Book of Daniel Bible Study | Mike Mazzalongo | BibleTalk.tv

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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.
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Length: 29min 57sec (1797 seconds)
Published: Thu Aug 03 2017
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