08: World News & Prophecy - Daniel 4:28-37

[Darris McNeely] In our last class, we left Nebuchadnezzar with the interpretation of this dream in Chapter 4 from Daniel. And, now, what we want to do is look at what happened later within a year. We kind of move forward in a year because verse 29 tells us that at the end of 12 months, so from the time Daniel ends his interpretation of the dream, we fast forward about a year. And then Nebuchadnezzar, what has he learned? What has he done? The text doesn't tell us anything. Understand that on the larger scale, the macro scale, of what's happening in Babylon, there's general peace on the borders within the land. Most of his conquests as king are behind him. There's peace. He has built Babylon as much as he could to be quite a large city. This particular picture shows that. In fact, it says in verse 29 that…

Daniel 4:29-30 “He was walking about the royal palace of Babylon. And the King spoke, saying," verse 30, "'Is this not great Babylon that I have built for a royal dwelling by the mighty power and for the honor of my majesty?'" 

So let's just pause there and talk a little bit about this city and Babylon and what Nebuchadnezzar had built. Because this is central to the story of Daniel. It's the height of the Babylonian Empire. It's what's called the Neo-Babylonian Empire. That's kind of a second revival. Hundreds of years earlier, there had been another dynastic run within Babylon. But by the time of Nebuchadnezzar, it's kind of part two, if you will, of Babylon. And it's at the height of its power and influence. And that's why in the biblical story where God focuses us on the time of Nebuchadnezzar.

And we talked about in the last class, the poor serfs, the slaves who would have been those who were the builders to be able to build a city like this. This is, again, computer-generated graphics you can find on the web, and there's some pretty good ones that have been done of what the city likely looked like. Keep in mind that the site of Babylon has been excavated extensively in recent years going back into the late 1800s, now 2 centuries back, but not quite 200 years, but the 19th century when it was rediscovered, largely, German and British and other archaeological groups started going in there and finding it and recovering it. Babylon, eventually, fell into disrepair and ruin. And as they say, the sands of time kind of covered it over, literally. And so all this had to be unearthed. And you could go there today, I did mention that in an earlier class, probably won't be because of the strife and problems that are over there.

But I'll show you some pictures of what they have reconstructed even down to the palace, and likely maybe even the room in which some of the book of Daniel 2 and 4 here took place. That would be kind of cool to walk right into that area here. But Babylon was a huge city. And the Euphrates River went through it. Some feel that they had even tunneled under the Euphrates River. This picture you see that running along the right side of the image. Some feel that there was a tunnel that they had built under that, I've read about that. There are certainly bridges across it and gates and temples and a huge metropolitan complex that stretched for many miles in the plains there. The buildings were made largely out of mud, brick that had been fired so that it would last, glazed over so that it would endure. And it did endure for a long period of time here. Nebuchadnezzar built this up. This is, you know, an artist's image of what it did look like. Now, verse 31 here, we'll just continue the story, finish this account out. Then I want to come back to Babylon for a moment. 

Daniel 4:31-33 "While the word was still in the king's mouth, a voice fell from heaven, 'King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken, the kingdom has departed from you, and they shall drive you from men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field.'" This is what Daniel had said would happen. "'They shall make you eat grass like oxen, and seven times shall pass over you until you know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men and gives it to whomever he chooses.' That very hour the word was fulfilled concerning Nebuchadnezzar, he was driven from men, ate grass like oxen. His body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hair had grown like eagles' feathers and his nails like birds' claws."

Now, here's a famous image that gives a pretty good view of what he could have looked like. This is a drawing by the English artist William Blake of Nebuchadnezzar's insanity, crawling around on all fours, hair growing out, nails like that of a bird, and, you know, eagle's feathers, his hair grows out to even kind of look like feathers. It's all depicted right here rather graphically. And this takes place according to the biblical text for seven years. Now, this is the only clear reference that we have from history of this taking place. We do know from the Babylonian Chronicle that there is a gap of about seven years in the record of Babylon at this time of largely anything or reference about Nebuchadnezzar. That's a fact. So there is that corollary.

Now, a historian would say that there's a reason for that, whatever, but it does fit the timeframe of this occurrence here at this particular point in time. And so as we're looking at it here, what was Nebuchadnezzar to learn? Well, he was supposed to learn humility. Did he learn it? Well, let's go on. It goes over a period of time here. 

“And at the end of the time, Nebuchadnezzar lifted my eyes.” 

