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CHAPTER 4

KINGDOM ENDED: THE DISCIPLINE OF EXILE

Throughout the eighth and seventh centuries, B.C., the prophets’ indictments revealed that Israel’s days as a nation were numbered. The cursings announced by God in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 were coming to pass. Israel lost her position as an independent nation exhibiting the Kingdom of God to mankind. In 721 BC the northern kingdom fell to Assyria (II Kings 17) and in 586 BC the southern kingdom fell to Babylon (II Kings 25). The nation would be submerged in the sea of Gentile political power. Never again would Israel see a son of Solomon reign on her throne. As Israel declined, conversely, the paganized Noahic civilization begun in the pre-Abrahamic times of Babel began to reassert itself with more powerful forms.

All of this historical chaos is interpreted by the prophetic authors of Kings as not due to mere political, military, or economic factors; it was due to the nation’s

collective disloyalty to Yahweh.

This chapter will mention the highlights of Israel’s sixth century exilic experience and the truths learned therefrom. Included once again will be the doctrine of sanctification, this time with emphasis upon our “separation from the world system”. Also included will be the doctrine of revelation with emphasis upon apocalyptic literature, especially that target of all biblical critics, the book of Daniel. (Read here some portions of Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Esther.)

ISRAEL & JUDAH INTO CAPTIVITY

In the spring of 605 BC at a place hundreds of miles north of Israel called Carchemish, the Babylonian crown prince and general of the army, Nebuchadnezzer, had soundly defeated the Egyptian armies. The balance of power had decisively shifted from Egypt into the hands of Babylon. Soon afterwards, Nebuchadnezzer secured Western Asia by taking political hostages from the various states, including some of the nobility of Judah (cf. Dan. 1:1-6). Thus the exilic experience began in 605 BC for some of the Hebrews. The discussion which follows traces both the loss of the Kingdom of God, the ascent of the paganized world system into an imperial Kingdom of Man, and some further consequences.

Loss of the Kingdom of God. How can one be sure that the Kingdom of God ended as the exile began? If the Kingdom had begun with great supernatural events in the Exodus, surely there ought to be definite historical signs pointing to its end. Alva McClain argues that three such signs did occur prior to the fall of Jerusalem and that by these signs one can know that the start of the exile marked the loss of the preliminary form of the Kingdom of God in history. These three signs were: (1) the transfer of political supremacy completely into the hands of pagan nations; (2) the end of the Davidic Dynasty through Solomon; and (3) the departure of the Shekinah Glory from Israel’s Temple [1].

1. Transfer of Political Supremacy. Shortly after his final victory at Carchemish, Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne of Babylon. For the next two years he purged pockets of resistance in Western Asia (II Kings 24:1-7). Eventually by 603 BC, his second official year as king, Nebuchadnezzar had become the undisputed lord and master of the ancient world.

Precisely at that historical moment King Nebuchadnezzar had his famous dream (Dan. 2) which by God’s help Daniel interpreted to be a panorama of history from that day (603 BC) until the final re-establishment of the Kingdom of God in all its completeness. The dream’s central theme was the transfer of political supremacy from Israel to four successive Gentile (pagan) kingdoms:

“Thou, O King, are king of kings, unto whom the God of Heaven hath given the kingdom, the power, and the strength, and the glory; and wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens hath he given into thy hand, and hath made thee to rule over them all. . . .”Dan. 2:37-38 (emphasis supplied) (cf. Jer. 27:4-7).

Centuries earlier such power could never have been given to a Gentile nation because of God’s promises to Israel:

“if thou shalt harken diligently unto the voice of Jehovah thy God. . . ., that Jehovah thy God will set thee on high above all the nations of the earth. . . .Thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath. . . .”Deut. 28:1, 13 (Cf. Ps. 89:27).

McClain observes concerning the previous centuries leading up to the exile:

“During that long period the power and authority of the Theocracy was never in question. No nation, regardless of its size or strength, could stand successfully against Israel as long as that people followed the will of its divine King. . . .Israel went down in defeat only when she turned aside from the divinely written charter of her kingdom.”[2]

The exile, then, represented the beginning of a new political configuration in the world community of nations, a world order that continues to the present hour. Here was the first sign that the preliminary form of the Kingdom of God was. finished. God no longer ruled His Kingdom as a nation free of foreign political domination.

2. End of the Solomonic Dynasty. A second sign that had occurred before the fall of Jerusalem also pointed to the termination of the visible Kingdom of God. In 601 BC Nebuchadnezzar had suffered severe military losses while battling with Pharoah Neco on the Egyptian frontier. Seizing upon the momentary Babylonian weakness, several of the subjugated vassal nations in Western Asia revolted, including Judah under King Jehoiakim (II Kings 24:1).

King Jehoiakim had been repeatedly told by the prophets not to rebel against Nebuchadnezzar because God had already given the authority of political supremacy to Babylon (Dan. 2 had occurred two years previously in 603 BC). Thus it happened that Jehoiakim’s successor and son, King Jehoiakin, reaped the cursing from his father’s rebellious folly (II Kings 24:6- 16). In 598 BC Nebuchadnezzar sent the Babylonian army into Palestine to resubjugate Judah. The king, the queen mother, the high officials, and the leading citizens (probably including Ezekiel, cf. Ezk. 1:1-2), together with enormous booty, were taken to Babylon.

