Gooding, David: 1 - God and Education

Hello, and a very good evening to you all. Excuse me while I get wired up. So that's me taped. And a very good evening to you. It is a pleasure to be back with you here once more in Coventry, and to see so many faces, loved long since and lost a little while, but seen again now this evening. We are delighted to be with you once more. Thank you then for your invitation. Thank you for the warmth of your welcome. You have invited me to spend eight evenings with you, and in the will of the Lord, I should like to use the opportunity to conduct with you a serious study of some aspects of the book of Daniel. The book of Daniel, as you know, is one of the more famous prophetic books of the Bible. It not only has some of its leading chapters devoted entirely to prophetic themes, but the imagery and the thought forms used in those visions and prophecies become, for the New Testament writers, very often the language in which they in turn talk to us about future and coming events. So that from a prophetic point of view, the book of Daniel is doubly significant, significant in its own right and for the validity of its own prophecies, significant also for its he- the help, the foundational help that it gives to understanding the language of the New Testament when it talks of the second coming of Christ and the affairs of the world that will lead up to that coming. Now, there are two ways, basically two ways of studying the book of Daniel. The first way is the way of the systematic theologian. You'll soon gather that I'm not one of those. It requires a great skill to be an efficient systematic theologian, and you will soon perceive I do not possess that skill. But the systematic theologian, when he comes to the book of Daniel, will aim to study particularly the chapters and verses that talk about things prophetic, and putting them alongside from all else that he can gather from the books of the scripture, Old and New Testaments, where they talk about things prophetic, he will then attempt to arrange all these details into a grand scheme of prophecy. And secondly, having erected the scheme of prophecy, then he will, of course, incessantly go back over the scripture in general, and the book of Daniel in particular, and seek ever more exactly and accurately to fit in the details of these books into the scheme that he has erected. Now, that is the way of the systematic theologian, and it is an exceedingly important and necessary way of approaching Holy Scripture. And all the first theologians and expositors tend to follow it. I shall not be following it. I shall be using a second meth- method this week, and that is to study the book of Daniel as it stands on the page of Holy Scripture. You see, while many of the chapters of Daniel are concerned to prophesy the future, many of its chapters have very little or nothing at all to do with prophecy. They are historical. They are the record of certain events that took place in the life of Daniel and his colleagues in the courts of Babylon and Persia. So that if we were only interested in prophecy, then we would, uh, incline to neglect the chapters that talk about these historical affairs. Whereas if we interest ourselves in the whole of the book of Daniel, then we should be attaching equal importance to the chapters that are stories, records of historical events. We shall attach equal importance to them and significance as we do to the chapters that are frankly prophetical. And the chapters dealing with history, of course, are many, chapters one and three and four and five and six, All of them have to do with things historical. So that if we study, as we shall attempt to this week, the book of Daniel as a whole, we must first get a good grip of its contents, and then we shall have to ask what each individual chapter is doing in the book, and what is the function of the message that each chapter brings, and how those individual messages are related one to the other. Let me try to illustrate what I mean. Of course, when we study a book of scripture, the first and simple thing to do is to make out a table of contents, isn't it? To see what the book, uh, contains. The second stage, of course, goes deeper, and we there inquire what the individual pieces have got to do with one another. Let me use the analogy of a human hand. Suppose somebody calls upon me to describe to a person from Mars who has never seen a human hand, what exactly a human hand is. And suppose I gave the following description. Well, you know, the human hand, it's a bit of square stuff, really, more or less square, you know, made up of bones and muscles and blood vessels and things. And then out of the top, it's got four bits projecting, you'll see, and it's got one bit out of the side, and that's a human hand. Well, that'll do for a beginning, won't it? That's a table of contents, anyway, of the human hand, you'll see. But it won't do as a description of the human hand, will it? Because you would guess that that description is a human hand to start with? And if we're going to understand a human hand, we must understand not only that it has a square bit of stuff in the middle and four bits sticking out the top and one out of the side, we shall have to ask ourselves, what is the function of those various bits in the human hand? Why is the thumb, for instance, that sticks out of the side? Why does it stick out of the side? And, and, and what does the thumb do in the human hand, you'll say? And that's an easy one to answer when you think about it, isn't it, you'll see? Because without the thumb, you couldn't grasp things very well, could you? And then we should have to ask why you have four fingers and not three, and why, why, uh, none of them is the same length, you'll see. We might get round to pointing out that the little finger is, has one of the strongest grips of all the fingers on the hand. Witness if a little baby puts its little finger around your finger and you see how hard a baby can pull if he gets his little finger around your finger, you'll see. In other words, to describe the human hand, you've not only got to give a table of contents, you've got to explain what is the interrelation of function between all the parts that go up to make the human hand. And therefore, if we would understand the book of Daniel, we shall not only have to make out the table of contents, we shall have to ask how each chapter, each division of that book is related to all the other divisions in the book, and what is their function in the whole, so that those chapters, when put together, function as God intended they should function to convey his many-sided truth. And for that reason, I provided a, a few notes, uh, for you. I hope you've got one near you, well, near your elbow somewhere, so that you can see it. It's, uh, uh, four she- uh, uh, four sheets, and they're tight on both sides, or two, two sheets, and they're tight on both sides. A word or two about the sheets of notes. You don't have to read them all at once. Uh, you may keep them if you please, but if you keep your step and you're coming back again, as I hope you will, perhaps you'll be so kind as to bring the sheets with you. Because while we should not be referring to those sheets every night of our studies, we shall from time to time be referring to them, and to have the sheet of notes in front of you will make it easier to follow what is being said, and will make it easier for me to explain what I want to explain. For instance, by next Saturday evening, God willing, we shall be considering the great chapters ten, eleven, and