that will inoculate us against God’s judgment. We can raise all the hell we wish and God cannot judge us; that is the spirit or Babel.

Therefore, since that was the spirit of the first world government, the first United Nations, God destroyed the people. In verse 7, “Come, let us go down, and there confound their language,” remember the word “confound,” we’re going to encounter it again in Daniel’s name. And the Lord “confounded their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” Whatever happened here was one of the most profound moments in human history. Ever since that moment the human race has been fragmented. No two people can communicate perfectly. Now God, you say it’s kind of silly; you argue, well look at all the trouble the missionaries have now, every time they have to go into a new country they have to learn the language; why all this problem? Why are all these barriers thrown up for communication? The reason is given in chapter 11; the reason is that no two men can get together on human viewpoint exactly the same way. In other words, Satan’s program to influence the human race will always have internal fragmentation. Satan can never produce, from this point forward in history, a perfectly unified system. Always there will be cracks in his armor; it’s guaranteed by the cultural fragmentation of Babylon.

So when we see the Babel kingdom smashed and we see it break into pieces, and these pieces go on down through history trying desperately to reestablish themselves, whenever we see the rise of a Babel type thing, such as the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire, in philosophy Hegel, Descartes, whatever the great empires, whether political or intellectual, they always die and they always fade away because of internal problems. And the reason is back here; God ordains that no kingdom, intellectual or political, will exit in history apart from His work of grace, that is, the kingdom of God.

So we find this thrust; over and over again Babel being fragmented tries to reestablish certain things. There are five points in the kingdom of man. First the promise of the kingdom of man; the promise or the goal, the reason why men always gravitate to reestablishing Babel and every great political leader has tried to do this, is ultimately man wants an autonomous destiny. That is, man corporately wants to build a society free from divine interference. This is the grand motive behind the great civilizations. This is the Biblical critique of culture, that at the root of it all is this dream that we can secure a social existence, intellectual existence or what have you, apart from divine interference. We do not want God interfering in any significant way. We must be free of the authority of His Word and we will be. So the goal of the kingdom of man is to attain a completely autonomous destiny.

The second thing you ought to know about the kingdom of man is how it is born. Whenever you have the rise of the kingdom of man it is always by conquest. It begins with Nimrod; Nimrod can’t secure voluntary allegiance to his program, He has to compel allegiance to his program. And always where the kingdom of man goes forward it will be based on deception and lies or it will be based on power politics. This has always been the thing, it goes back; in recent times the Third Reich would be a good example of a trying to reestablish Babel. The birth of the kingdom of man is always by enslavement. When the kingdom of man rises people always lose their freedom. The state is almighty.

A third thing you ought to know about the kingdom is its ethics. All ethics of the kingdom are basically subjective. It is the state, or it’s the 51% of the people that decide what is right and what is wrong. If 51% of the people decide that polygamy is correct then by definition it’s correct; if 51% of the people decide that deficit financing is not theft, as the Bible says it is, then deficit financing is all right, and so we go. Ethics is subjective; it is always out of the subjective consciousness of man. There is never an external authoritative reference point such as the Word of God.

A fourth thing that ought to be known about the kingdom of man mentality is that it expands, always wants to expand, and it expands by increasing state power, always when the kingdom of man expands it is never by voluntary allegiance; it is always by conquest just as it was born. It is always by gloating in the power of the state, so the state decides who can get married and who can’t; the state decides who will vote and who won’t; the state decides when you will educate your children and when you won’t. The state becomes, in effect, the fourth member of the Trinity.

And the fifth thing about the kingdom of man is its leadership. The leadership in the kingdom of man is not always the crooks and the people we say are immoral. That’s not the leadership. The leadership of the kingdom of man can be very skillful, very polite, very courteous and very well-cultured people. But they all have one thing in common; they have the satanic orientation of pride, that we will build a tower as it was manifested in Genesis 11, it will be our product. Maybe it’s clothed words which sound like this: let’s build it for the good of society, or let’s build it for some other goal, but always it is we will build, never a dependence upon the God of the Scripture, always we initiate.

