Lesson number one, entitled Daniel/
Revelation for Beginners. Revelation is a book full of symbolism and imagery
that is not really familiar to the Western mind. A lot of people look at it,
I've seen a lot of people interpret things based on the imagery
that has nothing to do with the imagery of the book and what it meant to the
people who first saw it. It was written in a style of writing called
apocalyptic. The word apocalyptic comes from a Greek word
which means an uncovering, an uncovering. So apocalyptic literary style, which you
find a lot of in the book of Revelation, was used by Old Testament prophets when
they were prophesying concerning world events. So when the prophets in the Old
Testament were talking about the fall of a nation or great disasters, natural
disasters, for example, or God's judgment on the people, whether it was happening
right away or whether it was coming in the future, they used this kind of
apocalyptic literary style to describe what's going on. Now there were several
characteristics of this style of writing which were similar from one
author to another. For example, it was used in times of suffering and
persecution. Different prophets would use the same style, literary
style, whether they were writing in 500 BC or 700 BC, you know what I'm saying. It
was a style that they apprehended and used for their purpose during their
time. It was also very intense and very emotional. The present suffering
was acute, the future salvation would be dramatic. So it's a very
dramatic style of writing, exaggerated. Stars were
falling out of the sky, the moon was full of blood, that
kind of hyperbole, I guess. They also used symbolic language: dreams and visions.
The writers told stories using celestial characters such as angels and demons.
They also used cosmological references to the moon and
the stars. In Joel, the Old Testament prophet, Joel chapter 2, verse 29 to
32 he speaks of the day when God will deliver His people and that's the
passage that Peter quotes in Acts chapter 2. So remember I
said, this study here is Daniel/ Revelation. Well, when we
will study the book of Revelation you will recognize this type
of language throughout the book. In our study of the period when Revelation was
written, you'll also see that it was a time of intense persecution for the
church from within as well as without. So there were a lot of reasons why the
author used this type of style of writing. Now most
scholars agree that John, the Apostle John, used this style of
writing in his book in order to keep the church's persecutors, the Romans, from
understanding its message. At the time it was a capital offense to possess the
scriptures. You could be executed for possessing the scriptures. And so what
happened a lot of the unnecessary books and things like that were discarded.
There were all kinds of smaller versions that were hidden at the time to keep
them secret. And when a letter came out as late as this letter did in the
90s, the year 95 or so, and it was widely circulated, there was a
great danger that if this letter fell into the hands of the Romans that the
Christians who had possession of it would be persecuted. And so John writes in
this apocalyptic style. And if you were not
Jewish, if you had no knowledge of the Old Testament, if you had
no knowledge of Hebrew, if you had no knowledge of Hebrew symbolism, then you
couldn't get the true meaning behind the images. It was just a bunch of
crazy stuff, crazy stuff. So this is where we are, this is where we are
today. In order to understand Revelation we first have to review some Old
Testament material where a lot of these images and references are found. I mean,
there are over 400 references from the Old Testament, but there are no direct
quotes. Imagine, 400 references in the book of Revelation, to the Old Testament,
to imagery, but no direct quotes from the Old Testament. So we
need to examine Jewish symbolism and Jewish numerology in order to get the
message behind the images. Imagine 2,000 years from now
archaeologists, they find some records and it says, Michigan
hotdogs. And they're thinking, Michigan hotdogs, what are those? Michigan
hotdogs? So they look through the geographical records and
they say, well, this country, the United States that existed many many centuries
ago, no longer exists today, was broken up into states and one of their states was
called Michigan. So we're narrowing down. And hotdogs, perhaps the dogs
there were kind of animal were very warm. Who knows. The
point I'm trying to get at, if you don't understand the culture, then the
symbolisms and the slang words make no sense to you. Okay, I'll stay with my hot
dog analogy here. Although I don't know if it's going over real well,
but in French, in Quebec where I come from, you
can buy hot dogs, right. And that's exactly what they call them
in French, a dog that's hot. Un chien chaud. It doesn't make a lot
of sense because the term doesn't come from the French language, it's just
translated into the French language. So it - I would imagine we have the
same problem today. These are Hebrew terms. The symbolisms made sense
only to the Hebrews, didn't make sense to the Gentiles. So if we want to make sense
of the book of Revelation, we need to understand the terms, the symbolisms.
And these are found in the Old Testament. That's why any
study of Revelation usually begins with the study of the book of Daniel, all
right. So we're going to start with the book of Daniel. Let's talk
about the historical setting of the book of Daniel. We know that Joshua led the
Israelites into the land of Canaan, which became Israel somewhere around 1410 BC, and then for the next three centuries the Israelites conquered the
nations that were living there and they were establishing
themselves. And then in 1060 BC, Saul becomes the first king of the united
Israel, the twelve tribes are united under a single King, Saul as that king.