Now, the time or times, which says seven times, this is understood by biblical scholars to be a year, each time being a year. And seven times would be seven years that this would take place. 

Daniel 4:34 "At the end of the time, the total time, I, Nebuchadnezzar lifted my eyes to heaven and my understanding returned to me, and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored Him who lives forever."

Now, he comes back to himself. Before I go any further, I forgot to mention this particular malady. There is in modern medical parlance a condition called lycanthropy, L-Y-C-A-N, thropy. Let me write it on the board, L-Y-C-A-N. Lycanthropy. It's a clinically diagnosed malady where people in the modern age begin to think of themselves as an animal and either crawl around, walk around, you know, clothes, semi-clothes, eating grass, thinking that they're an animal. I'll resist the temptation to make a modern comment on other things here at this point. But lycanthropy is a mental illness that causes a person to act like an animal. It's, you know, part of the record there.

Their inner consciousness, in a sense, is unchanged, but their outer behavior becomes irrational in that way. In other words, they still have a consciousness. This one, as we would look at it, would seem to be a problem put upon Nebuchadnezzar by God in a supernatural way and then relieved by God in an appropriate time, seven times or seven years later. Why seven years? What do we learn from that or what might that mean? We'll talk about that in a class or two from this point. After we get through Chapter 5, I want to fold that into something about the handwriting on the wall. So we'll hold that particular thought.

Verse 34 tells about now this being lifted. Light comes back on, and he comes back upright and returns. What happened during this time? Now, even the text of Daniel tells us that Nebuchadnezzar returns as king. Now, understand just the natural course of politics in any nation, ancient world, modern world, the leader goes down... You know, in America, if the president goes down, there's a line of succession. Most modern countries have a well-laid-out process as to what might happen if the leader cannot fulfill his office, dies in office, etc. That wouldn't have been necessarily in place in Nebuchadnezzar's case other than that it would have passed within his family, but he's still alive. And, normally, again, the way things would work, somebody would try to come in and fill that power vacuum. But that doesn't seem to happen here.

The kingdom is still preserved for Nebuchadnezzar. What we would assume is, you know, his staff, his closest advisors, his cabinet members, keep the wheels of government functioning. Likely, Daniel would have been a part of that. So that goes on and nobody tries to get the upper hand, do a palace coup and kill the king, necessarily, and take over. That just doesn't happen.

Daniel 4:34-35 Because, “At the end of times, his understanding came back and Nebuchadnezzar says, ‘I bless the Most High. I praise Him and honor Him who lives forever.’" And so he's finishing out this document that is to go to all peoples. "For His dominion is an everlasting dominion and His kingdom is from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing. He does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand or say to Him, 'What have you done?'"

It's pretty good and accurate testimony of what we will read in the Psalms and in other sections of scripture about the majesty, the omnipotence, and the power of God.

Daniel 4:36 "At the same time," verse 36, "my reason returned to me and for the glory of my kingdom, my honor and splendor returned to me. My counselors and nobles resorted to me. I was restored to my kingdom and excellent majesty was added to me." 

Oh, we're glad you're back. Maybe they gave him a couple of more new titles. He who returned, return of the king, whatever it might be there. They added on to him and gave him another medal to put on his chest or trophy for the case or whatever. Even majesty is added. And then he goes on.

Daniel 4:37 "Now, I, Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, all of whose works are truth and His ways justice. And those who walk in pride, He is able to put down."

Well, he walked in pride. He looked out over Babylon saying, "Look at what I have done." And, again, he hadn't learned his lesson. Now, he seems to have learned something after seven years. He acknowledges God's unending existence, His everlasting power as ruler of the universe and over the kingdoms and the empires of men. And that His kingdom, the kingdom of God, will have no end. He acknowledges that. He also comes to the conclusion, verse 35, that man's nothing. Man is nothing. All the inhabitants of the earth are like little ants, just to be squashed. Fortunately, by God's grace, He doesn't do that. But that's what he's saying. And he recognizes the absolute sovereignty of God.

I would not conclude, nor have I read where anybody else tries to make that conclusion, that he becomes what we would call a church member, imbued with God's spirit, converted, or anything like that. His life does go on. And he lives out the remainder of the years. And by all the records that we have, he dies on the throne and dies a natural death, by natural means in that way. And it comes to a close when we open up Chapter 5, Nebuchadnezzar is no longer their king. Belshazzar is, actually, his grandson, who is the king in Babylon. And that is another story.