Turning back to Daniel, Daniel faces the kingdom of man, and as I said, this is why Daniel is included in the wisdom part of the Bible. Remember the critics of Daniel make a point that the Scriptures in the Old Testament are in tripartite form, that is, there’s a first part, the Torah, the first five books of the Scripture; there is the Nabiim or the Prophets; and the Kethubim or the Writings. These are the Hebrew words for these three sections of the Old Testament. And the critic always laughs at the Christian who he thinks naïvely takes the authority of Daniel, and he says look, if Daniel is so authoritative how come it isn’t in the second section of the Bible, the Nabiim? How come it isn’t in with the Prophets? Why is it with the Kethubim or the Writings? And his argument is that Daniel was in the Kethubim because Daniel was written too late to be included in the second section, the second section of the Old Testament had already closed out, it wasn’t open for any more entries. And he has to do this because he must make Daniel late. Every non-Christian thinker and every Christian that doesn’t have his head screwed on must make Daniel late and by that he has to make Daniel written this side of 200 BC. He’s got to make Daniel written this side of 200 BC or he is face to face with astounding prophecy. And since the non-Christian perceives on the basis that the God of the Bible can’t reveal Himself; then in order to substantiate this presupposition he’s go to twist the Scripture until it fits his presupposition. So Daniel must be written late and he’ll warp and twist and do what he can to get it late.

Now our answer to this is that the tripartite division of the Bible is not chronological; the tripartite division of the Bible is topical, it’s not saying that one was written before the other. The Torah deals with the works of the priests; the priests were concerned with Torah. Torah means instruction; it’s the basic instruction for the believers of the Old Testament. The Nabiim is the work of the prophets; this amends and updates the Torah; it applies the Torah to social and political and economic conditions; it gives the judgments of God and so forth. The Nabiim are the addendums, the addition to the Torah. The Kethubim are the product of culture or chokmah or wisdom. And all the writings in the Kethubim, such as the Psalms, here you have skill in music; this is the hymn book of Israel. You have the book of Proverbs in the Kethubim; that’s skill in every day living. The Song of Songs is skill in sex. And the book of Daniel is skill, and the book of Daniel is written for believers suffering inside the kingdom of man. And for that reason Daniel is a political handbook.

Daniel gives you principles of when you can compromise without compromising. How can a believer live when compromising must made? We’ll see Daniel make some compromises here, and how can he make them and be morally clear with his God? How can he do this? The book of Daniel is written on when to compromise, when to keep your mouth shut and go along with the system, and when to open your mouth and fight the system. Some Christians think you have to fight at every point because we are inherently not positioned with it at every point and Daniel disproves this as an operating hypothesis. Daniel is in total opposition to the kingdom of man at every point but Daniel doesn’t choose to fight it at every point. There’s a difference.

So let’s look at Daniel 1:3 and watch the brainwashing program of Nebuchadnezzar as he attempts to amalgamate and destroy all national identity and just absorb all the children of all the peoples into his one great world culture. The idea of the one-world society hasn’t died with Nimrod. It’s popped up again, and when Nebuchadnezzar assumes the throne, he lives at the heart of Babel and at Babel he will build one-world culture. All nationalism, all cultural peculiarities must die off. Everybody must be absorbed into the great “one society.” And so he devises a very sophisticated system to take youths of royal families… now in verses 3-7 we deal just with the Hebrews but let’s look, Nebuchadnezzar had groups of the pre-Parthians, he had Assyrians, he had people from the Phoenicians, he had some Egyptians, he had the Hebrews and so on. In other words, view the book of Daniel as the experience of one Hebrew teenager who was in a class with all these teenagers from the other countries. Nebuchadnezzar’s attempt was to destroy their national allegiance and surrender to Babel; Babel must predominate. There must be no national allegiance. That means destruction of family authority.

Daniel can no longer have authority to his home, to his parents, he must surrender, because his parents are the older generation, his parents are already gone, they’re too absorbed in their national culture of Israel, and so we can’t vie with the parents. The way you start a new society is always with the youth; brainwash the youth, rip them out of the home and mold them into the society you want. So Hitler would have his youth, and you’d have the young people brought up in these great organizations because the older German families had too much of the old culture in them, we don’t bother with the old people, just let them die off and in 20 years we’ll be rid of them; that’s the attitude. But the young people have to be molded, and so the young people always become the targets of these utopians and the dreamers and schemers. Here it’s no different.

