Daniel Lesson 33

Prophecy Background – Daniel 9:1

 

[Tells about trip to Israel]  We resume our study of Daniel in chapter 9:1 and in order to have some continuity of thought I’d like to take a few minutes to review some of the important principles about the book of Daniel.  Daniel is what we call an apocalyptic book, an apocalyptic piece of literature.  Apocalyptic means hidden, and Daniel is called an apocalyptic piece of literature because it, along with Ezekiel and Zechariah are written in highly symbolic language and the question arises, why is there apocalyptic literature in the Bible; if God wanted all men to understand the Bible then why didn’t He write is simply enough to be understood by all men.  The answer is that God wrote certain parts of the Scripture to be understood by all men and other parts He reserved and the apocalyptic portions of God’s Word are reserved for those who have personally trusted in Jesus Christ and have grown a certain degree in the Christian life. 

 

In the first century the schedule of Christian maturity as far as we can judge from the book of Hebrews was approximately five to ten years; after that period they considered you to be a mature believer.  And for a person who had studied in the Old Testament prophecy and had studied the claims of Jesus Christ for 5-10 years was then in the position of being able to study Daniel and read it and understand it because the symbols would be familiar.  So apocalyptic literature is hidden literature and it is addressed not to the unbeliever, not to the outsider, but to the insider, the person who has already a spiritual relationship with the Lord. 

 

Daniel also is in a strange part of the Old Testament.  In the Hebrew there are three parts to the Bible; there is the Torah, the first five books; the Nabiim or the prophets, men like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, and so on.  And then the last part, the Kethubim, or the writings.  Each part of the Old Testament has a certain emphasis.  The Torah is Law; this emphasizes the dos and the don’ts.  There are 613 different commandments and those commandments are in there because the laws in the Torah is a definition of love.  Jesus said “if you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”  And because the word “love” has no content whatsoever, the word love always has to be used with revelation and law.  So law defines the content of love, and thus the Torah is first to define what it means to love God.  The Nabiim expands the Torah and applies it to new situations in history; they advance revelation. 

 

The Kethubim, the third part of the Old Testament, emphasizes wisdom.  In the Kethubim are detailed instructions on every day life; in the book of Proverbs there are discourses philosophically directed toward the world system, humanism and rationalism that came up later on with the Milesian thinkers in Greece, these have all been anticipated by King Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes.  It is a complete overview of man’s autonomous reasoning.  And actually Solomon anticipated recent existential thought some centuries and centuries before western world got there, but it’s all anticipated.  And so Ecclesiastes is his wisdom in the area of philosophy.  The Song of Songs is wisdom in the area of sex, both as to mechanics and as to the relationship in other areas of marriage.  That’s in the Bible for detailed instruction.  Then we have other sections of the Old Testament in the third part, and one of those sections is Daniel.

 

What should strike you unusual, as we’ve mentioned before, is why is a book so obviously prophetic, so obviously full of prophecy, not placed among the Nabiim; not placed in the second section where all the other prophets are but left for the third section.  Now the Holy Spirit doesn’t make mistakes and the Holy Spirit doesn’t operate by chance, and the Holy Spirit operates in a very, very specific way so He must have a specific reason for assigning Daniel to the third part of God’s Word. We’ve emphasized, therefore, that the book of Daniel is primarily not a book of prophecy; it is a book of wisdom, wisdom on citizenship obligations, how to live in a politically hostile environment.  It was originally written to prepare the Jew for the wars of the Maccabees, and also to prepare the Jews for the days of the tribulation.  And there are certain political principles that you can obtain from the book of Daniel.  So Daniel is wisdom, emphasis on the application, very much different from what often happens with this book.  People go to one prophecy conference after another; prophecy conferences are fine but there’s a certain kind of mentality that gets started and you’ll take some person and they get high on prophecy and that’s all they can talk about, and the point is that they never see where it applies today. So the book of Daniel is a warning to us that this is not just prophecy, that isn’t even the main purpose of the book.  The main purpose of the book is to offer stability for the believer inside the kingdom of man.