Such a disaster had been foretold by Jeremiah as we noted in the previous chapter (Jer. 22:24-30). The prophet had predicted that the Solomonic Dynasty would come to an end regardless of the promises of the Davidic Covenant. The Davidic Covenant had promised a continual Davidic Dynasty, not a Solomonic Dynasty (note carefully the language in II Sam. 7:12-13,16). McClain points out the fine detail of God’s Word (convenienty omitted in most university “Bible” courses taught by unbelieving faculty):

“In Jehoiakin the failure of the family of Solomon became complete, and no man of his ‘seed’ shall ever again sit on the throne of David. As a matter of historical fact, Jehoiakin was not ‘childless’. After being carried away into Babylon, he had a son through whom the family line finally culminated in Joseph, the husband of the Virgin Mary (Matt. 1:12-16). But our Lord Jesus Christ was not of the ‘seed’ of Joseph; he was the seed of Mary, who was descended from David through Nathan (Luke 3:31), not through Solomon. Hence, it is correct to day that Jehoiakin was to be written ‘childless,’ that is, in the genealogical register of the royal family line.”

Thus Jesus Christ had the genes of David through Mary but did not carry the genes of Solomon or of Jehoiakin, the disqualified main branch of the royal line.

The Solomonic Dynasty, then, ended prior to the fall of Jerusalem. Never again would Israel enjoy a Solomonic son on her throne. The cut-off royal line would stand as a historical monument to the failure of the nation’s human leadership just as the cut-off of the victorious conquest in the time of the Judges reminds us of the failure of the nation’s people.

3. Departure of the Shekinah Glory. A third sign of the end of the Kingdom of God in its early political form concerned the visible evidence of God’s presence in the nation, the Shekinah Glory. When the Kingdom had been born at the Exodus and at Mt. Sinai, God’s glory had been present as a pillar of smoke and fire (Exod. 19:18; 24:15-16). After the Tabernacle had been completed, “the glory of Jehovah filled the tabernacle” (Exod. 40:34). When Solomon had completed the Temple and his dedicatory prayer, “the fire came down from heaven. . .and the glory of Jehovah filled the house” (II Chron. 7:1). The Shekinah Glory, therefore, had been a crucial emblem of God’s presence in His Kingdom.

In the year 591 BC, however, the prophet Ezekiel witnessed in a vision the departure of the Shekinah Glory from Jerusalem; Ezekiel was the last person in the OT that saw the Glory. Ezekiel saw in succession the idolatrous abominations inside the Temple at Jerusalem (8:5-18), the movement of the Glory to the threshold of the Temple (9:3), the shining out of the Glory into the courtyard area (10:4), and finally the departure of the Glory from the city entirely (11:23). As the great nineteenth century Bible teacher, Samuel J. Andrews, said:

“This departure of Jehovah from His Temple and land. . .marked a change in His theocratic relation to His people—a change that continues even to this day. They did not cease to be His covenant people (Lev. 26:44). His purpose in them was still unfulfilled. His promises respecting the Messiah and His kingdom were not withdrawn, and He continued to accept their worship. But He Himself was no more reigning in Jerusalem; the Visible Glory no more dwelt between the cherubim; the Ark was not in the Most Holy Place; the holy fire no longer burned on the brazen altar; there was no response by the Urim and Thummim. The people might return, as they did from Babylon, the temple be rebuilt, the worship again set up; yet there was a change. They came back from their first exile and dispersion, but no more to be an independent nation. To their original standing as the theocratic people under His immediate rule, they were not restored. . . .[4]

Three signs of the end of the Kingdom of God, therefore, had occurred before Jerusalem fell in 586 BC: the transfer of political supremacy in 603 BC; the end of the Solomonic Dynasty in 598 BC; and the departure of the Shekinah Glory in 591 BC. The Kingdom of God had been temporarily lost from visible history.

The Ascent of the Imperial Kingdom of Man. Simultaneous with the loss of the Kingdom of God were the revival and rise of the Kingdom of Man. Just as the global flood in Noah’s day and subsequent drop in human longevity drew a curtain over the antediluvian past, so now the exile of Israel another curtain fell over the supernatural prophetic past history of Israel. Our attention shifts back from Israel to the paganized Noahic civilization that had further developed since God had called Abraham out of it (see Parts II and III of this series). Let’s recall this earlier paganizing process of humanity, how Israel related to it, and what happened at the exile.

1. Paganization of the Noahic New World Order. As I stated in Part II, the Bible carefully points out the tragic flaw of sin in the original founding family of civilization. Noah became drunk from the very thing he produced in subduing the earth. Although his sons were brilliant pioneers of global exploration, mapping, navigation, architecture, and other technologies—literally nation builders—the cultural glory of their new world order lacked spiritual life. On a scale exceeding the greatest Greek tragedy, the Noahic cosmos contained the seeds of its own self destruction.

The Bible overlooks all of the grand achievements except one—the Babel fiasco (Gen. 11:1-9). The depravity of man quickly manifested itself in seeking the highest goal of the knowledge of good and evil, of establishing the supreme standard of judgment, of interpreting reality in proud independence of the Creator of all. The triune lusts of the eyes, of the flesh, and of the pride of life rapidly corrupted the nations. Over against God’s Word which insists upon a two-level view of reality, man asserted a one-level of reality wherein God, man, and nature all share a common Continuity of Being. Creation was thus denied. In close association with denial of creation came the denial of the fall and the “normalcy” of evil, death, and chaos. An endless cycle replaced progressive history, and mankind was doomed to live in a meaningless tomb.

Nevertheless, from the time of Babel until the sixth century the paganized Noahic cosmos, now the Kingdom of Man, had been severely restrained by God’s curse at Babel. Linguistic confusion constantly had touched off nationalistic movements, racial discrimination, and impediments to world trade and communication. For about two thousand years people groups continued to spread into all areas of the earth. The climate gradually transitioned from the Ice Age aftermath of the flood (see Part III) to one closely resembling the present climate of today. Spiritually, however, the global paganism was challenged by the existence of Israel.

