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Religious Pron: The End Times, 8 of ?

May 22, 2024, 2:42 PM

Last time, the prophet Zechariah gave us a most unusual End Time prediction. One where New Jerusalem rises up on a sort of mesa, surrounded by a wall of fire.

Granted, there are some pretty dramatic mesas in the Holy Land that may have inspired him.

But Zechariah’s vision is quite a bit different than John’s vision, where New Jerusalem comes down from the clouds.

I guess we won’t know who’s right until we get there, but for now, let’s see what Daniel adds to the mix.

Daniel is sort of the Revelation of the Old Testament. It was the last word (chronologically) in the Bible for about 200 years, until Jesus and all that was written about him came along later.

So when Jesus himself read about the End Time in his studies, he would have read up to Daniel. The Book of Daniel seems to have been written in about 150 BCE, though it is set 400 years earlier during the Babylonian Exile. Why? Well, I’m glad you asked.

We all do, Elton, but he left us a fantastic book to tell his story.

Nothing got the ancient Jews writing books like national tragedy did, and that’s the inspiration for Daniel in my mind.

We’ve talked quite a bit about Assyria, and Babylon, and Persia, and even Greece so far. But the thing about history is that it never seems to end. And after all those civilizations passed through Israel, another one did, too. The Seleucids.

Although Alexander the Great got along swell with the Jews, he didn’t live forever. And when he died at age 32 in 324 BCE, his 10-year-old kingdom, reaching from Greece to India, was smashed to bits.

It turned out that young Alexander had a lot of very, very powerful generals who helped him build his short-lived Empire, and they all wanted their share of the known world when everything fell apart. They called themselves the Diadochi, or the “Successors” and they were some ruthless MoFos.

In a vicious and bloodthirsty saga that would even make the Romans queasy, the Diadochi fought over Alex’s empire for decades. But in the end, 2 generals won out against all the rest: Ptolemy in Egypt, and Seleucus most everywhere else, including Israel.

Seleucus and his successors were pretty nice to the Jews, generation after generation, till finally a bad apple surfaced; Antiochus IV, in about 175 BCE.

Here’s one of his coins.

Antiochus IV thought pretty highly of himself and took the name “God on Earth.” Sometimes it’s hard to be humble. But he was nice to the Jews. He even set up a sweet deal whereby he would declare any man, for the right price, to be “High Priest” of the Jews. High bidder wins.

But one day, while Antiochus was fighting his fellow Greeks in Egypt under Ptolemy, a brew-ha-ha started up in Jerusalem. A High Priest named Jason, who had rightly paid his dues to Antiochus, was passed over by another High Priest named Menelaus, who paid just a little bit more.

And with the cat, Antiochus, away fighting wars, Jason and his followers staged a revolt to take back his bought-and-paid for title from the new guy Menelaus.

When Antiochus got the news that his appointed High Priest had been challenged, he wasn’t happy. The Romans had just told him to back off of Egypt and humiliated him on the world stage, and now this punk Jason was embarrassing him yet again. And a man like “God on Earth” can’t afford to be publicly humiliated.

So he was spoiling for a fight. And then Antiochus IV unleashed on Jerusalem in a way that only couple of men have ever done in all of history. Namely, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and Vespasian and his son Titus of Rome.

Titus’s men hauling off the goods of the Temple, a couple of centuries later.

Antiochus IV didn’t raze Jerusalem to the ground, he just sacked the city and built a statue of Zeus in the Temple. Just to show everyone who the real god in control of Israel was.

Way.

That’s the kind of thing that will get nasty stories written about you in Bible books. And in some circles, it will get you called the Anti-Christ. One might even say it’s a Biblical-level affront.

Which brings us back to Daniel.

Like a few other Bible books, the Book of Daniel appears to be two books joined together; chapters 1-6, and chapters 7-12. Chapters 1-6 say they are written in the Babylonian Exile. But there are reasons to be skeptical.

First, there is some confusion as to rulers. Daniel 5 says this:

30 “That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom…”

According to the Babylonians, Belshazzar was never a king, though he was a prince. And while Darius was a Persian ruler and the Medes were an Empire, the two just don’t fit together. It’s like saying “George Washington, King of France.”

Another issue in Daniel is when Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar acknowledges that Daniel’s God is greater than his own. Since Nebuchadnezzar utterly destroyed Judah and Jerusalem, and the very home of Daniel’s God, the Temple, that seems like a most unlikely event.

Daniel 4:34 “At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven…then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever.

Did you really?

So what are chapters 1-6 about then? Well, they all share a common theme; getting by in hard times. And getting along with bad people. How does one continue a ‘normal’ life while living under a brutal dictator?

The person Daniel is a lot like Joseph from way back in Genesis. He navigates his way in a foreign court by reading dreams, and rises to a very high position in the foreign nation. With God’s help.

Daniel is like an updated story of Egyptian slavery, for people living in Babylonian slavery. And it has some of the most memorable tales in the Bible. There’s the 4-metal giant in chapter 2. (Hint: Babylon, Media, Persia, and Seleucia)

There’s the “writing on the wall” in chapter 5.

There’s the blazing furnace in chapter 3.

And the famous lion’s den in chapter 6.

Daniel in the Lion’s Den, by Peter Paul Rubens

And what message do all those stories have in common? Faith in God will get you through any difficulty. That was an important message to folks oppressed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, and by Greek despots like Antiochus IV in 150 BCE.

But even despots know their place.

Of course, writing stories like the ones in Daniel, while under occupation of a despot, might get you killed. So, if you were living under Antiochus, it might have been wise to write about things that happened 400 years earlier, and not about your current ruler. Like your life depended on it.

In time, some of those oppressed people in Jerusalem had enough and rose up against Antiochus IV. They were called the Maccabees. And that’s the end of the easy stuff.

Next time, it’s on to the cryptic chapters 7-12, and the clues that show us that those chapters may not have been written about Babylon at all, but about Jews in a similar circumstance, living under Antiochus IV. Stories only disguised to be stories about Babylon.

Remember, the Jews were dealing with a guy so ruthless he was considered to be the Anti-Christ 150 years before Christ was even born.

Till then, hot chicks with lions, in furnaces, and writing.

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Religious Pron: The End Times, 8 of ?

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