What I want to do is spend just a moment here as kind of a side point and go back and talk a little bit about Babylon. And this is an important thing to kind of establish in our mind, right now, as we've kind of come through the years with Nebuchadnezzar and his boasting about what he built, and coming to understand the significance of this head of gold, which Chapter 2 says. This powerful empire that stretches across the plains here in what is Mesopotamia and this region down in here represented or thought to be the link between the heavens and the underworld, the center of the earth, the center of the cosmos, this powerful, wealthy city that is there.

In looking at this, there's a lot that we do know about Babylon from the archaeological work that has been done, the records that have been unearthed, cataloged, put in museums. I don't know that every shard and cuneiform tablet has been cataloged in the Louvre in Paris, the great museum there, or the British Museum or the Pergamon Museum. The British Museum has a lot of stuff. The Pergamon Museum in Berlin, Germany has a lot of artifacts. In fact, this picture right here that you see on the screen right now is in the Pergamon Museum in Germany. And it is a reconstruction of this Ishtar Gate that I showed you right here. All right. This is an artist rendition. Our own Bruce Long did this, one of our members, of the Ishtar Gate, which was a huge complex.

Consider a gate to be a building. And it was an entryway into the city, but it was also a huge office building and a huge complex. And this particular picture here, I think, shows it. This is the Ishtar Gate right here, this blue here. And there's a large avenue in front of it that crosses the river. It's quite wide. It's called the processional way. They've excavated all of that and they have artifacts from that, that, again, are part of this museum complex in Germany. I've seen it a couple of times. This is a panel from the avenue leading up to that gate. This is another one. These glazed bricks are from Babylon. Some have been reproduced to fill in, but they brought these back in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

The Germans were doing this work. This was some of the pictures of them digging out Babylon during that period of time. The Germans did an interesting thing. They brought what they had back to Berlin, and they built a whole museum around it. And they call it the Pergamon Museum, which gets us into another story because the centerpiece of that museum is what is called the Pergamon Altar from the ancient city of Pergamos, which is in Turkey. And we'll read and talk about that when we come to the messages to the churches in Revelation. But the Germans were also working in Babylon, and they just decided to bring as much as they could back and build a whole museum around it. Pretty cool. And you can see that there today, although you may not be able to because the museum's been closed for a number of years under reconstruction, and it's a project that has kept on going. I think I took that picture.

We, actually, did a "Beyond Today" shoot there a few years ago. And I have to tell you about that. I had been there years before that, and I always thought it'd be great to come back here with a film crew and do a shoot, do some programs. And we did. Steve Myers, Gary Petty and I, Peter Eddington, and some of our staff, we went over there and we, actually, got permission to go into the museum before it opened early in the morning. We got there about 5:30 a.m., to set up, and we had about three hours to do our taping before they opened it up to the crowds. And it was pretty cool. We had our van loaded with all of our camera equipment. We drove into the back of the museum and started carrying our stuff in through the back door. We were in a basement. We kept coming up steps. We came to one level, and we turned right and came right out into this room right here.

And I, literally, had the thought at the time "Night at the Museum." I was like, "Where's Nebuchadnezzar? Where's Daniel? They've scattered already." It felt just like that because it was about 5:36 a.m. and just a few guards were there to let us in. And we had this part, section of the museum to ourselves to set up cameras and do our taping. And it was pretty cool. But you'll see right here, this is a panel, a glazed panel in the background there. I don't know if I've got another picture of that. I guess I don't. But that was taken from the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, the actual throne room of Nebuchadnezzar. And it would have been lined with that all up and down the walls of this very beautiful ornate walls.

And one of the scenes that I was shooting, and I think maybe Gary and Steve did different programs with the recording, I was reading from Daniel 2. And I was reading from Daniel 2, and I had started getting goosebumps go up and down my spine because I realized I was standing in front of that panel. And I got to thinking, "These words that I'm reading from Daniel were, actually, spoken by Daniel in front of that literal wall that they'd taken and placed in Germany." I thought, "Man, that's pretty cool." You don't get moments like that. You're that close to history, in this case, it's Bible history, and you're reading something out of the scriptures, and that's where it took place. So you could see that too, if you ever go to the museum and they ever reopen it completely, which we hope in sometime in the near future that they do.

But here's the point to get to. Babylon as a city is important for us to understand, not only from the history of Daniel but also of what it says about Bible prophecy in the time of the end. And we're going to come back to it next semester with the book of Revelation as we talk about a system called Babylon Mystery Religion, the Mother of Harlots, that will arise at the time of the end before Christ returns. To understand that future Babylon that is not quite here, it's important to understand things about ancient Babylon because that's why it's here in the Bible. And this is why God frames it the way that He does. So let me give you a few pointers about it.