 

We’ve covered Daniel up through the first 8 chapters and we’ve seen that Daniel has a structure.  In Daniel 1 we have Daniel entering Gentile politics.  It’s the story of as a young captive he survives his teenage years and works his way in, that’s through the Holy Spirit, he works his way into the hierarchy of the Babylonian Empire.  And from chapters 2-6 we have Daniel’s career outlined.  We have it all the way from the beginning under Nebuchadnezzar all the way to the end under the Persians, complete chronological sequence.  Beginning with chapter 7 and continuing through chapter 12 the chronological sequence is broken.  Observe this, chapters 2-6 are all written chronologically.  That is, they are a biography of Daniel’s life in politics.  At chapter 7 things stop and he goes back, ignoring now, chapter 7 does no chronologically follow chapter 6, chapter 7 goes back and now he goes back through his career and tells us his visions, his dreams and his prayer.  So from chapter 7-12 we have emphasis on Daniel’s understanding of Israel’s history, whereas chapters 2-6 discussed his career in Gentile politics and therefore we would be interested in chapters 2-6 because there we have information on our history.  But chapter 7-12 has emphasis on Israel’s history, the history of the elect people, the elect nation.  We’ll learn several things about prayer as we go but the overall lesson has to do with the history of Israel.

 

We wound up chapter 8 with verses 23-27 where God concluded chapters 7-8 and said: “And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors have come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up.”  Remember chapter 7 dealt with the outline of history as to its spiritual motives; remember the beasts and the animals, all that symbolism is to show you a certain mentality behind the great cultures of history.  Those animals are not just randomly picked; they’re picked to match a quality of civilization. 

 

For example, the Babylonian kingdom has contributed to the world an understanding of economics.  They were the great originators and founders of credit banking in the world.  The Babylonians pushed this very far so that in the future passages of God’s Word where you have prophecies of Babylon the emphasis is upon the coming banking financial and political picture of the world.  The emphasis is on economics.  God’s Word does not ignore the forces in the economic scepters, they are very important and if they are you would expect if God’s Word is God’s Word that it would say something to it, and it does.  It traces it back to Babylon.

Then the Medo-Persian Empire in history is known for a certain contribution, internationalism.  The Medo-Persians were the people who emphasized getting everyone together with one culture, as sort of an amalgam of many different nationalities.  And they were the one-worlders of their day as far as culture was concerned.  So the Medo-Persian Empire contributed that to Gentile thinking. 

 

Then we have the Hellenism, and Hellenism in Scripture emphasizes the autonomy of man’s reason.  The Greeks thought like a conquistador, to conquer every intellectual realm.  And so Aristotle, Plato and their associates devoted great [can’t understand word] to understanding these great philosophic problems.  So Hellenism emphasizes man trying to seek out problems denying the authority of revelational data, denying God’s Word and trying to say I won’t accept that data in my system, I’ll proceed first using my autonomous reason. That’s the Greek contribution to the stream of Gentile culture. 

 

Finally, the Roman civilization and its great contribution to our culture today and that is they were the most fantastic managers, builders and engineers the world has ever seen, aqueducts, walls that they have built, the Roman roads.  The Israeli army discovered Roman roads during the wars they had and if it hadn’t been for the Romans they wouldn’t have been able to move their armor across the sandy areas.  The reason they were able to move their armored columns and surprise the Egyptians was because their cryptographers had plotted where these Roman roads were.  So the Romans have laid their foundation in history and it still goes on. 

 

These four types of civilizations all blend together and the Bible insists that what we call western culture is an amalgamation of the contributions of these four civilizations.  And the spiritual ramifications, whether you go into politics, banking, science, philosophy or any field you choose, there is a tremendous pull, a tug of war going on, between the content of revelation and the content of the ideas of these four groups of people.  It collides in every field of man’s endeavor.

 

So that was Daniel 7 and in Daniel 8 we have the profile.  If Daniel 7 dealt with all these manifestations of the kingdom of man, then chapter 8 deals with the king of the kingdom of man, the king that will one day be called the antichrist, or the beast.  And his political profile is given in chapter 8.  And by a study of the near fulfillment of this political profile in the life of Antiochus Epiphanes, we can pinpoint certain characteristics of the beast.  We know in advance what kind of an individual he will be like.  He will not have horns; he will not wear a red suit and go around with a pitch fork.  The beast will be a very attractive individual, a very brilliant person, and one without any conscience whatsoever.  He will be a genius in the area of politics and economics.  He will offer the world a solution that will be acceptable to most people.  This is why it says in Daniel 8:23, he will be “a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences,” the “king of fierce countenance” means no conscience; “understanding dark sentences” is the proverbial type wisdom, he will be a genius. 

