Gooding, David: 2 - Functional Relationships

May I ask if I have my chairman's permission to continue? Ah, thank you. By the end of our last session, we had made ourselves a table of contents of the book of Daniel. And notice that if we follow thought flow, there are ten, not twelve, units in the book. Let us now look for a while at that table of contents and again apply our first and fundamental principle, which is to trace thought flow. To ask, secondly, what goes with what? Are these ten units, individual units with nothing to do with each other? If they turn out to be that, we have no grounds for complaint. If God chooses to tell- tell us ten units altogether unrelated to each other, nothing to do with each other at all, but then it's worth our knowing. Each unit will tell us something that we need to know. It could turn out then that the book of Daniel is somewhat like the book of Proverbs. In the book of Proverbs, the whole genius of a proverb is that it states a truth succinctly by itself, complete. And therefore, if there's no connection between a proverb and something that went before it or something that comes after it, we have no grounds for complaint, because by definition, a proverb is precisely that, a very short, pithy statement conveying a truth, and that's that. It is true that even in a book like Proverbs, uh, the a- the author or compiler has put certain proverbs together, because in the nature of proverbs, uh, a proverb doesn't tell all the truth sometimes. It puts one side of the truth. Answer a fool according to his folly, says one proverb, and another proverb says, don't answer a fool according to his folly, and both are true in within the limits, eh, that were intended. So then, if Daniel turned out to be a book like the Book of Proverbs, we have no basic reason for objecting or complaining. Our question is, however, is it so? Are these ten units, ten separate units, nothing much to do with each other, or are they in connect- are they connected like that old worn out analogy of the fingers of a hand and a thumb, you know, are they functionally related? So let's make a few more observations, uh, about what we read in the, uh, book itself, in the text. And, uh, you will notice where the book of Daniel begins and what it talks about when it, uh, begins. Daniel, um, chapter one and verse one. m In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, came Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, unto Jerusalem and besieged it. Did he so really? And what happened then? And the Lord gave Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand with part of the vessels of the house of God, and he carried them into the land of Shinar to the house of his God, and he brought the vessels into the treasure house of his God. Vessels of gold. From the house of the Lord at Jerusalem, where they were dedicated to the service of the one true God, and he brought them, and be it said, with the kind of reverence a pagan would show, with all the reverence he knew how to give them, he brought them and put them in the house of his God. He was an old pagan, of course. He didn't understand how wrong idolatry was, but he showed his reverence to the God of Israel, as he would have showed his reverence to all the other gods. He may have well thought, as rumor that he did, that Marduk was the chief of all gods and was specially interested in Master Nebuchadnezzar, and Nebuchadnezzar paid him hams- handsomely for being thus interested. But, um, uh, while Marduk may be have been the chief god, well, the god of the Jews was a, a, a, a, a god to be respected, and he brought his vessels and put them into the temple of his God at, uh, Jerusalem. What should we make of the statement? Is it, you know, like preachers do, just setting the context, getting people interested in the thing of, you know, on my way here to to the preach tonight, I saw a cow going across the main street of Toronto, and all the traffic was held up. Wasn't that interesting? It's got the kids listening, hasn't it? Nothing to do with what the, uh, preacher is going to preach about, but it is, you know, what the Greek orators would have called, and the Latin orators, a cap to, uh, uh, uh, uh, a capio benevolentia, you see, uh, getting their interest. Is that what this bit is? A little background. Was it meant to be taken seriously, do you suppose? These vessels of gold. Are they saying something profound that needs to be understood? That God would allow a pagan emperor to take these holy vessels from his temple and put them in the house of his God in Babylon, of all places. Wow. So anyway, we tuck it under our caps and go on reading. Should it occur anywhere else, of course, the memory would, uh, recur, wouldn't it? And do you know where they occur again? Oh, you do, don't you? I ask you because I'm afraid you'll think I'm making it up. I'm not, am I? I'm not going to write vessels in where they were never written in by