no, nor ever shall be",
even to that same time".
EPILOGUE
Excursion on Daniel, and his Testimony
For more in detail on Daniel
see
The Highway of Holiness Chs. 2-10,
esp. Ch. 8;
see also Gracious Goodness and This
World in Disorder Ch. 8
News 358
Adelaide Advertiser, October 5, 2005
Daniel the Book
God has often shown his power to foreign nations, such as Assyria in the case of Jonah, Babylon with Daniel, Egypt with Moses, and of course Palestine with Joshua! Daniel is one of a group of such divine excursions; and it all comes to a head in the case of the Head, even the Lord as man, Jesus Christ. All were attacked, Moses and Joshua almost stoned, Joshua vehemently rejected when he advocated immediate entry to Canaan, and they were in danger of revulsion by the frightened nation; while Jonah was given to the stormy sea for a taste of its power, when he was found out of line.
Many forget that God is alive, acts in power, and seek ludicrous excuses to avoid Him, or to attack His testimonies, which stand supreme and impassive, confirmed on all sides, as if aware of the demented furies which arise in men's hearts, as they seek escape from truth for their own devices.
Daniel as a book is like the Daniel of history, often attacked. As with the man, so with the book, however, the attacks simply fail.
See *2 in Ch. 9 above, for one major befuddlement which results from the chief form of deranged assault.
From SMR pp. 1082ff., a relevant excerpt is placed below, considerably augmented for our present purpose.
Daniel is of course one more prophetic reference to the Messiah in His humiliation, which (9:26) corresponds with Jesus Christ whom the Jews reject as a nation; whereas the Book of Daniel is Jewish scripture. We may be sure they did not invent it in order to forward the acceptance of the Messiah whom they rejected! In turn, Christ, Matthew, refers to Daniel the prophet, and as Dead Sea Scrolls show, the Daniel text before Jesus Christ, God-as-man, has strong correlation with our own.
The Dead Sea Scroll date for the literature in one Daniel segment is around 120 B.C. - that is, the date of the COPYING of this particular MSS, according to Dupont-Somner in Aperçus Preliminaires: at the latest. This is based on paleography. R. Laird Harris, in The Encyclopedia of Christianity, Vol. III, p. 296 notes that F.L. Cross, Professor at Harvard, sees a script from the Dead Sea material7 of Daniel not later than second century B.C.. R. K. Harrison in his Introduction to the Old Testament, refers on p. 1118 to the copies and fragments of Daniel at Qumran and declares:
''In the interests of objectivity it should be noted in passing that the Persian terms found in Daniel are specifically Old Persian words, that is to say, occurring within the history of the language to about 300 B.C..'' (Op. cit. p. 1126.)
They fit before that, then. Ideas, trying to contort Daniel to fit some notion of a Maccabean era, fail linguistically as well as contextually (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 8).
Further, Persian governmental terms, not Greek, appear in Daniel, indicative of a period for writing before Alexander in the 4th century, when Greek terms would begin to appear.
Harrison further points out that even a second century dating for Daniel is: absolutely precluded by the evidence from Qumran, partly because there are no indications whatever that the sectaries compiled any of the Biblical manuscripts recovered from the site, and partly because there would, in the latter event, have been insufficient time for Maccabean compositions to be circulated, venerated, and accepted as canonical Scripture by a Maccabean sect.
All things agree in one, and that with common sense, which does not smile in any case on an imaginary duplicity which would require a multitude of fools, tools and partisans pretending that Daniel did not deserve death for fraud, and that they likewise did not do so for inventing divine things at their own dream (Deuteronomy 13), or that offence could readily be added, with no dissentient voice, to offence after the exile, in stark contrast to the case in fact of Ezra and Nehemiah, whose return to rebuild was a matter of religious zeal and godly fear. Invention of history is the only way to avoid Daniel; but then, history, that is God's affair. We men have to follow it to see what it does, not innovate it at whim, caprice and will.
Earlier therefore is the time for Daniel, evidentially.
It is, as we shall see shortly in more detail, fascinating to find that what was already failed logically, as noted in Highway of Holiness loc. cit, also fails philologically: this sort of embracive consorting of considerations being the norm in scriptural attestation.
Professor Gleason Archer in his Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, in comparing the Daniel exhibits with those dated for the second century B.C., makes this note:
Any fair-minded investigator when faced with such an overwhelming body of objective data pointing to the temporal interval of centuries between the two bodies of literature must conclude that a second-century date for the book of Daniel is completely out of the question... The complete absence of Greek loan-words, apart from musical instruments of international currency... points unmistakably to a time of composition prior to the Alexandrian conquest.
That of course was in the fourth century B.C..
He continues that only a 'dogma-ridden obscurantist can adhere' to so late a date as second century B.C., and even he 'must henceforth surrender all claim to intellectual respectability.'
In his work, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction, he makes the point that it is now possible to compare the relatively newly discovered Elephantine papyri, in southern Egypt, writings which use what is known as Imperial Aramaic, with the style of the Aramaic section in Daniel, also in what bears the same name: Imperial Aramaic. On p. 376, he proceeds to present the fascinating fact that these fifth century B.C. writings are the real parallel to Daniel's language, both being in that official, literary dialect which spread through much of the Middle East. Thus the earlier assumption that Daniel's Aramaic was of Western kind, with associated dating considerations, is now void: it is of the Eastern type, with affinity for words and syntax that in this example is found in the 5th century B.C. .
Since all the parties susceptible to objective data, whether archeological, literary, contextual, historical or legal, move in the B.C. era for the writing of the MSS of Daniel, discovered at Qumran, and we are faced with a composition of the book of Daniel hundreds of years prior to Christ's death, it becomes an academic exercise of great interest, but no necessity for our work to pursue it further. Suffice to say that it is interesting to gain B.C. writings of Daniel nowadays in such volume, used so widely in that period. This is precisely what one would EXPECT, from a birth date for the book of Daniel, at the time stated within it, for Daniel the prophet.
That Daniel from such a date precisely foretold the death date for the crucial, vicarious death of the Messiah (Daniel 9:23ff., cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4) is an item that fits as does atomic power to the E=MC2 equation, this is what scholarship must acknowledge, scientific method construe positively and indeed, decisively. Such is the case where data both verify the supernatural authorship behind the book of Daniel and confirm the divine power behind the events, matching the wisdom behind the words with works to perform it. In the plethora of types of power bloc, social convention, religious attitudes, Jewish relationship to their world, their leaders and their religion, as well as to their God, it is just not possible to provide precise predictions involving such variables, some innovative with time, as did Daniel, by purely human resource, nor is anything supernatural adequate, except the Controller! ONE item astray in any configuration leads inevitably to a multitude of consequences which centuries could neither hide nor obscure.