twelve of the prophecy of Daniel, and on the last side of your sheet of notes, I have written out for you summaries of the four major divisions of the great prophecy in that part of Daniel, and it will be good to have those four major parts in front of our eyes so we can see what they have in common and what their major message is. So, as I say, you're welcome to the sheets. Uh, if you take them away, you're welcome to, and I hope you will. Well, please try to remember to bring them back with you when you come. And meanwhile, if it is not asking for the moon, perhaps you can find some time in the meantime to study these sheets of notes and to begin to come to answer the questions that they raise. For instance, these sheets of notes will show you that the contents of the book of Daniel are very, very carefully selected, and they are very, very carefully put together. They're not just a scrapbook of an old man's reminiscence, as you know what old men are like me, don't you, from time to time. If you entertain them more than a week, you'll find they keep telling you the same story over and over again. So did I tell you, when they only told you yesterday, of course, but that's the privilege of old men, isn't it? Uh, they are telling you all sorts of stories that have very little to do with each other, you'll see, and you love them for that, of course you do. But Daniel, though he wrote in his old age, perhaps, these are not the wanderings, not the scrapbook, uh, of an old man. This is a very carefully selected contents and a very carefully arranged book. You will see on the first sheet under the second section there, contents of the book of Daniel, for instance. But after chapter one there come two chapters dealing, both of them with images. Nebuchadnezzar's dream image, chapter two, and in chapter three, Nebuchadnezzar's golden image. And in chapter four and chapter five are both of them about kings, and both of them about the discipline of those kings. The first king was disciplined, humbled in the dust, under the discipline of God, and then finally restored when he had learned his lesson. The second king, though he knew all that, continued to defy God. In the end, God not only disciplined him, but executed him without any possibility of restoration. The two stories in chapters four and five are, of course, connected. Or if you look over onto the other column after chapter six, there come 2 chapters that each one of them give us a vision of the future in which the symbolism of wild animals is used. Chapter seven, there's a vision with four wild animals, and chapter eight, there's another vision with two wild animals, and of course the thoughtful will immediately ask, why do you have to have two visions? And the more so when chapter eight seems to repeat something of what's said in chapter seven. If you've been given a vision of the future with four wild animals, why do you need another vision with two wild animals, you'll say. The very fact there are two chapters dealing with beasts prompts us to ask, well, what is the function? Surely these two chapters are not just repeating the same stuff all over again. So, while they are similar, what is the difference? And why do you need two anyway? And finally, the final two visions, there's the vision of chapter nine, and then the great long vision of chapters ten, eleven, and twelve, all one vision in the book as originally given, and both of them, of course, have to do with the elucidation and explanation of certain writings. In chapter nine, it's a question of the writings in Jeremiah the prophet that Daniel seeks to understand. And in chapter ten, a messenger is sent to Daniel to explain to him what is written in the writing of truth, two lots of writings, therefore. So it is once apparent that the contents of the book of Daniel are not, as I say, the scrapbook, the, um, uh, unorganized scrapbook of an old man. They are very carefully selected and arranged. This coming week, if you have time yourself, I would be interested to hear what you make of that arrangement of the contents. And there's more to it than that, isn't there? If you'd like to turn the page, uh, over on the back there under heading three, there I have tried to give you a more detailed summary of the contents of these chapters. And you will notice what many theologians and expositors have noticed, that, uh, if you put out the chapters in two columns like this, then some of the chapters show an extraordinary similarity. Look, for instance, at chapter two. It is the survey of the whole course of Gentile imperial power. Four empires are represented in the form of a statue, a colossal statue of a man. You go over to the other side, chapter seven is giving you likewise a foreview of the course, the whole course of Gentile imperial power, here in the form of four. wild beasts. The image of chapter two is destroyed, and in its place the kingdom of God is set up. The fourth beast in chapter seven is destroyed, and the kingdom is handed over to the Son of Man and to the saints. Why two visions thus, so similar and so different? Many commentators have called our attention to it. But then look, of course, at, uh, this same feature, for instance, in chapter four. Chapter four is the story of God's discipline of Nebuchadnezzar, king of the beautiful city of Babylon. How that because of Nebuchadnezzar's pride, he was chastised and made to live as an animal eating grass until seven times passed over him, and then he was restored. Extraordinary thing for a Jewish prophet like Daniel to pro- prophesy that the Gentile power that had devastated Jerusalem and sacked the temple of God would, in God's mercy, not only be disciplined, but be restored. Extraordinary prophecy to come through the mouth of a Jewish patriot. But so it is. Whereas if you look across the column to chapter nine, it is the story of the desolations of Jerusalem City. The two great cities that stand in opposition, the one to the other in the ancient world, Babylon City on the one hand, Jerusalem City on the other. And while Babylon stood in all its glory, Jerusalem had been devastated, and devastated, if you please, by that same King Nebuchadnezzar. And what a story that is, as Daniel seeks to know the reason for it in his prayer, and is reminded that Jerusalem suffers its devastations and desolations because of God's discipline upon his people and upon that city. And whereas the discipline of Babylon lasted, of Babylon's king lasted seven times, the discipline of God upon the city of Jerusalem is to last seventy times seven. An exceedingly significant observation, isn't it? When it was Jerusalem and Jerusalem's people that were the people of God, evidently more heavily disciplined than the Gentile Babylon. And thereby hangs a very big and important tale when we come to consider the very practical question of God's disciplines of his people. But as I say, in the days intervening, if you have time, sir, from mowing the lawn for your dear wife and treating roses and any other things you have to do, like going to the supermarket and things like that, and you, madam, if you've time to spare from knitting the grandchildren's comforters, you'll say, um, you could even perhaps find a moment to look down these lists and begin to think yourselves about why are the chapters such a range, and why do so many chapters in the second column repeat the major themes in the first column. One more thing, and then we'll sing the hymn. One little thing of introduction, because our times are limited, we only have eight sessions together. Uh, I would ask you, if