Daniel. But the critical thing here in the story are the vessels of gold. Yep. Yeah. It was not simply when he, the banquet started. It was at that crucial moment when Belshazzar came to decide a question that had been niggling in his heart and conscience for months and perhaps years. Now he came to his decision at last. He had been told about Nebuchadnezzar and his conversion, and how he'd been an old, uh, licentiate, proud, arrogant, uh, monarch, you know, and then had had this mental breakdown or whatever it was, and turned and lived like an animal, and then had an experience of the living God and returned to sanity. How many times had he heard it from the Queen Mother till he was sick of hearing it? And this night he was going to decide what life was about. And he put on this tremendous party with all the lords and ladies, you know, the ladies dripping with diamonds down their necks and the latest creations under the sun. And, uh, right in the middle of it, he made his statement. What is life for? And he ordered these very same vessels to be brought out of the temple where they'd been put and set before him. And the king, before all his nobles and ladies, raised his faggons, these golden vessels, and drank thereof himself. In that moment came forth the fingers of a man's hand and wrote upon the wall. Dramatic stuff, isn't it? But do you see how that, so to speak, brackets that lot? Because if you've really been attentive le- uh, readers and taking that as potentially serious, when we come here and we see it is at the crucial moment of that story, we shall then perceive that this wasn't just a captatio benevolentii, you know, just a story to make the kids listen before you begin the sermon proper. If we hadn't been told here what the vessels were, we shouldn't have known what here they stood for, should we? If we hadn't observed Nebuchadnezzar's, uh, behavior here, we shouldn't be able to contrast it with this. Notice the contrast, won't you? Vessels here, vessels there. But Nebuchadnezzar's treatment, though pagan, was reverent. He didn't take the vessels of gold out of the house of the Lord and put them on his own dinner table. We are explicitly told he took the vessels out of the house of Lord and put them in the house of his gods, paying them reverence, such as he thought as a pagan was due to the gods. The contrast between that by Nebuchadnezzar and this by Belshazzar is eloquent indeed. This was a god-defying thing. And it forms, of course, a very big climax. For now, let's think again. Here's Nebuchadnezzar. And he was king of Babylon. And he came up, and God gave him complete victory over Jerusalem. These stories happened in Babylon till you come here. This is end of Babylon. When you start this side, you've gone over to the time of the Medo-Persians, and the king is a Persian, it's Darius. It doesn't matter that some of these visions may subsequently be dated to the earlier time. The fact in this sequence of thought, here Babylon begins in the destruction of Jerusalem, here Babylon ends. Here God allows Jerusalem to be destroyed and the vessels of God be taken. But here, the misuse of those vessels comes at the crucial point when Babylon is destroyed. There is then a thought flow going between these opening verses and the last verses of chapter five, is there not? Hmm. That's jolly inconvenient, isn't it? Because if you, I mean, if Daniel has so arranged it to have that kind of sequence that binds that bit together, it sort of obliges you to look this side, doesn't it, and ask similar questions, and that is awkward, particularly if you're not wanting to. We'll leave that a moment anyway. As to these five elements in this first side, are they altogether unrelated stories with nothing in common? Or are some of them related, at least in their themes. Well, I mean, ah, superficial stuff, that may be nothing at all, but this, after all, is an image, and this happens to be an image. Hmm, two images. And, uh, for that matter, uh, you'll see these stories we observed in our first session are not altogether separate, are they? Because when you come to the story of Belshazzar, and Daniel comes in to interpret the, uh, the dream, then Daniel, staring His Majesty straight in the eye, he says, and you knew all this about your father, your dynasty, the, the man preceding you in the dynasty, Belshazzar, you knew it all? You knew how he was warned, how he defied God, h- continued in his sin, how he was cut down and how he was restored. You knew it, Belshazzar. And in spite of being warned through knowing how your predecessor was warned, you defied the living God. There's no restoration for you, Belshazzar. The writing on the wall says that you're weighed in the balances and found wanting. Tonight, your kingdom shall be taken from you and given to the Medo-Persians. That night was Belshazzar slain. And if you were preaching, as you do when you preach it, don't you? Of course you do. At whatever level you