My daily Bible readings have brought me around once more to the Book of Daniel. There is language in there that I find hard to understand. Like, for instance, the “seventy weeks” in Daniel 9.
I should’ve just gone to my Strong’s Concordance, where I would have learned that the Hebrew word here means “a seven” or “sevens,” and can be used to denote a set of seven, or even as a figure of speech. But no, I was lazy, I was already on the computer and didn’t feel like going to my bookcase, so I looked it up in Wikipedia instead.
Silly me. I had momentarily forgotten that Wikipedia habitually cites the supposed authority of “Bible scholars” who don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God. So the Wikipedia article was focused on proving that the Book of Daniel is a hoax.
Follow the logic. Accurate prophecy is impossible. Therefor, the prophecy found in Daniel can only have been written long after the events it pretends to foretell actually took place. I guess that would apply to all prophesies in the Bible, invalidating the whole book.
In his Jewish Antiquities, written in the First Century, in Book 11, Chapter 8, Paragraph 5, the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus relates that when Alexander the Great came to Jerusalem (where the city authorities, although good and loyal subjects of the Persian king, decided it would be futile to resist the conqueror), the priests “showed him” the Book of Daniel, in which his successful conquest of the Persian Empire was predicted.
Alexander visited Jerusalem around 332 B.C., about 200 years earlier than the date assigned to Daniel by Big Shot Bible Scholars Inc. So they say Josephus is hoaxing us, too. He wrote primarily for a Roman audience, with the expectation that important Jews would read it, too. It’s difficult to imagine what purpose such a lie would serve if told to either audience.
I think I prefer to stay with St. Paul, and “let God be true, but every man a liar” (Romans 3:4).
Biblical “scholars”, and I use that term loosely, are useless. They don’t even believe in the bible. They begin with the premise that the bible is not true, so therefore prophecy is impossible. They have no proof, only their own conjecture. What a waste to spend so much time on the bible and never learn anything.
There are many many reasons to believe that Daniel is true, and written earlier than the scholars say. The biggest one for me is Dan 9:26. It speaks of the Messiah being cut off (i.e. Jesus crucified), and the destruction of the city and the sanctuary, which was the sacking of Jerusalem and destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. So even by scholarly accounts, Daniel was written before these events took place.
p.s.
A week in biblical terms represents seven years. The Israelites were supposed to let the land rest every 7 years, but they didn’t for a period of 490 years. So, for their disobedience God allowed them to be taken captive by the Babylonians for 70 years. Each year representing one week (seven years) that they disobeyed God (70×7=490 years). The prophetic clock was stopped on the 69th week. So the 70th week is what we know as the tribulation or Jacob’s Trouble, and is still future tense.
Of course the Book of Daniel is not a hoax. He predicted the four great kingdoms before Christ and how Christ’s gospel would conquer all kingdoms as it filled the whole earth. Can I get an “AMEN!!”
The prophecies of Daniel and Revelation are some of the most difficult to understand of all scripture, yet they have rung true in the past and are reliable in the future.
If God inspired writers to record His written word, it is only logical that He will protect and preserve His written word. When Daniel asked the meaning of some of the things he had written he was told that it was not for him to know, but that these words would be sealed until the end times when true knowledge would abound. I think we are seeing that now.