Isaac Newton’s Insights on Biblical Chronology

SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

Greetings to the brightest audience in the country and welcome to Theology Thursday. I’m Nicole McBurney. Every weekday we bring you the news of the day, the culture, and science from a Christian worldview. But today, join me and Pastor Bob Enyart as we explore the source of our Christian worldview, the Bible.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:14

We’re up to Daniel chapter 6, his own account of Daniel in the lion’s den. But to start, I’d like to reread the last two verses of chapter 5. so that we can recall the context, chapter 5, verse 30, that very night, Belshazzar, king of the Chaldeans, was slain. Remember that Daniel interpreted the handwriting on the wall. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about 62 years old. So now Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar II, has been killed. And If he had not been so prideful, if he would have trusted in the living God, he could have lived out his life on the throne, undoubtedly. But he lost what he had in this life, and he lost forever what he could have had, all the blessings of eternal life in the next. And he was succeeded by an older king named Darius. Chapter 6, verse 1 says, It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps to be over the whole kingdom. Now, I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about history and the Bible’s description of ancient kings. there is dispute as to who this Darius is. Unlike with Nebuchadnezzar, who we have just studied, where historians and archaeologists recognize him, although they refer to him accurately as Nebuchadnezzar II. The first Nebuchadnezzar had lived almost 500 years before the second in his namesake. And then Belshazzar, Nebuchadnezzar’s son, who was just killed after the handwriting on the wall incident, he is also recognized by historians. They call him Belshazzar and Balthazar. But with Darius the Mede, there is dispute and denial. And The identification of Darius is made more difficult by the fact that ancient names of kings and ancient titles seem to blur. For example, Xerxes means king, and Artaxerxes means great king. This is similar with, well, say Pharaoh is a title, and so we might call someone Pharaoh, but then which Pharaoh is he? Ahasuerus, the king. Now here, Darius, there is an ancient word for lord, king, and it’s Darius, Darius, or our Anglicized Darius. And so historians who don’t believe in the Bible, there are many who do, but there are many who do not. Those who do not believe in the Bible are loathe to consider whether Darius here is Darius the Great from history. Even though there are texts on a massive stone inscription at a great plain in Iran, up on a mountainside, there is an enormous… inscription that was carved into stone by the command of Darius, and he had it carved in three languages, Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian. And part of the inscription says that It is quoting Darius the king. Afterwards, I went to Babylon. And there are other particulars that suggest that this might be the Darius we’re reading about. historians prefer to identify him if at all. They will often say that, well, if the Bible speaks of a king or a city or an empire, it probably didn’t exist because they don’t believe in the Bible. So if anything, they prefer to identify this Darius as Syaxares II, who was a king of the Medes, And he was written about by an ancient Greek author, Xenophon. So I think what will happen regarding this Darius is what has happened literally a hundred times over now. When the Bible makes claims about geography, history, kings, customs, laws, monetary units, place names… that the secular world denies, eventually the Bible’s claims are verified. That has happened over and over and over. More than 100 people in the Bible have already been identified by secular historians outside of the pages of Scripture so that they are at an archeological dig and they come upon an inscription or a scroll and it speaks of, for example, King David. And that’s an inscription written by Israel’s enemies about a military defeat that King David suffered. So when you have an inscription written by your enemy bragging that they defeated the house of david in a battle well that’s pretty high credibility that the house of david existed a thousand years before christ which many secular historians denied until that point and some will still deny it even with the overwhelming testimony of scripture and now an extra biblical source corroborating something that doesn’t need to be corroborated Because God’s word doesn’t need to be confirmed. It is confirmed by his authority, by the Holy Spirit. Pontius Pilate is another example. There were those who doubted Pontius Pilate and that he was a governor in Israel. And the Jews have found in Caesarea an inscription stone reading that he dedicated, this is a dedication block of a building on the coast, right by the harbor that they created 2,000 years ago, and it’s a dedication of the building to Caesar by Pontius Pilate. And so, hence the name of the town was