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Monthly Archives: September 2015

A visualization of Daniel 11

24 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by Steven Anderson in Bible, Bible prophecy

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Daniel 11

It can be difficult for the reader of Daniel 11 to follow what is happening in the text. I have posted on my website a chart which visually depicts the actions described in the text (download it here). This chart is intended as a supplement to my Interpretive Guide to the Major Prophets (available here).

What this chart depicts is a conflict which begins as a conflict between Gentile kings and kingdoms, but which ends as a great spiritual battle between satanically-energized rulers and the people of God (Israel). Daniel 11:2-5 gives the historical background to the conflict, describing how the Persian Empire (which was ascendant at the time of the vision) would be conquered by a great Greek king (Alexander the Great), and how the Greek Empire would be divided into four parts immediately after the completion of its conquest of the Persian Empire. The text then begins to describe kings from a northern realm (the Seleucids) and kings from a southern realm (the Ptolemies). “North” and “south” are in relation to the land of Israel, which lay directly between these two realms and acted like a buffer zone. At first, Israel is completely in the background of the conflict—it is merely a land bridge which the armies of the two sides crossed in order to fight against each other. The southern kingdom initially held control of the land of Israel, and was relatively lenient in its treatment of the Jews. But Daniel 11:14 indicates that, over time, Israel began to be caught in the crossfire of the Seleucid-Ptolemy conflict.

Israel finally comes into the foreground of the conflict in Daniel 11:16, when the king of the north takes possession of the land. Increasingly, the king of the north begins to attack Israel, and not just the king of the south. In Daniel 11:30-35, the conflict between the king of the south and the king of the north finally becomes a conflict between the king of the north and Israel. The vision then skips ahead to the final consummation of the conflict between Satan’s people and God’s people in the eschaton (Dan 11:36–12:3). Once again, this begins as a conflict between Gentile kings and kingdoms, but becomes a conflict between an eschatological king (the antichrist) and Israel. In the end, this conflict becomes an overtly spiritual battle, with God’s people completely triumphant: the wicked king is destroyed, Michael the archangel defends Israel, and God’s saints are raised from the dead.

While Daniel 11 may seem like a catalogue of arcane details to some, it is these very details that make this chapter extremely problematic for critics of the Bible. Liberal biblical scholarship cannot deny that Daniel 11 accurately describes world history from the time of Xerxes (ca. 480 BC) until the time of Antiochus IV (ca. 165 BC). The critics also acknowledge that it would be absolutely impossible for a human mind to foresee these events hundreds of years in advance. Thus, if it is acknowledged that the book of Daniel was actually written by the prophet Daniel in the sixth century BC, as its first person narratives imply, the book would have to have a divine origin—something which no critic wishes to acknowledge. Theologically liberal scholars therefore postdate the book of Daniel to the time when they think the vision of Daniel 11 ends: 165 BC. However, there is much compelling evidence (besides the book’s self-claim) that the book of Daniel was written much earlier than this. It is for this reason that liberals have identified the book of Daniel as the greatest threat to their anti-supernaturalist worldview, and the book of Daniel has become the greatest battleground between critics and believers. The mind-boggling detail of the prophecy of Daniel 11 demonstrates clearly that the Bible is God’s Word, not man’s word, and the fulfillment of the historical portion of this prophecy reassures us that the eschatological portion of the prophecy will also be precisely fulfilled. The course and outcome of history has already been set, and God’s plan will unfold in the future as it has in the past.

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A lesson on evangelism from the Gadarene demoniac

18 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by Steven Anderson in Bible, Evangelism

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Gadarene demoniac, Gerasene demoniac, Mark 5

Mark 5:1-20 tells the story of Jesus casting a legion of demons out of an untamable man in the region of Gerasa/Gadara (parallel accounts are found in Matthew 8:28-34 and Luke 8:27-39). Jesus evidently took this man, and the demons which controlled him, by surprise when he crossed the Sea of Galilee in a boat and landed right where this man was to be found. This man lived in a graveyard, refused to wear clothes, and would break chains and fetters whenever soldiers attempted to take him into custody. Seeing the man’s plight, and wishing to demonstrate His power over Satan, Jesus commanded the demons to leave him. The demons made the man run to Jesus and beg Him for mercy, since they did not want to be sent to the abyss (a temporary place of confinement for certain demons before the final judgment; cf. Rev 9:1-11). Jesus responded by asking the demon for his name. This may have been because Jesus wanted to know who He was dealing with before deciding whether to grant the request not to be sent to the abyss.