In Daniel 1:3, “And the king spoke unto Ashpenaz, the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring certain of the children of Israel, and of the king’s seed, and of the princes. [5] Children in whom was no blemish, but well favored, and skillful in all wisdom, and gifted in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king’s palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans. [5] And the king appointed them a daily provision of the king’s food, and of the wine which he drank, so nourishing them three years that, at the end of them, they might stand before the king. [6] Now among these were of the children of Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, [7] Unto whom the prince of the eunuchs gave names; for he gave unto Daniel the name of Belteshazzar; and to Hananiah, of Shadrach; and to Mishael, of Meshach; and to Azariah, of Abed-nego.”

So we have a renaming, and here’s an attempt to break down everything. The great contest in chapter 1 is who will win? Will the kingdom of man win, brainwashing from the outside in, or will Daniel’s parents win, and Daniel’s God, working from the inside out. It’s a battle for the soul of these young people. Who will win, and that’s the confrontation you’re about to witness in these verses. The confrontation is an issue of will or will not Daniel’s soul be changed by external pressure.

“Ashpenaz,” in verse 3, “the master of his eunuchs,” is one of the great officers in the court. We don’t know if the word “eunuch” here literally means eunuch or not. It’s a problem; originally the word meant that; it meant that because the great kings of the ancient world had harems, and a lot of girls running around the court, and so his most trusted males would always be castrated. It was an attempt to protect the harem. And that’s, frankly, why the eunuchs arose. It was just to protect the king’s girlfriends and to produce loyalty in the court. There was a second reason; the second reason was that being eunuchs they could never have children and since these men could never have children they would never have allegiance to getting their son into a high place. Their total life, the meaning of their life had gone, except to serve their master. And so making them eunuchs was a very critical political function. Egypt did it; we know that from the story of Joseph.

But later on the word “eunuch” came to mean just a dedicated officer, like sometimes we’ll say so and so is a monk, or he’s monastic or something, and what we really mean is he’s an ascetic type of person. We literally mean that he lives in a monastery. It’s the same here, the word “eunuch” came to mean a person dedicated.

So he’s the chief of the staff, this is the chief of staff of Nebuchadnezzar. “…that he should bring of the children of Israel,” now it should be translated not “and,” but “that he should bring certain of the children of Israel, that is, those of the king’s seed, and of the princes,” the king’s seed and the princes. In other words, there were many hostages, many Hebrew boys had been taken into hostage, but of those Hebrew boys taken into hostage there were some of royal blood. And so he assigned the chief of staff to go find out from the genealogies who had royal blood and who didn’t. Now if you were Daniel and probably scared sitting there, and you were all called to line up for roll call one morning, and the chief of staff walked in and said all right, I want you, you, you, you and you, report in there. It would look like everything was chaotic; now what do I do God? But even this, even this very act of calling in all the Hebrew males for roll call and pairing off those who were of royal blood, even that was a fulfillment of prophecy.

Turn to Isaiah 39:7; even this, what must have terrified him at first, being all alone in this foreign country, ripped away from his home; nevertheless, his life was in the hands of God Himself. They couldn’t touch a hair on Daniel’s head without approval from God. And so in Isaiah 39:7 we have a prophecy given centuries before to Hezekiah. Verse 6 for the context, “Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, saith the LORD. [7] And of thy sons that shall issue from thee,” that would be the royal seed, “whom thou shalt beget, shall they take away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” So we have a prophecy.

Now why was this prophecy given? Isaiah 39 is a very interesting incident of national foolishness. In Isaiah 39:1 it talks about “Merodach-baladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah; for he had heard that he had been sick, and was recovered. [2] And Hezekiah was glad of them,” and this is in verse 2 what Hezekiah did, it was one of the most stupid things diplomatically that any politician has ever done. We as a country have done this over and over again. How we have gotten around judgment so far is miraculous. But “Hezekiah was glad of them,” now who were “them.” The “them” refers to the Babylonians, his potential enemies, and so this is where diplomacy goes, and while it looks like he has détente, and he “showed them the house of his precious things, the silver, and the gold, and the spices, and the precious ointment, and all the house of his armor, and all that was found in his treasuries; there was nothing in his house, nor in all his dominion, that Hezekiah showed them not.” He gave them a complete inventory of the military weaponry of Israel. It’s all détente.