 

Daniel 8:24, “And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power,” in other words, he shall rule like Antiochus, by deception and by bluff; “and he shall destroy in strange ways, and shall prosper, and he shall destroy the mighty and the holy people.”  He will be anti-Semitic.  Verse 25, “And through his policy also he shall cause deceit to prosper in his hand,” he will negotiate and break treaties, “and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many,” he will speak great glowing words of peace. The beast attains power through attempted peace-making moves.  Now it’s a strange thing in history but when peace has actually existed it has existed because people have had a strong military.  One of the most peaceful nations on the face of the earth is the most well armed nation, Switzerland.  Every Swiss man is in the reserve force and they know how to shoot; the Swiss have minded their own business and they have a strong military.  Where you have war and corruption you tend to have a very weak form of military or you have a weak will to use it when necessary.  Verse 25b, “he shall stand up against the Prince of princes, but he shall be broken without hand,” that is supernaturally, without man’s hands.

 

Daniel 8:26,l “And the vision of the evening and the morning,” the vision of the evening was chapter 7 and the vision of the morning was chapter 8, “which was told is true; wherefore, shut it up, for it shall be for many days.”  In other words, Daniel, keep this vision around because it’s going to be needed someday.

 

Now we come to Daniel 9.  “In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans, [2] In the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood by books the number of the years, concerning which the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, the prophet, that He would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.” 

 

Again in prefacing our remarks in verses 1-2 keep in mind that you’re in the Bible and your view of history given in this Bible will collide with everything that you have ever learned in school, for the reason that the Scripture view history as under control of a God who decrees whatsoever shall come to pass.  The Bible does not hold the statistical view of history.  The Bible rejects the view that history is a series of accidents that happens.  Or in the words of Henry Ford: “the sequence of one damned thing after another.”  The Bible says that history is the result of decrees that God makes and that these decrees play out.  And here in chapter 9 we come face to face with the decision whether we must abandon our view of history and our view of life that we inherit from our culture and go with the Scripture, or whether we reject en toto the philosophy we are now looking at in Daniel 9. 

 

Daniel 9:1, he says, “In the first year of Darius,” and verse 2 begins, “In the first year of his reign,” there’s a hanging construction here.  He starts a sentence, he stops, gives us a note in verse 1 and then in verse 2 when he resumes speaking he starts the sentence all over again.  And the purpose is to emphasize the first year of Darius.  Now there’s something he wants to get, something he wants to get across about this first year, there’s something important about the first year of Darius.  Now we know what the first year of Darius was in our calendar, it was about 538 BC, 539 by some reckoning.  And Daniel insists that this year is a marker, or a significant year in history.  Now we know some things that happened, “the first year of Darius” was the first year of the Medo-Persian Empire. 

 

Turn back to Daniel 5:30 you’ll recall what happens.  What had just happened in history that Daniel saw firsthand?  Daniel 5:30-31, “In that night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain. [31] And Darius, the Mede, took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old.”  Now we don’t know from archeology who Darius is.  Two guesses are given: one is that he is a viceroy under Cyrus; the other is that it’s an alternate name for Cyrus himself.  But the materials of history are not full enough and detailed enough to give us a pinpoint on who Darius was.  All we know is he was there and he ruled for a short time as the empire began.  Thereafter he’s called Cyrus, so it may mean that he’s the same, or it may mean that he’s a different person. 

 

So “in the night Belshazzar,” he was the last king of Babylon, “the king of the Chaldeans was slain,” 539 BC, you remember the famous orgy that they had in chapter 5 and it was interrupted.  In verse 31, “Darius, the Mede, took the kingdom,” so we have a complete shift and conquest of Babylon.  What happened then?  In 539 and 538 BC what is significant about the first year of Darius?  It is the first year that the Jews had freedom outside of Babylon.  The Medes and the Persians were more lenient on the Hebrew community than the Babylonians and so they enjoyed their first year.  Now this was in fulfillment of prophecy because in 539 BC Cyrus, the Persian, had completely conquered the cradle of civilization, as far east as the Indus River, as far west as Asia Minor and the Aegean, and now as far south as Arabia.  So he completely links the west and the east.  He was camped on the crossroads of the world and he brought into existence this tremendously new kingdom.  But it had been prophesied.

 

Turn back to Daniel 2:39, in Nebuchadnezzar’s vision decades before he had from God an idea there were four major elements to Gentile society that would rise sequentially in history.  The first element was his own kingdom, the Babylonian kingdom.  Then in verse 39 he predicted, “After thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee,” that kingdom would be the kingdom following Babylon or the Medo-Persian kingdom.

 

Turn to Daniel 7:5, keep in mind Daniel had all of this available to him by the time of 539 BC because chapter 7 begins in the first year of Belshazzar, so Daniel had access to this data, after the first beast, which is Babylon, the second, “And behold, another beast, a second, like a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between its teeth,” that would be the three kingdoms that Cyrus conquered, “and they said unto it, Arise, devour much flesh.”  Again, Daniel had available to him prophesies before the fact. 

