My friend recently gave me a book to read about Daniel's prophesies. It was written by the Jehovah's Witnesses so I was a bit apprehensive about trusting what it said, but she wanted to discuss it so I read the section on this particular one. As I suspected, there was something dodgy about the way it was presented, which was unfortunate, because really, part of the prediction is quite accurate, and would be impressive, if they hadn't ruined it by trying to make it look like the prophesy is talking about the present day.
So here is the first part of the prophesy in Daniel 2 :29-31. This is about a king who had a troubling dream that no one could interpret. Daniel steps up and describes it to him:
"You looked, O king, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay.
Daniel goes on to explain what this part of the dream means in Daniel 2:38-41
You are that head of gold. After you, another kingdom will rise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay.
The Jehovah's Witness book called “Pay Attention to Daniel's Prophesy” then gives names to these kingdoms that would rule over Israel. They put it in a chart saying:
Gold represents the Babylonian Empire, which went from 607 BC.
Silver the Medo-Persian Empire from 539 BC
Bronze the Greek Empire from 331 BC
Iron the Roman Empire from 30 BC
Iron and Clay the Anglo-American Empire from 1763 AD
To start the analysis, I added in when each empire ended. According to this book:
Gold represents the Babylonian Empire, which went from 607 BC. to 539 BC
Silver the Medo-Persian Empire from 539 BC to 331 BC
Bronze the Greek Empire from 331 BC to 30 BC
Iron the Roman Empire from 30 BC to 476 and AD in the West
1453 AD in the East
Iron and Clay the Anglo-American Empire from 1763 AD to now
Lots of things leap to the eye already. The prophesy talks about successive rules, while this chart shows a gap of 300 years between the last two Empires. What happened to the Spanish Empire, the Ottoman Empire the Arab empire, among others? Also how could they possibly say that the British Empire and the American Empire are the same? Also, the dates are a bit off – for instance, the Roman Empire started 27 BC. So let's do an honest chart of the powers that ruled over Israel from Daniel's time to now. The chart would look like this:
Gold represents the Babylonian Empire, which ruled Israel from 607 BC. to 539 BC
Silver the Medo-Persian Empire 539 BC to 332 BC
Bronze the Greek Empire 332 BC to 63 BC
Iron the Romans (before and during its empire) 63 BC to 614 AD
the Sassanian Empire 614 to 628
the Byzantium Empire 628 to 637
Ummayad, Abbasid, and Crusaders 637 to 1260
The Mamluk Sultinate 1260- 1516
the Ottoman Empire 1516-1922
the British Empire 1922- 1948
Today Independent with heavy US support 1948 until now.
There is no way that the feet of iron and clay can refer to the present day then. The Jehovah Witnesses Book is totally wrong, and fudging things to fit in with their beliefs that the Messiah will come now. But let's not leave the analysis there. Let's pursue it further.
So which Empire is the one represented by Iron mixed with clay? If the Roman Empire is represented by iron, then it is a time where the Roman Empire still existed, but had been replaced in some parts with other ruling forces. This fits in very nicely with the period between 476 AD and 1453 AD. Thus the Daniel's prophesy ended 1453. There's no way the book of Daniel was written during this time. Most critics would say it is written before 200 BC, so the dream the king had was quite impressive. But then the rest of the prophesy goes:
Daniel 2: 34-35
While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.
Daniel says the prophesy means this in Daniel 2:44:
In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.
He was obviously referring to the coming of the Messiah but that hasn't happened. But, just for argument's sake, what if the dream was prophetic, even if the interpretation was wrong? What would the stone be that shattered the statue and changed things forever?
To be clear, the dream said :
But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.
Assuming that whatever it was had to occur right after the fall of the Roman Empire in 1453, I looked up what happened in the 15th century. What immediately sprung to the eye was that the printing press was invented around 1455.
According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press#Historical_Impact,:
“The printing press was a factor in the establishment of a community of scientists who could easily communicate their discoveries through the establishment of widely disseminated scholarly journals, helping to bring on the scientific revolution.”
So God shattered the old world by introducing an invention that would democratize religion, politics and create a mountain of knowledge that people nowadays would say was the threat to His very survival! Yet, if this is treated as a prophesy, it means God is not an enemy of science, in fact, He wants it to advance!!! So those who oppose the scientific ways of looking at the world actually oppose GOD!
That really is quite ironic given that I started this line of inquiry by reading a book by creationists. I guess God really DOES move in mysterious ways!
note:
Information on the true rulers over Israel taken from:
"Ancient Palestine," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2008
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved. And http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel#History
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9 comments:
Hello,
You're definitely right to be leary of the Jehovah's Witnesses. They have some silly prophecies that really make no sense when scrutinized, as you have discovered. One of their main things is Jesus' invisible return in 1914, which I wrote about here:
http://billphillips.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/the-invisible-and-impossible-1914-return/
While I don't necessarily agree with your interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, I agree that true science doesn't go against God. True science gives evidence for a six-day creation, and a young earth.
Thanks,
Bill
You need to reread it and to speak to someone. You miss the point.
" The Jehovah Witnesses Book is totally wrong, "
No, you are.
"There is no way that the feet of iron and clay can refer to the present day then."
The clay means the democratic malleable forms of government and the iron means the dictatorial forms of government and since clay does not mix with iron, it signifies how they do not get along. That is during the last century and now when the democratic nations did not get along with the totalitarian nations and had wars.