The demons’ response to Jesus’ inquiry about their name was shocking: “My name is Legion, for we are many” (Mark 5:9). A fully manned Roman legion contained 6,000 soldiers, so this man was possessed by thousands of demons. The demons saw a herd of about 2,000 pigs feeding on a nearby hill, and they requested that Jesus allow them to go into the pigs, rather than the abyss, after leaving the demoniac. Jesus granted their request—not out of any compassion for the demons, but in order to show people how many demons were in the man, and to prove that they had gone out. In addition, pigs were not to be kept under the Mosaic Law, so there was nothing unjust about allowing a herd of pigs to be ruined. As soon as Jesus spoke the word, the demons left the man and went into the pigs, and they did what Satan always seeks to do—they destroyed their lives, causing the pigs to run furiously into the Sea of Galilee and drown.

The herdsman, fearing that they would be blamed for the loss of the pigs, immediately went to the Gentile city of Gadara and other surrounding regions to tell people what happened, so witnesses could verify their story. Unwittingly, these herdsmen were doing pre-evangelism. Many people went to see the sight for themselves. They were amazed by what had happened, as they saw the notorious demoniac clothed and in his right mind. However, their reaction was not to repent of their sins and to trust Jesus as their Lord and Savior. The Gadarenes were people who loved their sin and hated God. They did not want their pigs and demons removed. They therefore begged Jesus to leave their territory. Apparently Jesus honored their wish, and never returned to that region.

There was one more matter to be dealt with, however, before Jesus got back into the boat and departed for Jewish Galilee: what would be the fate of the man who had been cleansed of the demons? He himself earnestly desired to stay with Jesus, knowing that Jesus had saved him an otherwise completely hopeless and unremediable condition. But Jesus had other plans. One problem was this man’s race—he was a Gentile, whereas Jesus had been sent to the nation of Israel (cf. Matt 10:5-6; 15:24). No one with the time and space limitations of a man, not even Jesus, can do everything; we need to focus on the ministry that we are called to accomplish, even if that means neglecting other pressing needs that we might well be able to meet. Yet Jesus still had compassion on Gentiles, and He saw in this man a natural evangelist to the people who had just rejected Him. This man was one of them; he could find a natural acceptance among them that Jesus could not. He also had a personality and background which made him unafraid to speak boldly in public.

And so it was that Jesus gave the command to the cured demoniac to go evangelize his home territory, which was the Gentile region of Decapolis: “Go to your house, to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He had mercy on you” (Mark 5:19). The man did as he was told: “He went his way, and began to publish in the Decapolis what great things Jesus had done for him” (Mark 5:20; note the implication that Jesus is Lord). Mark tells us that all who heard this man’s preaching “marveled”; whether they believed in Jesus or not, they at least heard and understood the message about Him.

Jesus’ instructions to the demoniac contain a lesson for us on evangelism. This man was a brand new convert, saved out of a horrendous past. In fact, rough backgrounds do not get any rougher than this man’s background—he was extremely lewd, violent, obsessed with death, defiant of all authority, and possessed by thousands of demons. As a Gentile from a Gentile city, he was probably raised as a pagan, with little or no knowledge of the Bible or theology. He had not been trained in effective methods of evangelism. He only knew one thing: he knew what Jesus did for him. So Jesus told him, “Go home and tell your friends and family what I did for you.” He did, and they were amazed. This guy was a hopeless case! Now he is well! What happened? He said, “Jesus saved me.” See, you don’t have to be an expert in evangelism or apologetics to share the gospel. You just need to be saved. If you are saved, then you can tell people what Jesus did for you. It is that simple.

Evangelism is not as complicated as we make it out to be. Jesus did not tell this man, “You need some training before you can start evangelizing.” He did not say, “You need some time to make sure that you don’t go back to your old habits.” He said, “Go and tell the people you know what the Lord has done for you.” This is something that any genuine Christian can do. Evangelism is more than just asking strangers a clever lead-in question, quoting Bible verses from memory, and presenting a multi-step plan. The simplest way to evangelize is to just tell people what God has done for us, and specifically how He transformed our life by saving us from our sin and from Satan’s oppression. If people want God to do for them what He has done for us, it will be easy to explain to them how they can be saved; if not, we are still doing evangelism. Let’s stop scaring people away from evangelism by demanding they follow a professional method and use the extroverted, confrontational techniques of a professional evangelist. Telling the people we interact with about the things Jesus has done for us is something that even a new Christian can do, and simply talking about God and church is another thing that any Christian can do.