preach it. You can't preach this story without preaching that, you might say, they, they're twin stories, aren't they? But you know, uh, oh, you might as well say in some sense they're twins, both have images. It is a fact, however, you know, isn't it what, that when you get, uh, two or three things alike, and they resemble each other, then the wise, uh, course is to say, yes, I see they re- resemble each other, but what are the differences? That is true in medicine, of course. That's why the doctors indulge in what they're pleased to call differential diagnosis. If a doctor finds three men sitting in his surgery, and, uh, when he asks what's wrong, they say they've got sore throats. So they've all got the same, they've got sore throats. The doctor doesn't say, well, aspirin you, aspirin you, aspirin you, sore throat cure guaranteed. No, he first asks the dear first gentleman to open his mouth, and he peers down the opening and says, have you been at the football match recently and shouting your head off? Well, serves you right. Now you've got a sore throat. The cure for you is to go home and shut up for the next ten hours. The second man is told to open his mouth, and as the doctor peers down the cavern, hmm, says, I fear you've got laryngitis, my man. You need some penicillin. Sore throat, but then the the difference is all important, isn't it? He tells number three to open his mouth, looks grave and said, if you don't mind, I'd like to take a specimen. I'm going to send this away for examination. He fears that it's cancer of the throat. Same inflamed throat, all the same. Now the important thing is the differences. Differential diagnosis. And when you find, when you find, I haven't got a sore throat, by the way. When you find scripture putting things that are the same, either together or in a series, that's the first step. That is a thing to be noticed. But the next important step is to ask, what are the differences in these otherwise similar things? Even from a practical point of view, if you are preaching Nebuchadnezzar's dream image, you'll need another sermon next Sunday, won't you? And when you come to the golden image, of course, that won't be saying the thi- same thing as a dream image, will it now? But different. And why different, and how different? Yes? Good. Um... Let's look a little bit further. What do we say about, uh, the, uh, other side? Well, superficially, these would go together, wouldn't they? Two visions of beasts. They have that in common, that they're visions of beasts anyway. Though at once, of course, the differences strike us. These are four beasts, and these are two. And secondly, here the story is how the beasts were destroyed and the kingdom given to the Son of Man. But with these beasts, no mention is made of the Son of Man and his coming kingdom. You watch the systematic theologians, and they'll take these dear beasts and herd them together with these two beasts, and they'll argue which beasts are which, and are are are are these beasts those beasts or those beasts this beast, and which is which beast? Very good thing, as you must do it, of course. And for certain, uh, for certain reasons, it becomes absolutely critical. But then, if you're doing a literary criticism of it, you'll notice they're beasts. What you'll want to know is why they're different. Not are they the same, but why are they different? And why, if you've had four beasts, do you have to have another two? Or even if they're the same beasts as two of these beasts, why do you have to have those two repeated? What are these saying that those aren't saying? The similarities are important, the differences are even more important. Yes? Anyway, those, uh, strike you as a pair, don't they? What about those last two? Mm. Well... Have you got Daniel nine open in front of you? This is how it begins. In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, which was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans, in the first reign of his, in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood by the books. The number of the years whereof the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet for the accomplishing of the desolations of Jerusalem, even seventy years. And that understanding by means of the books, of course, once more isn't just a little interesting background, but nothing much to do with what's to follow. It is key to what follows. Daniel's prayer wasn't based on mere patriotism run wild or jingoism or anything of the sort. He came to plead before God because, first of all, he'd found it written in the books. That is the prophecies by Jeremiah that Jerusalem should be destroyed and left fallow and laying waste for seventy years. And with Jeremiah, that was an exceedingly po- important part of his prophecy. The false prophet said, nonsense. Jeremiah ought to be put in prison for saying such stuff. They won't be away, uh, uh, seventy years, two more years perhaps, and they'll all