Introduction to Daniel 5: SEVENTY YEARS!

 

D. God’s unfolding timetable for the restoration of Judah: 70 years.

 

The Divinely-appointed length of the Babylonian Captivity: 70 years! For this reason, Babylon’s destiny was sealed and its days were numbered (Dan. 5:25-28). As Dan 2:21a states: “He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings…” God is sovereign over all times and seasons, and sovereign over all changes and revolutions in states and kingdoms.

 

o   As chapter 5 opens (Oct. 12, 539 BC), the 70 years of the appointed Captivity—commencing with Nebuchadnezzar’s first incursion into the Promised Land (605 BC)—were swiftly approaching their completion. As the Handwriting on the Wall in this chapter will indicate, Babylon’s predicted downfall was immediately at hand. Dan. 5:26: “'MENE'--God has numbered your kingdom and put an end to it.”

 

o   While the Exile had been elsewhere predicted by earlier prophets, it was left to Jeremiah, in the 25^th chapter of his prophecy, to first reveal the precise length of Israel’s absence from the Land.

 

Jer. 25:8-13: ⁸"Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, 'Because you have not obeyed My words, ⁹behold, I will send and take all the families of the north,' declares the LORD, 'and I will send to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, My servant, and will bring them against this land and against its inhabitants and against all these nations round about; and I will utterly destroy them and make them a horror and a hissing, and an everlasting desolation. ¹⁰'Moreover, I will take from them the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones and the light of the lamp. ¹¹'This whole land will be a desolation and a horror, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years. ¹²'Then it will be when seventy years are completed I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation,' declares the LORD, 'for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans; and I will make it an everlasting desolation. ¹³'I will bring upon that land all My words which I have pronounced against it, all that is written in this book which Jeremiah has prophesied against all the nations.’”

 

o   In a letter written unto the exiles of Judah (ch. 29), Jeremiah advised them to get comfortable and establish roots in Babylon… for they would be there quite awhile! But after the appointed 70 years, God would remember them and lift His hand of judgment, restoring them to their own land.

 

Jer. 29:10-11: "For thus says the LORD, 'When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place. 'For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.’”

 

o   As a profound student of the Scriptures in general, and of predictive prophecy in specific, Daniel knew the times in which he was living…

 

Dan. 9:2: “…in the first year of his [i.e., Darius the Mede’s] reign, I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of the years which was revealed as the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years.”

 

o   The Chronicler reveals God’s design in establishing the precise length of the Exile:

 

2 Chron. 36:17-21: ¹⁷Therefore He brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or infirm; He gave them all into his hand. ¹⁸All the articles of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king and of his officers, he brought them all to Babylon. ¹⁹Then they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem, and burned all its fortified buildings with fire and destroyed all its valuable articles. ²⁰Those who had escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon; and they were servants to him and to his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, ²¹to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths. All the days of its desolation it kept sabbath until seventy years were complete.

 

The enormous catalogue of Israel’s sins, which brought them to the point-of-no-remedy (2 Chron. 36:16), and which initiated the Covenant Curses of the Mosaic Law (including, ultimately, expulsion from the Promised Land; cf., Lev. 18:26-28, 20:22, 26;33, Deut. 28:36, etc.), was vast indeed—including the shedding of much innocent blood in the days of Manasseh, King of Judah (2 Kings 24:3-4).

 

The specific violation of the Sabbath Year throughout through 490 years of its history, however, when the Land was to lie fallow every 7^th Year and the nation was simply to trust in God’s gracious provision, was the reason attributed to the precise length of the Captivity.

 

Lev. 25:2-7: “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the LORD. For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits, but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the LORD. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired worker and the sojourner who lives with you, and for your cattle and for the wild animals that are in your land: all its yield shall be for food.

 

Violation of this law was attended by a prescribed penalty:

 

Lev. 26:33-35:  And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste. Then the land shall enjoy its Sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies' land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its Sabbaths. As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest that it did not have on your Sabbaths when you were dwelling in it.”

 

The 70 occasions in which the Sabbath Year failed to be observed over a period of some 490 years of Israelite History thus resulted in precisely 70 years of Exile in Babylon, in which the Land would finally observe the 70 Sabbaths that it had been denied.

 

Failure to trust in the Lord is a grievous sin indeed, in that it calls into question both His power and His very integrity!