you intend to come, if you possibly can, to read in advance the chapter or chapters that we shall be considering each evening. They are on your invitation card, which chapters they will be, and they are also on the first sheet of the notes that you have been given. It will be a great help, but we shall be under pressure of time. I shall not be publicly reading the chapters from Holy Scripture, not because I wish to depreciate Scripture, but because many of those chapters are very long, and our time is precious. I take it that if we come to these sessions, we come because we are serious students of God's word. I shall presuppose that the chapters are fresh in your mind and that you have read them. Of course, if you just can't because of pressure circumstances, we shall be referring to them throughout. But for the most part, we shall not be beginning by a lengthy reading of some seventy verses of each chapter. We shall suppose that we've all read it, so that we may save time for the exposition of God's work. So much then for the dry as dust, uh, uh, introductions, psalms introductions, dry as dustings anyway. So that's enough of them, and let's give ourselves a breather before we get down to study the passage for this evening. The author of the book of Daniel, as he comes before us in his writings, is, I suggest to you, a very easily recognizable type. He was an expatriate Jew who, because of political circumstances, had been obliged to leave his own country and was living abroad in what for him was a foreign country and a foreign culture. Expatriate though he was, very true to life, he soon found his feet. While originally he was among the captives and doubters put into the slave labor camps and the displaced persons camps in Babylon, he was soon spotted by the Babylonian authorities and offered a place in the university in Babylon, there to be trained in administration, which meant in those days the sophisticated expert knowledge of how to write a, a cabion, and all the experience and expertise of being an official administrator in the great Babylonian capital city. In that civil service, he soon made his mark. He had come through the university with flying colors, first class in all his topics, and, uh, for a long life followed a distinguished career in the civil service of the Babylonian Empire. And when at last the Medo-Persians took over from the Babylonians, Daniel, now an elderly man, came for a brief while to be head of the Persian civil service. I say an easily recognizable type, because forever since Nebuchadnezzar II took the Jews captive in Jerusalem and took them down to his capital city and country. Nations in Europe and Asia and other parts of the world have, uh, known this interesting phenomenon, Jews living among them. Jews who have, to some extent, become assimilated into the country in which, into the culture of the country in which they live. But Jews who have, all out of proportion to their numbers, made exceedingly significant contributions to the life of the nations in which they have lived. In art, in medicine, in engineering, i- in law, in politics, and in economics. You wouldn't have to think but a few moments to name me Jews, would you, who have been absolutely famous and still are in the many countries of this world, in the many departments of life. Daniel was an early example of what we see around us still to this very present time. So we follow his writing with great interest. And one of the things that already soon strike us when we read his memoirs is that in spite of the fact that he lived his life as an expatriate in a foreign culture and rose to such eminence within that foreign culture and in their civil servants. He was a man who not only maintained his piety, he maintained also his faith and hope. He maintained his piety, that is to say, his personal life of prayer, and not only in private either, but when under the first king of Persia, through an edict of the state that banned prayer to any god except to the emperor for a period of a month or so, then Daniel continued with his devotions and made sure the public were aware that he continued in his life of devoted prayer to his god. A man who maintained his devotion in spite of his success in the Gentile world. But then, of course, there have been many men, and there still are many men and women, are there not, who, having brought up in a Christian environment still, and then rising to great positions in the state or industry or science or what have you, maintain quietly, if not always publicly, their devotion. They say their prayers at night, even if nobody else knows about it. But Daniel did not only maintain his devotion, he maintained his faith, and that's another thing altogether, isn't it? He maintained his Jewish hope, you'll say. And, uh, that is all the more remarkable because Daniel's faith was not some vague kind of religion composed mostly of moral precepts, do good and try to be kind and on the whole be honest when you can afford to be. Daniel's hope was centered on this, that Israel, Israel's God was the only true God on the multitudes of gods and goddesses that the other nations of the ancient Near East, uh, Middle East, uh, worshiped. Daniel held that the God of Israel was the only true God, and that all the other gods of the nations were nonsense, idolatrous figments of the human imagination. And, uh, of course, as you may at once see, that, uh, kind of view wouldn't necessarily have been in great favor in the civil service of Babylon, nor in the temples of that nation. He maintained it nonetheless. And then, of course, Daniel's faith was that not only was Israel's God the only true God, the one true God, transcendent Lord, creator of heaven and earth, but that that transcendent creator had chosen Israel from out of all the other nations to carry a sublime and distinct and special role among the nations. They weren't just one more nation among all the other nations. Israel's faith was that they had been chosen of God Almighty, raised up amongst the other nations to carry a testimony to the true God and to protest in his name against the idolatry in which the other nations were found, and to point the other nations to him who is the true God. In such words, as Isaiah was went to herald abroad, look unto me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God and those on the side. That was Israel's faith. Point to a missionary for the true God, chosen by him for this unique ministry among the nations. And certainly it was, uh, Israel's faith, and it was certainly Daniel's persuasion that grew deeper as the years went by, that it was through Israel that, uh, the salvation of the world would come about. Daniel maintained that faith throughout his long years, in spite of all that he came to know about the brilliant civilization of Babylon and Persia, and for all his success in those Gentile fields. And you'll see that it's all the more remarkable when we think of another thing. Daniel, you will notice, has dated the beginning of his book to the year when Nebuchadnezzar first came into Judea, at that time he didn't destroy Jerusalem forthwith. That was some few years before he destroyed Jerusalem, but he did subject the people. He took away a number of prisoners, particularly those belonging to the royal house of Judah, and he ravaged the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem and took away some of its golden vessels. And that makes the fact that Daniel persisted in his Jewish faith all the more remarkable, doesn't he? For you consider the situation. Daniel was brought up to believe