Caesarea. And so this is a pattern that has occurred over and over. In Genesis, we read about the five villages of the plain, and historians now acknowledge that they know of these five villages of the plain outside of the Bible. Historians denied the existence of the Assyrian Empire. Now they acknowledge it. They denied the existence of Nineveh itself. Now they acknowledge it. Well, why would they acknowledge it? Because they found it. Why would they acknowledge the Assyrian Empire? Because when they found Nineveh, they found the library that was buried under 100 feet of sand, and they literally got tens of thousands of clay tablets of the history of the Assyrian Empire, including the battles with the kings of Israel, as recorded in the Bible. So we have the Bible recording that part of history from the Jews’ perspective. And in the library in Nineveh, recently excavated about 100 years ago, we have the other side of the story. So this is the pattern. Skeptics deny the existence of the Hittites, for example. Now you could go to Turkey and go to the Hittite museum and see the amazing evidence of their empire. So many particulars which were questioned or even outright denied have been confirmed. Most recently, we talked a while ago about the Pool of Siloam that was finally excavated, the Great Pool of Siloam. And I had in the studio, Bob and Yert Live, just a few Fridays ago, an archaeologist who was one of the key excavators of that site. The Gospels speak of the Pool of Siloam and the Tower of Siloam. Even more recently, they’ve now completed a full excavation of a fortified wall in Jerusalem that is almost as long as a football field, but it’s just a portion of a wall that was built in the time of Solomon. When Solomon, with his great might and riches, wealth, the control of the nation, he, of course, built up his empire. and the skeptics and the atheist historians don’t like it, and they will deny the archaeological evidence that this was from 900 years before Christ, because they say the Jews never had a kingdom like that. They never had an empire. They were never a mighty nation. So they desperately want to deny the truth of the Bible. But Scripture has been confirmed that hundred times over I should say a thousand times over so I think it’ll be interesting and we might be alive well we will be alive whether here or in heaven when the ultimate confirmation surfaces and that will be fun but for now we have Daniel’s sacred account to trust And trust it we do because of the evidence that the Bible is God’s Word, so we trust God’s Word. Now, historians are men, human beings, who have taken it upon themselves to study the records of ancient history, and then they give their opinion about which historical perspective is the most accurate. So there’s nothing magical to being a historian. There’s something supernatural about it if God is inspiring Moses to write the history from the creation of the world. But it’s just hopefully an intelligent human being who has resources and great intellectual acumen and invests himself in a careful study of history. Well, one historian who’s almost never recognized as a historian says, wrote extensively that we should trust the Bible’s account of history rather than the account of secular historians who disagree with the Bible. And his name is Isaac Newton. Now, Isaac Newton is considered the greatest scientist who ever lived. He helped us understand gravity and color. What is color? It’s the length of light waves. And he invented calculus because he had a physics problem he couldn’t solve. So he invented a whole branch of mathematics. A brilliant man. He’s the first to comprehend universal gravity. And what people often overlook about him is that he wrote more about history and chronology and the chronology of the Bible than he ever did about astronomy or physics. This was one of his greatest passions. He wrote a book called The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended. Because in his time, as in our time, there are claims that the ancient Egyptian dynasties went back thousands of years, a number of thousands of years before Christ. And I’d like to quote to you what Isaac Newton said about this. He said, for an educated man in the 7th or even 18th century, any suggestion that human past extended back further than 6,000 years is a vain and foolish speculation. Because he believed the Bible to be the Word of God. the chronology to be accurate, and he was a defender of Bishop Usher, who wrote a chronology, the Annals of World History, and he said that creation occurred approximately 4,000 years before Christ. Isaac Newton, joking sort of, was making fun of Manetho. He’s the standard popular Egyptian Egyptologist who has given the world our chronology of the ancient dynasties of the pharaohs. And Isaac Newton said, well, if Manetho is right, then Egypt existed for thousands of years before the world was created. And he said, therefore, Manetho was not right. And there are others who have looked at Manetho’s history of Egypt and they’ve analyzed it and said, you know what he did? He made a mistake. He’s taking this series of pharaohs from one source on