Daniel is really an object lesson in prejudice: the number of aborted criticisms of it, that are interred with recent excavations of archeology, is truly startling. The book stands in all its untouchable dignity, sharply verified. The Jews did not make up a scripture of which none knew, and solemnly hoodwink the populace, scuttle their souls or blaspheme God for the purposes of religion. Daniel, like all prophets, had to make the grade on predictions (Deuteronomy 18). He has done so admirably, in a fashion far more spectacular in kind, than is the U.S. landing on the moon: for He predicted both the date and the nature of the death, in human form, of that divinity who should rule over all nations for ever... hundreds of years before it happened (cf. Daniel 9:26, 7:13ff., with the prior Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, 16 for which see Joyful Jottings 22-25).
As we see, his predictions from long before Christ's advent, concerning His death, represent perhaps the greatest detailed falsifiable prediction of all history, to the days of Christ... and THAT, says the examiner, should do! (See Ch. 9 supra, The Daniel File - esp. pp. 946, 940, 896-898.)
As J. Oswald Sanders points out in his Men from God's School, p. 164:
The Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, begun about 285 B.C. includes Daniel, which would result only if there had been long acceptance and acknowledge of the prophet Daniel.
Daniel would be to them as real an historic figure, if too beautiful in character for cynics, as he was to Ezekiel, who remained in Jerusalem a little longer than Daniel, to the end, whereas Daniel was removed a few years earlier, in the 3rd year of the reign of Jehoiakim, as shown in Daniel 1:1ff..
The young Jewish cadet, as this chapter shows, had been the subject of many a challenge, had been specifically granted extreme understanding and wisdom from God to meet a challenge which was exceedingly close as a parallel to the exposure of the 'magicians' in Egypt in Moses day (cf. Exodus 8:18-19). Just as there the power of God INTERESTED IN DEPLOYMENT for the RESCUE of His people from slavery and containment by a spiritually profligate Egypt, was used in a way none on this earth could parallel, so here in Babylon, with Israel abroad this time for its sins, exiled to a new land, yet again the power of God is deployed. This is done in part to make starkly clear that there is no other Lord, however corrupted the people of Israel had become, and that all else is mere fiction.
Even in a few faithful believers in Him and in His covenant, the Lord can upset kingdoms, overturn armies, distress kings, put His children in places of high authority near the throne room of history! (cf. Hebrews 11:33ff..
So then was it in Babylon, as in Egypt.
Daniel the Man
In both cases, there is a DIRECT competition, in the former one in Egypt, with the magicians actively working and seeking to duplicate what Moses did, until the devastations in the land were beyond mere challenge, and their powers collapsed before what was obviously divine, directed, programmatic and with no limit to cause it to fold, no artifice to control it, no hope in further contest. As the text there notes in Exodus 8:18-19, Pharaoh for all that, hardened his heart. He was to become a classic case of resisting God in direct contest, where God in His compassion and concern was bent on evacuating a people. God could remove this world if He wanted to, and will do so in His time (II Peter 3, Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 24:35); but not before its purpose is past (cf. II Peter 3:9).
Knowing the end from the beginning, He uses all things to bring some to Himself, some mortals to immortality, to attest the truth, to rebuke the evil without revoking the freedom which can elect to use it; and thus He employs cases like that in Moses' day to make in a direct contest, all things quite clear.
In the case of Nebuchadnezzar, centuries later, in Babylon, the King's request for what obviously only God could know, gave the opportunity for God to show what only God could know, and this was not lost on Nebuchadnezzar when Daniel conveyed the message.
We read that this is so, in Daniel 2:46-49:
"Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell on his face, prostrate before Daniel, and commanded that they should present an offering and incense to him. The king answered Daniel, and said,
'Truly your God is the God of gods, the Lord of kings,
and a revealer of secrets, since you could reveal this secret.'"Then the king promoted Daniel and gave him many great gifts; and he made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon, and chief administrator over all the wise men of Babylon."
Seriously wearied of Chaldean wise-man pretensions, he had determined to expose them or have the testable part, his actual dream, reported to him by them: if savants they were, if possessed of access to the knowledge that counts, then let them perform! Such was evidently his view, perhaps based on much longsuffering and some waffling deceit in the past. The practical test result not being forthcoming, doubtless as all too usual, possibly in less difficult cases, the angered potentate had ordered all killed. As in the days of Elijah, of Moses, there comes a time when was is CLAIMED is either done or not done; and if not done, then that is the end by any level-headed verification mode, of that. If you deal at that level, then the power at that level is what is in view!
Here the opportunity for the Lord, without any revocation of liberty, arose. Daniel in the Lord's perfect providence had been shown earlier as a pure, devout and prayerful man, and with his friends, had gained access to knowledge of the royal challenge: could he TELL another's dream ? In response, he had sought the Lord as all Christians must when impossibility (except for God, according to His word) is the issue; and to Daniel there had been given the answer. In this way, the wise men of Babylon were just as totally exposed for their ignorant traditions and powerlessness as were the magicians of Egypt; and their gods were shown to be as merely cultural as were those of Egypt, in the ancient time when that land was being destroyed by successive plagues, all duly removed when Pharaoh sought mercy, only to repeat his determined bid to keep the Jews as slaves in his land. The decision of God to abstract Israel from Egypt having been made, and pronounced, the power rose as the case demanded, and in this God provided a picture for ever, so often pondered as in Psalms 105, 106.
Thus naturally Ezekiel, seeing his young countryman, apparently of royal stock, taken from the land to exile, for a post as cadet, and later following with zeal the developments for his countrymen, would have double reason to be aware of Daniel, quite apart from the dazzling reputation from his amazing acts wrought in the name of the Lord, just as those of Joshua, in their own declarative and effective way, startled the people of Israel, in earlier times.
Hence, as well might be expected, Daniel is twice mentioned in Ezekiel, as a contemporary of note: namely in Ezekiel 14:14 and 28:3. The three men whom Ezekiel is used to evoke, Noah, Job and Daniel were all of one class. As a category, they were famous men of God, biblically highlighted, epochally basic in the Biblical history, people used in pivotal situations for the divine glory. Even these could not prevail when Judah was so corrupt as she had become in Ezekiel's day. Such was the message from Ezekiel to his people, in his own day, as he cited these three heroes of the faith.
Their famed actions for their people would be now wholly without avail! You could import them into Judah now, and they would contribute nothing to obtain deliverance, for the stage was set, the time had come and the Lord's purpose was decisive. Chronic corruption, defilement of mercy, these things were the very ante-room to devastation.
Such is the message of Ezekiel 14:14. Daniel if brought back to the land, from that international station where his reputation for wisdom was startling and his elevation remarkable, even then could not help. Job if brought forward to that day, he too, though magnificently delivered from a seemingly hopeless situation in his own day, could not help. Nor could Noah, though he with so few was given an ark for escape from a world-wide catastrophe.