that in that temple at Jerusalem, the transcendent Lord was pleased to presence himself. That temple was unique amongst all the millions of temples that filled the ancient world. In that temple, there was no statue to to its god. Jews were distinct from the other nations. They were not idolaters, but they did believe that God graciously deigned to present himself in that temple. And now, here come Nebuchadnezzar and ravaged the temple and taken away its golden vessels and stopped its, its worship. And what happened? Well, nothing happened. No bolt from the blue struck him dead as a lifeless corpse for his impiety towards the God of heaven. No, nothing happened. No voice, no Michael the Archangel, no nothing. And what are you suppose the Gentiles said about that? They said, Daniel, oh boy, so much for your God, Daniel. Who did you say was the supreme God, the living God? Well, Daniel, actually, your God doesn't turn out to be very good, does he? I mean, our God won this last battle anyway. Our God's better than your God. Your God may be a kind of a God, they said, Daniel, will treat his vessels differently, and so old Nebuchadnezzar did. He got the vessels out of the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, and being a good old idolatry, he put them in his temple of his gods in, uh, Babylon, quite respectfully, you'll see. But he still had the old idolatrous view that there were thousands of gods, and he believed that Israel's God was just one other god amongst all the other gods, and that for the time being, Nebuchadnezzar's God had beaten Israel's God, so that was that. And how did you, after that, stand up on your hind legs and preach that Israel's God was the only true God, the true and the living God? And all the other gods were mere idols. And Daniel maintained his faith in spite of it. And it was all the more remarkable because, as I said, Nebuchadnezzar began to to ravage not only the temple, but eventually he destroyed the royal house of Judah. That was the end of the kings of Judah. And the ancient prophets had prophesied that it was through the kings of Judah, their royal line, that eventually the Messiah and the savior of the world would come. God had indeed made a covenant to David, king of Judah, that, uh, never should his throne fail, never should they lack a descendant of his to sit upon his throne. And here comes Nebuchadnezzar and depose the king of Judah. And the throne of Judah has not yet been, not since been filled, unless you count the few years of the reign of the Maccabees. How did you still go on preaching and believing that the savior of the world would be of the seed of David according to the flesh? And my brothers, my sisters, I'm not talking obscure ancient history either, am I, at this point? You've a vested interest in this, haven't you? As you know from talking to your atheist friends, at least I hope you know. For our Christian gospel, pray, what is our Christian gospel? You say, what has our Christian gospel got to do with Martin Nebuchadnezzar? Well, according to Paul, the Christian gospel is the message concerning God's son who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh. Our Christian gospel is not some philosophy thought up by some bright spark and consisting of eternal truths. Our Christian gospel is based on the God who has revealed himself in history. Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, is of the seed of David, according to the faith. If those ancient prophecies about David in the Old Testament and David's seed and David's throne have come unstuck. Then our Christian gospel lacks one of its great foundations, doesn't it? That Daniel maintained his faith. We all say, maintained it in spite of the fact that eventually Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem. But then, of Daniel's faith that Jerusalem would one day be the very center of the world? We read, therefore, the historical bits of, of, of the book of Daniel with tremendous interest, do we not? How did the man survive with his faith undimmed in that kind of situation? For I tell you straight, there have been many, many young men and women brought up in Christian churches, and in Sunday school and Bible class they gave great evidence that they had grasped the gospel. And then they succeeded, be it in business or politics or learning and science, and little by little, though still at night they kneel down and say their prayers. If we were to test them on how much they still believe about the Jewish hope, let alone the Christian hope, and God's program for this world, you might find that they believe uncommonly little or nothing. The big world has been too much for their faith, if not for their piety. How then we ask, did Daniel manage to maintain his faith? Well, you'll see, in the first part, because he had been well taught by the prophets that went before him. Daniel was a young gentleman that had been brought up on the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, to go no further, and Amos, doubtless, and some of the others. I don't know what you bring up your young folks on these days, do they? I hope you bring them up on the prophets. And that before you send them out into this godless modern world, into whatever sphere, you will grunder them in the face. Don't say, will you, that this stuff is too deep for our young folks. They must have lighter stuff. Or to send them out without the knowledge of God's holy word is like sending out innocent babes to face with bare hands the machine guns of the enemy. If their faith is to be maintained, pray see that they are grounded in God's holy word, and not least in the prophets. And Isaiah had been joined by Jeremiah, and the both of them by Ezekiel, as they had sounded out to Israel. Yes, you are God's people. Yes, God has deigned to presence himself among that temple. But precisely because you are God's people, if you don't repent of your sin, God will judge you. You'll see there are modern folks around. I had colleagues enough in the university who used to get at me like that. They would say, the Jews are supposed to be God's people, aren't they? What, what, what, what about the massacre at Shitalakamp in, in, in Israel? They will say, as though the position were that because Israel is God's special people, they can do what they like. They are God's blue-eyed spoiled boy. That is not true. Why must the prophet God have said to Israel, you only have I known amongst all the nations of the earth, and therefore... Therefore what? I'll feather bed you and cotton wool you. No, no. Therefore, I will visit your iniquities upon you. When Israel refused to repent, and as a result, God allowed Nebuchadnezzar to come against them, Daniel, though broken-hearted Titus, was not surprised, nor was his faith stumbled. Instead of taking the disasters that came upon the city and the temple under Nebuchadnezzar as a sign that Israel was not God's people after all, it did but confirm Daniel's saying that they were the people of God. Hence the sufferings that God had allowed. Oh, my good brethren and sisters, there is, let me pause and, and, and, and get off main road for a moment. There is a lesson, isn't there? There's Paul writing to the Gentiles in his famous Romans chapter eleven: don't you get high-minded. For if God spared not the natural branches when they sinned, but broke them off, you must be prepared to think that God will one day break off the Gentile branches that he has grafted in against nature if they continue not in faith. And Christendom moves towards the great apostasy, doesn't it? Christendom as a