Isaiah 39:3, “Then came Isaiah, the prophet, unto King Hezekiah, and said unto him, What said these men? And from where came they unto thee? And Hezekiah said, They are come from a far country unto me, from Babylon.” Now that’s just an attempt to skirt around it because Isaiah had prophesied years before about Babylon. Verse 4, “Then said he, What have they seen in thine house? And Hezekiah answered, All that is in mine house have they seen; there is nothing among my treasures that I have not shown them. [5] Then said Isaiah to Hezekiah, Hear the word of the LORD of hosts,” and then he gave him the judgment and the prophecy of verse 7.

In other words, Hezekiah had very, very foolishly allowed a group and a nation that operated on non-Biblical principles to see the fruit and the culture of a nation that did operate on Biblical principles and to generate a national lust. America has tossed around its wealth to the point where ever two-bit idiot culture on the face of this earth envies Americans, and envy is a sin; we have stimulated the sin of envy nationally and diplomatically speaking. And here you have how it was dealt with then; God said okay, you started it, you pay the price. Daniel is part of the price.

Turn back then, having seen that Daniel 1:3 is not an accident, it just didn’t happen, it wasn’t just that one morning when the roster was called that he was faced with a trial bigger than the grace of God. It was just fulfilled prophecy. Daniel’s life was in the hand of God. And then it says, “bring me” two specifications, they must be “of royal seed, and of the princes.” Now that suggests that Daniel was a relative, a distant relative of Hezekiah, and that he could have sat on the throne of Israel at one time. Daniel, by the way, is of the tribe of Judah. Daniel, in one sense, becomes typical of the church in the age when Christ is not here. It’s a believer isolated.

Now with the word “princes” we come to our third critical problem. I told you as I go through this book I’m going to take a few breaks; a number of us are faced with discussions and attacks, particularly in this book, many university students here and you will certainly get hit somewhere along the line with these arguments, and I must prepare you. We’ve given two critical problems and their answers. Now we come to the third crucial problem; it concerns the word “princes.” The word is [sounds like: pa ra mim], and it has four consonants. When you have a noun with four consonants; when you have a noun with four consonants in the Hebrew it’s a signal that something is going on because Hebrew nouns have three consonants, not four, this last one is just an ending. But if you understand there is four, there’s something going on here. And sure enough, this appears to be a Persian word.

We’re introduced now to this third critical problem where liberals attack the book of Daniel. The argument is this: Daniel has loan words in it from post-Daniel time, therefore Daniel was written late. In other words, there are Greek words and there are Persian words in this book, and they say that proves the book was written later when the Persian and Greek words were circulating. The dictum was formed by S. R. Driver at the turn of the century; this was a famous dictum which he thought proved the late authorship of Daniel. Why are we so concerned to defend an early authorship of Daniel? Because it’s the only way we can preserve the doctrine of inerrant Scripture. Jesus said this was written by Daniel and He said it was written early. If you get wishy-washy on how you handle the book of Daniel you’re going to have to logical, dump Jesus in the basket because He is no longer authority.

S. R. Driver’s famous dictum went this way: (quote) “The Persian word presupposed a period after the Persian Empire had been well established. The Greek words demand, the Hebrew supports, and the Aramaic permits a date after the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great in 332 BC.” So according to Driver’s dictum, these words, like the one you just see, “prince,” proves a late authorship on the book of Daniel.

Now what is our response? I’ll only respond as part of this third critical problem to the Persian word; as we go through the book I’ll show you the Greek words and we’ll respond to those. At this point I only want to counterattack at the area of the Persian words. What about these Persian words. All right, there are 19 Persianal words in the book of Daniel. They are there, there’s no debate, they are Persian words. That isn’t the area of discussion. The argument that the liberal points out is that many of these are found only in late literature; that’s their argument, they are found only in late literature, which suggests that these are late words.

But the methodology of argument is a two-edged sword. I am now going to use the liberal methodology in reverse. We can show that 9 of the 19 words are found only in early literature, therefore the argument is invalid. The liberal says that the words are found only in late; that’s true for some of them, but half of them are only found in early literature. So that’s one answer. These answers are found in K.A. Kitchen, Notes on Some Problems in the Book of Daniel.

A further point in our response, not only are 9 found only in early literature, but all of these 19 words are old Persian, not middle Persian. In other words, the represent the [can’t understand word] Persian vocabulary, not the later Persian vocabulary. So if you’re going to argue on this basis, that Daniel was written late because it has Persian words in it, it would seem that if Daniel was written late he would have used the Persian vocabulary circulating in that late time, but he doesn’t. He uses archaic Persian words, and that’s unusual.