Vast as were their biblically famed deeds, nevertheless, even these three famed Jews could do NOTHING, if present and interceding in Judah at that time; for the sins were too great!
In Ezekiel 28:3, likewise, the wisdom is to the point, Behold you are wiser than Daniel! the Lord declares of the King of Tyre, ironically chastising him: there is no secret which can be hidden from you! It is obvious that this book employs a potent barb, readily understood, biblically co-ordinated, staggering in its depth and intensity!, Next in the canon to Daniel, just as the prophet Ezekiel was next to him in the dramas of the subjugation of Judah by Babylon, Ezekiel's prophecy has explosive clout. Both of these prophets were involved with the exiles, both were zealous for Judah and her people, aware of developments.
This then is the confrontational specialty of Daniel, relative to the powers of this world, and the application of such wisdom in derogatory contempt to the king of Tyre, as seen in Ezekiel 28, is to ridicule that king's pretensions; and to do so in an arena of recent history so notable that the sting would be direct, precise as a surgeon's scalpel. Noah, archetype of deliverance from inundating realities, he too, would fail to protect such as Judah had now become, intercede as he might!
Thus, to seek to remove us to some obscure and not especially relevant figure when this is the hot news at the time, and the nature of the portentous and biblically relevant assemblage, is rather ludicrous. What someone not biblical could or could not do would be a yawn, as relevant and interesting as ice to the Eskimo.
On the other hand, the citation of Daniel in such company is coherent, effective, pointed and logical.
The point is what those who were famed as before God Himself, might achieve in His presence, and through His mercy!
This, then, is PRECISELY verification, since it is exactly the sort of reference that one would look for, in two such contemporaries in such closeness in their lives and their works and interests; and had it not been present, there would be quite some furore. Verification acts always in the things of God, like an accelerator on the hills. You see because being called for, it acts! (cf. Psalm 57:2, Psalm 62:11-12). Power belongs to God, says David, and again, "I will cry out to God Most High, to God who performs all things for me."
Now that it is as we have found, in such exact configuration relative to the case, it is verification extraordinary, indeed it is double, decisive and apt for derogation to a massive degree of all challenge.
In view of the book of Daniel being in the Septuagint, and for that matter, of reference to its contents being in the First Book of Maccabees, showing that all of these things were common knowledge as famed events by the second century B.C., and as those of the epoch of Daniel: there is need for submission to the evidence. Indeed, it must always be remembered that there was a death penalty for false prophets, and the true had to have their words fulfilled, on pain of death.
Devastation, even national, did not remove the awe at the power of God, any more than the atomic bomb has removed the fear of explosion; but rather is the divine power treated with respect by those chastened, as they returned at length to their homeland! Tragedy does not dull, but rather sharpens fear. The desolations suffered by Israel made the realities the more precious, as you see in the exacting discipline of Ezra and Nehemiah, in the intense regard for the truth from the past, the discipline and the devotion, with the abhorrence of the realities of sin, during the reconstruction of the city and the rule for the land.
Unlike is this to the case reported in The Advertiser, October 5, 2005, where Australian society is found to be growing more prone to deceit, lying and lowering standards, where truth is being derogated in a nation to some extent currently cocooned, where co-operation is to some extent compromised by the lack of confidence which untrustworthiness can produce, a testimony to the unrealism of deceit, whether self-deception or volitional. No, in Israel returning, chastened from Babylon, the tragic realities had left a people from the first, dependent on the Lord, seeking His way and desiring to uncrumple the linen of their lives, the fashion of their faith, and to leave pretence with pretension behind. While once again, as centuries passed, corruption would set in, yet it took its time just as the judgment in Babylon had taken its toll. The deceit of all in all things at such a level, as if to 'create' a Daniel, this would be the sort of thing Bugs Bunny might attempt; but it is for this reason precisely, that the cartoon is humorous. It does not work that way!
For returning Israel as you see abundantly in Ezra and Nehemiah, corruption was haltered by godly fear, repentance was an absolute, truth was paramount, the word of God was directive, to be received with appetite because it was the word of the One who works all things according to His will, who is merciful and had just shown them prodigious mercy in the conditions of their return with so many of their temple objects intact. Duplicity was indeed seen as a work of the devil! Thus the passionate desire for God is like that of a lost waif, at last able to eat! Such is the atmosphere to be found in the rebuilding, so that though deception is at this level always an oddity, an aberration to imagine, here it would be the the very perfection of a crop of poison provided as food.
In all these things, then, it is as one would expect from the work of Daniel, the name not exhumed from a figurative past, but deployed with other names of Jewish fame and notoriety, at the top of the list of heroes of the faith: Noah, Job and Daniel.
As noted above, the language in Daniel, relative to Persian terms, fits the Old Persian vocabulary, which sets it before 300 B.C., while the prophecies including that of the death date of Christ's crucifixion, have all been as regular and reliable as have the ever increasing testimonies of scientific knowledge, to the integrity of the book. It is impossible for man to make such predictions, and there presence is in itself the authentication of the book: just as it would be if a cheque for 1000 trillion were received from a Mr Smith, and he were the only one in this world who had that much wealth or access to it. When power is needed from a unique source able to supply, it is then that source from which it comes. So is it in the case of the book of Daniel, which is verified in language, logic, history, versions and extra-biblical material and usage.
All that lacks integrity is attack on it, on spurious grounds, such as those shown in *1 Ch. 9, above, where the whole collation of false premises is exposed.
What Daniel shows is the perfect precision of God, and the power He deploys, as in the resurrection, when the case requires it, so that His love and mercy can reach this world in new ways, finding new souls in the old ways, to redeem. God is love; and power is an implement. His restraint is a marvel, for He is indeed slow to anger; but His power is nothing else, for when it is used, the world though slow to awake, finds history moving upon it, like an army (cf. SMR Chs. 8-9, Answers to Questions Ch. 5, The Pitter-Patter ... Ch. 4).
Daniel in Company
Such was the case with Moses, with Joshua, with David, with Daniel; and such is the case even now as the sea and the waves raging (Luke 21:25) make the foretold impacts. These are seen now in Japan, as earlier in the USA, on the coasts of California, and as if this is not enough, more recently in two major hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, which as a pair in 2005 A.D., surpass all records, the latter having headed directly for major oil installations in that country, but sparing them in the event, as if a prodigious warning!
Such also was the case with the Jews' return to Jerusalem in 1948 (completing the work in 1967), to take that city against the efforts of the powers that be, in staggering triumph, when millions in money and men were against it, and the UN, for that matter. Yes, in the concept of a whole civilisation, all nations were against it in this! Britain had forsaken her, the UN was hostile to its regaining Jerusalem, Arab neighbours massed against it, none seemed ready to aid it! It was precisely as Zechariah had foretold for the neighbourhood and beyond. To "all the people round about", Jerusalem indeed has now become "a cup of trembling", when they seek to encounter it, as they frequently do in word or in deed! It is indubitably "a burdensome stone for all people" as that prophet predicted for the period before Christ would return, some 2500 years ago.