Then in 1020 BC, David becomes King and subdues the entire land. He extends the
borders of the kingdom from the Egyptian desert in the south to the
Euphrates River in the north, from the Mediterranean Sea in the West to the
desert that existed in the east. And then in 980 BC Solomon becomes King,
David's son, and for forty years Israel enjoys a golden period of peace and
prosperity during which the temple is built in Jerusalem. Well, after Solomon
dies and the kingdom is divided in two - there was a civil war, but when
his son and others, the northern kingdom made up, was one division of that
divided kingdom, ten tribes gathered together, Shechem was its capital for a
time. Then Penuel and then misra was the capital of the northern kingdom and then
the southern kingdom made up of two tribes with the capital of Jerusalem. And
strangely enough, the North was called Israel and the South was called Judah.
The two were never reunited and they competed for dominance in
the region. And after the split there was a decline in moral and religious
fervor in both of the kingdoms, as periods of high infidelity, if you wish,
to the Lord followed each. So they were faithful under Solomon, but
when they broke up the North, the South, the North especially went into idolatry
rather quickly. The South followed, but not as quickly, as we'll see. Now
during Israel's development from 1400 BC to it's divided Kingdom in the ninth
century, one nation dominated the world scene politically and militarily for
almost five centuries, and that was the Assyrians. Their capital was to the
north of the northern kingdom. It was in Nineveh. And the Jews often had to pay
tribute or fight off this strong and wicked neighbor of theirs. And that's
where, remember Jonah, the Book of Jonah? Jonah was sent to Nineveh. And the reason
that Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh is because Nineveh, the Assyrians, had
punished the Israelites so often for not paying their dues. They had invaded them,
they had enslaved the people, there were wars. And so, the last thing that Jonah
wanted to do was go to Nineveh, the capital of their enemy, the
capital city of their enemy, and preach to them, so that God would save the city. I
mean, what Jonah wanted was for God to destroy Nineveh.
And destroying Nineveh would be destroying their major
enemy. We know the story of Jonah. Finally, God gave him an offer he couldn't refuse
and the fish spit him up and he went to Nineveh and he
preached. So let's keep this in mind, the Assyrians, shall we, in 722 BC the
Assyrians attacked and destroyed the Northern Kingdom and they scattered the
people throughout other nations and they brought many into exile into Assyria.
And that's how Assyria handled their conquests. They would conquer a nation
and then they would take the people of that nation and spread them out to
other nations, in order to dilute their nationalism by diluting their bloodlines.
And so, they would force a nation to intermarry with surrounding nations.
And their idea was that in several generations people would have less
fidelity to the old ways, to the old country, to the old nations, ideas.
So that's exactly what they did to the Israelites, the northern
tribes. They just scattered them among other nations. And of course, for the
Israelites, the other nations were pagan nations, and they were forced to
intermarry and to settle in other countries. They
also brought foreigners to live in the northern kingdom and of course mix
with the Jews that remained there. Well the result was that the northern kingdom
and population were mixed with foreign nations. They lost their pure Jewish
blood and their heritage. And these mixed Jews were eventually called Samaritans
by their southern neighbors. They were despised, a, because of the mixed blood,
and b, because of the mixed religion, because the northern tribe mixed Judaism
with paganism. So their religion had some parts of Judaism, but also other parts
of paganism, pagan worship. And so the southern tribes, the two southern tribes
rejected them because of this. And of course the northern
tribes, after a time, began to collaborate with other nations
against Judah. And so that was another reason that the southern kingdom was not
very friendly to the Samaritans, because of that. Meanwhile, on the world stage, a
new power was emerging to challenge the Assyrian supremacy. And in 612 BC the
Babylonians destroyed Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, and they established
themselves as the world rulers. In 606 BC the Babylonian army led by future
king Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem and he carried off the main leaders, the
nobles, the royalty, to Babylon, where they will begin 70 years of captivity, which
was prophesied by Jeremiah back in 626 BC, 20 years before it actually happened.
Twenty years by the calendar before the Babylonians actually came in to
destroy and capture Jerusalem, Jeremiah prophesied that this would happen and
that they would be taken into captivity for 70 years. And they were in captivity
for 70 years, according to his prophecy. Now you need to understand, the Assyrian
style of conquering was that they would mix the people that they
conquered with other nations and dilute them and weaken them,
that's how they did it. The Babylonians had another strategy.