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Lessons about compromise from the book of Daniel

05 Saturday Sep 2015

Posted by Steven Anderson in Bible, Current events

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prophet Daniel, uncompromising

Following the legal redefinition of marriage by the United States Supreme Court, other legal cases have quickly arisen in which the religious liberty of Christians to refuse to accept homosexual “marriage” has been challenged. It is certain that many more religious liberty cases will be brought to the courts in the months and years ahead, as the culture and government of the United States becomes increasingly antichristian and anti-Bible. The book of Daniel is especially timely in this milieu, since it describes how a young Jewish man named Daniel and three Jewish friends of his maintained their devotion to God after being taken by force from Jerusalem to the pagan city of Babylon and impressed into a pagan king’s service.

Most Christians are familiar with the story in Daniel 3 of how three Jews—called by their Babylonian names of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—were thrown into a fiery furnace for their refusal to bow down to a giant idol. This idol was set up on a great plain before a huge crowd of people—probably the officials in King Nebuchadnezzar’s government—and the king demanded that everyone bow down to his idol or face death. To the pagans, there was no question that they would bow down to the image, rather than die. They had no religious loyalty that was greater than their concern for their own personal safety. But Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood tall and strong while all the others bowed their knees to the king’s idol. After these three Jews spurned an offer of pardon from the king if they would change their minds, the king ordered them thrown into a blazing hot furnace (probably a brick kiln). But God honored the commitment of these three young men and brought them out of the fire completely unharmed, to the king’s utter amazement. Nebuchadnezzar responded by acknowledging that the Jews worshipped the Most High God, and he promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in his government.

Many modern Christians may struggle to understand why Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did not bow down to the idol. Indeed, some other Jews might have obeyed the king’s command, since there were only three people present at that occasion who did not bow. Here are some of the rationalizations that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could have considered:

  • They could have thought, “It is understood that this is not about changing religions; this is just a symbolic act of political loyalty toward the king. The Bible says we are to obey and respect the governing authorities.”
  • Or, “All that matters is what is in my heart. I can pray to Yahweh when I kneel, and not actually be worshipping Marduk at all.”
  • Or, “Marduk is just the name the Babylonians use to refer to the Supreme Being, whom we call Elohim. I can bow down to Marduk in recognition of the Babylonian attempt to give expression to ultimate reality, even though my understanding is more complete than theirs.”
  • Or, “That statue is just a piece of metal, and not an actual god. I would not actually be worshipping another god by getting on my knees in front of it.”
  • Or, “I didn’t have a choice! They forced me to do it!”

The human mind is superb at thinking of excuses and rationalizations, so you may be able to think of others. The problem with all of these rationalizations is that they represent compromise with the world’s demands for the sake of personal expediency, usually by reinterpreting an absolute statement in the Bible (Exod 20:4-6) through the hazy “postmodern” view of reality.

(Some might suggest that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could have resigned their positions in the Babylonian government, since the demand to bow down before the idol in Daniel 3 was evidently a test of loyalty for government officials. However, this may not have been possible, since they were working as conscripts [Dan 1:1-7], not as voluntary employees.)

This is not the only example in the book of Daniel where Daniel and his friends demonstrated an absolute refusal to compromise. Daniel’s insistence in Daniel 1 that he would not eat the king’s meat or drink the king’s wine might seem strange to many today, especially since Daniel faced the death penalty for not complying. There are many people who supposedly know how the world works who would say that Daniel’s refusal was foolish, stupid, and petty. In fact, however, none of these people has achieved the greatness that Daniel achieved—a greatness which was achieved through a recognition of God’s sovereignty in the affairs of men, rather than seeing only natural processes at work. In fact, Daniel’s persistent adherence to the law of his God at any price was the entire key to his success in life and to his career in government service.

Many times in American evangelicalism we have seen preachers who seem very theologically sound and fervent when they are in their prime, but who become much less dogmatic in their later years. In Daniel 6, however, we find that when Daniel was a very old man he was still standing strong in his refusal to compromise. In that chapter, Daniel’s enemies in the Medo-Persian government tricked the king into signing a law which prohibited people from making requests to any God or man but the king for a thirty-day period. This law was likely presented as a test of loyalty to the king, although those who made the law were actually seeking to trick the king into deposing Daniel against his own will.