2. Israel’s Historical Witness to God. Throughout the centuries following Abraham’s election and separation from paganism, God built a powerful counter-culture. There was constant contact with surrounding nations as the major trade routes flowed through the land of Israel. The Jewish sojourn in Egypt between Jacob’s time and the Exodus gave Egyptian Gentiles full knowledge of the chosen people, even to the point of having one of them, Joseph, elevated to a level next to Pharaoh himself (Gen. 41:37-45). Moses, too, circulated inside the Egyptian royal circles (Exod. 2:5-10). The final confrontation at the Exodus, as I pointed out in Part III of this series, left a devastating effect on this most powerful Gentile nation.

After Mt. Sinai all nations having commerce with Israel would encounter the God-given Law that towered above all pagan law codes (Deut. 4:6-8 cf. Rom. 3:19). Economic freedom, private property, and fair court systems must have deeply impressed foreign observers. Most of all, the powerful belief in a written contract with the sovereign, omnipotent Creator of all men and nature must have sharply contrasted with pagan fears and capricious gods and goddesses. The phenomenon of ordinary citizens “indicting” their rulers for violation of God’s Word must have appeared as a bewildering behavior. The Solomonic golden era has given the world some of the cultural fruit of divine wisdom. Centuries of analysis by prophets of every aspect of the nation’s historical experience, always interpreting prosperity and poverty in terms of God’s blessing and cursing had generated the world’s first historiography. Thus in spite of the nation’s decline and fall, God’s elect purpose for it as a channel for blessing all nations was already well underway (Gen. 12:3). Now the exile would give the last bit of preparation for the coming global Messiah: a finished canon of Scripture with a prophetic panorama of human history. The exile, then, would not only be the means of disciplining Israel but would complete Israel’s role of preparing the world for Christ by dispersing her citizens throughout the Gentile world, spreading biblical truth and the Scriptures among men everywhere. Josephus notes that by his day in the first century (A.D.) it could be said that Jews lived in every part of the earth since very early times [5].

Great Church fathers long recognized this function of the exile. Augustine (354-430 A.D.) wrote: “That same nation. . .was afterwards dispersed through the nations in order to testify to the scriptures in which eternal salvation in Christ had been declared” [6]. The brilliant French mathematician, Blaise Pascal (whom secular historians treat with great embarrassment because of his biblical beliefs) (1623-1662 A.D.) commented:

“As His Gospel was to be believed by all the world, it was not only necessary that there should be prophecies to make it believed, but that these prophecies should exist throughout the whole world, in order to make it embraced by the whole world.”[7]

Thus Israel’s pre-exilic role, though apparently frustrated by her idolatry, would be completed by the exile-caused dispersion of Jews into all the world with the Old Testament.

3. Imperial Paganism. Against this background of the continuing struggle of the Kingdom of Man to emerge full-blown in history and Israel’s role as a suppressing biblical counter-culture, one can profitably study what happened in the sixth century. With the loss of the Kingdom of God and the dispersion of Israel, the Kingdom of Man now revived in a new potent form.

Three things need to be noted about this new form. First, the transfer of political supremacy in Daniel 2 to four specific, successive Gentile kingdoms meant that imperialism unrestricted by Israel’s existence would be the modus vivendi in international relations. Although the previous Babel curse was still in effect, forbidding one world government based upon one world culture and language, now one nation was given dominion to impose its own culture upon weaker nations. Rather than a pure world government created by mutually consenting nations (a vision shared by “one worlders” since Dante and Kant), there would be one nation and one culture which would attempt to dominate the globe at any given time. Due to this dominance of Gentile nations, Jesus called the era from the exile onward “the times of the Gentiles” (Luke 21:24).

The resulting imperialism seems to be linked in Daniel 2 with economics and military power. Each successive kingdom is represented by a metal of less value but of greater strength than its predecessor—gold, silver, bronze, iron, and an iron-ceramic mixture. Since these metals in ingot form were used in international trade in the ancient world, their decreasing value would suggest a declining value in world currency. Similarly, their increasing strength suggests an increasing military power (cf. Dan. 2:44). In fact, the last three metals—bronze, iron, and an iron-ceramic mixture—depict the history of military armor.

Subsequent fulfillment of parts of the Daniel 2 prophecy clearly identifies the four kingdoms as the Neo-Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Greek, and the Roman. The currencies of these empires were eroded by continual deficit financing and resultant inflation [8]. Moreover, each successive empire covered a greater area and diversity of nations so that it had to deploy a stronger military force to keep the unity sought by apostate man. The link between increasing military strength and deficit financing, of course, is clear: as more and more brute force was required, there were fewer and fewer resources available to support the effort.

Also to be noted about this new Kingdom of Man form, besides its policy of imperialism, is its willful defiance of God’s revelation. Unlike previous Kingdom attempts, such as the Egyptian or Assyrian empires, all four kingdoms of Daniel 2 have available to them a biblical option of worshipping the God of all men. It was no longer a case of “swallowing national pride: and humbling themselves before the God of a foreign nation, Israel: Israel no longer existed as a competing power! The dispersed Jews were citizens inside these kingdoms; they were not true foreigners. Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome all could have existed as secular governments, utilizing the wisdom of OT law gained from their own Jewish citizens without feeling that they had surrendered any sovereignty to a foreign power.

In spite of the testimony of Daniel, the Babylonian ruler, Nebuchadnezzar, deified himself and his national cult probably by reinterpreting the image of his dream in pagan political terms (Dan. 3-4). Similarly, in total disregard for the biblical information available from Persian Jewry, the Medo-Persians persisted in elevating mere human legislation to the status of divine, immutable decrees (Esther 3-8; Dan. 6). The Greeks, despite the Jewry in the Levant, set up a situation that led to the reign of the most God-defying, Satanic leader of the ancient world, Antiochus Epiphanes (Dan. 8).