 

In Daniel 8:3 recall the vision he had while he was transported in vision to Shushan, which was the palace of not the Babylonian Empire where he was in fact, but the capital of the coming empire of the Medes and the Persians.  And Daniel saw this and he “lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there stood before the river a ram which had two horns … and one horn was higher than the other, and the higher came up last. [4] And I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward and southward, so that no beast might stand before him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand, but he did according to his will and became great.”  So again Daniel had revelation and prophecy before this thing happened.

 

Therefore, in this year, the first year of Darius, Daniel got to thinking, I have just lived through the fall of a major civilization.  God has spoken to me and told me this would come to pass, and now I have seen it come to pass.  Now one of the great doctrines that we learn in the exilic period is the doctrine of the sovereignty of God, that God is sovereign over all nations, not just over Israel.  We knew that before but it becomes clearly demonstrated during the time of the exile.  And Daniel could worship his totally sovereign God now.  But something else was on Daniel’s mind because of the way he responds to this fulfilled prophecy in the first year of Darius.  He’s going to start praying for something. 

And in order to understand what it is he’s going to start praying for, we have to see what it was that caught his attention, because he does tell us.  After verse 1, when he announces the time of his new thinking, the first year of Darius, he says in verse 2, “in the first year of his reign I, Daniel, understood by books the number of the years,” and skip completely from the comma all the way down to the next comma, “that He would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.”  “I understood the number of years that He would accomplish in the desolations of Jerusalem,” literally, “it would be seventy.”  Now that’s the way it reads in the Hebrew.  What he is saying here is that I understood in certain books, which we’ll discuss in a moment, I went to these books and I found out that Jerusalem would be trodden down for seventy years. 

 

Now obviously in addition to the prophesies of his own, Daniel had prophesies from another source, and then he tells us the source, the books or the writings of the prophet Jeremiah.  And Jeremiah lived an entire generation before Daniel.  Jeremiah witnessed the fall of his nation.  Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet because he had to sit there and watch a people who stubbornly rejected the Word, who always had some gimmick going to replace the Word of God.  And he watched his nation go down, and it’s not a very pleasant sight to watch a nation go down, particularly when it’s your sons that are dying and it’s your wife that’s being raped by the incoming armies, and when it’s your friends, parents, fathers and so on who are being shot because they are too old and they can’t make it for the new society.  That is not a pleasant time to live through, and Jeremiah had to live through a very awful period of history.  And it was during that awful period of history that God gave that man some tremendous promises, and some tremendous truths. 

 

Turn to those places where Daniel obtained his information.  Before we turn there, please notice again, Daniel, though he received direct revelation from God never expected God to continually give him direct revelation.  When Daniel faced a problem he didn’t go to God and ask Him for every piece of data on his hotline.  Daniel went to the books of the canon of Scripture for his content, just like we should, and we don’t live in a period of active revelation so that’s all we’ve got to go to is the authoritative books of Scripture.

 

Let’s go back to the prophesies written a generation before Daniel, to Jeremiah.  Jeremiah 25:1, “The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim,” now in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the Babylonians began to put pressure on Israel.  The year is 605 BC and that was one of the first raids that Nebuchadnezzar made down into Israel.  He didn’t spent too much time, just enough to obtain some political hostages, one young boy by the name of Daniel.  And then in 598 BC Nebuchadnezzar made another move, came down and took off more hostages, and those included a man by the name of Ezekiel.  And then finally in 586 BC he came down again and he destroyed the city of Jerusalem.  So those are the three intrusions into Israel from Babylon, they began in the fourth year of Jehoiakim.  So Jeremiah sits here and just as the first wave of the Babylonians come into Israel, God gives him a message, and here’s the message God gives him.

 

Jeremiah 25:2, “Which Jeremiah, the prophet, spoke unto all the people of Judah, and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, [3] From the thirteenth year of Josiah,” that’s when Jeremiah began his ministry, “the son of Amon, king of Judah, even unto this day, that is the twenty-third year, the word of the LORD has come unto me, and I have spoken unto you, rising early and speaking,” I have spoken to you over and over, “but ye have nor hearkened. [4] And the LORD has sent unto you all His servants, the prophets, rising early and sending them, but you have not hearkened, nor inclined your ear to hear.”  