One recent example of the latter burden noted, is in bin Laden's testimony (cf. Lord of Life Ch. 8, *1), that it is US help to Israel that grinds in his mental maw like sand, as he seeks for former Islamic 'glories'. The US and the UN alike, in that group seeking results in the Middle East, one into which Britain does not fail to come, these actively have sought resolution for the Jewish city, while Russia entangles itself in the Madrid Quartet as well, with solemn purpose in pursuit of ACTION! Oil is in trouble because of this trouble, the terrorist movement with its Islamic emphasis being incensed, as well as willing to receive enormous rewards for oil, which likewise threatens economies in its great price rises, as disruptions proceed. It ramifies and it fires, this Jerusalem, moving to the Pacific Islands in their balm, in these ways which intertwine, like fingers clasped.
As for the restoration of Jerusalem to Israel, this is something that had to happen as Christ foretold it quite clearly in Luke 21:24, and there had to be overwhelming victories against vastly superior numbers, for Zechariah has specified this in Ch. 12. History has as always, obliged and done it as prescribed.
Further, this had to occur before Israel the nation should in vast masses again seek the Lord, and repent of the crucifixion, for this is shown also in Zech. 12:10. It had to be in the Age following the death of Christ, so that the repentance of the Jewish people could be for what they had DONE to Him! You do not repent in advance! So is it set in Zechariah in the latter part of our Age, with the impending events of Zechariah 14 brewing like the storm they undoubtedly will be. Thus, Jesus the Christ in Matthew 24:21 declares this time will be one of
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"great tribulation, such as was not sine the beginning
of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be", |
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while Daniel in
Ch. 12, foretells that |
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"there shall be a time of trouble such as never was
since there was a nation even to that same time". |
All this has happened, and such things happening are merely axial evidences of the power of God, which the Christian knows in his or her own life. It is there, not blatant, but patent when necessary; and the power to perform it is in proportion to that deployed in the resurrection, available as God sees fit to use it, keeping His glorious promises and showing His hand (Ephesians 1:19). Yes and His demonstration may freely be greater, for who will limit the Lord! (Isaiah 14:27). Yet He does not use power as if this were the point; and so Jesus Christ when on earth sometimes asked those whom He had healed NOT to report His healings (perhaps, lest this, a secondary thing, should become primary).
He uses power for what IS the point. God is love, and in His love He acts in judgment, often only after long provocation, often after many appeals as to Israel as shown in II Chronicles 36 and Jeremiah. But He acts, and that indeed for those who remember Him in His ways, who wait for Him and rejoice in their lives for Him (cf. Isaiah 64:5, and Daniel 9:1 ff. - where staggering and precise results flowed freely, as His name was sought and His will ascertained). God is a Spirit, and when you are blind to His deeds, hypnotised by culture and desire into sin, then you neither know nor serve Him, and it as foreign to you as music to the deaf.
This however does not affect the music. It is still there.
Daniel and our Times
The Word of God both does not Change and Foretells Change
Since efforts to terminate Daniel's prophecy, not in terms of the events it so persistently, profoundly and precisely predicts, but at the hand of man, as that of an assassin, and the book's integrity is constantly self-verifying, just as its assaults are self-destructive as has been shown at length, for example not merely above, but in Highway of Holiness and elsewhere: so the whirl of history submits likewise to no truncation, and comes steadfastly into sight, day by day, in accord with divine knowledge, forecast in wisdom and implemented in truth.
Robustly Daniel covers to the present, with a vast stress on what was to be the pre-eminence of the Roman Empire, then on Christ's incarnation and vicarious death, followed by the diverse pseudo-imperial future down the changes of the post-Messianic Age (our own).
This is of course also the Church Age in the New Testament sense, since the Messiah continues to rule, pending His explicit restoration in majesty, as shown in Daniel 7:9ff., 7:21ff.. This period between His slaying with sacrificial meaning, and His return to rule, is thronging with fourth kingdom developments (cf. SMR pp. 886ff., Daniel 2 and 7). It is a period politically swaying about that partly strong and partly broken kingdom of Daniel 2, the last, which amazingly but actually, has been so apparent for millenia (cf. Daniel 2:41-43).
Not merely is it varied in this aspect, continually coming to be, going and coming back, but the 'clay' and the 'iron' of its composition, we read there, fail to cohere. So has it been an empire, an idea, a polluted paragon and an imperial misfit, surging into history, swirling into the folly of mad emperors with imperial tilts to the skies, as if gods, working often enough like devils, till its fall in 410 A.D..
The religious wing, always apparent from Nebuchadnezzar's golden statue for worship onwards, was indeed dazzling with a dark light that glooms rather than enlightens in startling fashion, in the days of the fourth kingdom, and it is foretold by Daniel 7:20-21, with its war against the saints of God. This has indeed characterised the whole fourth empire, whether in the Roman imperial day, much of it with slaughters all but inconceivable in their barbarous whimsy and callous disregard with lions and lamps of man alike, or in the time succeeding that first insight into its nature!
This religious aspect has led imperiously in the imperial bishop of Rome, who gradually extended his powers from that of mediation of disputes, to bringing in idolatry such as that of the mass (cf. SMR 1088Dff.), and glutting the gallows in their preliminary torturous format of the Inquisition (cf. Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 14). This often specialised in imposing pain, torment, trouble, incarceration, provocation, and slow demise or sudden passion of torture, on those who like Daniel's friends, refused to worship such human constructions and contrivance (cf. Exposition on I Kings 8) BECAUSE they worshipped God, not some symbol which the Lord broke to indicate the body which He still retained after breaking it (that is, the bread!), in a ceremony instituted for the express purpose of remembering Him! (Luke 22:19).
Daniel not merely predictively depicts such hatred of the saints which is deployed in the diversified, partly strong and partly broken, divided but somehow united fourth kingdom, but the end of the matter with the judgment of God Himself, in Daniel 7:22. This is vastly amplified of course in Revelation 13-18, as to its detail in the New Testament, yet this with marvellous fluency of interaction with Daniel and its language! Even now, the predicted political dismissal of what we now know as Roman Catholicism (though wrongly so, for it is the Gospel which is Catholic or universal as the word entails, not something made in Rome, with its improper prelate*1 as even a glance at Matthew 23:8-10 reveals), seen in Revelation 17:14-18, is proceeding. The European Union moves more and more decidedly with the refusal in stark mutiny against any more of this, as seen this very year, 2005, in its Constitution, where omission is as clear as silence for a mouth often at work! The woman on the beast's back has been given an exit visa; or less formally, the beast is now bucking! (cf. SMR pp. 946ff.)