Once again, Daniel had a number of options available to him that might have seemed very palatable to a modern Christian. Daniel was not required by the new law to renounce God, or to pray to the king. Had he simply quit praying out loud, he would have been a law-abiding citizen. Even if he had continued to pray out loud, but had done so privately, he could not be charged with wrongdoing. He could have thought, “I am having such a great influence for God in this government, it does not make sense for me to lose it by insisting on praying in front of everybody.” But Daniel knew that he only had a great influence for God because he had a strong public testimony for God, and because he was a man of uncompromising character. Hence, Daniel refused to pray to God with his window shut. Daniel did not hide his faith or keep his mouth shut about his God when it might be offensive. He was an open servant of the God of heaven, and all the world knew it. The fact that Daniel’s enemies knew he was praying to his God suggests that he prayed out loud, and probably in the Aramaic language instead of his native Hebrew tongue. He may also have read his Bible out loud—not out of pretension, but as a testimony to the world. If Daniel had begun praying in secret as soon as the king banned all prayer to God, this would have communicated that God was not more valuable to him than his life. Thus, Daniel chose to pray publicly even when he knew it would result in a death sentence.

Most people in this world covet money, power, and prestige. But Daniel and his three friends demonstrated throughout their lives that, although they were given great honor and privilege, they were always willing to give it all up in a moment in order to avoid the slightest compromise of their principles. The only thing that really and truly mattered to Daniel was his God. The stories in the book of Daniel teach that God blesses a refusal to compromise, but they also set forth examples of absolute faithfulness—”we will obey God even if He does not deliver us.”

For a more detailed study of the book of Daniel, see my book Dr. Anderson’s Interpretive Guide to the Major Prophets (available here).

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JETS: An evangelical Christian seminary in the Arab world

03 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by Steven Anderson in Current events

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Arab Christianity, Arab evangelicalism

I have spent the past two weeks in Amman, Jordan as a visiting professor at Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary (JETS). This was the third time I have traveled to Jordan to teach an intensive summer Bible course, and I plan to return. While the Arab world is generally portrayed in Western media as the domain of Islamic extremists, there is a Christian minority in most Arab countries. Within this Christian minority is an increasing number of evangelical Arab Christians. Arab evangelical Christians are some of the most gracious and hospitable people you will ever meet—a far cry from the radical Islamists who dominate news coverage of the Middle East.

Religious freedom for Arab Christians varies greatly from country to country; Jordan is one of the countries that grants greater freedom to Christians, and it contains a significant evangelical Christian minority. Jordan is also the most politically stable of the Arab countries with significant evangelical populations, which makes it an ideal location for a seminary to serve evangelical churches throughout the Arab world. While Christianity is legal in Jordan, evangelical Christians still face discrimination and harassment from individuals who are hostile to evangelical Christianity. Jordanian churches and Christian schools need prayer as they operate within a culture in which many are adverse to their presence.

Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary was founded in 1991, and was officially registered by the Jordanian government in 1995. Its mission is to train evangelical Arab Christians for church ministry in the Arab world. The school includes students from many different Arab countries. After many years of planning and a frustrating series of roadblocks, JETS finally moved its operations from rented space to its own new campus in 2013. Although prayer is the seminary’s greatest need, the school also has financial needs and relies on donors from the United States to fund its operations. One pressing financial need is for the completion of the new campus, which will reduce the seminary’s expenses by eliminating the need to purchase off-campus housing for the students and will also contain facilities to generate revenue for the school. The new campus is on a beautiful piece of property (see pictures below), and the architecture of the campus is outstanding; however, it is only partially finished. When fully constructed, the campus will include Christian television studios, a Christian conference center, a gym, an outdoor amphitheater, and student and faculty housing. Essentially, the JETS campus is intended as a central gathering point for all the evangelical churches of Jordan. The entire campus could be completed for less than the cost of a single large building on an American college campus. Donations are tax deductible in the United States (see http://www.jets.edu or http://www.jetseminary.net).

Other ways to support the ministry of JETS include adopting a student’s financial needs or supporting Western faculty. Please share this information with anyone who may be looking for a way to support evangelical Christians in the Middle East during a period when the Arab church is under unusual pressure due to wars and political tensions in the region.

Prayer tower at JETS

Prayer tower at JETS

Class photo

Class photo

Unfinished building on JETS campus

Unfinished building on JETS campus

Finished building on JETS campus

Finished building on JETS campus

JETS logo

JETS logo

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