Introduction to Daniel 5: the Rise of Cyrus & the Doom of Babylon

 

C. Thunder from the East: the Rise of Cyrus the Great and the Silver Kingdom.

Correspondent with the decline of Neo-Babylonian power came the rise of challengers from the East (i.e., Iran): the Medes and the Persians. While the great king Nebuchadnezzar was long-resistant in his personal acceptance of Daniel’s interpretation of the Dream of the Colossus (ch. 2), the Silver Kingdom would arise nonetheless, under the sovereign direction of Almighty God!

 

Cyrus the Great

  o    The Medes were an Iranian people who had been allied with the Neo-Babylonians in their revolt against Assyrian power, destroying the Assyrian capital of Nineveh (612 BC) with a vicious and merciless ferocity. Forming a powerful kingdom, they ultimately fell under the dominance of a kindred Iranian people, the Persians, with the rise of Cyrus the Great.

  o    The Persians were a nomadic and pastoral Iranian people that rose to prominence in the days of their great warrior-king Cyrus (c. 600-530 BC), dominating the neighboring Medes (550 BC) and rapidly rising to international prominence, forming the vast Medo-Persian, or Achaemenid (i.e., "of the House of Achaemenes") Empire.  

 

  o    This first Persian Empire is pictured by the means of various symbols employed by Daniel:

      o    In Daniel 2, Persia is the Great Colossus’ breast and arms of silver (v. 32).

      o    In the Night Vision of Dan. 7, it appears as the great lopsided bear (v. 5).

      o    In Dan. 8:1-7, the Persian Empire is pictured as a great Ram with two horns of differing lengths that is defeated by a great he-goat (Greece).

      o    The lopsidedness of the great Bear and the Ram’s horns of uneven-length are indicative of the fact that the Median element—while honored and prominent—was nonetheless subject to the dominant Persian element.

 

For further background, review pp. 20-21, Sec. II. A. 3. c. i.

Study Notes: The Bible vs. Theistic Evolution

  

Biblical Problems with Theistic Evolution

(Pastor Terry L. Reese of Valley GBC of Armagh, PA, 8/19/22)

Intro & Recap:

We have been examining the various alternatives with regard to the question of human origins, and the logical & scientific errors associated with materialistic Darwinian Evolution. We also examined some reasons why some professed believers embrace Theistic Evolution. This is a significant issue: how we interpret the Word is at stake!

 

This week we encounter some of the Biblical problems associated with Theistic Evolution.

 

1. Two horses. Theistic evolution fits neither the Bible nor science in its attempt to

find a middle ground between the two. Darwin made it clear that the supernatural was unnecessary in his theory. The Bible, however, excludes naturalistic evolution. Theistic evolution thus tries to ride two horses, creation and evolution, which are going in opposite directions!

 

>NOTE: Theistic evolution is NOT taken seriously by modern science!

 

This speaks of the double-mindedness of modern believers.

 

James 1:5-8:  If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

 

Matt 6:24: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

 

1Kings 18:21: And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.” And the people did not answer him a word.

 

2Cor. 11:3: But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

 

2. Theistic Evolution destroys the integrity of Scripture.

1. Biblical History called into question. Is Gen 1-11 subjective myth? Are Adam, Noah, the Flood narrative, and the Tower of Babel real?

 

2. Were there untold eons of death and decay before the Fall? Is Death an instrument of creation? How did Death originate?

Rom. 6:23: For the wages of sin is death…

 

3. What of the explicit details of the Creation Hymn of Gen. 1, regarding the time and order of events? Can we harmonize these with the claims of Lyellian-uniformitarian-geology & evolutionary Darwinism? Impossible! The Bible says Plants were created before (Day 3) the sun, moon, and stars (Day 4)—in contrast to current cosmological theories. The Bible says whales & birds (Day 5) existed before land animals (Day 6)—even though modern scientific theory has it the other way around. Biblical Days cannot thus be reinterpreted as long ages in the name of reconciliation with current popular science.

 

4. Theistic evolution disturbs the entire storyline of Scripture, calling into serious question the basic concept of the earth and mankind being at the center of God’s creative & redemptive activity. Is Earth just one of many planets upon which salient life evolved? But the Earth was created before the Sun and the stars of heaven (Gen. 1:1, 16), HUMAN sin introduced death and imperfection into God’s perfect universe (Gen. 1:31, Gen. 3, Rom. 8:20-22), Jesus was incarnated only in HUMAN flesh (Heb. 2:5-18, meaning only HUMANS can be saved), and died ONCE for all, completing His atoning work (Heb. 10:11-14). He will return to THIS Planet (Zech. 14:4), and God will ultimately regenerate the entire Universe based upon Christ’s redemptive activity at Calvary (Rev. 21-22). The EARTH is God’s Grand Theater of Redemption through which He brings eternal glory unto Himself!