ancient Egyptian history and he’s accidentally repeating it. So he has mirrors or reflections. It would be like taking the time from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln, and a thousand years from now, somebody thinking there was a George Washington II, and there was a Thomas Jefferson II, and John Adams II, and so on, through old hickory and all the way up to Abraham Lincoln. And somebody would come and say, no, you… You have an extra hundred years in the history of America. It shouldn’t be there. You’ve got to collapse it. And that has been also proposed by an author who’s very controversial, who wrote a book called Worlds in Collision, and then he wrote Ages in Chaos, Emanuel Velikovsky. And he was… a friend of Albert Einstein. They were co-editors of the Hebrew Journal in Jerusalem. When Einstein died, he was reading Velikovsky’s latest manuscript, and Velikovsky has been completely debunked on his worlds in collision theory. But his history in Ages and Chaos, I’ve read very carefully. Others, it’s consistent with this belief of Isaac Newton’s that Egypt’s history is not as lengthy as it is claimed. So now let’s get back to our text in Daniel chapter 6. And I trust Daniel’s record. And with the book of Daniel being in the Bible, I trust this as accurate history recorded as inspired by the Holy Spirit. So it pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps to be over the whole kingdom. So there’s 120 provinces. And over these three governors, of whom Daniel was one, and remember that he’s already served. He’s got great experience. He served for nearly 40 years under Nebuchadnezzar. So he knows what he’s doing, and he was valued greatly as an advisor. So Daniel was one that these sad traps might give account to them so that the king would suffer no loss. So all the governors of the provinces would report to this triumvirate, if you will, these three who were just beneath the king. Verse 3 says, I think so. It’s the spirit of the living God. Now, Word would get out of that, right? If there’s just a company and there’s a director of marketing and the president is thinking of making him the CEO, pretty soon everybody knows, unless the president keeps it in his own mind. But pretty soon, even then, people have a knack of figuring out what’s coming. And so then what would happen if the king wants to put Daniel above even the others, right? then knowing human nature, envy is likely to set in. So verse four, so the governors in Satrap sought to find some charge against Daniel concerning the kingdom, but they could find no charge or fault because he was faithful, nor was there any error or fault found in him. What a beautiful testimony from Daniel’s enemies. This is similar to Joseph. We know that with Jesus, even his enemies had such a hard time bringing an accusation against him that they had to just make it up. And here we are today, 2,000 years after Christ, and the vast majority of people who reject Jesus Christ have nothing but good things to say about him. That is quite a testimony to who Jesus Christ is. Even Muhammad, who is an enemy of God, heaps praises on Jesus Christ, as do a billion Muslims around the world. So Jesus Christ is the ultimate example, but Daniel here is also an example of someone who is honorable, and therefore even their enemies have a hard time bringing an accusation. Then these men said, We shall not find any charge against this Daniel unless we find it against him concerning the law of his God. Wow. Remember that Jesus said, Blessed are you when men speak evil of you concerning my namesake. For my namesake, if you do righteous and you are persecuted, you’re blessed. And so here is Daniel being set up to be blessed. They don’t realize this. They think they’re setting him up to harm him. They’re setting him up to bless him because they’re going to speak evil of him for Christ’s name’s sake. Verse 6, so these governors and satraps thronged before the king and said thus to him, King Darius, live forever. All the governors of the kingdom, the administrators and satraps, the counselors and advisors have consulted together to establish a royal statute and and to make a firm decree. Now remember, Nebuchadnezzar made a royal statue. This is not a royal statue. This is a statute. This is a law. There are Christians who study common law and they get very invested in a discussion of the difference between laws and statutes. And there are laws that are eternal laws, like do not murder, do not steal, do not commit adultery, do not bear false witness against your neighbor. And then there are regulations of use for infrastructure. like when the government builds roads and they say, well, you drive on the right side of the road. So that doesn’t have the force of God’s laws. That is a convention among men which governments have every right and authority to establish. And so most of the world drives on the right side of the road. Is that true? Except for island nations. Island nations have the flexibility, like England and Australia and New Zealand. They drive on the left. And if you’re an island nation, then there are no bridges usually connecting to you, so people