be back, you'll see, said Hananiah, the false prophet. And Jeremiah said it was rubbish. Events proved it was rubbish. It wasn't going to be two years, it would be seventy years. That is an exceedingly important part of Jeremiah, and the timetable, of course. Now, as the seventy years drew towards their end, Jeremiah, uh, Daniel set himself to pray on the basis of the books. The books. And in answer to his prayer, the angel was sent to give him God's interpretation of the books. Yes, Jerusalem would be restored. Within seven years it would be restored, but not fully and finally restored. For Israel had continued in her sin. The discipline on Israel with the destruction of Jerusalem had not brought to the captives and the exiles in Babylon the repentance that was due before God. They continued to break his covenant. God would honor the promise of the books, therefore, and restore Jerusalem, but not completely. This wouldn't be such a restoration as Isaiah had talked of in his golden terms of the Lord's house being established at the head of the mountains and the nations flowing unto it and all that, not, not, not yet. In fact, there are times of great trouble ahead, and the interpretation that God gives of the book now, perhaps you'd like to call it a revised interpretation or something, would be that to the end, desolations were determined. And it should be seventy times seven before Jerusalem should be finally restored. So this matter of the books is exceedingly important, and their interpretation. What do you suppose the last vision is about? Ten, eleven, and twelve. The angel brought, uh, Daniel, did he not, a tremendous bit of prophecy, prophecy, telling him how, in great detail, the history should develop in the succeeding centuries. Well, where did he get the information from? Look at chapter ten, if you will, verse twenty. Then said he, knowest thou whereof I am come unto thee, and now I will return to fight with the prince of Persia, and when I go forth, lo, the prince of Greece shall come, but I will tell thee that which is inscribed in the writing of truth. Oh. So if this is the books, this is the writing. And the prophecy that proceeds, therefore, the angel didn't make it up out of his own head. He was conveying to Daniel what was written in the writing of truth. That asks us to think, doesn't it? The books are, of course, the inspired prophecies, a- a- at least those we know given us in the Old Testament under the name of Jeremiah. This writing of truth, what is that? Was that part of the Bible? Was it a biblical exposition? Well, it wasn't when the angel, if it had been written in the Bible, the angel wouldn't have said, I come to make you know what's written in the Bible. Goodness me, if Daniel couldn't read the Bible for himself, he was a pretty poor Jew. And if we can't read the Bible for ourselves, we're pretty poor Chris- Christians, aren't we, Wato? What was written in the books, Daniel could read and prayed for illumination. When would it be fulfilled? But what was written in the, in the writing of truth, he couldn't read. That wasn't the Bible. That is referring to the decisions and counsels of God, written, so to speak, on the heavenly tablets. God's secret hitherto, not known to men, but God's purpose and decisions. But now those divine decisions made known to Daniel. By that simple fact, of course, and it, you may say it's, well, it's only superficial. Well, have pity on us, we're only super- superficial to start with anyway. Those two, um, sets of chapters, they have something in common as well, don't they? And we should want to know what the difference then is between them. Good. At this superficial level, uh, perhaps we have one more stage to look at before eventually we get down to more serious matters. We're not doing this, of course, to play crossword puzzles with the word of God. We're trying to take God's word seriously. If you only had an old pagan play by Euripides and uh, or, or, or, or Sophocles or Aeschylus, you'd try and take it seriously, wouldn't you? And try to read it as a whole and ask what the relationships of the parts to the whole are and so on. Shall we not spend equal energy on God's word? He knows how to write, you know, that's God. But now I'm full of hesitancy. I don't know if I say what I'm going to say, whether I should get out with my life, you'll say. Or I shall be accused of that cardinal sin of scholarship of being fanciful, and that scholar shouldn't be. But I've got my bulletproof vest on, and I do it up and proceed to the fray. Hmm. Funny thing, isn't it? But would you, if you could get your imagination really going, see any connection between Neb- Nebuchadnezzar's dream image in chapter two and the vision of the four beasts in chapter seven? Anybody got any i- fanciful idea, absolutely fanciful idea, that there's a common subject matter between them? Pardon? The nations, yes. And what about the nations? Well, come at it another