 

We know from the book of Jeremiah what some of the excuses were.  Some prophets had a pleasing personality, other prophets did not have a pleasing personality and God’s Word says that’s not the issue.  In the New Testament it’s the same thing, Jesus had a very personable type of countenance and if you had a social function you’d always invite Jesus, He was just that kind of a person.  John the Baptist was a stick in the mud and nobody wanted him around.  But the interesting thing is that the New Testament says that you’re accountable for the message, not the man, and not his personality.  The people were held responsible for the content of John the Baptist’s message whether they liked his personality or not, they were held accountable for the message of Jesus, whether they liked his personality or not, and they were held accountable in Jeremiah’s day for the message, not the man. 

 

So he says, Jeremiah 25:5, “Turn again now every one from his evil way, and from the evil of your doings, and dwell in the land that the LORD has given unto you and to your fathers forever and ever,” this is the message that he’d been saying.  Verse 7, “You have not hearkened unto me, saith the LORD, that you might provoke Me to anger with the works of your hands.”  Now in verse 8 is the prophecy, “Therefore, thus saith the LORD of hosts, Because you have not heard my words, [9] Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the LORD, and Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, My servant, and will bring them against this land, and against its inhabitants, and against all these nations round about, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an horror, and an hissing, and perpetual desolations.”  Verse 11, “And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an horror; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.” 

 

Now Jeremiah had a problem here because there were people going around, this is in 605 BC and he says that from this year on it’s too late, you have had a chance to take in the Word, I have taught it to you, other people have taught it to you and you could care less, so now it’s too late, and the only thing you can do now is take on some information that will help you get through the crisis that is coming.  So in 605 BC he announces 70 years.  Those 70 years are going to be up in the year 535 BC.  The first year of Darius is 538 BC.  So the time of the completion of those seventy years is very, very close to the time of Daniel.

 

Jeremiah 25:12, “And it shall come to pass, when the seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the LORD, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations.  [13] And I will bring upon that land all My words which I have pronounced against it, even all that is written in this book,” and so on.  So we have a seventy year cutoff. 

 

Now it turns out a very interesting thing.  In 539 BC the Babylonian Empire ended; it seems it ended 4 years too early for that prophecy, except for the fact that between 539 BC and 535 BC you have the reign of this person called Darius.  After that he is called Cyrus.  Something happened in that year, and what happened was not only a shift of administration over the province of Babylon under the Medes and the Persians but there was also a mandate to the Jewish people to return to their land.  That was all coming up very, very close to the time of the first year of Darius.  So the seventy years prophesied in Jeremiah are just about to close.  Now we have other Biblical passages that give us amplification.  Daniel said he studied not from a book, but from many books, plural.  What are the other books that he went to?

 

Turn to Leviticus 26:32, some who are ardent ecologists will be fairly amazed to know that one of the reasons why Israel went into captivity is because of her ecological responsibility.  God says “I will bring the land,” this is a cursing section, and there are various levels and degrees, there are five degrees of discipline and the last degree is when they are going to be deported.  The last degree, in verse 31, “I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation.”  Verse 29, “And you shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters,” that was fulfilled in a very gruesome way in 70 AD.  Masada was part of the fulfillment of this kind of thing, it was a terrible thing. 

 

But in Leviticus 26:32 three’s a prophecy, “I will bring the land into desolation; and your enemies who dwell therein shall be astonished at it. [33] And I will scatter you among the nations, and will draw out a sword after you, and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. [34] Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lies desolate, and you are in your enemies’ land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths.”  The sabbath here is not the Saturday but this is the seventh year.  In the agricultural economy for six years they were to grow their crops and in the seventh year the land was to lie fallow.  It’s a very interesting point in the Bible.  The land under our feet is our possession, and we are judged by how well or how poorly we handle natural resources.  So a little innocent thing, like a farmer going out to plow his field becomes a matter of crucial importance to the thinking of the prophets of Scripture.  He’s plowing God’s soil, and that soil, though it’s not living, doesn’t have a personality in the sense of a language speaking spirit, the soil has a right and God lays down the right of the soil under the Old Testament economy to rest.  Just as man was to rest, His animals were to rest, and the soil was to rest.  We know there are a lot of organisms and chemicals in the soil and there are good and sufficient reasons for having it rest, particularly in those days.  So this was a reason.