Was there not pressure on it, the European Union, to acknowledge 'Christianity', which Rome so likes to relate to itself ? There was and a Cardinal was soberly reflecting on the ... loss which was suffered in this refusal to acknowledge it. Did not the last pope reflect on Europe as properly to be united in his own pastorate! Was not a ludicrous effort to avoid the issue made when there was a preliminary draft of the new Constitution for the European Union, referring to Greece and Rome, but omitting Christianity; and did not even a STATEDLY ATHEIST leader of one of the lands of Europe publicly deplore such an omission as unrealistic! Yet it was made, and Rome in this was unmade.
NO, no, no, non, nein, nyet, never! came the answer from the EU. It could be divisive was the word of one of the notable European leaders involved: so that it would be just a unity sacrifice, this omissioin of Rome ? People will understand what is meant, was the claim; but what is meant for understanding is this, that Europe is not acknowledging Rome politically!
Sacrifice it was, and so the exclusion in this important document, the Constitution of the EU, is just as much a sign of the times as was the fact that at the first, the Common Market was formed in terms of the Treaty of ROME! Rome was there, and is now somewhere in the air, in this arena.
Times are changing as required by the book of Revelation, and the partly weak and the breaking up elements in the clay and iron, a section of the symbolism for this Empire, this Beast, to use the language of Daniel and Revelation: it is now aggregating, now dispersing, but continuing. Thus this fault and flaw in it, just as Daniel predicted it, proceeds towards the day of Rome's demise as a world power, her separation, segregation alone, no more a part of the force of this world and its ways (cf. John 14:30-31).
Apparent causes for this observable fact of fall, relative to Romanism, in the realities of the dynamics of this world's ways may include such elements as
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non-marrying priesthood and |
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food exclusions (fulfilling the
prediction with this apostasy seen in I Timothy 4), |
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birth maximising amid a surging
world population and |
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inadequate repentance for the
Inquisition (cf. The Frantic Millenium .. ..Chs.
6 and 10 , with
Ch. 6 above and 912ff., 1033ff.), that extrapolation
of all apostasy, wreaking long and torturous pressures |
It is meanwhile important to realise that Rome's ways in the Inquisition are not so very different, in gruesomeness and horror, from those of many of the other tyrannies of this world, such as those of Hitler, Stalin, the Taliban, yes and Spain in its unhappy heyday, with its adventures in gold and men with the Aztecs and Incas - almost too sad in genocidal properties, long to reflect upon at all. This is what the world is like when it transforms either some new religion or the perversion of the Cross where Christ was crucified, into an arm of might to 'crucify' in other ways, its own victims. That, it would be like predatory doctors, assailing their patients. OUT! is Christ's word to Peter concerning force for His cause; and Matthew 26:52ff. does not evaporate, for all the increasing heat of greenhouse gases, or any other heat!
As Daniel and Revelation 13, 16, 17 show so clearly, the religious arm in these things concerning the 'beast', is an adjunct, while the 'mouth' speaking great things which is to come has had its predecessors, and the war on the saints has long continued. This has been observable in history, whether from the day and way of the Roman Empire, in its first flush,in its continuation to the East, in the Holy Roman Empire, in the Inquisition, or in the Moslem ravages which give the line, as did Hitler with the Jews, for purely religious or idealistic philosophies of brutality, concepts of the cadaver, a token of things to come as seen in Revelation 13, where false religion with its false prophet, will extol the Beast, with all his brutalities.
These Islamic ravages, incidentally, are not only on pleasure places like Bali, nor only in sites for murder's barbarisms, such as Israeli citizens, nor are they for the USA alone; but they work in such places as Sudan and Ambon;and let us NOT forget the latter, people are people and the atrocities of herding of them outrageously remains a vast crime, whatever Australia does - or rather does not - to help the situation. So is the stage being set in spirit and cultural custom, so is the office of rant and irreligion, with the dragon in lamb's guise, advancing (cf. Revelation 13:11 and with it, Matthew 7:15 and Acts 20:29ff., II Peter 2:1ff., Jude).
Europe is Rushing to its Fleeting Rule to End the Age
Let us for the time, however, more generally pursue the development of power, the expression of it, in the partly broken but partly strong Europe.
After the strangely prodigious outreaches of Europe, in addition to the above, in seizure of much of Africa, and even of the British Empire, for all its better qualities, itself still a portion of the same imperial setting, we cine ti the newly magnificent 350 million or so assemblage of the EU.
It is this which bids fair whether in
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its space program, |
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its airbus gala, |
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its communications, |
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its
atomic energy or |
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its European Parliament, |
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in its exports of immorality through
Brussels (cf. Wake Up World Ch. 3) |
to bring to earth the celestially defined completion of the affair, with the central world government, predicted to come, in that domain.
Already, there are signs in the new approach in the US, that of 'tactical diplomacy', noted on ABC News Radio on September 25, 2005, provided with a special public relations post to assuage diplomatic difficulties and seek more 'harmony', together with the colossal US national debt and its inevitable implications, of a significant passing of power. It is going back to what the US indeed helped so generously to rebuild, after World War II, that is to Europe! Now that this contains Britain, with France, Germany, Spain, Italy and numerous other members, already in stress as to whether to spread or not, to Turkey, it is becoming, the desolate of 1945, the munificent of 2005: all in a mere 60 years.
Brussels has indeed sprouted, and is becoming rather like the aristocracy once in Britain, a thing that declares itself in many phases and fields, with some authority!
The extensive fulfilment of Daniel's predicted ten-fold rule, suddenly coming to coalesce in one world authority, has been extensively documented before (cf. SMR pp. 946ff., 889, 929ff., 957ff.).
It is predicted, in that natural correlate of Daniel, the book of Revelation which extensively alludes to it. Indeed, it adds and consummates its message, that this universal earthly rule proceeds to a financial oversight, control and repression (the number 666 being a 'mystery' for which one solution has been presented - cf. SMR pp. 906ff., 684). Such a line of central authority had already been well introduced to Europe, and indeed at least as a spectacle, to the whole world in the last century, with
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the freezing of assets; |
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secret police eyeing and spying; |
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incredibly brutal and often prolonged dyings, with |
staggering social acceptance under duress,
(many not desiring to know more than useful,
of things).
Such has been merely exemplified by
the extermination zest for Jews, amounting to near genocide
- this case prior to the Jewish restoration and rule of the Messiah, being
covered in prophecy by Jeremiah 30:4-9, Romans 11:25ff., Deuteronomy 32, Leviticus 26.