won’t get in head-on collisions, like when they drive from France to Germany. But island nations, they have a different convention. That’s fine. So they are saying to the king, King Darius, we have consulted together to establish a royal statute, a law, and to make a firm decree that whoever petitions any god or man for 30 days except you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions. So they are appealing to his pride, his ego. So that often works. And they are manipulating him. And he supposedly is their friend. They’re supposedly on his side. What is manipulation? How do you know if you’re manipulating someone? If you’re manipulating the enemy and you are in the right, then it’s okay. Like if you’re at war against the Germans and you manipulate them to thinking that there’s an army amassing for an invasion and we’ve actually built up paper airplanes and paper trucks and ships made out of cardboard. That’s a manipulation and that’s fine. The Bible even shows that as when God advises Joshua to take the city of Ai. And he suggests that they use a manipulation. Well, when it’s your enemy and it’s a just war, you could manipulate the enemy. Or if you’re fighting against abortionists and trying to save a child from being killed, you could manipulate the enemy. But it’s wrong to manipulate your friends, to manipulate your family, or try to manipulate believers or ministries. When you are saying something wrong, and asking someone to do something or to think something, but you have an ulterior motive. It’s not the reason that you’re giving, it’s for another reason, then you’re manipulating them. And this happens all the time, and we need to be very aware and ask God to identify, Lord, help us to see, search my heart, see if there’s any wicked way in me. Am I manipulating my loved ones or friends? Am I telling them something because I want to accomplish something else? And so isn’t that exactly what they’re doing? They’re saying, King, you’re so great, we need a law that no one could pray to any god other than you for 30 days. And the king thinks, wow, I like that law. Now, he also likes Daniel. He doesn’t know that they’re trying to set up Daniel to be killed. So they’re manipulating him. And he is… foolish for being seduced by their manipulation and his great sin of pride is what causes him to be vulnerable that whoever petitions any god or man for 30 days except you oh king shall be cast into the den of lions And if you recall, the Romans had a theme on that because they would take innocent people, Christians, and feed them to the lions. Verse 8, now, O king, establish the decree and sign the writing so that it cannot be changed according to the law of the Medes and the Persians, which does not alter. Now, do you notice that? If a king of the Medes and the Persians, Media Persia, if he issues a decree, it cannot be changed No matter what. Not even he could change it. That was their custom. That was their law. Now what is that based on? Ego. An ego and pride to the max. If the king says something, then that something must be done. Even if he finds out that he’s about to do something that should not be done. Something that’s terribly unnecessary. Still, that’s just too bad. It must be done because he said it. God is not like that. God is not like that. That is Calvinist theology. Calvinist theology is, if God says something, it must be done. Doesn’t matter what. Well, remember Nineveh? God said that there’s a prophecy from God through his prophet Jonah that in 40 days Nineveh would be destroyed. That’s the prophecy. So God said it. It has to happen in 40 days. But Nineveh repented. And so the book of Jonah says explicitly and God repented and he did not do that which he said he would do. Unlike pagan kings, God is eager to display humility. But Calvinists, if they could remake God in their image, in their theology, they would turn God into a pagan king whose words cannot be altered into a stone idol who cannot be changed. Why? Because they say that his power, because of his power, everything must happen by his power. They elevate that. Omnipotence and sovereignty and control above everything else about God. But God values humility more than power. Think about that. Which two, if you were asked, what does God value more, power or humility? Well, imagine if God gave to Satan, to the devil, all power. So God, he could delegate power. He does that. He created powers and principalities and authorities and thrones and dominions, and he created Satan as a great and powerful angel, an archangel. Well, what if God gave to Satan all power, Do you think Satan would use it? You better believe he’d use it. Do you think he would show humility and be humble? No, not at all. To God, humility is so much greater than power. And humility is a greatness that cannot be given. God, throughout all eternity past, had all power.

SPEAKER 01 : 28:45

Hey, this is Nicole McBurney jumping into the broadcast. We are out of time for today, so be sure to come back next Thursday to hear the rest of this study. To find other resources and Bible studies, be sure to go to kgov.com slash store. That’s kgov.com slash store.