 

Now the number of years that Israel went into captivity, seventy, equals the number of sabbaths that they had forgotten about, they skipped in their desire to over-produce agriculturally, they stressed natural resources.  And God held them responsible for the misuse of natural resources in desiring super production.  God said I will provide but when a man goes into business to super produce he’s doing it for his own security.  He’s having the citadel concept of his business, I will over produce and over produce and over produce and over produce so I will have a surplus and I want a surplus, an economic surplus, in my business of great magnitude, because such a person thinks, the greater my business surplus the greater my economic security and when I have economic security I don’t have to trust the Lord for the security.  So the economic security becomes an idol that stands in the way of our trust.  So for that reason the ancient Hebrew agricultural community was very severely disciplined.

 

Turn to 2 Chronicles; Chronicles is a book written by a historian analyzing the whole problem of the fall of the nation.  In 2 Chronicles 36:21 we have the reason for the captivity, “To fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths; for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.” 

The land had a right, the soil and the rocks, and the bacteria in the soil, the chemicals in the soil, those had a right before God the Creator to rest and not be overworked by the force of man.  Man is created to be the lord of creation but a lord underneath THE Lord, not autonomous.  So there are some more passages that Daniel had available.

 

One more, and this explains why he reacted in this prayer that he’s going to pray.  Jeremiah 29, at the time of Daniel Jeremiah 29 was not part of the book; it was a letter that was circulating.  So Daniel got his information by direct revelation, he got it by studying the Torah, he got it by looking at some of the other historians, and he got it by letter.  Jeremiah 29:1, “Now these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah, the prophet, sent from Jerusalem unto the residue of the elders who were carried away captives,” so Jeremiah is over in Israel and he writes this letter to Babylon for people just like Daniel.  “…who were carried away captives, and to the priests, and to the prophets, and to all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon.”  So this is a letter with certain information in it. 

 

What information?  Jeremiah 29:5-7 give some specific guidance for the Jew living in a Gentile society.  This, by the way, is the last word from the Old Testament that the Jewish people have, even to this day.  The whole complicated problem of what is called dual citizenship, is the Jew loyal to Israel first or is he loyal to his own country first?  The answer is he’s loyal to his own country first, and then to Israel as long as he’s living in that Gentile land.  Of course he can be free to immigrate and move to Israel, but these are the directions that they had.  “Build yourself houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; [6] Take to yourselves wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters, that ye may be increased there, and not diminished. [7] And seek the peace of the city to which I have caused to be carried away captives,” “…seek the peace of the city, and pray unto the LORD for it; for in its peace shall you have peace.” 

 

And the role of the dispersed, the Jews in the Diaspora were to pray for the particular cities where God had put them, because only as those cities had peace would they have peace.  Now those were particular by way of interpretation, the instructions given to Daniel.  Why?  Because there were prophets in that day who said oh, don’t settle down, don’t buy property, don’t raise a large family here, always live in tents, be ready to move because we’re going to go back real soon.  Jeremiah said no, we’re going to be here a long time and we have again the seventy year prophecy.

 

Jeremiah 29:10-11, “For thus saith the LORD, After seventy years are accomplished at Babylon, I will visit you, and perform My good word toward you, in causing you to return unto this place. [11] For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected” or planned “end.”  God has a plan for the nation Israel, that plan will go on, in spite of all the nations on the earth, God’s plan for Israel shall not be stopped.

 

Now God says at the end of seventy years, and remember, seventy years are close at hand, the end of them, in Daniel’s day.  There’s something else that is going to happen and here is what explains Daniel’s prayer reaction.  Jeremiah 29:12, “Then shall ye call upon Me,” when?  At the end of the seventy years, “then shall ye call upon Me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.”  You see, they couldn’t pray before that, a very interesting principle.  For seventy years they could pray all right, but they could not pray to return to the land.  God said I don’t care how hard you’re hurting, how badly you’re hurting, I told you that you would be in that land for seventy years, not 69, not 68, not 67, but 70.  So don’t come to Me with all these prayer petitions that we want the discipline to end; it’s not going to end.  I can give you comfort in the midst of your discipline, but the discipline is not going to end; I said 70 and I mean 70. 

 

So here, “then shall you call upon Me,” after the 70 years are finished they have the freedom now to pray for the recall.  Now they can launch that prayer petition.  Now the prayer petition becomes bona fide.  Now they can pray without conflicting with the revealed will of God.  Prior to the end of the 70 years, no; after yes.  “Then shall ye call upon Me, and [then] shall ye go and pray unto Me, and I will hearken unto you. [13] And ye shall seek Me, and find Me,” and then there’s a condition, and it’s this condition that very deeply disturbed Daniel, and this becomes the reason for his great prayer of Daniel 9, one of the greatest prayers in Scripture.  “…when ye shall search for Me with all your heart. [14] I will be found by you, saith the LORD; and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places to which I have driven you, saith the LORD, [and I will bring you again into the place from which I caused you to be carried away captive.”