Finally, the Romans continued with their emperor-worship even though biblical truth was available from Jewish families and the early Christians throughout the empire.

As an example of just how accessible biblical truth was to the leaders of the Roman empire, John Wurts recounts how the king of Britain, Caradoc, was captured and incarcerated in Rome in A.D. 52. His daughter, Gladys, was adopted by the Emperor Claudius and became Claudia, who later married a man by the name of Rufus Pudens. Caradoc, his father, Claudia and Rufus were converted and baptized by the Apostle Paul, becoming the first royal converts to Christianity. Claudia and Rufus Pudens are mentioned in II Timothy 4:21 and Rufus in Romans 16:13 [9]. Another evidence is Roman law: it was very cognizant of Jewish Roman citizens, many

of whom were prominent in the Empire as Josephus notes in Antiquities, XIV, vii,x. Thus Rome as well as the previous kingdoms all had sufficient biblical

information readily available from their citizens and rejected it [9].

In each case, however, God brought about the kingdom’s destruction by progressive internal weakening together with occasional direct judgments upon individual rebels (e.g., Dan. 4:22-27; 5:18-30; Acts 12:20-23). Thus, the new form of the Kingdom of Man after the exile clearly attests to the truth that all such attempts at autonomy in the face of available revelation are doomed to failure because the entire creation is God’s, not man’s.

A third thing to be noted about the post-exilic Kingdom of Man is its function in training believers to have a supracultural loyalty to God, a supreme hope based upon His (as yet) unfulfilled promises. If faith is pictured by Abraham and love of God by the Sinaitic covenant stipulations, then hope is seen during and after the exile. Man no longer has an option between two present kingdoms as mankind did between Moses and Ezekiel; he must choose between the present Kingdom of Man and the future Kingdom of God. He is a citizen of the present kingdom but a citizen with a “prior loyalty” to the coming kingdom. The priority of loyalty—so confused in the period of Israel’s decline covered in previous chapters—is now made clear.

The new version of the Kingdom of Man after the fall of Israel, therefore, differed from its previous versions in that it had a global imperialism unchecked by Israel’s presence, a clear testimony of God’s revelation available in its midst, and a training function for believers to develop hope. The sixth century B.C. saw this great revival of the Kingdom of Man simultaneously with the loss of the Kingdom of God from visible history.

Repercussions of the Exile. Two primary repercussions manifested themselves as a result of the rise of the Kingdom of Man and the decline of the Kingdom of God. God provided a new kind of revelatory literature for believers, the apocalyptic genre, while at the same time there was an explosive rise of philosophical and religious movements on a global scale.

1. The Rise of Apocalyptic Literature. To equip the Jews of the exile and later believers, God developed the new literary genre: the apocalyptic. Knowing that He would have to “leave” Israel in the world without His vital Presence and without an unbroken line of prophets, God summarized ahead of time all future history in the OT apocalyptic books—Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah and a few portions of the other books. In the New Testament the book of Revelation is entirely apocalyptic.

Several features characterize apocalyptic literature. The reader of Daniel 2, 7, 8, 10-12, Ezekiel 37:1-14; 40-48, and Zechariah 1:7-6:8 is first struck by the obviously strange symbolism. This literature reports a dream vision by the author along with a divinely-given interpretation through an angel. The vision content centers not upon the person situation of the individual author but upon the key historical events in human history leading to the consummation. The angelic interpretation usually emphasizes basic concepts rather than fine details, tempting readers to push further into the unknown and try to interpret the interpretation.

The purpose of apocalyptic literature is different from the prophetic literature written during the decline of Israel. That older prophetic literature focused upon convincing the nation of its violation of the Sinaitic contract. Apocalyptic literature, by contrast, focuses upon assuring believers that the Kingdom of Man in spite of all appearances will not ultimately triumph, that present sufferings will not go on forever, and that final judgment upon the world system will surely come. God will use as tools in this final judgment the same ones He did in the Exodus: geophysical catastrophic events. These catastrophes are not merely symbols; they are rooted in the Exodus judgment upon Egypt and in the global flood of Noah’s day. All unfilled prophecy will be fulfilled because God is sovereign. Unlike the older prophetic literature, social ethics become a minor point in apocalyptic literature.

2. The Emergence of Philosophy and Religion. Another repercussion of the exile was the explosion of new religions throughout the world along with the rise of philosophy in Greece. The older, more mystical pagan religions that were perversions of the Noahic Bible arose quickly during and after the Babel period (see Part III of this series) and had remained fairly stable throughout the centuries from the call of Abraham to the exile. Suddenly in the sixth century, however, everything changed. As Robert Brow says:

“In the sixth century B.C. there was a tidal wave of revolt against the priestcraft of the ancient world. This wave shattered the power of the old religions, though their cults continued to exist as backwaters for centuries. Seven world religions appeared within fifty years of each other and all continue to this day.”[10]

Note the seven that Brow mentions and especially watch their dates, keeping in mind that the exile period officially lasted for the seventy years between 586 B.C. and 516 B.C. In the Middle East Zoroaster (600-583 B.C.) founded the religion of Persia. In India Mahavira (Vardhamana) (599-527 B.C.) started Jainism, Gautama the Buddha (560-480 B.C.) introduced Buddhism, and Hindu reformers began Vedanta Monism with the Upanishads. In China Lao-Tzu (604-517 B.C.) founded Taoism and Confucius (551-479 B.C.) pioneered Confucianism. Finally, within Jewry there arose Judaism as a distinct development from the OT religion under the Theocracy and living prophets. Besides these seven religions there arose in Greece the idea which we call “philosophy”.