What they did is they, kind of, scooped off the cream of the crop of the nation
that they had conquered, the best and the brightest. They took
those and they brought them back to Babylon and they trained them in the
language and the literature and the politics and the history and the art of
Babylon. In other words, they remade them into Babylonians, and
once they were fully trained, fully loyal, then they would send these people back
into their nations in leadership positions, in order to influence
their former nation in the ways of Babylon. Just a whole different
strategy on how to conquer and to rule a nation. Now, among the leaders and young
Nobles that were carried off at this time was a young man called Daniel, who
would grow in importance and prestige in the foreign king's court because of his
ability to interpret dreams and prophecy. He was bright. He was among the
bright, but his value to the Babylonian king was not his ability at
math or politics or science, it was his ability to
interpret dreams. Also taken away at this time was the
prophet Ezekiel. The prophet Ezekiel was also carried off at this time and he was
the Prophet to the people who were in exile in Babylon while Jeremiah remained
back in Judah, and he was the prophet to the people who remained in Judah during
this time. So God allowed His people to be taken away into exile, but He provided
for their spiritual needs. as I said, Daniel was in the palace, was influencing
the king with his special gifts. Ezekiel lived among the people and he
ministered to them with his teaching and his prophecies. As a matter of fact, it was
during this time while the Israelites were in Babylonian captivity that the
synagogue, the idea of the synagogue began. There were no synagogues before the
the captivity, but while they were in captivity the Jews wanted to maintain
their religion, they wanted to maintain their faith in God, many of them.
And Ezekiel, of course, was there to encourage them. And so, they began
meeting in their homes for prayer, for the reading of scripture, for mutual
edification, for praise, for encouragement. Does that sound familiar? And so, that's
where the rise of the synagogue movement began, during the
Babylonian captivity. And after the Jews came back to rebuild the temple and to
rebuild the city, they also brought back with them this idea of the synagogue and
established synagogues, not just in homes now, but actually separate buildings, in
order to worship and to pray. Now they still have the temple where
they would go do the feasts and where they would offer sacrifice. They didn't do
that in synagogues, but now this new element in their spiritual
development was present, all right. So 20 years later in 586 BC after the
king who had been left in charge of the southern kingdom by the Babylonians
rebelled, his name was Zedekiah. Twenty years he's under the thumb of Babylon, he
figures, we're going to rebel. We’re going to throw off the yoke of
Babylon. And so what do the Babylonians do? They return to Jerusalem, they destroy
the temple this time, and they destroy the city, and they carry off even more
Jews into captivity. As I say, as I mentioned before, the Babylonian system was
to carry off the leaders and retrain them in Babylonian culture. So in 539 BC -
and if you notice, this first lesson is just history. I'm just
setting it up for you, okay, so we know where we're at. Give you a little
background as to how the book of Daniel was written and why. So in 539 BC
something else happens on the world scene, the Medes conquer the Babylonians
and the new world leader is a man called Cyrus, who becomes king in 536 BC. Now in
that same period, this king releases the Jews to return to their homeland and
provides them with help to begin rebuilding the temple and the city.
During this time, around 534 BC, Daniel dies while in captivity in Babylon, which
is now controlled by the Medes. From about 500 to 332, the Medes
share world power with another mighty nation called Persia. And so you
have the medo-persian empire that develops. And it's during the reign of
the Persian kings that the city of Jerusalem is finally completed. The
temple is rebuilt. Ezra the Prophet reestablishes the law. Malachi the
Prophet begins to prophesy to the people who have resettled in Jerusalem. And
Nehemiah returns to rebuild the wall. All this happens, 486 all the way down to 400
BC. And so, Old Testament history ends in 400 BC. In other words, 400 years before
Christ, four centuries before Christ, with the work of Malachi. Now in the world
there are two other historic events that take place that have great significance
for the world and also for the coming of Jesus and the spread of the gospel.
One of these is Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great conquers Persia.
Notice I'm saying - the Assyrians were in charge, and then the Babylonians
were in charge, then the Medes were in charge, and then there was the
medo-persians who were in charge, and now Alexander the Great comes along and he
conquers Persia in 331 BC and Greece now becomes the new world power. We know
that Alexander dies soon after in 323 BC, and he died in Babylon, by the
way. It is said that he had a broken heart because there were no other
nations that he could conquer. He lived to conquer other nations. And then
in 146 BC Rome destroys Carthage and puts an end to the Greek dominance of the
world and will become the new world power for the next 500 years. Now we need
to understand that there is a story within a story going on here.
And let's face it, if you know history classes,
you know that I have gone through 1,400 years of world history
here in about 20 minutes, but I just want to show you the high points because we're
going to come back to these as we talk about Daniel and Revelation and the
visions that Daniel has and the visions also, excuse me, the visions also that
John will have. So I said to understand that there is a story within
a story going on here. First of all there's the story of the Jews, the Jewish
people. The Bible tells us the story about their kingdoms being destroyed by
foreign armies. The Bible tells us about their people being carried off and
two of their people, Ezekiel and Daniel, writing about their various experiences.