way. Daniel's dream image, gold, silver, bronze, iron and clay. What on earth is they, are they all about? They are a succession of metals, and they represent strength, yes, good, different types of strength. What? Characteristics. Characteristics of what? Quality of character. Yes. Quality of the nations, yes. Yes. Um, they are in this order, gold, silver, bronze, iron, iron clay, from head to foot, character of different nations. And what about these nations? All existing simultaneously? No, what then? Successive nations, yes. So it is an analysis and a description in symbolic form of qualities, characteristics, that people are saying, but characteristics of a succession of nations. Yes? Hey, what are these four beasts about? Pardon? The same nations. Yes, the same nations, sir. And, uh, succession of nations. Yes, so if this is succession of nations, this is succession of nations and the same nations, Mr. Brooks points out. Come now, we shall need some differential diagnosis now, shall we not? Why on earth, if you've got one image about the succession of nations represented by metals in an image of a man, do you need another vision of the same thing, succession of nations, but this time under the figure of succession of wild beasts? Mm. And we notice, uh, following our, uh, uh, following our business of difference of differential diagnosis, that the gold, silver, bronze, iron, and clay are eventually destroyed by the stone. Cut out without hands, which grows into a mountain. And that stone represents? Pardon? Christ, yes, and his messianic kingdom under the figure of a stone. When the four beasts are done away with here, the Messianic kingdom is described, isn't it, in form of a stone cut out without hands? Here? How is Christ described here? As a stone that went into a mountain? No? Well, how then? Yes, the Son of Man, sir. Not a stone, but the Son of Man. And before we're finished, we shall have to account for the fact that we are given two critiques, not just one, two critiques of Gentile power. Two analyses of Gentile politics. Two descriptions of the succession of nations from Nebuchadnezzar onward. The Gentile, uh, uh, nations, therefore, their political power and their political regimes are described twice, but under very different, uh, symbols. And if the symbols are, as you have suggested and rightly suggested, if the symbols are telling us the characteristics of the politics of those nations and their political systems, then it is obvious that you can't do with just one description. You'll have to have two, because from two different points of view, they look very different. Just to anticipate what we shall find, in the first instance, the critique that God gives Nebuchadnezzar of Gentile empire is a magnificent thing. Oh, wow. It's a man, a huge man at that man so big it's a bit awesome, you know. Kind of like a, a, a, a Moor statue. Don't have one in your garden because it frightens most people. An enormous great man. But you can't deny he's brilliant, can you? Look at his sparkles. Gold and silver. Strong iron, you'll see. Man's government, and God is being absolutely fair, isn't he? It has been a magnificent human accomplishment. No? You say not our Canadian government. Well, I wouldn't have dared to say that myself, but uh, uh, uh, uh, I just say, but even you, I think, would prefer your government to living in a forest along with lions and tigers and each batting each other and pulling your wives along the ground by the roots of their hair, all that kind of thing. You would think your ordered life here under the government is much better than to such jungle chaos, wouldn't you? Like the Greeks thought that, uh, man's progress from living in a jungle, beastly, horrible and nasty, hmm, without a Cadillac or a roof over your head. Was much improved by getting together in cities, and cities joining up into countries, and devising some form of government with all the necessary accum- uh, accoutrements of government, technology, you know. Hmm. A tremendous achievement. Here is God being fair. God isn't despising human government. In a sense, there is no authority but of God. Nor should we despise human government. Well, it's a bit creaky at the moment, but isn't there hope after the centuries that, um, uh, oh well, by its gradual development, of course, an experiment with different forms of government, uh, be it gold or iron or, well, Claire's a bit doubtful, um, uh, uh, uh, that we shall come to the utopia, the government that's going to solve all the world's problems and bring us in a period of absolute utopian prosperity and peace. Why shouldn't the progress carry on? Well, that's one analysis, isn't it? That system of government, as depicted by that image, came unstuck. It had a terrible weakness in its feet. It was unstable, therefore. Eventually it was destroyed, and its place taken by a stone. Wow. When you first see the contrast, it's a bit off-putting, isn't it? Here was a beautiful