The third point that we make in response to liberals on Persian words is that by 200 BC the Greek translators of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, didn’t know what these words meant, so badly, they were so ill informed that when they translated them they made very sloppy translations. If Daniel was written late, why is it that in 200 BC the translators have lost the meaning of these words? Obviously because the words aren’t late; they’re very, very early. So therefore we do not pay any attention to the liberal argument that because Persian words exist in the book of Daniel it proves later authorship; it proves nothing of the sort, and any system of logic you use to try to use this to prove late authorship, I will use your same logic back against you to prove that it’s early authorship.

Daniel 1:4, “Children [youths] in whom there was no blemish, but well favored, and skillful in all wisdom, and cunning [gifted] in knowledge, and understanding science,” now this means that these people, including Daniel, were picked out for their potential skill in education. He wanted the cream of the crop and these are the people that you want to manipulate. You don’t bother with your inferior students; you get your most brilliant students and you feed them the wrong kind of information, or the slanted kind of information, and you produce towering giants for your cause. That’s always the way it worked.

I was at MIT, I can remember the cells that were working in Cambridge Massachusetts, the Cambridge Youth Council, how they siphoned off from the best kids in the class, and they’d meet together, and they’d get all the attention of the professors. And what were they doing? Simple, that way you produce your leadership for your cause, a very smart thing to do.

So Daniel was one of the top, it means well favored, “in whom was no blemish, but well favored” means physically they were attractive men, they were the kind that the Greeks always liked to have, the typical model of the Greek male. The Greeks wanted beauty in their courts, the pride of the kingdom of man. So we must have men who are handsome, men who are outstandingly handsome to be the eunuchs of Nebuchadnezzar. “And skillful in all wisdom,” the word skillful here, “skillful in all wisdom” is that they had a well rounded training. Remember this boy is only 14; we know he’s about 14 for the reason that the kind of training, this three year training was the ancient form of high school, so we guess that they were around 14. “…skillful in all wisdom, and cunning [gifted] in knowledge,” again the concept of exposure, these men were well exposed, the parents had given these kids a fantastic education. “…and had understanding” or discernment in science,” that’s not modern science; it’s the various skills of the ancient world.

“…and such as had ability to stand in the king’s palace” means members of his court. Now can you think of other men in the Scripture that had the same kind of experience as Daniel? Two stand out? When I list these two men you think of it for a moment, because when I list these two and add Daniel we have three fantastic examples you can use in your own personal life for inspiration so survive under very anti-Biblical positions. One man is Joseph. Joseph was trained in the culture of Egypt; he was taken away from his home, without any parents, without any guidance, all alone in a foreign culture, Joseph remained loyal to his God. Joseph was another man in the Bible, that’s explained in Genesis 41:37-45. The second man who qualifies to be included is Moses. Moses was taken away from his culture and from his land, brought up in a foreign culture with human viewpoint education, yet turned into one of the most astounding authorities of divine viewpoint. That’s given in Acts 7:22. So you have three Biblical examples of young men, brought up with no divine viewpoint in their life after their early years, who turn into spiritual giants: Joseph, Moses and Daniel.

From this we can draw some conclusions by way of application. It is possible to survive in a human viewpoint educational system. 1 Corinthians 10:13 apply to these three men, “No testing has taken you but such as is common to man,” that is you will never face a trial, no matter how ad you think your education is, you will never face a trial that either Joseph, Moses or Daniel didn’t face before you. They had more things going against them than you’ve got going against you. So the argument of 1 Corinthians 10:13 applied in your Christian life is simply this: if Joseph could do it, and Joseph worshiped the same God I do; if Moses could do it and Moses worshiped the same God I do, and Daniel could to it and Daniel worshiped the same God I do, then I can do it. So it is possible to survive in the human viewpoint system.

Another principle associated with all this is the key in all these men’s lives was their early years. Moses, remember, was brought up by his mother; his mother got herself appointed as nurse in Pharaoh’s household. Moses’ mother fed him divine viewpoint as she brought him up through the early years. All three of these men had that in common, that in their early years they had faithful parents who kept pumping them the Word of God, both in lip and in life. They surrounded these kids, to the point where they became teenagers a foreign culture could rip them out of the home, could try to squash them in a human viewpoint brainwashing situation, and it would never work; it failed every time.