And then there's another story going on at the same time here, and that's the
story of world kingdoms. Through the Bible accounts of the experience of the
Jews we can trace the rise and fall of five world powers, which historical
records confirm. As I said, the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the
medo-persian Empire, the Greek Empire and the Roman Empire. Now the Bible doesn't
talk about these, like, it doesn't give you the details, the rise and
fall of the Roman Empire. It doesn't give those details. When you read about -
when you read in the Bible what's in the forefront is the story of the Jews.
That's the story that we're reading about, about the Jews. When they were in
exile, when they rebuilt the temple, when Jesus came, the prophets.
That's the story that's in the forefront, but the story that's in the
background, okay, like scenery almost, if you wish, is the story of these five
kingdoms. Because the Bible does mention the various world powers. It doesn't give a
lot of detail about them, but enough details to understand that the story of
the Jews is set within the context of the stories of all these world powers
that were taking place. And so the significance of this is important for
several reasons. First of all, much of Daniel’s visions and dreams and
interpretation and prophecy will chronicle the rise and the fall of these
world powers and the eventual coming of the Christian age at its proper point in
history. In other words, the Bible is talking about Daniel, a historical figure,
talking about and making prophecies concerning world powers that history,
secular history, actually records. So you have exact historical prophecy that
can be verified through historical records. That's pretty
amazing, that's pretty amazing. When Daniel prophesies the rise and fall
of the next four kingdoms in history hundreds of years in the future and he
nails the order, that's pretty amazing proof that the Bible is
something very special. It's not just another book. It's not just a religious
book. It's not just a history of the Jews, but it is something that has been
written, has been conceived by a power much greater than man, because we
can't even tell what the weather is going to be like in two days, you know
what I'm saying, with all our gadgets and equipment. Here you have an individual
thousands of years ago who predicts the rise and fall of four great
kingdoms, four world powers. One of the strongest proofs for the inspiration of
scripture is the book of Daniel. In 605 BC Daniel begins to predict the rise and fall
of four world powers into the next six hundred years and he calls them exactly
in the order that they rose and they fell. And then, the language and the
symbols and the prophecy are directly related to the meaning and the
interpretation of the book of Revelation. In other words, if you don't understand
what's going on in Daniel, you're not going to understand what's
going on in the book of Revelation. That's why you start there.
That's why so many people make mistakes with the book of Revelation. They don't read Daniel. And then they extrapolate on the symbols and they make it mean what they
want. But the first rule of good Bible study is to ask the question, what did
this mean to the people to whom it was originally addressed. When you figure that
out, then and only then can you make applications to what it means to us
today. But if you skip that step, you risk making some mistakes. And so we're going
to start the study of Revelation by studying Daniel, because its history, its
prophecy, its language, its images, relate directly to similar features in the book
of Revelation. All right, so let's just, kind of, bring all this together here and
close this out. The book of Daniel was written by Daniel who was a young Jewish
man from the upper classes of Jerusalem society. He was carried off into
Babylonian captivity in 606 BC and wrote this material between 606 and 534 BC, when
he died. Now, his main abilities were in interpreting dreams and visions and
prophecies. He was an instrument of God placed specifically in a certain place
and time for God's service. His book was written in two languages, Aramaic and
Hebrew. And the book of Daniel is divided into three sections. First is chapter 1,
which is an introduction to the entire book. Chapters 2 to 6 describe Daniel, his
three companions, and the experiences that they encounter in Babylon. So it's
kind of a history of what's going on, and that's the easy part to understand. We were
here, we did this, we said that. Pretty easy to to follow. Fascinating historically. But then chapter 7 to 12
narrates visions that Daniel has concerning world powers and their
relationship to the kingdom of God, and that's the important part, because Daniel
said there's going to be four world kingdoms that come up, and then that
fifth kingdom that will come, that last kingdom will be God's kingdom. And so
Daniel is one that very clearly prophesizes the coming of Christ and the
establishment of the church in the clearest of terms from the Old Testament.
Okay, so that's the material we're going to cover this week. Next week we're going
to start studying the book as a way to prepare for our study of the book of
Revelation. Remember I said, Daniel/ Revelation for Beginners. We have just a
quarter, we’ve got thirteen weeks of this. So we're not going to get bogged down too
much in a line-by-line description. We're going to take it in chunks, okay. But
hopefully by the end of the study you'll have a firm grasp of both of these books
and the important parts of these books. So that's it for this time. I hope you'll
be with us next time when we study the book.