image, the latest in technology, and how smooth they could have made an image like that in Babylon. They had all the technology, gold and goldsmiths. Man, there's no savage affair. This isn't some totem pole. Oh, excuse me. I didn't say that. Take that off the record. Uh, but this was a beautiful artifact of uh, uh, of, uh, technology. A dream one, of course. And it's all smashed, and its place taken by a, a bit of raw stone. Come, come. What kind of a way is that to describe the Messianic Kingdom? Well, you'll have to tell me that tomorrow when we get time. Does the symbolism make sense? Because, you see, when you come the other side, you've got another analysis, another description of those same empires. It's a very different description. Not now a sophisticated man, a big man. Four wild beasts. It's a very different analysis. What's this God now being rude or something about human government? No, no. It is the simple truth. This is not some preacher exaggerated and going over the top. It is a fact. Wild beasts, you know, are quite, um, no, they're quite good in their own way, aren't they? Remember being in Kenya and taken by a dear missionary to see some lions, and he was an intrepid kind of missionary and drove the car or the van right up, right up to a dear lion, as near as we are to that wall there, you'll see. And we didn't feel particularly threatened. I closed the window up because the lion had very bad breath, but, uh, as you see, but, uh, other than that, he was quite benign creature. He just had his breakfast on a giraffe and was sleepily, uh, pleased with the world, and us in particular, you'll see. It's a wild beast. But you know what? If I didn't ask the lion to share its breakfast, you see, because lions have this, if they were hungry and you were the only breakfast in sight, I'd have no compunction whatever. The name of the game is survival. They must have the raw material to live, and if they have to do it, morality doesn't come into it. They are amoral. They don't understand morality. Survival is what is the question. They are what you might call, if you used a political term, power blocks. Well, they're quite civilized, as long as they're not threatened. I once, I remember I was in a great country not far from here, which is America. And in a moment of imprudence, talking of this Daniel chapter seven, I said, you know, if America one day were threatened with its oil supplies, the morality of the situation wouldn't come into it. They've got to have the supplies, and survival would be the name of the game, and morality wouldn't really enter into it. And then the, the oil supply was threatened by one Saddam Hussein, and they went for him, didn't they? That's power blocks. Talk to any theory of politics that you know on Earth, and they would say, but what can you expect? Governments aren't individuals. Individuals have to, uh, consider morality, but governments? Their job is to protect the nation. And in the last analysis, morality doesn't come into it. It is survival. God says those empires here, magnificent accomplishment of human spirit. Here, do observe that governments are amoral power blocks when it comes to the final analysis. You'll want both analyses to give a fair-minded picture, won't you? Notice how God is fair in giving both sides of the story. And we begin to see that the literary analysis, and now some patterns begin to emerge. That is not, uh, just for the sake of playing crossword puzzles with the word of God. That arises out of the fact that when God speaks, God gives a balanced picture and put the two sides to it. God is teaching us how to think too, fairly and even-handedly, and both sides of a question. Yes? When the image was destroyed, that beautiful, spectacular, refined image of a man was destroyed, its place was taken by the Messianic Kingdom in the form of a stone cut out without hands. Apparently crude, but powerful. And of almighty strength, it was cut out without hands, that is by divine power. That is supernatural power. Why was it suitable? Why, because if you notice this marvelous image, beautiful, a wonderful creation of human technology, had a fatal weakness, clay in its feet. And therefore it had to be removed. Its place was taken by a rock cut out by supernatural power. Here the story is different. These beasts, that's what governments are, power blocks. Job is to protect their citizens at all costs. And so they went on, succeeding one another, until there arose this colossal beast, is that amalgam of all previous beasts. I was such a beast and so amoral that it bit and it tore and it stamped and it destroyed with its colossal power. The trouble here was not a fatal weakness as in the image. The trouble was this beast's hideous strength. And therefore God was obliged to get rid of it before it destroyed the whole earth. Hmm. Interesting that, isn't it? And the beast was taken, uh, uh, uh, and removed, what, by a stone cut out without hands? Of