It was covered no less by the
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unfeeling and frequent betrayals,
even of parents by children, for the "party" in Germany, or in Russia |
as also through
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confiscation of assets, |
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financial restrictions and measures
to control a whole section of Europe, |
The vicious and vitiated visions of mere imagination (cf. Aviary of Idolatry), were the harbingers not of Spring, but of a debasement to devilries, which the Inquisition in its own former time, fittingly introduced (cf. Revelation 18:1-3, SMR pp. 946ff.).
On the right, the CONTROL was by Hitler for his inglorious few years of fanatical dedication to dreams, with anything but dreams in the nails of those controls; on the left, it was found in the USSR having a nightmarish extension into Eastern Europe, so to extend the thunder of woe which engulfed that vast assemblage of imposing nations. Imposing or not, it was quite soon imposed upon, as their history indeed shows quite clearly, to have been the case.
Indeed let us hear Matthew 24:10-12, to see the perception of Christ, concerning the heart of man and its 'maturing' as time should go on, for as He Himself declared of His then forthcoming crucifixion, "If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in a dry one ?"
If the Lord's own crucifixion amid ranting rejection, an event disadorned with manipulation by priests and unfeeling or weak hearts, if this was the world's repayment of evil for good, if this was done THEN, what enormities would men commit when the tree became dry ? What would they manage to do in devilries when their fourth kingdom came to its stinking flower (the world's largest flower is a parasite allegedly of profound stench, perhaps a symbol!) ?
"Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold."
This phase had special impact in the USSR, where the accounts of the persecution of Christians in particular, the denial of opportunities to build, the restrictions, the brutality - one case being too typical, where cheek bones might be broken in an attack on a prayer meeting - and it is but a large, a very large instalment in the cultural quirks and social insanities to come. There, the atrocities were perpetrated with feigned neutrality but actual assault. It was done amid false charges, not limited to attack, but including drugs to alter if possible the very mind of man. Harassment became a euphemism, prodigies of blatant disregard of humanity became the reality.
These things, be it noted, are all PART OF THE PARADIGM, indices of what is latent, then patent, what is in the interstices of the human heart as recently as 50 years ago, and less; while for its part, the Bamboo Curtain, is no less shocking still, than was the Iron Curtain then (cf. News 35, 37, 150, 98, SMR pp. 670, 684, 696), and its events of persecution give all the more opportunity for observation, on the part of those who look not at dreams, but practical realities. The judgments drawn up by God provide a preliminary indictment and accurate prediction of what is to come. What He judges is truth, so that the requital indictes the crime! (cf. Revelation 19:20).
As portrayed over one decade ago, in SMR, this movement to RULE THE WORLD is one filled with examples, both immoral, amoral and violent, both strategic and surreptitious, and it is to ONE godless humanism with mystic follies of its own invention.
If the world will not hear, there is no need for each of its inhabitants to be deaf, for God is still calling (Hebrews 3:7). It is not as if God is without love because He is equipped with plan, or unconcerned because things will draw to their completion. He completed His work (John 19:30); man is required to accept what He did, and to entrust his life to Him.
Yet there is not merely a failure to respond, with many, and that in religious places; there is a rebellion of method as well as of fact, which bids fair to become the worst affliction of all.
A new plague, given some more reputable beginnings in the largely ineffective League of Nations, and the United Nations, helped by the World Council of Churches, unity-religions, and the whole tribe of human tantrums to push back God's words in Christ into His mouth and 'run the blessed thing themselves', this little world of ours: This is to come and is coming. Revelation speaks of the kings at the last giving their power to the ultimate 'answer' of man, the 'beast', the unifying ruler with its worldly religion (cf. Chapter 9, Daniel File, Part B, The Coming Consummation, infra.)
These are of one mind and will give their power and authority to the beast - Revelation 17:13.
We have tasted the repressive ... expressive and suppressive power of police-state Nazism and Communism; but this will be a plague (*17) to remember - as an instructive episode in the history of disaster-seeking, rebelling man; or to forget - for those caught in its turmoils, without Christ.
The drive to unity without God, this becomes a tertiary pollution problem; it is logically subsequent to the primary efforts at (physical) control, and the secondary problems with the consequences of the controls. Here is the ultimate control; and its pollution also is ultimate: the determinate dereliction and desolation of the human heart. The language of Daniel of this phase, long after the predicted killing of the Christ (the Messiah of Daniel 9:26), as the end prior to judgment itself rushes forwards like a sprinter from the starting blocks (having, as it were, become exasperated with the delay, and acting at last... 11 Peter 3:1-5)... this Danielic language is expressive:
And till the end of the war, desolations are determined... and on the pinnacle of abomination shall be one who makes desolate, even until the consummation, which is determined, is poured out on the desolator - Daniel 9:26-27. (It is this desolator to whom Christ refers, concerning the last times, before His return, in Matthew 24:15.)
The sense of prolonged chronic pollution of mind, body and soul, coming to a suitable fever crisis is seen from Christ's depictions, which we pondered, and here also; they touch also the earth, in which no Biblical prophecy concerning it will fail to be fulfilled; or ever has failed.
This drive to earthly unity as one of the 'control' measures of a desperate though wholly misnamed 'world community' (such a title, now a cliché, almost seems like deliberate satire, as events unroll...), this will bring the fears of a polluted and misused environment into proportion.
Why ? or how ? Man the environmentalist will then be struggling not merely nationally, as in the French (*18) and Russian revolutions, or in the Chinese, with its Tiananmen Square, dripping with blood but also with tears of broken dreams, shattered ideals, betrayed hopes: and indeed in endless seeming tyrannies from other and equally proud quarters. The struggle will then also be international, with the misdirected sacrifice of sovereignty, national sovereignty on the international altar: Yes, and more than that, Mrs Thatcher ... though the attempted 1992 'union' in Europe is a start! (Nov. 1, 1993) indeed sees the Treaty for 'European Union' in force.)
The sacrifice will become, increasingly clearly, what it always has been for the 'world' in principle: it is the sacrifice of the soul and its everlasting destiny handed over to the world, for what does not profit, no, not if one should get all of it. Isaiah puts the underlying position poignantly:
The sacrifice will become, increasingly clearly, what it always has been for the 'world' in principle: it is the sacrifice of the soul and its everlasting destiny handed over to the world, for what does not profit, no, not if one should get all of it. Isaiah puts the underlying position poignantly:
"Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters, and he who has no money; come, buy and eat; yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
"Why do you spend money for that which is not bread ? And your labour for that which does not satisfy ? hearken diligently to me, and eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come to Me: hear, and your soul will live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.
"Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and a commander to the people... Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near..."
(from Isaiah 55:1-6 - italics added).The issues were always clear; but now the pride and power of man will be projected on an international scale; it will indeed transcend even Empire (*19). It will be, as far as this world is concerned, of a universal dimension: with no 'land of the free' for escape.