Although differing in details these seven religions and philosophy all had one thing in common: they emphasized Man as Savior. They were potent new versions of paganism which arose to sustain the Kingdom of Man. Some were “pessimistic” and “irrationalist” such as Buddhism which stressed the illusory character of the human ego and the limitations of human thought. For Buddhism man saves himself by losing individual desire. Taoism and Vedanta Monism developed the basic pagan idea of the Continuity of Being into a full fledged pantheism in which God is the creation. Others were “optimistic” and “rationalist” such as those which stressed ethics and doing good (Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Confucianism, and Judaism). In these man saves himself by his good works. Whether optimistic or pessimistic, however, all of the religions that developed in the exilic period promoted man to a more active role than the older pagan religions. They mirrored the transfer of political supremacy to the Gentiles and rise of an imperialist spirit of the age.

Secular historians and classroom teachers generally ignore this “coincidence” of seven world religions suddenly developing when Israel goes into exile. For most of them, of course, there is no biblical God Whose contractual agreements with Israel coincide with His rule of the human race. Such coincidences as this one are viewed as mere statistical accidents of history. For a biblically literate mind, however, there appears to be some sort of linkage between the exile event and the nearly simultaneous origin of these religions.

After the exile the OT Scriptures were spread far and wide throughout the world by the Jews of the Diaspora. Biblical ideas, like the idea that history has meaning and purpose which can at least partially be understood by man and like the idea that there exist ethical standards for all men, must have had a profound effect wherever they went. As Brow notes, the first of the seven religions began in Persia with Zoroaster. Can anyone believe that Zoroaster never was influenced in any way by biblical ideas spread throughout the Neo-Babylonian and later Persian empires by Daniel (Dan. 2:46-48; 3:29; 4:1-37)? Remembering that Jews were high up in Persian administrative circles for several centuries (Daniel, Nehemiah, Esther) and that Persia extended into India, one might conceive of the possibility that some parts of OT thinking filtered eastward in the Far East. By elevating man to a more active role, these religions were pagan imitations of the Sinaitic Covenant that had given man a place in the Kingdom of God.

More clearly than these seven pagan religious creations, Greek philosophy showed the intellectual repercussion of the rise of the Kingdom of Man. Prof. Henri Frankfort wrote of this Greek innovation:

“[The early Greek philosophers] proceeded with preposterous boldness on an entirely unproven assumption. They held that the universe is an intelligible whole. In other words, they presumed that a single order underlies the chaos of our perceptions and, furthermore, that we are able to comprehend that order. . . .[They attempted] to reach a vantage point where the phenomena would reveal their hidden coherence. It was the unshakeable conviction of the Ionians, Pythagoreans, and early Eleatics that such a vantage point existed; and they searched for the road leading to it, not in the manner of scientists but in that of conquistadors.”[11]

What more likely source of this idea that “a single order underlies” all of reality than the OT revelation of the plan of God to Israel? As I pointed out in the first chapter, Solomon spread Hebrew wisdom throughout the world through his commercial trade. I cited Prof. Albright’s remark about the linkage between Israel, the Phoenicians, and the rest of the eastern Mediterranean. Thus, from the exile period came the temporary removal of the Kingdom of God from history, the rise of the Kingdom of Man, and historical repercussions for Israel and the world.

DOCTRINAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE EXILE

The brief synopsis of Israel’s sixth century exilic experience provides one with an enlargement of two major doctrinal areas—the doctrine of sanctification as it pertains to separation from pagan culture and the doctrines of revelation and inspiration as they pertain to apocalyptic literature. Just as the exile itself returns our focus to the whole world outside of Israel, so, too, do these doctrines impact human race culture outside of Israel.

The Sanctification Issue of Separation. From the previous chapters one can see that the entire period from Solomon to the exile greatly adds to our knowledge of sanctification, of how God reigns in His Kingdom. Not surprisingly, the exile continued this expansion process. Like the fall of the Kingdom covered in Chapter Three above, the exile gave increased insight into the workings of the enemies of sanctification. In the case of the exile we obtain the principle of separation from the enemy known as the “world” in two areas: general culture and legal relationship.

Separation From Worldly Culture. Paul admonishes believers in Romans 12:2: “And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Such advice began centuries before Paul at the exile when the general social life-style of the culture surrounding believers became officially pagan. Although believers have lived “in” such a society ever since, they have been instructed not to be “of” it (cf. John 17:14-15). How, then, can we be “in” a pagan society and not “of” it?

The dispersed Jews of the exile furnish a good example for believers submerged in the sea of a pagan culture. Many of these Jews kept teaching and learning the Word of God. They refused to work seven days a week. They were frugal and kept high moral standards. According to Psalm 137 while the Jews were in Babylon they refused to sing biblical music when there was danger that the music would be misinterpreted and used only for mere psychological stimulation (137:2-4). They saw their position in a society officially pagan as a precarious one in which there was constant danger of “serving other gods” (note I Sam. 26:19; II Kings 5:15-18). By equating “serving other gods” with living outside of Israel, they evidently meant that the spiritual shape of pagan culture flowed from their religious conceptions. The “world view” of the society sets the ethical standards and values for the whole population. It did in Moses’ day with God’s law, and it did in Nebuchadnezzar’s day with his decrees.

Separation, therefore, involves every societal influence upon our behavior whether local peer pressure, commonly-assumed agendas, educational goals, and popularist causes. In a pagan society rebellion against the authority of God is officially incorporated in every area from the top down. While we may be “in” the world, we should not thoughtlessly and blindly respond to its stimuli. We ought not be “victims” whose character and behavior are determined by the world. We have redeemed minds, free to think God’s thoughts after Him as we ponder His Word. Then, as these truths take hold in our hearts, we will express them publicly into the culture around us. This means, for example, that we will think and act differently not only in everyday common relationships but in the more “aesthetic” elements of culture—art, music, science, and philosophy. Christians cannot afford to naively adopt pagan psychological theories in their counseling or atheistic educational schemes in their teaching. Everywhere in life there will be conflict between any manifestation of loyalty to God and the pagan environment.