course not. The wild beast was replaced by, oh, look at this. Delightful, isn't it? The perfectly human, absolutely perfect specimen of man. Yes. Cool, you could preach one or two sermons of that, couldn't you, sir? Just out of the contrast, I mean. What ho you could. But then you'd be borrowing God's sermon, wouldn't you? That's the thing to do when you preach, borrow God's sermons. They're the best. They're the cheapest, generally. Mm-hmm. But I've gone into my weakness, dear me, fatal weakness. I've started preaching, come back, all that, and I wasn't supposed to be preaching, but just, uh, suggesting that there is a similarity between number two here and number seven here. And that the similarity isn't fanciful, it's deliberate. And it is necessary. And when we exercise our minds on it, and why are the same, why are they similar, and yet why are they different, we begin to see why there must be two. We're beginning to understand function. Why the sum has to be there? Because of its functional relationship to the others, that kind of thing. Here, that raises a thought, doesn't it? It's a sort of embarrassing thought. Um, yeah, these two then are very similar. Any connection with the, between the others? Ha. That would set your question, wouldn't it? I'll do the easy ones if you do the hard ones, yes? Look at this thing here. Number four. This is about the King Nebuchadnezzar. And, uh, he was king, you may know, of Babylon. Said so in the text, king of Babylon. And, uh, that's not a remark to be dismissed lightly. Babylon was one of the seven wonders of the world. And this Nebuchadnezzar, as distinct from the earlier one, Nebuchadnezzar II, was the rebuilder and the beautifier of Babylon. He's famous in history for it, more than for even his politics. Oh, he had turned it into a magnificent city. Talk about the city planning and Toronto's Sears Towers or whatever they got. Uh, Babylon, you'll say, was a magnificent thing with its magnificent temples and its ziggurats and its gardens that weren't, after all, hanging, so they think, but we still call them the hanging gardens, you'll see, and the river running through and the magnificent boulevards and the old Ishtar Gate. If you haven't seen it, well, sell your shirt and go to, uh, Berlin in Germany, east, and go into the Pergamon Museum and see the tiles that came off and were brought by Schliemann to Berlin, the tiles that came off the Ishtar Gate itself. Magnificent bits of work. If you had them in your bathroom, you'll never cease showing all your guests what the beauty of these tiles with their embossed artistry and, uh, uh, symbolic figures on them. Oh, the last word. And, uh, he had been responsible for the magnificent city. Uh, yes. But he was warned of his pride. We shall have to come back to that, uh, another day. And when he refused to repent, he was cut down. For in his dream, he was likened to a beautiful tree, performing the functions of a beautiful tree, God's gift to men. And Nebuchadnezzar gone perverse. So his tree was cut down. Have a minute. For seven times. Seven times shall pass over it. And then the king was restored Stored. after After 7 seven times. times. This is... Babylon. And this one? City of... Jerusalem. Do you see any point in those two being opposite each other? Sure you do. The two great cities that fill the later prophecies of the Old Testament, Babylon and Jerusalem. And when we come to the climax of the book of the Revelation, it'll be in terms of two cities, yes? Babylon and And Jerusalem. Jerusalem. Oh, well, yeah, of course. But, but, but then there's a point, isn't it? In this one, four, the king of Babylon is cut down and left down for seven times, and then Babylon is restored after only seven times, or its king is restored, I ought to say. And this is about Jerusalem city. Cut down. By whom? Well, he's nibs. God's axe to cut down Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar himself. He, when he misbehaved, is disciplined by God. Isn't that interesting that God is interested in an old pagan king and takes the trouble to discipline the king and talk to the king and cut him down under his judgment and then restore the old king? God is generous, isn't he, Wato? Concerned for Gentile kings and restored Nebuchadnezzar, hmm, after seven times, even though old Nebuchadnezzar had been in God's hand the implement for cutting down Jerusalem. And Jerusalem should be cut down, how long did you say? Huh? Cut down Seventy times seven. Do you agree with God's sense of proportion? Wow. Wow. Jerusalem, the love city. Tell me, was it a Jew who wrote this book of Daniel? How did he manage to face this? That the destroyer of his lovely city, Jerusalem, what he believed was the city of the great king, God's own city, the destroyer of it, yes, was disciplined, and God restored the man. After only seven times. Well, it's God's own city, Jerusalem, under the disciplines of God. Cut down seventy times, seven times. Oh