 

Now as typical with prophetic literature we’ve got a whole ball of yarn here that’s mixed up because prophecy is written so that the various events separated in time are collapsed because you’re looking at it from the end of it.  So in prophecy you’ve got to discipline yourself to be very, very careful how you read it because you can have like the First Advent of Christ and the Second Advent of Christ and in the Old Testament they’re all mixed together.  And you never can step outside of history to turn around and get the side view to see how far apart they are.  From our finite human position prophecy is always written this way, so we’ve got these verses and they’re all kind of appearing woven together, and here’s one of those places in Scripture where that happens because we know verses 10-11 are winding up in Daniel’s day; there’s no problem with that, we know that was fulfilled in Daniel’s day. 

 

But verses 12-13 form a potential; the potential is that at the end of the 70 years the Jews would be free to pray for their return, AND they would be free to have an entire national restoration at that point in history, if they would meet the conditions—“you shall search for Me with all your heart;” “you will search for Me with ALL your heart.”  But we now know, it’s easy for us, Monday morning quarterbacks always are very slick, it’s easy for us now looking back on history to see what happened here.  What happened was that they didn’t seek God with all their heart, so verses 12-13 are still held out to the nation Israel, when you seek Me and find Me, “when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”  That’s still being held out by God to the nation Israel.

 

Jeremiah 29:14 is a prophecy, not of the return after Daniel, but of the ultimate return at the end of history prior to Christ’s return.  “And I will be bound by you, saith the LORD; and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations,” not just Babylon, it’s a bigger verse, verse 14 is far bigger than verse 10, “from all the nations, and from all the places to which I have driven you, saith the LORD, and I will bring you again into the place from which I caused you to be carried away captive.”  Now that hasn’t happened yet.  But the reason is the sequence of these verses; they are very carefully worded.  God, when He writes a contract, writes it very carefully, and if you read it through there’s a certain logical sequence to these verses that must be recognized and followed.  So verses 12 and 13 were potentially available in Daniel’s day and Daniel is going to try to appropriate these in his prayer.  He is going to make one of the most fantastic prayers in the Word of God. And he is going to use verses 12-13 as an entrée with God to bring the nation back and not just bring it back, but to give it that time it’s great national blessing. 

 

But we know in retrospect it didn’t happen.  So at the end of Daniel’s prayer the angel comes with new information.  Daniel, you prayed a good prayer, but the problem is the spiritual condition of the nation isn’t such that we can fulfill it yet.  So now there’s going to be another interim and just as there were 70 years of captivity, so the same number is going to be moved over, there’s going to be another 70, and this is going to be an add-on, an add-on interim history until you’ll get another chance for this kind of thing.  God will reward Daniel for his prayer, but Daniel, though as hard as he will, he individually fulfills verses 12-13, but nationally the nation is not behind Daniel in his prayer.  Therefore the condition of verse 12-13 is not fulfilled; therefore verse 14 is not fulfilled.  Therefore the restoration that will happen in Daniel’s day is only a partial restoration.

 

Now we have taught you when you go through Scripture always to associate doctrine with events.  We have said there are certain key events in God’s Word, and you think memorizing is hard, just remember these events and they’ll form a set of drawers in your mind and when you read the Bible then you can classify the information you’ve got using this system. So I’m giving you something here besides just a framework, I’m giving you something that you can then use to memorize.  This is not just details, but the main events of Scripture. 

 

Now the doctrine that we have learned, the principle is after you look at an event go to a doctrine that that event teaches, then you can remember the doctrine.  You may not remember the words of it, you may get yourself in a situation where you can’t remember the full content of the doctrine, but if you have carefully studied so that you can picture in your own head using whatever pictures you want to in your own sanctified imagination (or unsanctified imagination), you can remember the event, then you can always locate that doctrine.  It will help you locate the doctrine.

 

All right, the doctrine we are learning with the exile at this point is the doctrine of revelation.   The doctrine of revelation is associated with the event of Sinai, with God speaking, but now in Daniel we have an amplification of that doctrine.  In Daniel the new thing that is learned about the doctrine of revelation to be appreciated from that time forward in history, is the role and the power and the scope and magnitude of Biblical prophecy.  Why did God, at this point in history, put such great emphasis on prophecy?  It seems kind of interesting that when the revelation process is operating in the Old Testament, it goes on and on and on and on, until it phases out about the 4th and 5th century BC.  Just before the end of the revelation process, before God shuts it off, He starts rapidly emphasizing prophecy, so the last few books are heavily prophetic.