That is very simple.
To Bill:
I'm not a creationist but I definitely think that science should be pursuing this line of inquiry. The Bible gave rules that protected people from diseases before people even knew germs existed. The story of Eve being made from a rib of Adam's was around long before anyone even thought about cloning or gene manipulation...
Oh- about the Jehovah's witnesses- I was told by one that heaven was already full- all 144000 places were occupied by deceased male Jehovah's witnesses. I asked her what the point of recruiting was and what would happen to her when she died. She said she didn't know but said she was sure she wouldn't be forgotten.
Thanks for the comment!
cheers
Carmen
To Edward:
There's always been wars and conflict between countries of different types of government. That's not unique to our age- it was true even before Daniel's time.
I like another explanation I've heard- my friend said that the two systems are the Roman based societies vs the Arab based societies. Roman based being us, I'm guessing Arab based being the Muslims. That takes it nicely into the present day. However it does ignore countires like China and Japan which make up a decent percentage of the world's population.....
Thanks for your comment!
cheers
Carmen
True Science does not go against God. True science does not give evidence of a six 24 hour day creation.
The earth was created in Gen 1:1.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
That is a long and undetermined time before the six days.
The six days were not 24 hours. They were long epocs. Moses wrote that because the vision he was given portrayed the closing of one epoch and the starting of another as a day.
People who criticize 1914 don't understand it.
"I was told by one that heaven was already full- all 144000 places were occupied by deceased male Jehovah's witnesses."
You were told incorrectly.
Whether heaven is full or not is irrelevant to salvation. There is life on earth. And it is not deceased males. Females are included, but when they get to heaven, they are neither male nor female.
" I asked her what the point of recruiting was and what would happen to her when she died. She said she didn't know but said she was sure she wouldn't be forgotten."
You need to talk to someone else. It is not recruiting, but doing what Jesus said of preaching the good news of the kingdom. The kingdom rules over the earth.
When people die they are in God's memory until the resurrection. What other way is there?
To Carmen
"There's always been wars and conflict between countries of different types of government. That's not unique to our age- it was true even before Daniel's time."
Yeah, so?
But the image represents a progression from Babylon to the Medes/persians to the Greeks, to the Romans. Then the feet were made up of clay and iron. Clay and iron don't mix. That indicates our time. The clay is the democratic governments and their fighting or not mixing with the totalitarian governments the iron ones.
That is the final progression.
The reason Daniel does not mention the other kingdoms and empires in-between iron (Rome) and iron mixed with clay, (the era of the democratic reunification of the former Roman Empire) is because the audience he is writing to is the Jewish people. This is significant because the last time the Jewish people existed as a unified entity in the lands of Israel or Palestine was during the Roman Empire. Subsequently, it was during the Roman Empire that the greater part of the Jewish nation was expelled under the Emperor Hadrian in 135 AD. The Jews would not arise again as a unified people until 1945, with the help of the United States as you have mentioned. This of course brings us back to the empire of iron-mixed with clay, made even more potent by the reunification of the Roman Empire under the democratic body of the European Union, which of course is attached militarily and through Western culture to the United States: thus creating an empire strong in influence like Rome’s (iron) but brittle under the fickleness of democracy (clay). So, as far as pertinences to a Jew concerned with the motherland goes the succession makes a lot of sense.
This is why non-Christian scholars argue that Daniel had to have been written around 200 BC, but this too unfortunately has flaws especially when you look at the Arabic, Persian, and Greek of the writings in the manuscript; which all date from circa 550 BC or later. With the evidence of the Eastern Arabic dialect and Persian from 550 BC many point to the three Greek words in Daniel as evidence for fallacy in the document. Once again though, there is a problem with such an argument since there is compelling evidence of written Greek before Plato circa 800 BC and it is also known that Greeks had been trading with Babylon since 750 BC.
Really the best argument against the book of Daniel is that it was a purposeful Jewish fraud circa 300-200 BC by someone who knew Eastern Arabic, Persian, and Greek from 600-540 BC.
I’ve left a reference for you below from a site called British local History concerning the expulsion of the Jews and from Bible.org for references discussing when the manuscript was written.
British Local History
http://www.britishlocalhistory.co.uk/community/local+history+wiki+article+The_Jewish_Diaspora_.aspx
Bible.org:
http://bible.org/article/introduction-book-daniel#P67_13392
Dispersion of the Jews in the Roman Empire- British Local History
“Expulsion of the Jews in the Reign of the Emperor Hadrian (135 CE): How Heraclius turned the Jews out of Jerusalem.
The destruction of Judea exerted a decisive influence upon the dispersion of the Jewish people throughout the world, as the center of worship shifted from the Temple to Rabbinic authority.
"Forced expulsions and persecution resulted in substantial shifts in the international centers of Jewish life to which far-flung communities often looked; although not always unified due to the Jewish people's dispersion itself."
OK, if I was going to use a statue as a symbol where the body represents a successive line of rulers and the feet represented a time that was over a thousands years later, I'd have the statue hovering over it's feet, meaning there was a substantial gap between those eras and the last one. It was a vision, so it could have presented itself that way.
I do believe in prophesy, so the book could have been written substantially before the events that transpired. I also believe the future isn't set in stone and that it can be altered. Maybe that's what happened.
Just a thought.
Carmen
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