dear. There's a verse in Amos, isn't there, that runs, you only have I known of all the peoples of the earth, therefore I will... what? Feather bed you? No, no. Therefore, says God, I will deal more severely with you than I've dealt with anybody. Ladies and gentlemen, whatever conclusion we come to the much debated thing about how you interpret the seventy times seven things, and we must take it seriously, and we must try to understand it, and the systematic theologians are right when they call upon other scriptures and combine them all and try to work out what it means. But at the simple level, before we get round to the detailed interpretation, you see some of the point, don't you, why this stands over against this. Oh. So these similarities then are not, I beg to plead, fanciful. Just like a picture that's going to show you the farm with a horse and Mr. Farmer and Mrs. Farmer with the pails of milk down her side and the goose coming and the little child and the tree and the pond and the church in the distance are not just put on the picture like that. They're put in proportion, aren't they? And the artist will tell you how, do you notice how the steeple of that church balances this tree thing over here? Mm. Beautiful architecture in the picture. And God, who happens to know how to write, has a beautiful architecture in his word, and it isn't there just for the look of it. It's there because that balance enters into the very message that God is wanting to get across. You haven't finally preached the whole of God's view of the succession of Gentile empires. You haven't finally preached it all unless you've seen that these two are necessary, why they are necessary, how they are similar, and why they are different. That's why this simple stuff we're doing this morning, the sort of the ABC of Daniel, is, is nonetheless not only interesting, but practical for your preaching. You'll have to preach it in the end. You won't tell Mrs. Giles when you begin your sermon, uh, on Neb- Nebber's image and, uh, then this one here, the four beasts. You won't tell Mrs. Giles necessarily, or the sixteen-year-olds in the pew, now do you understand the structure of Daniel? Well, so be double Dutch to them. You might, uh, preach on this one week and all its features and say what a marvelous thing human government is, and we should pray for the government, shouldn't we? And what are all powers of God and, and how man has been searching for ideal government, and aren't we glad that we live under a civilized government instead of the, the, the USSR kind of a government and all that kind of thing, uh. And the next week you come and you say, we're going to have another look at this government, you'll say, this government business, and uh, uh, remember last week we saw how wonderful provision God's government, human government is. We're going to get a slightly different picture this week, and they won't know it's anything to do with structure. They needn't know that, need they? Uh, but you'll put the other side of the story, and you learned there was another side of the story by observing the structure of it. If two therefore, is deliberately opposed and set over against seven, and it begins to look as if four here, the cutting down of Nebuchadnezzar's tree and its restoration after seven times, has something to say to us in light of the fact that Jerusalem was cut down by that same Nebuchadnezzar. And these are the two big cities, Babylon and Jerusalem, and this was to be cut down for seventy times seven. If they have something, you know, in connection, and we've got to tussle it out. Any notions on the others? Are any of the others related? But it's ten past twelve, ladies and gentlemen. I had intended to give you some handouts, but like the worst of school teachers, I'm not going to. You might care to think yourselves, mind you, overnight. If that is a moderately sensible table of contents, and there are some connections not only downwards like that, but across ways, we've got the sort of notion there might be. It might be worth your doing a little thinking, mightn't it, to see whether there are other similarities. If these two, for if these five are bracketed together by the mention of the vessels here and the mention of the vessels at the end, and that's not just artificial, arbitrary, it is part of the very message, the different treatment of those vessels. And it became crucial point in the destruction of Babylon. Is there anything that clamps these five together? That would send us hunting, wouldn't it? Reading chapter six again, and then re- oh dear me, what a lot of work that would be. Better to get a preacher, hire him to come and tell you. But, uh, you'll see, that might make an interesting study between nine o'clock tonight and, uh, half past six tomorrow morning, won't it? And then tomorrow I shall pluck up the courage and hand you out sheets of what my suggestions would be. Thank you for your attention.