Daniel replied, “There are no wise men, enchanters, magicians, or fortune-tellers who can reveal the king’s secret. But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and he has shown King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen in the future. Now I will tell you your dream and the visions you saw as you lay on your bed.” [Daniel 2:27-28 (NLT)]
The book of Daniel begins with the arrival of the first set of Judean captives in 605 BC and the first six chapters describe the events occurring in Babylon until around 536 and the beginning of the Persian empire. In contrast, chapters seven through twelve are filled with visions and dreams. As part of the Jewish and Christian canon, the traditional view is that this book is a factual recounting of Daniel’s life and a record of supernatural predictions written during the late 6th century BC. Skeptics, however, call its author a fraud and the book fiction because of the mention of Belshazzar as the last king of Babylon, Darius the Mede as the one who took over Babylon, and the incredible accuracy of Daniel’s fulfilled prophecies. They claim that the book had to have been written (or amended) 400 years later in the 2nd century BC by someone claiming to be Daniel.
For centuries, ancient historians reported that Nabonidus (who Daniel never mentions) was the last king of Babylon. It was not until the late 19th century that a cuneiform text known as the Nabonidus Chronicle was discovered. Written in 539 BC, immediately after Babylon fell, it tells us that Babylon’s King Nabonidus was away from Babylon for ten years and was not in Babylon at the time it fell. In his absence, he “entrusted the kingship” to his son, the crown prince Belshazzar. The existence of a coregency helps explain Belshazzar offering the position of “third highest ruler in the kingdom” to Daniel; the other two would have been Nabonidus and Belshazzar. With Nabonidus’ absence the fateful night Babylon fell, it was Belshazzar who was seated on the throne, hosting a feast for 1000, and acting as king in his father’s absence. For all purposes, Belshazzar was Babylon’s last king!
Another point of contention among critics is Daniel’s mention of “Darius the Mede” taking over as king of Babylon. According to the Nabonidus Chronicle, Greek historian Xenophon (c. 430 to 354 BC), and Babylonian records, Cyrus appointed Gubaru, a Mede, to be ruler of Babylon. These ancient texts also tell us that Gubaru was born in 601 BC. which make him 62 when he took over Babylon in 539—exactly the same age Daniel said Darius was. Both nationality and age match but we still have the different name. Darius is a Persian word meaning “the Royal One” and, rather than his given name, Darius may have been an honorific title.
Seeing how the first six chapters of Daniel are supported by extra-biblical sources, the book’s author appears to have possessed first-hand knowledge of all that happened between 586 and 536 BC. Perhaps the real motive behind denying the book’s historicity is theological. To avoid concluding that Daniel’s predictive prophecies in the later chapters are the inspired word of God, critics hold that the impossibility of such accurate predictions means that someone added to his work after the events happened.
While skeptics say such accurate foretelling of the future is impossible, as believers, we know nothing is impossible with God! A God who can speak the entire universe into existence should be able to see into the future! A God who can’t show His prophet visions of the future certainly wouldn’t be able to generate a flood, create plagues, part the sea, send manna, make water spring from a rock, order a drought, deliver three men from a fiery furnace or an old man from a lion’s den. Foretelling the future would be child’s play compared to making water into wine, cleansing lepers, feeding a multitude with a boy’s lunch, giving sight to the blind, or raising the dead! When we start picking and choosing which prophecies and miracles we accept and which we don’t, it seems we’re left with only two choices: all or none!
Out of necessity, the skeptic must discredit both the Bible’s miracles and predictive prophecy since, if just one miracle or prophecy is allowed to stand, he must accept the existence of God and the divine origin of the Bible. Either Daniel was one of the greatest prophets of Judaism and Christianity or a scholar who was a fraud. You decide.
The Israelites were surrounded by various pagan peoples who worshipped foreign deities. Baal ruled over Canaan and Phoenicia, Chemosh over Moab, and Marduk/Bel and Nebo over Babylonia. The Philistines’ had Dagon and the Ammonites worshipped Molech. These gods usually had a domain over which they ruled. For example, Baal’s domain was rain, storms, and the harvest. Moab’s Chemosh presided over war and mountains. As patron deity of Babylon, Marduk/Bel was supposed to protect the city and rule over storms while Nebo’s purview was wisdom and science. The Philistines’ chief god Dagon presided over death, the afterlife, war, and agriculture while Ammon’s Molech reigned over the underworld, which may explain his association with child sacrifice in the Old Testament.
Today, when someone is called the “salt of the earth,” the speaker probably means he or she is a dependable, unpretentious and honest person—someone of moral integrity. That is well and good as far as it goes, but Jesus meant more than that when He called us to be “the salt of the earth.”
Eighteen years after the kingdom divided and Jeroboam became king of the northern kingdom of Israel, Rehoboam’s son Abijah became king of Judah, the southern kingdom. As Solomon’s grandson and David’s great-grandson, Abijah was part of David’s dynasty; Jeroboam was not. Although 1 Kings called Abijah a sinner, 2 Chronicles recorded the one highpoint of his short reign. War broke out between Israel and Judah and Judah’s warriors were outnumbered two to one. As the two kings squared off, Abijah shouted out to Jeroboam and his army. Referring to the “covenant of salt” between God and David, Abijah called Jeroboam a traitor, his men scoundrels, and charged Israel with rebellion against the Lord’s chosen Davidic dynasty of kings. Their rebellion hadn’t been against Solomon or Rehoboam; they’d rebelled against the kingdom of the Lord! Continuing with his tirade, Abijah charged the northern kingdom with apostasy because of their idolatry and illegitimate priests. After pointing to Judah’s faithful worship, he warned Israel they would not succeed because God was with Judah. Indeed, in spite of overwhelming odds, Scripture tells us “God routed Jeroboam and all Israel” and the Judeans were victorious because they “relied on the Lord, the God of their ancestors.”
When God sent Jonah to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, it was to warn the people that they would be destroyed for their sins. While we tend to focus on the miracle of Jonah and the sea creature, the real miracle in the Book of Jonah is the city’s response to the prophet’s message—Nineveh immediately repented of its sinful ways. Some forty years later, however, the Assyrians were once again back to their old behavior: rejecting God’s authority and worshipping idols. Around 740 BC, they attacked northern Israel and, in 722, they invaded the remaining kingdom and took Samaria, just as both Hosea and Amos had prophesized they would. The northern kingdom’s population was resettled elsewhere in the Assyrian Empire and Samaria became the center of a new Assyrian province.
When I came across this revised version of the 23rd Psalm, I was sure it was written by a cynic as a way of mocking God, Christianity, and many of today’s popular evangelists. Imagine my surprise when I learned that it was written in all seriousness by Charles Fillmore, the founder of Unity, a church within the New Thought movement. The “revised” psalm was published in Fillmore’s book Prosperity in 1938. Although we may associate the beginnings of prosperity or “health and wealth” theology with televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Bakker in the 1970s, the movement began in the late 19th century. Sadly, in one form or another, it still is preached today.
Devotions of the Heart 