Join us in this riveting episode as we delve into the study of the Book of Daniel, guided by the insightful teachings of Bob Enyart. We explore the divine revelations and symbolism in Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams, shedding light on the captivating narratives that depict the rise and fall of powerful empires. With a unique perspective rooted in open theism, we ponder on how God’s will and human events intertwine, offering a fresh understanding of ancient scripture.
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country, and welcome to Bob and Yart Live. Today, we’re getting into a study of the Book of Daniel done by my father and predecessor, Bob and Yart. And if you want, you do not want to miss this. If you want to get all of Bob and Yart’s Bible studies for just $10, you can get that at nyart.shop that has all of these Daniel studies. You do not want to miss those. But today, we’re getting into this study of Daniel, So exciting. Hey, if you can’t afford that $10, email us, service at kgov.com, and we will find a way to get you those Bible studies. Hey, this is Daniel, Bob Enyart’s study of Daniel. So exciting. I’ll see you on the other end.
SPEAKER 02 :
Please turn to Daniel chapter four. We have been doing a Bible study of Daniel this summer, and we’re going at the pace of one chapter a per week, per Sunday night, and I wanted to bring the congregation up to speed so that people could feel comfortable if they’d like to join us in progress since we’re now a few chapters in. So what I’ll do is just a very brief review of the first three chapters of Daniel, and then I thought we could look at Daniel 4 together right now. And then whoever would like to join us in the evenings beginning tonight will be in Daniel chapter 5. And we always say, Lord willing, not always, but we want him to know that we recognize his authority over us and he could call us all to be with him today. And then we would not have our Bible study as scheduled this evening. So we often say, Lord willing. So this is an open theist Bible study of the book of Daniel. That means it’s coming from the perspective that God is free and he has a will and that the future is not settled but open because God could have new thoughts. And he could design a new flower if he wants, write a new song. He could do these things. And so in chapter 1, we saw the captivity of Judah, southern Israel, by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who went and he took many of the Jews from their homes and resettled them in Babylon or southern Iraq. Now we call that King Nebuchadnezzar. He’s actually Nebuchadnezzar II. but the world calls him Nebuchadnezzar because his story is in the Bible and As another indication of countless indicators that the Bible is God’s Word, aside from being the world’s number one bestseller through the centuries, the whole world refers to the king of Egypt as Pharaoh, even though Egypt, the Egyptian language, doesn’t have a word Pharaoh. That’s the Bible’s word for the king of Egypt, so the whole world calls him Pharaoh. And likewise, The whole world calls this guy Nebuchadnezzar, even though historians recognize that Nebuchadnezzar lived 500 years earlier, he’s Nebuchadnezzar II. He’s the second, but we don’t call him the second, because for the most part, in our collective consciousness, we forget the first guy, because he’s not in the Bible. And so… This Nebuchadnezzar took thousands of the Jews from southern Israel and into captivity in Babylon, including Daniel and three of his associates, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. When we looked at chapter 1, verse by verse, in chapter 2, we saw what their names meant in the Hebrew, and they were names that honored the true God, the living God, the God of Abraham, and they changed them to pagan names to honor their pagan gods. So that’s what they did. They wanted to identify these men who loved and honored God. They wanted to give them a new identity so that they would honor the false gods of the Babylonians. Chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream. And it was so terrifying to him. It’s so dramatic to him that he called all the wise men, the Magi, the Chaldeans, everybody in to tell him the meaning of the dream. And they said, okay, king, we will just tell us the dream. And he said, no, I won’t tell you the dream. You tell me the dream and then you interpret it because otherwise I’ll kill you. And they said, well, that’s not fair. You’re supposed to tell us the dream first. And he said, no, you’re a bunch of liars. So if I tell you the dream, you just make up the meaning, the interpretation. So you tell me the dream and then you interpret it. Then I know you’re not making it up. And they said, this has never been done before. And he said, I don’t care. I’m the king. And he started killing them. And then God gave the interpretation to Daniel, the dream and the interpretation. And so the king made Daniel a leader in his empire, along with his associates, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. The next chapter, Daniel 3, Daniel is off on the king’s business somewhere, perhaps as an emissary. We don’t know. He’s not there. And the king starts to think about the interpretation Daniel gave to his dream, and the king didn’t like it. Because Daniel said, “‘King, you dreamed of a great image.'” And this image had the head