As I noted in the first chapter, three bad versions of separation have occurred throughout Church history: wholesale capitulation to pagan public values and agendas, accommodation to the social environment with endless “reinterpretations” of the Bible, and physical separation from the culture as in monasticisms and isolated religious communities. Good versions of separation will show a real separation (not capitulation or accommodation) of the mind and heart and core agendas (not physical separation). Biblical culture will automatically be expressed by groups of well-sanctified believers. “Depth leads to breadth” we found out from the Solomonic era. The proper balance between Christianity and culture has never been stated as well as it was by J. Gresham Machen. Wrote Machen:

“Instead of destroying the arts and sciences or being indifferent to them, let us cultivate them with all the enthusiasm of the veriest humanist, but at the same time consecrate them to the service of our God. . . .Let us go forth joyfully, enthusiastically to make the world subject to God.”[12] Speaking of why such a wise balance is needed just for the first step of evangelism, Machen said:

“We may preach with all the fervour of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas, which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.”[13]

Wisely separating from worldly culture while citizens of a pagan society requires great alertness (starting from self-examination of our hearts), hard work, and a dedication. It requires a peculiar resource: a vision of God’s sovereign control over, in back of, underneath, and behind every pagan power that pushes on us. Our hearts must have both an inner compass to stay undeflected by the world and an energizing motive to stand against the relentless pressure to give in. We need assurance that God is still for us even though the great public miracles of the Kingdom era no longer occur. No matter how knowledgeable, how skillful, or how motivated a believer might be as he or she lives in the world system, separation can lead to a violent confrontation. For further insight into this special case, we now look at separation when it leads to a break with the legally-established authorities. Separation from Legal Relationship. When political supremacy was handed to the Gentiles in 603 B.C., it meant that believers would have to live after this point under the authority of pagan law rather than under the civil components of the Sinaitic Covenant. “Serving other gods” thus included submitting to political authorities dedicated to imposing a pagan worldview upon the society. No Gentile king could be required to study the Word of God daily (cf. Deut. 17:18-20); no pagan society would terminate by law all outstanding debts every seventh year (cf. Deut. 15:1-15); and Gentile taxation would not be limited to just tithes (cf. Deut. 14:28-29; 26:12). Because the prophetic line operative inside Israel would cease and because no Gentile nation had a contract with God (besides the original Noahic Covenant), no prophet of God would be sent to indict Gentile pagan rulers for their breach of the Sinaitic Covenant.

Although the state under the Kingdom of Man legally imposes pagan legislation, the believer is still required to give his allegiance to the fourth divine institution by obeying the state (D.I. No. 4—see Part II of this series). The New Testament in addressing the church that lives in the pagan world is very clear (cf. Mark 12:17; Rom. 13:1-7; Titus 3:1; I Pet. 2:13-17). Even though a believer is a citizen of the yet future Kingdom of God and is, therefore, an “alien” in the matter of ultimate loyalty (Eph. 2:19; Phil 3:20; Heb. 11:16), the believer is not to defy pagan civil law except under certain conditions. Civil disobedience is a very serious matter, and to be in the will of God requires careful heart-searching regarding one’s hidden motives besides self-control and courage.

Daniel and his companions are a model of biblical civil disobedience in motive, circumstances, and procedures. When the pagan Babylonian state appeared to compel the Hebrew political hostages to participate in idolatrous religion by eating food connected to that religion (Dan. 1:8) or by bowing before a state-sponsored idol (Dan. 3:7), or when the Medo-Persian authorities prohibited prayer to God (Dan. 6:7), Daniel and his companions disobeyed the authorities in the name of God. They chose civil disobedience only when the state transgressed the central religious sphere of worship of God. Civil disobedience in the name of God is authorized only when there is outright prohibition against worship of God.

Even in the rare case where civil disobedience is legitimate, the believer is to exercise respect toward the civil authorities (Dan. 1:8; 3:9; 6:21); attempt to persuade the authorities to go along with the biblical position on a pragmatic basis (Dan. 1:12-13); and, if civil disobedience must be followed, submit to the required punishment (Dan. 3:17-18; 6:16).[14] This relatively conservative procedure in dealing with an apostate state appears reasonable if we remember the larger picture of why the exile happened in the plan of God, why believers have to live outside of a literal, political Kingdom of God. Ever since the exile, God has been dealing with the world in a special dispensation of grace in order to permit all mankind to confront His Word revealed through Israel and decide whether to submit or continue rebelling. If Christians were allowed to defy the state and rebel over every point of paganism over against the Word of God, then unbelieving society would not have freedom to submit to or reject the Word; they would be “pressured” into obeying it. Submission would be merely a form of fleshy peer pressure; it wouldn’t come from the individual heart.

Of course nothing precludes believers from trying peacefully to convince a pagan culture that things ought to be run more wisely. In the final analysis pagan social principles are self-destructive (Rom. 1:18-32) even when they appear to be ethical (Rom. 2:1-16). Where, therefore, legal participation in the political life of the pagan state is open to believing citizens, there is no prohibition against seeking legislation patterned after the wisdom principles in the Sinaitic Covenant and Proverbs. This activity of enriching one’s culture with biblical principles is fully encouraged by God (cf. Jer. 29:7) and is part of being “salt” and “light” in an otherwise rotting and dark social order.[15]

The Dynamic behind Successful Separation. Separation from worldly or pagan culture requires a “long-range” faith. Technically, such “long-range” faith is termed “hope” in the Bible. For believers to endure centuries of suffering under the reign of the Kingdom of Man, a fully-developed faith based upon the complete plan of God for the ages is necessary. All pagan lordship must be truthfully seen as a temporary season of history that shall end in the triumph of Daniel’s fifth kingdom, the stone that smashes all pagan power (Dan. 2:34-35, 44-45).