whole has no grounds for feeling superior to Judaism. When Daniel found his beloved city sacked and himself transported into among the Gentiles, his faith was not dimmed, it was strengthened. The remarkable thing is that he retained his faith and his, uh, sense of destiny, isn't it? We who live in this, uh, more advanced age, we have much to ponder here. I have an elderly gentle gentleman friend, a Jew in Belfast. He managed to escape Hitler just, but he was brought up in Austria and had to flee and came to Northern Ireland, of all places, by mistake, he tells me. Anyway, many a time have I sat and listened to him as the tears have run down his cheeks, and his first question is this: Where was God when Hitler was gassing six million of my people? I can't believe there's a God at all, says he. Where was he if he's alive? Gone asleep or something? And then he'll say, and yet he says, I look out of my window and I see that man across the street, and I say to myself, he's a Jew, he's a Jew, you can tell him anywhere. And how is it, says he, that my Jewish race roamed about the world and scattered to the fallwind, have maintained their identity and their hope. That in itself is something to ponder, is it not, after all these long centuries. Israel for many centuries out of their land, now at last back into it. And of course, we are in the better position, aren't we? Those ancient prophets prophesied that one day Jerusalem would be again the center of world politics, and all the nations of the world should come against Jerusalem. Last year we saw the faint beginnings, didn't we? Of the idea that in order to bring in the new world order that the United Nations seeks eventually to achieve, then presently the Jewish question must be settled, and all the nations settle the Jerusalem problem. The main center point of history. Daniel therefore made, maintained his faith. What was the, uh, faith and what terms were it? Let me read you what the gospel was that Isaiah preached, first of all, to his people and through them to the nations. I read you from Isaiah chapter two and it runs like this: And it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it. Many people shall go and say, Come you, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and he shall judge between the nations and shall reprove many peoples, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. What marvelous and magic words they are, aren't they? How evocative, how they reach down to the very bottom of our hearts. So marvelous that, uh, left to ourselves, we should say that must be fairy sto- tory talk, mustn't it? The nation's not learned war anymore. Why, even in our own century, those of us who are going gray will remember how that when the United Nations was formed, uh, the the World Council, or whatever it was called in the first days, after the First World War, it was going to banish wars. What a sorry history it had. And now we are our own United Nations. Marvelous to see around their great building there, isn't it? And across the road in the garden, the inscription of Isaiah's wonderful text, when the nations shall speak peace to one another and beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and they shall not learn war. It appeals to us, doesn't it, because it's the only sane way to live. How would you justify yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, to a visitor from Mars who'd never been here before and began to read our history, even the history of this century, and the multi-millions that had it that it was going by the very laws of history to bring in a world government of peace and plenty and paradise. A world wherein government in the end should not be needed, but the people should govern themselves. It was a theory, they said, that was founded on the very laws of history. It was inevitably coming to pass, and why they had to enforce it, no one really knows, but it didn't come to pass quite quick enough, so they had to enforce it. They were going to enforce paradise upon the world, and they did it, or tried to, and at what cost? Nowadays, to look upon the statues of Lenin in his own country and to remember his words that you can't make omelets without breaking eggs. You can't bring in your paradise without, uh, cracking a few skulls. He cracked them up, didn't he? Sixty million plus of people, he and Stalin and others, eliminated for a theory that was going to bring in paradise, without God, of course. And the stark ruin of its failure is ghastly to look upon. Sensible people, therefore, suspect, uh, fear this, don't they, that, uh, they're going to have a blueprint for paradise and, uh, going to bring it about by enforcing it. And therefore they come to believe much better in the idea that man, little by little, will gradually perfect himself. A reform here, an adjustment to politics there, the fostering of democracy somewhere else, the elimination of a few corruptions somewhere in the administration, and little by little by little by little, patiently, like an island grows out of the sea by the millions of corals that give their life to form it. So eventually, somehow, mankind's cultures and civilizations will eventually advance and cover the whole world, and in the end banish war. Daniel here casts a wet blanket over the whole thing, doesn't he? He doesn't believe that either. That didn't make him necessarily very popular down in Babylon, for they thought they had a good chance of building paradise, Jose. And to stand in their superb city with all the latest architecture and the brilliance of their learning and the skill of their administration and the success of their economics, amidst the wonder of their arts, every one of the wonders of the ancient world, and to tell them that the human hope that little by little the great civilizations of this world will eventually bring in the paradise for which we long was false. That wasn't to make him very popular, was it? We'll say the reason why he held it and preached it was because of the diagnosis that he had in those, um, aforementioned prophets, God's holy word, about the human heart being deceitful above all things and desperately sick. But also his own experience gathered from a lifetime almost, spent in the great civil services of the ancient world. He knows that in spite of man's advance, in spite of his inventions, in spite of his glorious civilization, there is so much evil, not only in the hearts of individuals, but in the very structures of politics and of the state, of economics and the law, there is so much evil. Man will never reach that golden age of peace and glory and prosperity that he sees, simply by the onward progress of human civilization. He held that the only hope for the world was, as the prophets have announced, the personal coming of God Messiah. Behold that when the Messiah came, he would have to put down all forms of human rule and government, and wipe the slate clean, and set up his own messianic kingdom upon earth. Now that is a real prophecy that by many people has been dubbed by the term apocalyptic, and you ought to know, if you've not met it before, but I suspect you have, that in many circles apocalyptic is a bad word, and some people, by some people regarded almost as a kind of swear word, apocalyptic. They say it is a pessimistic view of history. Are you really saying that in spite of all the genuine, honest, sincere efforts of our politicians and of our lawyers and our medical men and our scientists, in spite of all the visible progress to which we've attained, at least in a few parts of the world, are you really