Another principle to draw out of this, and that is human viewpoint education has truth in it; it isn’t truth itself but you can learn a lot from it. Where do you suppose Moses learned to write, so that he could write the Law? He learned to write it in Egypt. Where do you think that Daniel learned to write apocalyptic literature? We now know because archeologists have discovered apocalyptic human viewpoint literature written before Daniel. Daniel developed some of his literary style through his human viewpoint education; he used his education in terms of divine viewpoint. In other words, get your tools and that means an education, get some languages, get some basic tools, a working understanding of math, of science and you can use those tools your way. Just put up with the system and go along with it, and then when you get it all together, then drop your bomb, but wait until you get all your tools together. Take from it, if the system is there to give it to you then take everything you can get from it, and turn around and destroy it, but use the tools that you get from your education.

Now we follow church precedent; let me read you an astounding passage from Milton’s work. This is his famous one, Areopagitica, it’s actually his speech, which will astound more of you who have come up in strict fundamentalist upbringing, and this is one of the most famous addresses against censorship of pornography in the history of the world, against censorship of pornography. And it was written by the most strict Puritan of them all, Milton. But in the course of the discussion, in the middle of Parliament, he discussed this very point. He says:

“Not to insist upon the examples of Moses, Daniel, and Paul, who were skilful in all the learning of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Greeks, which could not probably be without reading their books of all sorts; in Paul especially, who thought it no defilement to insert into Holy Scripture the sentences of three Greek poets, and one of them a tragedian; the question was notwithstanding sometimes controverted among the primitive doctors, but with great odds on that side which affirmed it both lawful and profitable; as was then evidently perceived, when Julian the Apostate,” here’s the Roman Emperor, he’s going to try to destroy Christians. Now in these next few sentences we get a glimpse to what our brethren did centuries ago. Now let’s think if we in the 20^th century could produce this kind of repurtation. This is the reputation of your brothers and sisters in the faith centuries ago under the Roman Empire. Here’s what they did for Christ.

“When Julian the Apostate and subtlest enemy to our faith made a decree forbidding Christians the study of heathen learning: for, said he, they wound us with our own weapons, and with our own arts and sciences they overcome us.” Isn’t that a fantastic testimony to early Christians? They were so well schooled in the arts, in the sciences of Rome that they destroyed them with their own tools. Now that’s the objective you ought to have as a Christian. You like to have a little destruction, well you can have a godly kind of destruction but you’ve got to have construction first, you’ve got to learn, and then just do what the early Christians did, tear them apart; but wait until you get mastery of the tools. Suck the educational system dry of everything that it’s got to give you and then shoot it back like your brethren did centuries before; Daniel’s going to do the same thing. In here he’s going to learn certain things; at the end of verse 4 one of the things he’s going to learn is that “they might teach the writing and the tongue of the Chaldeans.”

The word “learning” is the word that means the books. Do you know what the books were? They were the books of astrology and divination. Daniel had to learn astrology. One of his big courses of study was astrology and you know when he gives his prophecy, his prophecy blows the whole root out from under astrology. How could Daniel have been so effective a warrior to destroy astrology in his time had he not been trained in it? And because his very training was in the field he knew exactly where to strike with divine viewpoint. Daniel was trained to strike, and trained at the enemy’s expense notice. What a fine education provided, his parents probably never could have afforded such a beautiful education, but here the apostate, the heathen, the pagan is providing the tab for the education: God’s humor!

Verse 5, “And the king appointed them a daily provision,” now this is where he’s going to make a difference, we’ll see next week why, “of the king’s meat, and of the wine,” now that’s what Daniel does not accept. He accepts the education but he won’t accept the food and the wine. “…so nourishing them three years,” that’s their high school, “that at the end thereof, they might stand before the king.” They had a brilliant system of education.

Now the final point, Daniel 1:6-7. Here’s another thing Daniel had to face. First he had to face education, verse 4. Then verse 5, he had to face the culture, the daily give and take of food and we’ll see later religious worship is involved in verse 5. He had to face that, the second point of pressure upon this young teenager. But then verses 6-7, the most insulting thing of all, the complete eradication of his testimony, the complete destruction of it in the eyes of his peers. Each one of these Jewish boys, all four of them, had names that testified to the grace of God.