This long-range dimension to faith was different than the earlier faith of Israel during the conquest and into the monarchy period. Then the Hebrews trusted God for relatively short-range blessings under the blessings provision of the Sinaitic Covenant; now they had to hope in God’s prophesies of the distant future (Dan. 9:24-27). They had to see God’s sovereign will behind the historic rise and fall of the Gentile nations in which they lived. They also had to see God’s grace that postponed judgment and removal of evil in order that pagan peoples could have an opportunity to repent. Only by seeing the end of history can believers live properly under the present, seemingly “normal”, Kingdom of Man. We can see this principle by observing the power of false long-range faiths such as Communism. The surprising endurance and tenacity against overwhelming odds was seen again and again in early Communist organizers in Russia and China as well as during the Vietnam War. A post-war study done by the Rand Corporation for the U.S. government interviewed Communist Vietnamese prisoners-of-war who endured systematic American B-52 bombings.

“The analyst found particularly remarkable. . .the degree to which the men do not simply ‘mouth’ what they have been told, but seem to have fully absorbed and assimilated it. . . .Thus, what may have begun as indoctrination has become sincere conviction. . .and may, therefore, be virtually impossible to dislodge. The men polled here. . .are unlikely to change their views. . . .They can perhaps be killed, but they probably cannot be dissuaded either by words or by hardships.”[16]

Communism has fallen only because the object of the long-range faith was false.

Christianity has not fallen because its Object of hope remains true. A powerful example of the tenacity of biblical hope in living separated lives is that of the Puritans. The very hatred of Puritans even today centuries afterward testifies to the fear these believers produced in pagan hearts. Said an English commentator:

“[The Puritans were] the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. . . .Those. . .who formed, out of the most unpromising of materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen, who trampled down King, Church, and Aristocracy, who. . .made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. . . .People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. . . .They went through the world, like Sir Artegal’s iron man Talus with his flail, crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities, insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier.”[17]

Revelation and Inspiration in Apocalyptic Literature. If successful separation depends upon long-range faith (hope), then long-range faith requires a special Word from God (faith always comes from God’s Word-Rom 10:17). As we saw in Part III (Mt. Sinai event), the Word of God must be understood in terms of revelation, inspiration, and canonicity. The special Word of God given through Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and the Apostle John furthers our appreciation of these truths.

Apocalyptic Revelation. Earlier we learned that biblical special revelation has unique characteristics shared with no other human knowledge. All biblical revelation is verbal: it has intellectual content that passes from God’s mind to man’s mind rather than being merely uninterpreted raw experience from which the human mind has created meaning. Biblical revelation as a message from God’s mind to our mind is, therefore, personal: there can be no neutral response to it; we either submit to it or rebel against it. Additionally, it is public history, not merely private vision: it occurs in objective reality regardless whether man subjectively discovers or understands it.

With the rise of the apocalyptic form, the prophetic characteristic comes to the fore, the characteristic of coming from beyond man’s mental limitations in space and time. For fourteen centuries a line of prophets in the Hebrew nation received and communicated prophetic revelation about previously unknown thoughts in God’s omniscience. Apocalyptic revelation comes from so deep within God’s mind that it pushes the limits of our minds to understand. It speaks of things never yet experienced that are only vaguely like past human history. Topics like a fiery cosmic cataclysm, political and religious intrigue on a global scale, resurrection of human bodies, and unprecedented angelic intervention cosmic history strain our ability to comprehend.

Apocalyptic Inspiration. We previously learned that although much revelation has been lost in history, under the providence of God part of it has been preserved in written form, the Bible. Of course, because the Bible is the only special revelation left in existence, it has become the target of all God-haters. And no part of the Bible has been more viciously attacked than the book of Daniel. Let’s look at the fight over Daniel to learn more about the truth of inerrant inspiration.

According to liberal higher critics who inhabit most university and seminary faculty positions, Daniel is a pious forgery written around 200 B.C.; its impressive “prophecies” were all written, they claim, after the fact. Its apocalyptic prophecies that applied to the Persian and Greek periods are so stunningly clear that to unbelief they could only have arisen in human minds which already knew those historical details. The following brief defense of Daniel uses material found in readily-available, conservative works on Daniel and Old Testament introduction.[18]

Higher critical attacks upon the trustworthiness of Daniel have generally focused in history and linguistics. Critics have a prior theory of the OT canon development that helps them “explain” Daniel as a late addition. The three parts of the OT canon—law, prophets, and writings—are seen by critics as three chronological stages in the writing, editing, and collecting of OT books. Why, they ask, is a prophetic book like Daniel in the “writings” section of the canon instead of in the “prophets” section? Quickly answering their own question, the critics claim that Daniel was written too late to attain canonical status along with Ezekiel and Zechariah which were canonized n the third century B.C. according to this theory.

Obviously, this critical attack depends entirely upon the chronological development theory of the OT canon. Such a theory, however, has never been proved. There are other, much more plausible, explanations of the OT canon’s tripartite division. One explanation is that the three parts of the canon are not chronological stages at all but a topical classification. The law gives legal instructional material; the prophets give prophetic commentary on past and future history from the covenant perspective; and the writings give wisdom principles for life. Daniel, then, is included within the writings rather than within the prophets, not because it was composed too late for entry, but because it has primarily to do with wisdom principles for living within the totalitarian Kingdom of Man.

