I want to look at the book of Daniel, and I will confess to you that those of you who have taken my course on Daniel, who are part of our regular curriculum inclusive of those of the AOE Bible Institute know that I resorted to a teaching method that was cinematic or movie-based, that the lesson actually was the display of movie fragments that make up the story of Daniel. And while I anticipated that that would be most entertaining as well as informative because of the drama and the mixture of metaphors that movies provide. It could be just a little bit distracting.
So I'm kind of coming behind that teaching tool and I am looking at a more fundamental, direct approach to the telling of the story of Daniel. I want to look at Daniel in five different parts in this review session. And I want to close with a discussion and a dialogue on the book of Revelation in the New Testament, or why both of these books are referred to, Watchtower's beloved, as apocalyptic literature. And what is the interplay? What is the relationship between the two? And how does one inform the other? And actually how the latter is an attempt to be an interpretation of the former. We'll get into that toward the close of our presentation today.
So let's take a look at the book of Daniel. There are several items in this story, in this narrative that I am anxious to share and unpack with you and hopefully enlighten you in terms of some of the background information and material that's going on now.
Some of what I will be talking about, students who have been around me for a period of time will recognize because it will be a repeat and a reiteration or a reinforcement of some things that I have taught in the past. Those same things may be heard by some of you for the very first time, and I pray that it will prove to be a benefit to you as well. So this is our lesson and our lecture on the book of Daniel, which we find in the pages of the Old Testament.
Now, the character that is on the screen is a Old Testament king,
not a member of the faith community.
This is Nebuchadnezzar. He serves around the year 600 BC. And let me just quickly say to you that the Old Testament closes with the Hebrews falling into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and the beginning of a 70-year period of captivity at the hands of the Babylonians. The Old Testament closes with several prophecies of such. So when we look at the prophecies of Jeremiah, and we look at the prophecies of Isaiah, and we look at the prophecies of Zechariah, and even Malachi, and many of what we would call and refer to as the minor prophets, the prophecies, watch this, beloved,
that they are sharing with the faith community relate to this time period that we will come to know as the Babylonian captivity. Now, we begin in the Old Testament with Adam and Eve, and we go to Noah, then we go to Abraham, and then Isaac and Jacob, and then there are the 12 sons of Jacob, Reuben, Simon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Nephil, Gad, Asher, Isaac, Zebulun, Benjamin, and Joseph. And then, of course, those 12 sons then create tribes. Those tribes then confederate themselves into the United Kingdom of Israel that is presided
over by first Saul, and then David, man after God's own heart, and then finally David's son Solomon. It is in the aftermath, watch this, beloved, it is in the aftermath of Solomon's ruled that these 12 tribes divide themselves. 10 of those tribes that are the northern tribes, they coagulate and confederate and remain together, and they continue to call themselves Israel. Two of those 12 tribes, Benjamin and Judah, they create an alternate alternate nation and they refer to themselves as the kingdom of Judah. So we have the northern kingdom of Israel and then the southern kingdom of Judah and the citizens of that southern kingdom
of Judah are called Judahites. Judahites. Now a little later on the Judahites will abbreviate their name from Judahites to Jews. Now, I say that to help give you some clarity that there are names that collapse and sometimes are confusing. One is Israel, another is Hebrew, another is Jews. And we tend to use these terms interchangeably when they actually all refer to something that is slightly different. If you say Israel, you could mean two things. You could mean when all 12 tribes were together, that was Israel. Or you could mean when the 10 tribes of the north came together, they continued to call themselves Israel. So Israel
could mean all 12 tribes, Israel could mean 10 tribes. Then there is this word Hebrew. Hebrew refers to the ethnicity of all 12 tribes. So, Hebrews is what they were called before they were called Israel. So, Abraham was a Hebrew. Isaac Jacob were Hebrews. And so, Hebrew is an ethnic term that means all of that faith community put together. And then of course, Jews or Jewish are the two tribes of the South who were originally called the Judahites or the Kingdom of Judah. And they abbreviated that term Judahites to Jews and from which we get Jews, we now get Jewish. So Jewish, Jews, Hebrew, Israel, all of those terms,
while they are similar, beloved, they certainly are not the same. Now, in 950, these tribes divided into a Northern Kingdom and a Southern Kingdom. kingdom. And of course, by 922, that northern kingdom is besieged by the dominant empire of that day, which would have been the Assyrian empire. That king would have been Zennekarib.
And he overran that northern kingdom. God protected the southern kingdom. And so Assyria never invaded and never took control of the southern kingdom. However, it would be around the 722 that we begin to see a change where the Assyrian watch where I'm going now, the Assyrian empire would fall and we would see the birth and the rise of the Babylonian Empire. So what the Assyrian Empire had been is what the Babylonian Empire now becomes.
In around 606 BC, Daniel, who is the main character of this book, begins to predict and begins to prophesy that because of our failure, watch this beloved, this is very, very important. Because of our failure to keep covenant with God,
God is going to allow what the Assyrians did to our brothers in the North. God's going to allow that to take place with us, not at the hands of the Assyrians, but at the hands of the Babylonians. Now this is very, very important.
The Babylonians replaces the Assyrians as the dominant empire of that part of the world at that time. And the Bible is very curious here because the Bible says and suggests, and this is very, very important, beloved. The Bible says and suggests that God uses Babylon to punish Judah for that
lack of loyalty, commitment, and covenant with him. So we get a sense that Babylon is successful been successful, not because Babylon was better than Assyria, but rather because Babylon was being used by God to implement the will of God. That's very, very important because on the surface, it might look like Babylon was a mightier empire than Assyria and of course we could have discussion and debates around that. But what is certain from a biblical point of view is that God not only allows and permits, but God uses Babylon to reprimand a people who he was no longer in covenant with. It was the same God, watch this beloved, the same God that had protected Judah from the time of
Solomon down to the time of Nebuchadnezzar in terms of a defense against the Assyrians, the same God destroying his hand of protection so that an alien and invading army could do to Judah what Assyria or no other foreign power could do in the past. And that's what brings us to 600 BC Nebuchadnezzar, who is serving as the king of Babylon is the beneficiary. Watch this, beloved. He is the beneficiary of God's decision
to reprimand his people because they are no longer in covenant with him. And they have proven themselves to be disloyal and not remain the people to whom God is most pleased with. That is the commencement. That is the beginning of the story. Now, those of you who've seen those segments of the movie, this is dramatized, and it is most
entertaining, but I'm trying to give you as distinct and as direct an explanation of what entertaining, but I'm trying to give you as distinct and as direct an explanation of what of Daniel and...
Transcribed with Cockatoo