saying that in the end, uh, that will be a failure? That it is so evil that when your Jesus Christ comes again as God's Messiah, he'll have to put it aside and establish his own kingdom and the coming of Christ is the only hope of entry for our world. Are you really saying that? And when you say, yes, we're saying that, then they say, well, that's a horrible theory. But if that is true, it takes the very heart out of all sincere human efforts to make the world a better place. If it's true, you might as well, we all might as well sit down and twiddle our thumbs. According to you, whatever progress we make, it's gonna only be any good. It won't bring in this age of peace and prayer. Understandably, they don't like it, do they? And then they say, of course, the other bad thing about that kind of view is that the only hope for the world is the coming of the Messiah, or as Christians will put it, the second coming of Christ. And the other thing wrong with that is that it encourages people to withdraw from life and life's responsibility, and not mentally to shoulder their part in the affairs of daily life to help their fellow men. And finally, they say it very easily goes over to fanaticism, you know, and uh, we know what they mean, don't we? We've had enough books in recent times telling us that the second coming of Christ is about to happen. Uh, uh, I do remember in the early eighties, uh, some people said it was going to happen in uh, nineteen eighty eight. It had to because the Jewish state had been restored in nineteen forty eight, and our Lord said the generation should not pass away, uh, before he came, and a generation in the Bible, they said, was forty years. So if Israel was restored in 48, then the Lord's coming would be in the next forty years, that would be nineteen eighty eight. But, uh, he didn't come, at least I think he didn't come. No one notices that he did. Yeah. And they say, well, it leads this view of the future that the only hope for the world is the second coming of Christ. It leads to fanaticism, people going out and sitting on top of a mountain announcing that the second coming is going to happen next month or next Tuesday afternoon, perhaps. And they both have said similar things to Daniel, when he let his view be known. But the criticism was unfair, certainly for d- eh, on Daniel's part, wasn't it? Highly unfair. Because while he did hold that their only hope for the world was the coming of the Messiah, he didn't run away from life, did he? It stares you in the face if you'll read the historical chapters of his, of his memoirs. He did not run away from life. Given the chance of a university education in Babylon, he didn't say, no, no, no, no, no, why would you bother with education? Messiah is coming. We don't want to study physics or chemistry or business administration or things like that. No, the Lord is coming. Let's, uh, go and sit on a mountain and eke out life of a brown bread and then wait for the Lord to come. No, no, he didn't. Given the chance of university education, though it was in a Gentile society, he thought, uh, it was taking, for God's sake, was taking, for his own people's sake, was taking, for the good of mankind, was taking. And so did the work learning acadian, no easy language to learn, and all the business of cuneiform and administration, and though a lot of that education was based on funny mythologies, he thought it worthwhile knowing what people believe, and offered a place in the civil service thereafter. He took it and must have applied himself diligently, what o? Because as I said before, he rose in the civil service to great eminence, was advisor to some of the kings of Babylon. When the Persians took over, became for a brief while head of the Persian administration. He did not run away from life. And I might add at once that this belief that the only hope for the world is the coming of Christ is not a recipe for running away from life, getting up a corner, not even now. Why didn't he run away from life? Because, as he himself will make clear in his memoirs, that, uh, even suppose the Messiah were not due to come for centuries, life is still worth living, isn't it? For it is in the daily affairs of life, in the here and now, in business, in school, in factory, in the lawyer's office, in university, wherever you are, and in the home predominantly. It is as we face life and enter into life and live it under God. That, uh, we are facing life's chief purpose, is it not? This temporary life is given us as the time in which we prepare for the eternal beyond. Daniel was told that the Messiah would not come for centuries. He didn't say, oh well, then it's no good living. He gave himself to life in the fear of God because he knew and believed that this life was given him to prepare for meeting God. And though the Messiah would not come for centuries, Daniel presently, when the short life was over, would have to move out into the great eternity and meet God. We live in another age, don't we? Christ came in his first coming nearly two thousand years ago and told us before he went that he would come again. And we know not what hour in which he comes. We have to be ready, therefore. But suppose we knew that the Lord Jesus was not coming back for the next a hundred years, and most of us here tonight would be dead anyway, wouldn't we? Does that mean, therefore, that life would lose its purpose? Of course not. Our age too is the one opportunity we have, isn't it, of getting ready for the great eternity. And true faith in Christ, for only through faith in Christ and not by our works can we be accepted with God, but true faith in Christ will show itself, not merely in the vigor with which we sing our hymns, not merely in the earnestness with which we study our scripture, but in the way we live in our grocer's shop, on the factory floor, in the civil service, in the income tax, or whatever it is we're in. True faith will show itself as we give ourselves, each one, to the calling in which God has called us. And that will be no little battle in a world that is fundamentally corrupt. To live as a Christian, when your trade union cell wants to strike and it isn't really justified, when it wants you to slow down working when you could get twice as much work done, but you're not supposed to. To stand in the daily affairs of life in the factory is much more difficult than getting up in a little hall with a few Christians and singing some hymns, isn't it? And if you are a businessman at the head of a big concern in this cut and thrust world, to strike honest deals when the pressures against you are enormous, it's difficult, isn't it? But it is in the daily affairs of life that we demonstrate our faith and get ready not only to meet God, but get ready to meet the Lord Jesus when he comes. True belief that only the coming of Christ will bring in the age of peace and glory is no excuse for running away from life. It is rather the incentive to get on with life and live it seriously before God. And he maintained his faith then, and entered into life. And that is all the more remarkable because, you know, when he got down to Babylon, it was a brilliant civilization. You guys have read all the handbooks on Babylon, haven't you? Some of you may even have gone to East Berlin and seen in the Pergamon Museum there a restoration of what the Ishtar Gate of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon look- would have looked like. What a marvel of art and symbolism and architecture, a brilliant, uh, civilization indeed. And when Daniel got there, it must have made Jerusalem seem