of gold. That’s you. And then it had breasts of bronze and legs of iron and feet of clay. And these are subsequent empires that will replace you. And the king was so stunned at Daniel being able to tell him his dream and the interpretation that The whole empire knew of the dream, what it was, the threat to the Magi, and then Daniel coming forward and revealing the dream and the interpretation. The whole empire knew it. So the king was so excited, but then he started to think about it. And he thought, you know what? I don’t really like that dream all that much. I don’t like that dream because that dream says that my empire, the work of my hands will come to nothing. It will be replaced by another empire. And I don’t like that. So I’m going to build an image 100 feet tall and 10 feet wide of a man like I dreamed in my dream, only it’s not going to be gold and bronze and iron and clay. It’s going to be all gold because no one or nothing and no God will depose me in my kingdom. It’s up to me what happens to my kingdom afterward. And so he said, now when the musicians play, you have to bow down to my image. But Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah said, no, we will not do it. And so the king called for them and they said to his face, we will not worship your image. We only worship the true God. And if he wants to deliver us, he can. And if he doesn’t want to deliver us, it doesn’t matter. We would rather die for him than live for you. And so he threw them into the fiery furnace, and there was a Christophany, God the Son, appearing in the furnace. And they survived. And just like the king did with the fiery furnace, just like the king did with Daniel, he said, wow, the God of Daniel, he’s the real God. And then over the next… months and a few years, he forgot that, and he wanted to be God again. So he said, if you don’t worship my image, you’ll be killed. So then the true God saved these three, and so the king issued another decree. He was convinced yet again. And he said, you know what? If you don’t worship the God of these guys, the God of Abraham, I will cut you in pieces. And Now, do you think that was God’s will that Nebuchadnezzar say, if you don’t worship Jehovah, you’ll be cut in pieces? No, but it’s the accurate record of what happened at the time. And so the Holy Spirit inspired Daniel to include that account in this book of Daniel. So now we come to Daniel chapter 4. And Nebuchadnezzar, the king, and by the way, this is it. After this chapter, he’s gone. from the book. We read about Belshazzar then, his son, who became king after him, but he’s done after this chapter. Now, there are things he did that are only maybe alluded to in Daniel, but they’re expounded on in other books of the Bible, like Chronicles and Jeremiah and elsewhere, and in history, because he sacked Jerusalem, and he sacked it but good. And he went after Tyre. Remember God said to Nebuchadnezzar, I’m going to give you the city of Tyre and you’ll carry away the spoils of the land. But then he went to war against the city of Tyre inside and on the coast, the Mediterranean. For so long, the battle was waged for so long that the Bible says that his army went bald. His army went bald during the battle. And he never… took the spoils of Tyre and Sidon. He never did. And during his interaction with the people of God, the Hebrews, and God’s prophet Daniel, he’d do something good, he’d do something bad. He’d do something good, he’d do something bad. And so God’s blessing would be there and then removed. His blessing would be there and then removed. So we get an open theist perspective of prophecy in the book of Daniel when we only study the Bible from the view that God is a person who is free. And how is it that God could predict what kingdom would rise to replace Babylon? How could God know that it would be the kingdom of the Medes and the Persians? How could he see it? Because we can see it in the dream. We could tell that that’s what God is referring to. And then it would be replaced by the Greek empire and then by the Roman empire. How could God see it? Doesn’t that prove that God predestines everything? Or doesn’t it prove that he has a snapshot or a video of the future? No, we have human beings who have been so incredibly insightful that they have predicted what would happen in subsequent centuries. And I think of Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote that the following century would be characterized in international affairs by the fact that the Americans and those across the Atlantic, the British, spoke the same language. And he said that factor will dominate world history. And how did he know that? Did he predestine everything? Did he have a crystal ball to look into the future? No, he was wise and he was observant and God a million times so. So now we come to Daniel chapter 4. And Nebuchadnezzar, the king… writes a letter to all peoples, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth, peace be multiplied to you. And peace is beautiful when you can have it, but ultimately it’s truth and righteousness that we fight for, not peace. When peace is your goal, you will settle for misery and injustice and wickedness to have peace. Next Sunday, Ken and Joe and others will go to the Gay Pride Parade, they call it, downtown Denver, with tens of thousands of people. And them being there, they’ll deny peace to some segment