12
HISTORICAL REVELATION
PRESENT DAY
Dr. McCarty’s office smelled of the pepperoni and tomato sauce stuck to the empty box crumpled in the trash can. He and his inquisitive protégé had been discussing Daniel for four hours, breaking only for bladder relief and the delivered food. Kyle had never been so focused on learning anything and couldn’t believe the time had passed so quickly.
“I’ve kept you much too long,” the professor said, glancing at the Roman numeral clock above his door. “But you have been the most attentive student I have had in years. I couldn’t give you enough of my favorite prophet. Let me close this session with some additional perspective.”
Kyle repositioned in the chair and readied himself for beginning page eleven in his notebook.
The professor flipped the pages of his Bible to the left. “God loves His own as a parent loves his or her child but with a far greater love than we can imagine. He gives us every opportunity and reminder to live godly lives. But He is just. In His holiness, He cannot overlook sin.
“The Jews of both Israel and Judah had been instructed thoroughly regarding God’s parameters. He warned throughout their history of what His wrath would entail if they were unrepentant and rebellious. Historically, as far back as 1400 B.C.—eight hundred years before the generation of Daniel—God was specific on the consequences of disobedience. Moses wrote the first words of warning in Deuteronomy, the fifth and last book of the Pentateuch. After God had given His people the Ten Commandments and assured them of their prosperity and security while they honored Him, He spelled out the punishment for rejecting Him. Listen to some excerpts from what is now chapter twenty-eight.”
“But it shall come about, if you do not obey the LORD your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you . . . The LORD shall cause you to be defeated before your enemies . . . Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and yearn for them continually, but there will be nothing you can do. . . . The LORD will bring you and your king, whom you set over you, to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone. . . . You shall have sons and daughters but they will not be yours, for they will go into captivity. . . It shall come about that as the LORD delighted over you to prosper you, and multiply you, so the LORD will delight over you to make you perish and destroy you; and you will be torn from the land where you are entering to possess it. Moreover, the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth; and there you shall serve other gods, wood and stone, which you or your fathers have not known.”1
“Moses probably didn’t realize the exact judgment God described through him would be meted out to his generation’s descendants eight centuries later,” Dr. McCarty added.
“It’s amazing that God warned them so clearly, and they paid no attention,” Kyle said. “But I have to say, it seems that if He loved His own people so much, He wouldn’t have done such a horrible thing.”
“We must understand, the people who committed the sins caused the judgment. God only pronounced the judgment. Think of it this way. Let’s say a thief broke into your parents’ house and shot your mother and father in cold blood. The murderer came before the judge for arraignment, and the judge said, ‘I see this is your first murder, and you have only a few thefts on your record. You seem like a good man, so I’m going to dismiss this charge. You’re free to go.’ How would you feel about that?”
“Of course, I would be outraged.”
“Justice would not have been served, right? If we mortals require justice for wrongdoing, how much more would God, Who cannot be unjust, require it? Love requires justice.”
Kyle nodded slowly.
“Almost a century prior to Babylon’s invasion, Isaiah prophesied with specifics what would happen to Judah. He even wrote about the young men being the first to be taken captive. This is from Isaiah 39, recording his conversation with King Hezekiah.”
The professor quickly located the scripture passage. “Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house and all that your fathers have laid up in store to this day will be carried to Babylon; nothing will be left,’ says the Lord. ‘And some of your sons who will issue from you, whom you will beget, will be taken away, and they will become officials in the palace of the king of Babylon.’”2
“Whoa!” Kyle said. “Even after the fifty kids were taken by Nebuchadnezzar, no one made the connection to Isaiah’s prophecy written a century earlier?”
“Oh, I’m sure Jeremiah and a few others did. But the vast majority of the people apparently had no interest in the writings and never read them. The priests didn’t want to believe God would judge His own. It was an inconvenient truth. They would only speak what the people wanted to hear.”
“God was pleading with them right up to the time of their doom, but they wouldn’t listen,” Kyle said.
“Just before Nebuchadnezzar took the boys and treasures in the first invasion, Jeremiah railed against Jerusalem for their being oblivious to his years of warning. Listen to this from Jeremiah 25:
‘From the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, even to this day, these twenty-three years the word of the LORD has come to me, and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened. And the LORD has sent to you all His servants the prophets again and again, but you have not listened nor inclined your ear to hear . . . Therefore, thus says the LORD of hosts, Because you have not obeyed My words, behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, declares the LORD, and I will send to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, My servant, and will bring them against this land and against its inhabitants and against all these nations round about; and I will utterly destroy them and make them a horror and a hissing, and an everlasting desolation.’3
“Note that Jeremiah eluded to not only his twenty-three years of prophesying, but also to many other prophets they had also ignored,” Dr. McCarty added. “Just in the Bible alone are the works of seventeen prophets, all pointing to the ultimate judgment of Israel and Judah. There were many others whose writings were not canonized or have been lost.”
“With all the warnings, I still wonder how they could not have recognized their plight and changed to avoid the consequences,” Kyle said.
“I would like to answer that question with a couple of questions. Why are people today rejecting God? Why are they rebelling against His instructions presented clearly in the Bible? In the last half-century, He has been taken out of many areas of our lives. We have declined exponentially in morals and traditional values. The Church is being increasingly considered unnecessary. People have become more dependent on materialism, government, and technology than on the truths of God.”
“So, why aren’t there modern-day prophets warning us like those we’ve been discussing?”
“Well, we don’t see prophets today like those in Daniel’s time who received visions and audible messages from God. God tells us through the writer of the New Testament book of Hebrews that what He once spoke through the prophets, He now speaks through His Son, Jesus. We have the entire New Testament providing truths for living and warnings of sin’s consequences. In addition, we now have the Holy Spirit to help us understand it.”
“So, He doesn’t speak through His people anymore?”
“Oh, yes, more than He ever did through the prophets. We have an abundance of pastors, Bible teachers, evangelists, Christian authors, and worship leaders who project God’s messages to us constantly through our churches and various media. Plus, more recently, God has given us the technology of internet websites, email, social media, and eBooks. These provide instant access anywhere, anytime, to endless knowledge of His messages. God is far from silent today. He is calling out to this generation more loudly and more frequently than He ever did with the ancient Hebrews. We have absolutely no excuse for not understanding God’s truths, His justice, and the rewards and consequences for our decisions.”
After a still and quiet moment, Kyle replied, “Man, I’ve never thought about these things in my life. Judah back then was so much like America today. I want to know more, Dr. McCarty.”
“We have just scratched the surface. There is so much richness in prophecy that God wants me to share with you. Just wait until you see what happens next in Daniel’s life. But it’s getting late, so let’s wrap it up for tonight. How about we meet next time at my house for dinner? I would love for you to meet my wife.”
“I don’t want to impose. I sure wasn’t expecting . . .”
“Not at all. Jennifer makes the best chicken cacciatore this side of the Mississippi. I say that out of respect for my mom, who lives on the other side of the Mississippi. She’s ninety-two, still lives alone, and cooks her own . . . you know . . . chicken cacciatore.”
Kyle chuckled. “Just text me with the day and time. I’ll be there. Thanks.”
1 Deuteronomy 28:15, 25, 32, 36, 41, 63-64
2 Isaiah 39:6-7
3 Jeremiah 25:3-4, 8-9