Babylon was a city. It was an empire. It becomes a system, this head of gold that though the empire falls, that head of gold from Daniel 2 continues to influence and to work within the next empire represented by the silver, the next one, by the bronze, and the Empire of Rome represented by the iron all the way down to the toes represented by the clay mixed with iron. The head of gold guides the whole system just like the head guides our body. Cut our head off, we're dead, right? But our intellect, our brain, everything, the whole systems of the body are directed by the head. That's where our intellect is. That's where our mind is. That's where the spirit of man is, if you want to put it in a place, and Romans 8 tells us that God's Spirit joins to our spirit. So that's where God's Spirit is, and makes us then thinking human beings and with the addition of God's Spirit, potential sons of God. So the head's pretty important.

Going back to Babylon, Babylon, as I said, was this huge city empire system. But within the city, it became quite wealthy through the generations. This Ishtar Gate is a representation of that. And one of the things that you see from all of these pictures that have been generated from it, like this one, you see a ziggurat over here, the temple of Marduk and other gods and goddesses. Even the Ishtar Gate here, this Ishtar Gate, which is right there, was named after the goddess Ishtar, which tells you that religion dominated the city a great deal within Babylon. And every temple had a cast of priests who attended in the temple to the needs of the gods and to the affairs of the temple.

Well, here's what happened in Babylon. The wealth of the city grew and a lot of that wealth couldn't be absorbed in the normal channels of commerce. Their banking system was not quite what we have today. In fact, what happened in Babylon, the temples became repositories for money, along with other parts of the system there. But taxes came in, the spoils of the war and the conquests and the taxes off of that. A lot of that was deposited into the temples. And the kings would do this as well, give it to the priesthood to curry favor with them because the religion, through the priests, kept everything going and functioning smoothly, kept people...what's the word, desensitized or anesthetized.

In other words, it kept people calm because, you know, if the gods were happy, crops were good, no inclement weather, no global warming, everything goes smoothly. The priests held control of that. As they became wealthier, they reinvested their money. They became pretty good at that. Their systems of religion continued to grow, continued to develop. The wealth grew year by year. Money was put there. Kings would come and go. The temples and the priests stayed. It was a constant. King needed money, he'd go to the temple. He'd borrow from the priests. He'd have to repay it. But it creates this entire system. In other words, the temples and the priests became the financial purveyors of the nation. They became the Wall Street, the financial houses of the empire.

And that power grew because their money grew. They handled and controlled a great portion of the trade that went up and down the rivers and across the land. They also developed a wise reputation for management and investment of the money and did quite well. And they continued to grow. The kings came and went, but the religious systems and the houses they lived in continued to be there. And they were free from all the issues of, at least, the politics of the royal family and assassinations and intrigues that were there. And the merchants then, essentially, made Babylon, and the people and the priests began to enjoy that so that this entire system grew.

Now, as a result of this, and as we deal with it and think about it throughout the history and the story of Babylon, the Hanging Gardens became one of the legendary features of Babylon. They're not mentioned in the Bible, but they're mentioned in histories. It took a lot of money to build it and to maintain it with water and the lush plants like that in the desert conditions. That represented and symbolized a great deal of that money and that time as well. And so as a result of this, Babylon grew and its wealth continued to grow and was passed on. But its religion, its culture, its entire systems began to pass through the rest of the empires and the systems that followed on, Persia, Greece, and Rome, down into even our modern world.

Typically, in school, we learn about Greece and Rome being the kind of the progenitors of Western civilization, and, to a degree, they were. But Babylon was there before Greece and Rome. And a lot of things came from Babylon that are a part of our everyday culture. If you write 32 degrees out in your paper or type it out, you see a little degree mark up there, that comes from Babylon. A lot of initial and primary astronomical information about the skies comes from Babylon. The Bible talks about in Revelation 17, Babylon Mystery Religion. And there is a religion that was a part of Babylon that has endured through the millennia down into our time as well. The worship of a mother god, goddess, and so many other factors of it. This has been documented through the generations as to what Babylon was. It was a complete system. It was religion. It was politics. It was economics. It was education. It was culture.