The price of such a 'control' on man, to contain the damage of his spiritual sin, expressed so diversely and inventively in so many ways: the 'system', the 'plan' or 'new age' or whatever else it be called. This will give the undoubtedly this-worldly majority an opportunity to 'manage'. To manage what ? To manage their own unity; and there will be given a man, the 'man of sin' (II Thessalonians 2), to manage it, with strong hands and sightless eyes, fittingly representing a race that is lost and has lost, and will not receive the victory (1 John 5:4). From that pollution, the power of God will keep the people of God (Revelation 13:14-15, Matthew 24:24, Revelation 7:14, Luke 21:15, Revelation 12:10-11, 14:13):
And they overcame him by the blood of the lamb, and by the word of their testimony: and they did not love their lives unto the death (Revelation 12:11).
End of Excerpt
Since the time of writing those
things in the early 1990s or late 1980s, there has been a vast increment in
Europe's domain, government bodies, moral suasion, space programs (cf.
Galileo, Cascade...
Ch. 12 ), international participation and degree of
world dominance even, and increasingly so, relative to the USA, where vast
national debt and enormous and sometimes imprudent rushes into international
action and moral experiment, where the term 'moral' may be used at all, are making it more and
more a dependent.
Man has not moved notably forward, but rather inexorably and execrably backward since the days of the middle of the 20th century. Hatred is profound, passionate and often religious, as if the very devils were unleashed, with appetite before hell subsumes them in their horrid abyss: present in spirit and deployed in human bombs, with aircraft as weapons, and devastation of children with some degree of target practice, it moves even to the obsessive defoliation of entire nations as in Zimbabwe, with an agenda founded on folly and producing ruin. If the work of the Inquisition was a good prelude, as to type (cf. I Timothy 4), then this is an outstanding correlation in spirit, a very ecstasy of ruin.
If Hitlerism does not do it, then Communism is ready to try, and failing, to move its brute force in crushing man to ludicrous departures from its failed doctrine (cf. SMR pp. 925ff.), and failed example in the USSR, to vehement and unprincipled capitalism, such as many a nation has left behind: this now to be found in select segments of China! If this death of the individual and idolatry of the State is in disgrace, then other mentalities of mordant machinations, dreams that are what the Bible calls "filthy" indeed, are at hand to move towards the despatch of the race, guideless, guileful and godless as it grows into what Christ called the "dry tree"!
Yet if even this is inadequate for corrosion, corruption and derelict decadence, then militant Islam is to hand (cf. More Marvels ... Ch. 4, Divine Agenda Ch. 6, Red Alert Ch. 10, *4), pursuring the use of force at the faith level which characterised Muhammad's early movement to Mecca (cf. SMR pp. 1186Aff.), while scampering sects proliferate*2, as if to mop up any remains, and international modish moments with international marvels move*3, like hyenas removing what the fiercer beasts have left.
Thus does the cyclotron of evil proceed as Christ foretold in Matthew 24, evil men arising and deploying force, iniquity abounding, false prophets and false Christs aplenty.
The angry heart of disaffected man, departed from God, inventing his own thoughts, dreams and gods, proceeds to the biblically appointed confrontation to come, as seen in Revelation 17, pursued in Revelation 18 and consummated in the return of the Lord, portrayed in Revelation 19.
LIBERTY MISUSED AS A VEXATION FOR TRUTH
DENIES LOVE AND SURGES INTO JUDGMENT
WHERE HATE CAN BE SATED IN HELL
If man's mischiefs are not symbolic, but lustful in blood, how much more are God's judgments not symbolic; but where mercy is paraded in contempt and unbelief, so is justice alone left!
This situation of sin in man remains, and its outcomes remain; and its cause remains.
Parodies of philosophy in particular continue to attest the sickening confusion and hypocrisy that godlessness produces (cf. SMR Ch. 3, The gods of naturalism have no go!), in contrast to the pervasive attestation of the word of God in all ways, on all sides, at all times. This is shown in great scope and detail in such works as:
SMR Ch. 5,
The Meaning of Liberty and the Message of Remedy,
REASON, REVELATION and the REDEEMER,
SCIENTIFIC METHOD, SATANIC METHOD AND THE MODEL OF SALVATION,
Parodies of politics abound, as in China where in a land reputedly concerned to obey the Christian concept of providing for each according to his need, receiving from each according to his ability, which is for those who know God and hence where purity and truth abound, the Communist abyss has left them in such an ultra-capitalist mode for many, and such an abject poverty and repression for others, that it has become a very beacon of confusion, and a statue of seduction.
Thus in a broadcast by John Taylor, heard on ABC News Radio, September 25, 2005, we find that there is recently a peppering in the speeches of Communist party line personnel, of references to social harmony, while on the other hand, there is admission that there is anything but equality of opportunity. It is acknowledged by some who speak, that the rich are abounding, the poor are without needs met, while there is no proper differential in taxation according to means, nor is their a social security net! Corruption is rife and in much, robbery of one kind or another, rules: people come to the towns looking for something better, the Report noted, but unless they have 'contacts', especially government ones, it is an uncommonly difficult road to run on.
When evils of unrestrained commerce rose in Britain, there were moderating effects from such as the Earl of Shaftesbury, deliverances wrought by such as Wilberforce, both Christians, there was understanding through the Gospel as by Wesley and Whitefield, and the enormous efforts were made where absolutism did not rule, where men of heart could be heard and results could accrue.
In absolutism, however, as in Communism, in its tyrannical totalitarian dynamic, such alleviations are declared illegal, persecuted, characterised as a challenge to State security, so that the instruments of thought may be locked up, given labour re-education and other appalling horrors of pseudo-sadistic dis-splendour till the blood almost freezes at the prospect.
Thus Communism, though starkly exposed by nations which have drunk deeply of it, and such nations in many cases are now liberated from its domination to other tyrannies unspeakable, misrules of the heart, still finds place to galavant around while free nations pour wealth into China, to help it gain power. This, it is the result, not the purpose, but the two should be conceived together with wisdom!
There, the insecurity of its unelected leaders continues to be a major criterion of all action, as if a dog were to be concerned only for the security of the fleas which feed on it.
Man however shall not live by bread alone (Matthew 4), as Christ declared, instructing the devil, but by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God. This pseudo-communist 'god', so far from his premises in his fallen premises in China now, does not know where to go, how to go and continues merely to seek to increase production, power and potential for the country, ready for confrontation and self-elevation in the usual mode. This is wrought with more hypocrisy than usual, while continuing in the work of making the world to conduct war within itself.
Direction however is essential in all going, meaning in all eating, point and purpose in all progress, if indeed it is to be assignable as progress at all. Evaluation will always require values, and these, if to be criteria and not mere whims and caprices, have to have actuality as their base, something available ONLY in God, since otherwise they are byproducts of desire, culture, ignorance or other dwarfed oddities, mere assertions and ascriptions with no hold on reality, merely a name for wish.