Besides the historical argument, higher critics of Daniel often employ linguistic arguments. Instead of dealing piecemeal with each and every such argument, we can save much time by unmasking the chain of logic used in all of them. Each critical linguistic argument begins with a selected linguistic parameter such as vocabulary, syntax, proper names, or orthography, which varies to a large degree in a known way over time. Moreover, this parameter, which can be called P, must be one which concerns the actual composition of a book, not its subsequent transmission as each new manuscript is copied from an older one. Thus any given orthographic train will not work; the trait finally chosen must be known to remain unaffected by subsequent transmission.

If some parameter, P, for example, varies sharply from century to century and which is determined by compositional activities, not transmissional activities, is found, then P can be established for each century from the sixth through second centuries. In such a case, comparison of P as it occurs in Daniel with P as it occurs in literature of the sixth through second centuries should yield approximate dates for Daniel.

For example, if certain proper nouns for musical instruments which are mentioned in Daniel are clearly used only in the second century or more recent literature, then Daniel is probably a late composition.

The problem with every critical linguistic argument advanced so far is that an adequate P cannot be defined. Items such as syntax vary not only with time but with style of literature. Particular proper nouns and special terms are now turning up in new archeological materials from many different centuries, disqualifying them from being P (because they do not vary enough from century to century). In the musical instrument hypothesis above, for example, as one P is suggested, more manuscript discoveries indicate its use in both the sixth and second centuries. Thus almost every archeological discovery has disqualified a hypothetical P. The negative critical arguments used in some classrooms, therefore, are manifestly not sufficient to undermine the traditional sixth century compositional date for the book of Daniel..

On the other side of the issue, believers in a sixth-century Daniel are not without extra-biblical evidence for their claim. Recently, manuscripts of the book of Daniel which were found at Qumran were dated back to at least 120 B.C. Since none of the Qumran caves evidence gives a hint that Daniel was not canonical, one has clear proof that Daniel was canonical by at least 120 B.C. The question critics have to answer is why a book supposedly written about 165 B.C. so suddenly received canonical status when the phenomenon of quick canonization is unknown in the rest of the OT. The only explanation that fits the facts is that Daniel had to have been written far earlier than 165 B.C. for it to be recognized as canonical by 120 B.C. If it indeed was written prior to 165 B.C., then it contains clear-cut, specific prophecy of Antiochus Epiphanes (Dan. 8), and thus the heart of higher critical anti-supernaturalism is destroyed. Another evidence for the early authorship of Daniel is the fact that it is quoted by Mattathias (died 167 B.C.), who encouraged his sons to resist the tyrannical ruler Antiochus Epiphanes with exhortation drawn from the book (I Macc. 2:59-60). This citation by Mattathias shows Daniel was fully accepted in his day as authoritative as the canonized prophetic OT books he cited in the same context (I Macc. 2:51-58).

All the available evidence, therefore, supports the sixth century, traditional date of Daniel. Objections to this date are rooted in unbelief and a hatred for the supernatural intervention of God. Apocalyptic inspiration is a fact of history and evidence that God provides enough revelation for his people to endure protracted trials of living in imperial pagan culture. The basis exists for the motivational tool of “long-range” faith or hope as the means of successfully separating from the world-system. As John the Apostle put it, we know that the world-system is passing away. Why should we be intimidated by it and capitulate or accommodate to it? We’ve been let in on some of the deepest thoughts God has on the ultimate goal of history!

END NOTES FOR CHAPTER 4

1. Discussed in great detail in Alva J. McClain, The Greatness of the Kingdom (Chicago: Moody Press, 1959), pp. 120-129.

2. Ibid., p.135.

3. Ibid., p.126.

4. Samuel H. Andrews, God’s Revelation of Himself to Man, quoted in McClain, p.124..74

5. Antiquities of the Jews, XIV.vii.2.

6. City of God, VII. 32, trans. Marcus Dods in Great Books of the Western World, XVIII (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952), 262.

7. Pensees, 571, trans. W.F. Trotter in Great Books of the Western World, XXXIII (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952), 303.

8. John S. Wurts, Magna Charta (Philadelphia: Brookfield Publishing Co., 1945 [1964]), pp. 156,160.

9. See discussion in Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1970), pp. 22-28.

10. Roger Brow, Religion: Origin and Ideas (Chicago: InterVarsity Press, 1966), p. 27.

11. Henri Frankfort et al., Before Philosophy (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1964 [original title, Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man, 1946]), pp. 251,254.

12. J. Gresham Machen, “Christianity and Culture,” The Banner of Truth Magazine, No.69, June 1969.

13. Ibid.

14. See discussion by Charles C. Ryrie, “The Christian and Civil Disobedience,” Bibliotheca Sacra, CXXVII (Apr-June, 1970), 153-62.

15. Christians can use the Sinaitic Covenant as an idea source for legislation today on the basis of Deuteronomy 4:8.

16. Konrad Kellen, Conversations With Enemy Soldiers in Late 1968/Early 1969 (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 1970), p.102.

17. Thomas B. Macauley, Critical and Historical Essays. Everyman’s Library: No.225 (London: Dent, 1907), pp. 185-187.

18. See any good conservative OT introduction. Detailed conservative technical responses to specific criticisms are found in D.J. Wiseman, et. al., Notes on

Some Problems in the Book of Daniel (London: The Tyndale Press, 1965). The critic must also explain Jesus’ belief in a real sixth-century Daniel authorship (Matt. 24:15) in the light of Daniel 9:25-27. Also, they are left trying to explain how the four kingdoms mentioned in Daniel 2 and 7 are “really” a retro-view of the three kingdoms existing between the sixth and second centuries (Neo-Babylonian, Medo-Persian, and Grecian).