to be, by comparison, a little village in the outback. What marvelous, what marvelous knowledge they had done in Babylon. Well, the old shepherd up in Judea, they could name a few stars, but down in Babylon they weren't content to name the stars. Well, they knew all about their rising and settings, and they measured their settings, and they had an exceedingly complicated system of mathematics based not on tens but on sixties. and with that cumbersome mathematics they predicted eclipses, and they could work out the position of the stars. It must have been fascinating for a young gentleman like Daniel when he saw how much they knew. And of course, the art forms were so different. Up in Jerusalem, they didn't have any images, I do they, but down in Babylon they did. Oh, it was a riot, not to speak of a hanging garden, so-called. What did he maintain his faith? That little Jerusalem had the answer to the world's needs, and not the great civilizations like Babylon. Well, he came to that not only because of the diagnosis given him by the word of God, he came to that by his own personal experience, all those long years, till eighty years and more, in the civil service. He noticed this, that in spite of their brilliant civilization, the ancient world had this fatal tendency to get their values wrong. Be it in education or in politics or in culture or what have you, they showed this constant tendency to get their values wrong and to treat things of absolute value and importance as though they were only of secondary importance or none at all. And to treat things that are important, but only of relative importance, as though they were the end and be all of life. Constantly getting their values wrong. Tonight, before we go, we ought to consider how they got their values wrong in the world of education. That is why you will find, and if you care to study the sheet I've given you on the second, uh, on the third page, you'll find evidence there that that does one to five deal with this question of values and the overriding importance of getting our values right. This is an imposing thing nowadays. I do go to Russia, like some of us do. Some of the leading atheists in that country, the editors of the various newspapers in which we insert Christian articles, will tell us, have told us more than once, we need this kind of thing in our country. They will tell you why. And these are atheists talking, still atheists. Because they will tell you the economic plight of this country is serious, exceedingly serious and dangerous. It is still, whether they get through this coming winter without another revolution is anybody's guess. It is a difficult sight to see. The chaos and deprivation that their god- godless theories have brought them to. It was a nation that led the world in thinking that they could create a paradise on earth without God and by banning God. It is as though he that sits in the heavens has laughed, and the Lord has an intuition. You will feel sorry for them. They will tell you that bad is in our economic pipe, there is a bigger danger, and that danger is we're a nation without any values. A Marxist theory, most of them didn't believe it for the last years, only pretended they did. And now that's been knocked on their head, they have no values. And they will tell you that when the people has perceived the government as being the biggest criminal liar, thief, torturer, murderer, and the whole lot, and the only way that people know how to survive is to copy the government. How do you recreate a whole vast empire and reorder its administration on a nation that has no values and no basis for its values? Daniel, in his memoirs, points out that marvelous as those ancient civilizations were, not decrepit like the Russian is at the moment, nonetheless were founded on false value. Take education. Daniel didn't object to the opportunity to be educated, accepted gladly the courses they offered him in the university. Moreover, when they changed his name from being a name, and he and his colleagues, uh, that had incorporated into the name, the name of God, when they changed it and gave them names that incorporated the names of their silly old idols, Daniel didn't object, well, he couldn't have them, so you can't stop people calling you what they will, can you? But when he was supposed to eat the king's mead in a university dining room, that according to the ceremonies of the time would have been offered to the gods, and he and his colleagues downright refused. They'd heard about idolatry from Jeremiah and Isaiah. They see whips of it here amongst the, uh, uh, amongst the apostates in Israel. But to see idolatry firsthand, and to see idolatry in the university in Babylon. No, said D- D- Dac, not on your life will I submit to it. Why not? But it wasn't true, that's why not. An idolatrous interpretation of the universe was a false interpretation of the universe. It wasn't true. What was the, uh, idolatrous interpretation of the universe, for to put it briefly as one can? According to the New Testament, the ancient nations knew the true God, but didn't like to retain the knowledge of God, did they, and suppressed it. But when men cease believing in the true God, they don't start believing in nothing. So they had to make gods of their own. Their gods were, on the one part, the deifications of the forces of nature, the storm god, the moon, the sun, the great powers of chaos, and so forth. They made a god out of the physiological processes of the human body. They worshipped the goddess of love, they called. And they felt the aggressive urge in their own breasts, and they said a god had got hold of them, and they worshipped the god of war. Their gods were deifications of the powers of nature. And when men lose faith in, in, in, in the true god, they, that's what they do, isn't it? So say. If ever there was an age of modern times that worshipped the goddess of love, so-called Aphrodite, it's our modern age, isn't it? Ask this bright young thing who's just murdered her lover's wife, like two of them have just done. And I say that love made me do it, and that's supposed to be enough excuse. And then the jury lets them off because, well, it was love made them do it, wasn't it? Just like the old ancients who would say, well, it was the goddess Aphrodite got hold of me, you can't be Mr. Goddess, and it is love that moves you to murder your lover's wife. Well, that's love, isn't it? I mean, everybody says, well, that was love, so, so you mustn't call that murder, I see. She was blinded by love. And you'll see, our modern world may not worship idols made of stone and wood anymore, no. But if you ask our modern atheists and humanists what they regard as the ultimate powers of our universe. What are the powers that brought our world into being and us into being, and what are the powers that will, um, in the end destroy our universe? They will answer in their scientific jargon exactly the same as the old idolaters of the ancient world. They said there's no God, but what brought the universe into being, and what brought me into being? What I say, basic energy and the strong atomic power and the weak atomic power, and nowadays they've coalesced the two, haven't they? And, uh, electromagnetism perhaps and gravity, yeah, and a bit of physiology and chemistry put in, biology and what have you. And the interesting thing about that is that all these powers and processes are utterly mindless. They haven't one eighth of the sense in their heads. They don't know what they do, and when they've done it, they don't know they have done it. They have no