 

3. Theistic Evolution Denies the explicit teaching regarding Adam & Eve’s formation.

Did Man evolve? Or was he directly formed of the dust of the ground?

Gen. 2:7: Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.

 

The creation of Eve? Gen. 2:18-25?

 

Also, Theistic Evolution provides no clear answer to this question: “Where & when did man acquire his soul? From whence the Imago Dei?”

 

4. Theistic Evolution dismisses the historicity of Adam, and thus, his theological importance.

1. Adam is held up as the antitype of Christ, the Last Adam (Romans 5, 1 Cor. 15). A real Adam is the explanation for the imputation of Adamic sin (Rom. 5:12) and for the doctrine of Original Sin (the inheritance of sin seen in Gen. 5:3), as well as for the existence of Death…

2. What is the foundation of Holy Matrimony (Matt. 19 & Mark 10, referring back to Gen. 2)?

 

Matt. 19:4-6: He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

 

5. Theistic Evolution defies the Biblical Law of “Kind after Kind” taught in Gen.1.

11-12: Then God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them"; and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good.

 

21: God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

 

24-25: Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind"; and it was so. God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.

 

6. Theistic Evolution desecrates the Person of Christ by making Him the Son of a Primate.

Heb 10:5  For this reason, coming into the world, He says, "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but You prepared a body for Me.”

 

Note the sanctity and perfection attending the eternally prepared Incarnation of the One acceptable sacrifice, the Son of God, the Son of Man, who died for us. The Son of an animal did not die for us!

 

7. Makes man more akin to beasts than something created in the image of God.

Man was created in the image of God—but he is fallen. Man’s savage sinful desires are not the result of natural evolutionary processes! (Gen. 2:16-17). Our sin is ultimately unnatural—God did not originally create Adam this way (Gen. 1:31)! Let us not blame God for our pride, greed, brutality, and out-of-control and aberrant sexuality.

 

8. Makes Christ a false witness of the history of the early earth. Note His testimony as to a real Adam & Eve, a real Abel (Luke 11:51), and a real Noah (24:37-39). Note His testimony regarding a real first marriage in the Garden of Eden in Mark 10:6-9:

 

“But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh; so they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate."

 

9. God’s Nature Misrepresented.

1. Theistic evolution gives a false representation of the nature of God because death and ghastliness are ascribed to the Creator as principles of creation.

 

2. In Theistic Evolution, God becomes a minimal “God of the Gaps.”

The Bible states that God is the Prime Cause of all things. ‘But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things … and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him’ (1 Cor. 8:6). And He is the Great Sustainer (Col. 1:17, Heb. 1:3), upholding all things.

 

Theistic evolution, in contrast, ascribes minimal activity to God, allowing Him to directly intervene only over those areas that cannot be presently “explained” by science. In other words, the only workspace allotted to Him is that part of nature which evolution cannot ‘explain’ with the means that are presently at its disposal. He is thus reduced to being a ‘god of the gaps’ to explain that phenomena about which there are scientific doubts.

 

Conclusion.

Prov 18:17  The first to put forth his case seems right, until someone else steps forward and cross-examines him.

 

Evolution seems right because people don't hear the evidence against it and no one questions the collective wisdom of the pop culture—and the churches thus repeat the Galileo syndrome (i.e., the church embracing popular science over Scripture). Regarding Galileo, the Bible does NOT teach geocentric theory (i.e., the sun orbiting the earth)—the secular Greek science of Aristotle and Ptolemy did! Roman Catholic leaders foolishly embraced secular science over the Scriptures and thus made a human theory—geocentricism—the formal doctrine of the church. This is precisely what Theistic Evolutionists are doing today!

 

A better alternative: special, immediate (direct) creation.

Based upon two important elements: Faith & Facts.

 

1. Faith: we fully accept what God—the only eyewitness to creation—has to say.

Heb. 11:3: By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

 

2. Facts: We accept the inspiration, inerrancy, and authority of Scripture. The Bible tells the truth--whether it be about the mundane things of earth or the spiritual things of Heaven (John 3:12: "If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?")

.

John 17:17: “Thy word is truth…”