And when the Bible talks about a final Babylon, it's not only talking about, let's say, an empire, a final empire out of the system, but it's talking about an entire culture that is a global culture in modern terms. And that's why it's important to understand so much of what we gained from Babylon. I like to tell this story of this derivative impact. And I think it helps us to understand something. If Babylon was a major enterprise with economics and goods and services and grain and animals and product being transported back and forth, which it was, through caravans, camel caravans, donkey, mule caravans across the desert or on boats going up and down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which it was, you have people moving, moving produce, moving goods and services.

Imagine that you're running a boat, a barge up and down the Euphrates River, and you take on cargo at one point of the river, you know, upstream from Babylon here, somewhere up in here, and you take it several miles down and you discharge it or you offload it to another service, you get paid that. You get paid for that trip and whatever the money form was at the time. Well, you're going to make another trip if you're a barge owner, you know, think of truckers today or whatever, you're going to go on to another stop. But you don't want to be carrying that money with you all the time because people might come and steal it, right? You don't want to be carrying too many bags of money.

And so here's what you're going to do. Along the river system of the Euphrates, you would pull in, tie up at a wharf, and you take your bags of money, and right there on the river, there would be a branch of the temple in Babylon where your money is being held. And you would deposit it there in that branch of the temple that's in the larger building in Babylon. And you might get a receipt for it so you could know it was yours and you could trade that off. Then you'd pick up a load, work was done like that. Not unlike what we might do today. We don't do this as much anymore because we've got it all on our phone, but they're still around.

You need $500 or $1,000 to go to the Feast of Tabernacles. You want some cash. Where are you going to go? Here's where I'm going. I'm going right over here to the East Gate Mall area, and there's a place called Chase. Chase what? Chase Bank. I'm going to go into Chase Bank, and I'm going to withdraw $500. A bank, that comes from Babylon. It comes from a boat pulling along and tying up on the bank of the Euphrates River and putting their money, their gold, their silver in deposit with the temple branch bank on the bank. We get a lot of things from Babylon. Even the things we take for granted. I never knew that until I studied into this. I grew up going into a bank. I don't go to the bank as often anymore because I'm like everybody else. I've got the app.

But when I need cash, when I go overseas and I want a pile of $1 bills to tip people, and I want a few 20s and just good old American dollars, I have to go to the bank and draw that out to take it with me. That all comes from Babylon, money. And money, you know the phrase, "Show me the money." If you understand nothing else about Babylon and what we gain from the ancient world, economics is what it's all about. Now, we will see this when we go to Revelation 18 and 17, where we have this image of a woman riding a beast. And it's called, Mystery Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots and of the Abominations of the Earth. And in Chapter 18, we have an entire economic system described there, a global economic system that can really only truly be understood in terms of today.

And so this final system that will arise, this final appearance of what began in Babylon, and then, finally, appears one last time in the age before the return of Christ, is a system that is built on economics. It is built on religion, and it's a false religion. It's political in nature because Revelation 17 says that this system has committed what it calls fornication with the kings of the earth. There's a relationship between religion, politics, economics. It all works together. And our world is developing this system today. It's not fully here. I've talked about the fact that we are living in a modern Babylon. In many ways, we already are. But the appearance of this final system that is described in Revelation 17 and 18, which is the culmination of what we're now, you know, kind of winding up as we look at, at least, the story of Nebuchadnezzar and that head of gold, that culmination is yet ahead of us in our world. We can see it developing.

I've written a manuscript for a booklet on this that we're working on. And I've got to write the final chapter, which I've entitled, Slouching Toward Babylon. We're slouching toward Babylon, this final Babylon now. And a lot of what we see around us in the changes in our culture, even revivals in some ways of various forms of spirituality, even ancient pagan religions, can be melded and folded into other more traditional religions to create a unique religious appearance symbolized by this woman riding this beast at this particular time. All of that we can talk about, and we'll talk about in more detail later as we go through various aspects of this. But this should give you at least an appreciation of what it is that we are reading in the book of Daniel and why this is important.

The prophetic fulfillment of this, according to our understanding of Bible prophecy, is important to know. And we'll talk about that probably in a module about this idea of prophecy and how it will be fulfilled. So this brings us through the first four chapters of Babylon. We'll treat Chapter 5 separately, and then we'll do that next class. And then we'll come back and pick up the seven times of Nebuchadnezzar's insanity and connect that to the handwriting on the wall to see what else we might possibly be able to discern out of this imagery and these experiences with Nebuchadnezzar's seven years of insanity, the handwriting on the wall, and what that might be giving us certain clues or at least levels of understanding of the events that are yet ahead for us within Bible prophecy. So we'll pick that up next time.