purpose. They are utterly blind. They've made us without intending to, and one day they'll destroy us, and when they've destroyed us and our planet, they won't know they've done it. That's idolatry of the highest order. And you won't need me to tell you it's taught in many of our schools from the infants upwards. Atheistic, humanistic evolution. Daniel wouldn't, wouldn't have it. If it cost him his university career, he wouldn't have it. Well, One no compromise compromise, he his said. faith. They refuse to eat the food that had been offered to idols. Why? Because the idolatrous interpretation of the universe isn't true, and universities are places where we're supposed to examine and follow the truth. It not only demeans God, it demeans man too, doesn't it? What's the value of a man? Well, let me put the question to you. Why shouldn't you kill a man? Huh. If one of these days you had a mind too, and you saw a sophisticated computer, uh, robot coming towards you and doing silly things, you might be moved to kick it in the ribs and destroy the thing. Nobody would charge you with murder, would they? What's the difference between destroying a sophisticated computer and destroying a human being. Well, if there's no God, there's very little difference, ladies and gentlemen. Both are the end products of evolution, blind evolution. But you see, if there is a God, there's a difference because man, says the Bible, is made in the image of God. Man is more important than the whole universe put together. And it's so, isn't it? And you can see that. You don't worship the old sun up in the sky, would you? Wouldn't think of doing it, nor should I, you see. I know a thing or two about the sun. It's a great big thing. It's in size. Well, my poor little brain is a tiny bit of stuff, so to say, not as big as a grapefruit, and the sun is millions and millions and millions of miles across it. But, you know, my brain, even my brain's more significant than the sun. So is yours, isn't it? I know the sun is there, you know. Sun doesn't know I'm here. I know how the sun works, thanks to the scientists. Sun doesn't know how I work. It's a bunch of gas. A few atoms running around. Big atomic furnace, so some of them say. So it is. Your brainfare is infinitely more significant than the sun. And will you hold a view that says one day the sun and its mindlessness will explode and Earth will evaporate, and that will be the end of the human race, and the sun won't even know what he's done? If that be true, then we're not what we thought we were. We're merely the end product of mindless, irrational, purposeless forces, with no future ahead of us, but ultimate extinction, not only for us as individuals, but for the whole human race. And no one believed. We believed there is a God and that man is made in the image of God. There are our values. And some of us tell the Russians with as much sympathy as we can tell. If you in years past had believed that man was made in the image of God, Stalin wouldn't have eliminated sixty million of them, would he? Values. Values. I am still uncompromisingly for the God of the Old Testament, unique Lord, creator of heaven and earth, and man made in his image. This is the truth about man. We are to try and understand what all the scientists say, both the believing scientists and the unbelieving, and the philosophers believing and unbelieving, and all the technologists believing and unbelieving. They're not to be ignoramuses. Like Daniel, we shall welcome every bit of education, but we shall need to stand within the world of education, shall we not? For the truth about mankind, for the truth about God, and the truth about man. For if man is but the end product of mindless forces, then man ultimately has little significance, and you'll never build a paradise on that, will you? Moreover, most of us will be dead before the paradise comes anyway, even if it came. And if when we get it done for, you might forget everything about paradises to be. Why would you worry your head about them if within the next year you go into the grave, and it's the end of you forever? And so tonight we begin our study. I shan't abuse your patience like with other nights, at least I hope I shan't. I must try and take a vow tonight to let you out early, and reward for good behavior or something. But this is Saturday night, and most of you will be able to take an extra hour and day tomorrow morning. Ah. But tonight we've introduced ourselves to the topic, and I hope I've reminded you of the relevance of this study for our modern world. We can't all be involved in education, can we? And many of you have children, and many of you have grandchildren in the schools and in the universities. All other responsibility is on you Christian parents to make sure that you know what they're being taught in school. Do you know? You know the things that they're being taught in their universities, technical colleges. All the responsibility to come alongside of them in their days of need, when their faith is being sorely tempted. You say, but that would mean a lot of our work. Of course it would mean a lot of our work. And you will teach in Sunday school, God increase your faith in his word, and you will teach the senior Bible class lessons. Oh, God give you grace and wisdom to teach the whole word of God, so that you may give them God's answer to our modern humanistic, atheistic, and hedonistic society, and not to allow the folks to go out, the young folks, into this godless world, with little more than a few stories behind them. Therein might I stand. And oh, my brothers and sisters, we live in the midst of a wicked nation, do we not? But we cannot be content having the message we have, can we, just to preach it inside the places where we meet. And there's a vast world out there, lost, hopeless. Beyond our shores, millions die, scarce knowing the name of Jesus. And if they have heard it thinking in their hearts that it's a lot of old myth and unscientific nonsense. Oh, my brothers, my sisters, God give us grace in the light of the coming of our blessed Lord Jesus to take our stand in whatever level, in this sphere among others, in the education of our young people, in home, in church, in school, and wherever it may be. Shall we pray? My Lord, we thank thee for thy word. We thank thee for this testimony from the past, from our dear brother and friend Daniel himself. We bless thee for his faithfulness to thee. We thank thee for all the ability that thou didst give him, but even more for the insight into thy word, and for the faithfulness with which he received it and stood for it and testified to it in the positions that thou didst place him in those far off days. We look forward to seeing him in glory with great anticipation. Now, Lord, we help us as those who are surrounded by this very crowd of witnesses, that we in our advanced day be likewise faithful to thee, that we might understand the times and what thy people ought to do, and that we may ourselves be bold and aggressive in our evangelism, holding out the word of life, even in spite of the multitudinous discouragements of this cold and dark world, this apostate country, and in spite of all the positive opposition that may come our way. We bless thee for Jesus Christ, thy son. We praise thee from our hearts for the glorious gospel thou has given us in knowing him and in knowing thee. God, help us, we beseech thee, to live in its light, to stand for its truth, and to proclaim its message faithfully in our dying generation. We ask this for the sake of Jesus Christ, thy son, and in his name, amen.