Directed as to what they must do, and how wrong it is not to do it, then, the masses in China merely eat the will of some, in the fulfilment of corrupted purposes which make a social milieu not merely deplorable, but self-perpetuating by power, repression, suppression. This is on the basis of sold souls who are puppets and instruments of some who remain men, if merely managers who know nothing of how to manage themselves, being divorced from God, mere sparks sizzling in the polluted void, filled only with dust.
It is only when man realises that God is, creation is, morals are, the word of God rules, that any unity is possible, any point in anything approaching unity and any logic in life; but since modern man is on fire with dreams to lull and passion to force, and men in masses are in a driving contortion of ague on the one hand, and mutual display and contest on the other, the scenario of Daniel, the fourth empire's movement to its godless and harried end, proceeds according to plan!
Such examples exhibit a sad reality. It is that over the last 250 years in particular, even to the peripheral vision of those who spiritually resemble in sight, the vision of the legally blind, and especially in this now maturing period, the 21st century, man has not mellowed, but rather become brutalised, indeed in much almost demonised with corrupted cunning, vague dreams, listless ideals, pragmatic cynicism, where truth is an enemy and lies are abroad as cultural exhibits, in many parts, educationally required (cf. TMR Ch. 8).
Where Islam does not defile the liberty of women, or in its militant practitioners destroy peace in whole countries, where Communism does not deny the soul of man by the voice of the soul of those who still feel free to have voice, then in democracies in large numbers, mythical substitutes for creation tear at the soul of youth with such governmental delusion, that the party of spiritual drunkards becomes complete. Man through freedom turned to folly, or liberty removed, rushes to the end of his riot, in ruin. It is as Romans 1 has specified the development.
It was to be, and Daniel having foreseen the extravaganza of corruption to come (as in Daniel 7, 12), not merely for such as Nebuchadnezzar but for this world: so it now is. The prophetic word rules, because of its Author, who knowing all, tells those who listen, the way of it.
In this, Daniel joins with Paul (SMR pp. 661ff., and Ch. 5 above) and Isaiah (as in Ch. 59), with Habakkuk and with Ezekiel (cf. Chs. 36-39 and see It Bubbles ... Ch. 10, SMR pp. 510ff.), and with the Lord Jesus Christ as in Matthew 24, Luke 21, Mark 13).
Thus, Daniel in these and many other ways placarded for milenia to come, what in verifiable and empirical data did come, is coming and proceeds like a blast from an opened oven on a torrid Summer's day.
That blessed creation of liberty in man, which sin subdues and cynics decry, as if afraid to face the mess they have made of their own freedom (cf. SMR pp. 294ff., 257ff.), that ability to dispose thought and to invent folly, or follow good, indeed to love - and God is love, the criterion and the joy, where good is to be found: this is misused with zeal. It is, it proceeds as if on a perpetual motion survey, to demonstrate in detail over the millenia that NOTHING ELSE WORKS. It shows moreover that nothing else is valid (as shown in the references at the head of this section), so that irrationality and irreverence, like two rogues, join hands to help themselves to the waning world.
It will prove but a will-o'-the-wisp to grasp!
Daniel it was, with others of the prophets who predicted Christ, the desolations He would cover in pardon for the penitent who believe and receive Him in truth and in reality, who foretold the desolations which would uncover themselves in this world, because refusing cover, who showed the scope of that partly brittle, broken fourth empire in Europe, centred in Rome, with its clay and iron not agreeing, so producing instability. It is this which history has shown with eloquence and elegance combined, its brutalities and its pomposities a fitting prelude to what Daniel calls the coming words of the "little horn" of Ch. 7, great and pompous are they, as II Peter 3 also exhibits, and II Thessalonians with Revelation 13,17 attest.
The numerous examples and exhibits provided above, abundantly attest that what have been almost unlimited follies in the last 250 years, as if man were determined not merely to be a slow learner, but to forego the very power to learn, amid the erratic absolutists, the tedious totalitarians, the irrationally ruthless, the morbidly relentless, the remorselessly ruinous, the heavy dreamers with their disgraceful dynamics and the airy illusionists. Such as these are on the card to come and increasingly, they declare themselves.
Does man indeed do such grievous things ? why even in body, man has been doing such deeds both at large on the extended canvas, and on more limited scales, whether in Africa, in Europe, in Russia, in China, in Vietnam, in the Sudan, in what was the Congo, now aflame, in Cambodia, and lately in Zimbabwe, with a lust and will which when extended a little by such as Hitler and Stalin have created, become the very model for the end.
As to Daniel, in Ch. 9, he not merely predicted the date of Christ's death from centuries beforehand, but gave the nature of the darkening end, more detailed in its depiction in Ch. 7 to be sure, but in Ch. 9 in its doomed and dark character of desolation upon desolation; and this is there shown until all kingdoms are delivered to the Son of Man, worthy of all honour and glory, power and presidency, with His Father (a contribution of Daniel 7). Indeed, it is His Spirit which has indicted these things (cf. II Peter 1:10-12), who convicts men of their cause, the consequences and the derelictions (John 16:9ff.).
There then is the final desiccation, where the deserts of desertion manage to lure the relics of mankind who reject truth, to their final ruin.
In that same Christ however is the place where the delicacies of life live, where is the truth, fire, vision and love which appeals, because it has no need to use force. Is this not because truth has its own force and love does not deal in damnable delusions in trying to manipulate man, but presents itself. The heights and the depths are as in Daniel, as in Revelation, as in their joint testimony, as in the Gospels cited; and there is only One attested way to know the one and avoid the other. It is to receive Him who IS the truth, and to cease trying to manufacture your own meaning, message and vision, as if the realities of God lay in your own power. Alas, this is the deceptive delusion which is enticing man in his millions, man the product, man the derivatives, yet this of God. It is luring him, diseased in heart and polluted in spirit, into desires as imponderable and impractical now as at the first in Eden, where man was enticed to seek to be 'as God', when it is not knowledge apart from one's Creator which is needed, but IN HIM!
It is not contest with the Creator, as ludicrous and unfeasible, which is to the point, but capitulation and content (Luke 14:27ff.); for to God, a man, a woman, a child may indeed with purity and right go, and as creation, adore the Creator, as saved, delight in the Saviour, Jesus the Christ: then as sinner rejoice in purity, as beloved, rest in love, as shown mercy, be showing mercy.
NOTES
*1 See SMR pp. 912ff., 950ff., 1032ff., 1042ff..
See Answers to Questions Ch. 6 and Things Old and New Chs. 2, 5 , 9,10 Epilogue, Appendix; Tender Times for Timely Truth Ch. 8.