The first one, Daniel; El is the word God, Dan is the word judge and it means God has judged. You can well understand his parents naming their boy Danel, God has judged, because they lived in the day when God judged their nation, and so the word Daniel is an attribute that God of the Bible, the God of the Hebrews is sovereign. So God has judged, not Baal, not anybody else, but God, the God El of Israel, has judged.

Then the next man, “Hananiah,” iah is the word for Jehovah, Hanan is grace, Jehovah has been gracious, a second testimony in their names; Jehovah has been gracious. Then “Mishael,” this is a very interesting one, you can see El on the end, learn to take these names apart, you don’t have to know Hebrew to do it but every time you see El on the end of a name, that’s God, that’s Elohim. This word is mi, who, and sha is translated like, his name means who is like God, who is like El. And then the fourth name, Azariah, the iah is Jehovah, it’s the short form of Jehovah, Azar is your word ‘Ezer, my helper. “Yah is my helper” was this boy’s name. So all four of these youths apparently were raised by very godly parents who named their sons for something about God’s character: God is gracious, God judges, He is my help, who is like God.

So the men had a public testimony. But in the kingdom of man you can’t have competing lines of authority; the kingdom of man needs to crush any allegiance to God above the kingdom of man; society must be the final end of it all. The state must be the final end of it all. But men will never tolerate a competing loyalty. But these men all have names that speak of the one who stands above the kingdom of man, who judges the kingdom of man. So these people stop their ears when they hear these boy’s names. These boy’s names had to be changed, we will not tolerate that in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar; that is false allegiance, it’s unpatriotic, it’s allegiance to a higher authority and we will destroy it. So they renamed the boys, and this is probably one of the great humiliations that Daniel had to withstand, particularly as we explain what these names mean.

Daniel 1:7, “…for he gave unto Daniel the name of Belteshazzar,” Bel is the name of the chief god of Babylon, it’s actually a contraction and it means may Bel protect his life. You see what they’ve done: God has judged, and they say oh, God has judged, well where has he left you little boy, he’s left you here all by yourself, you’re alone, your parents aren’t around so you know what, we’re going to name you because you need protection, your God judged your country thousands of miles away, you’re all alone, so we’re going to give you good protection, we’ll name you Belteshazzar, may Bel protect your life. So when Daniel walked around, everywhere Daniel had to sign his name, wherever he had to register for a course, he had to do it as “may Bel protect my life.” See what they were doing? Forcing and to destroy that testimony.

Then the next name, Hananiah was named Shadrach; it’s not clear form the original what this name means, the best guess is that it’s a misspelling of Marduk, that is that it’s a garbled version of Marduk, Marduk if the chief god of the pantheon, it’s another word for bel, bel Marduk. See Hananiah, Jehovah is gracious, forget Jehovah, you’re in Babel now and you worship Marduk, so you’ll be called Shadrach.

Now the most insulting of all is Mishael. This boy’s name meant who is God; Meshach means who is [not sure of word, sounds like: Atu], Atu is the moon god of Babylon. So they say your parents like to name you “who is God,” we’ll fix you, we’ll rename you, “who is Atu,” and everywhere you go you’re going to testify to the moon God. We will not permit your parents names to persist on your identity; we will eradicate your identity; when we get through with you you’re going to be absorbed into Babylonian culture.

And finally the last name, Azariah, and here is the most ironic name of all. What did we say Azariah was? Jehovah is my ‘Ezer, Jehovah is my helper, and what do they name him? Abed-nego. “Abed” is the Hebrew word for slave, “nego” is another rendering of nebo, the god; I am the slave of Nebo.

How would you feel to have your identity erased like that? With the sweep of the pen of the chief of the eunuchs, erases all of your identity and all of your testimony. And that’s the battle that is going to be in the coming chapters of this book, a battle that people still face in their educational system. The battle is if you eradicate the external names, eradicate the way these kids dress, change it all, put them in an educational system, can you change their soul? And Daniel is going to be one of the mighty testimonies that you can change a guy’s name, you can make him wear a different uniform, you can plug him into a different system, but you’re not going to change his soul, the Word of God lives and abides and once it’s rooted into the soul, nothing can change it. That’s the big message of the book of Daniel. Prophecy is there, but prophecy is only as an aid to preserving your identity in the midst of the kingdom of man.