 

Now that same pattern appears in the New Testament; for a generation there is revelation through the apostles, you have the Gospels being written, you have the canon being developed. What’s the last book of the New Testament?  It’s a book on prophecy, and again in the New Testament before God shuts off revelation He gives us prophecy. 

 

Now what is on God’s mind that leads Him to do this thing again and again in history?  Just before He turns the facet off of Revelation he always gives us a heavy dose of prophecy and then it stops and the light goes out.  Now He does this because He knows that we are going to need help in desperate times that are ahead.  The prophecy is given because He loved us and because He wants to provide for our needs in an era of no revelation.  He does not want us to go seeking all sorts of hyper emotional charismatic experiences; He wants us to go back to His provision which were the prophetic sections of the Word.  That’s why He closed both Old Testament and New Testament canons that way.  He closed them with a heavy dose of prophecy.

 

What function does prophecy do?  Prophecy has several functions.  Prophecy has a comforting function for believers… a comforting function.  You can comfort yourselves when it looks like everything is breaking lose.  Let me give you one very trivial comfort of prophecy.  Back when I was going to college it was the days of organizations that were going to blow everything up with nuclear weapons, and I can remember in the streets of Boston parade after parade demonstration after demonstration, stop nuclear weapons because nuclear weapons are going to destroy mankind.  A bunch of us at MIT made a big poster that we folded up so they wouldn’t see it and as they got into the parade and they came before the stand we opened it up and it said: Nuclear warfare will improve Boston.  But this is the only way you can deal with those kind of people because you can’t reason with them, so make everybody laugh at them.  But this was the big emphasis that nuclear warfare was going to end the world and everybody was upset.  Any Christian that knows anything about prophecy knows there’s something wrong with that kind of thinking.  The world is not going to end until Jesus Christ returns and we have adequate ground in the Word of God, we do not have to fear nuclear annihilation. 

 

That ought never to be a fear of the Bible-believing Christian.  If the Scriptures is credible, if Christ’s Word’s are credible, we have to be cautious obviously, nuclear bombs hurt people when they go off, but they’re not going to end the planet and we’re not going to blow up planet earth by some nuclear device.  This is why in an all out nuclear confrontation the Christian statesman has one final ace in his hand that his opponent never has; the communist live trapped in a materialist world view and when it comes down to the 11th hour the communist must always back off his threat because if he blows up the world he has nothing more to live for.  But the Christian can always out bluff the communist because of the power of the Christian world view.  The Christian can approach nuclear confrontation with both eyes open and relax because he knows that Jesus Christ will return to a surviving human race. 


Now do not interpret this as being careless; we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about getting rid of this morbid fear that the human race is going to kill itself; it is not, God will not permit it.  So that is a source of comfort if you accept prophecy. 

 

Now prophecy has another function, a function to the non-Christian as well as a function to the Christian.  Prophecy’s main function to the non-Christian is that it gives him a vital evidence that the Christian faith is the true faith; it’s an evidence of the faith, an evidence which is not available from any other religion or philosophy in the world.  Not one philosophic or religious competing system can claim a massive number of prophets writing over a span of 30 centuries with an internally self-consistent message always centering on the same person, always centering on the same principle, grace, and always centering on the same person, Christ.   No other religion can claim that; they can claim a founder and a miracle here and there, but only the Judeo-Christian faith has 30 century long history of prophecy and prophecy that has been confirmed on numerous occasions. 

 

Daniel saw a confirmation of prophecy in his day.  We see a confirmation by the restoration of the state of Israel since 1948 in our day.  Prophecy is an evidence.  Now this isn’t going to club somebody into believing, but it should act as a challenge to you; do you have a philosophy of history and of your life that can answer and explain these phenomena, can explain the self-consistent 30 century long message that has been given into history, substantiated numerous times?  We have to make our choice; as Christians we have available prophecy, we can believe it or disbelieve it. As an unbeliever you may face the claims of the Christian position and you know these prophesies or you ought to study them if you don’t.  Many people down through history have; one of the greatest French mathematicians who ever lived, Pascal, said that the reason that the Jews were cast out into the world was to give every continent data of prophecy so that when Jesus finally did come to make His claim the seed would have already been sown, in Asia, in Europe, in Africa.  Prophecy has those two functions.

 

Next time we’ll deal with Daniel’s response in prayer to prophecy.