of the march. There won’t be peace on their block. Last week, Bryce, friends of the Ballantines, Lance Ballantyne invited him to come by and Bryce is a musician extraordinaire from California. He’s making a Christian documentary. And he was a hardcore atheist liberal. And he was at a gay pride parade in California. And he was offered $100 to carry a sign around that said, God hates homosexuals. Only they abbreviated it to four letters. God hates. So these were the homosexuals paying liberals and atheists and homosexuals to pretend that they were Christians because if Fred Phelps didn’t exist, they would invent him. Because they want Christians to look like they hate their neighbor. They want that. And so some Christians, sadly, give them what they want unwisely. But peace, where you can get it, and eventually God will bring peace, but great turmoil will come first. But Nebuchadnezzar realized people like peace. Peace be multiplied to you. I thought it good to declare the signs and wonders that the most high God has worked for me. How great are his signs and how mighty his wonders. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and his dominion is from generation to generation. When people today claim that miracles happen, usually they’re secret events that nobody else saw or experienced, and only the true believers will acknowledge that a miracle occurred. That’s not how it worked in the Bible. In the Bible, when God did miracles, most of the time they were done out in public in front of an audience, which was mostly made up of unbelievers, and usually before kings and emperors and governors, Pontius Pilate, Egypt, the armies of Egypt, Pharaoh and his household, in this case, the king of Babylon. That’s where God did the miracles. And the miracles were then woven into the history of the world. And so they’re recorded in the Bible so that we could have faith all this time later. So Nebuchadnezzar writes that he wants people to know what God has done. Verse 4, I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at rest in my house and flourishing in my palace. I saw a dream which made me afraid. Now, this is now a second dream. This is another dream. And the thoughts on my bed and the visions of my head troubled me. Therefore, I issued a decree to bring all the wise men of Babylon before me that they might make known to me the interpretation of the dream. So they were blessed because Daniel came through with the first dream. So this time he didn’t say, tell me the dream or I’ll kill you. He figures Daniel’s still available, and if they can’t get it, he’ll call Daniel. So, unbelievers are often spared an early judgment because of the salt and light of the body of Christ. The salt and light of the body of Christ. And so, he brought all these wise men to him, and verse 7 says, Then the magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans, it’s part of Babylon, Chaldea, and the soothsayers came in, and I told them the dream, but they did not make known to me its interpretation. But at last Daniel came before me, his name is Belteshazzar, according to the name of my God. In him is the spirit of the holy God, and I told the dream before him. Now that’s peculiar, right? Nebuchadnezzar has a hard time keeping his gods straight. It’s very difficult for him. He falls in and out of acknowledging that the God of the Hebrews is the true God. Now, Daniel’s name, we went through all the names that were changed by the Babylonians in our Sunday night study, but Daniel’s name, and they all had beautiful names, his meant God is judge. God is judge. Well, they changed it to Belteshazzar, which is Bel is the name of their God. The Canaanites called him Bel. The Babylonians called him Bel, B-E-L. Oh, no relation. And so Belteshazzar means the wife of Bel shall protect the king. The wife of Bel shall protect the king. And in fact, his son, who shows up in the next chapter as king, is Belteshazzar. So just Bel shall protect the king. So Nebuchadnezzar, he’s explaining at least… how daniel got this name daniel came before me his name is belt issues are according to the name of my god That’s how we named him. But in him is the spirit of the true God, the holy God. And I told the dream before him saying, Belteshazzar, chief of the magicians, because I know that the spirit of the holy God is in you and no secret troubles you, explain to me the visions of my dream that I have seen and its interpretation. These were the visions of my head while on my bed.” I was looking and behold a tree in the midst of the earth and its height was great. Now, in the Bible, God gives people dreams and visions. And sometimes, as you might imagine, the visions are so vivid that they feel like they are there. They can’t tell even once they come out of it. Like the Apostle Paul said, God gave me a vision of heaven, and I actually can’t tell if I was really there or if it was just a vision. And with our age of virtual reality, that’s not very real. In reality TV, that’s the opposite of reality. We could sort of imagine that God who created our senses could give us a vision, plug into those senses, and we see, hear, feel, taste, and touch everything as though we were there. And so this was a dream that made a big impact on Nebuchadnezzar. By the way, when John was given a vision of the end times, he wasn’t transported into the future time travel. He was given a vision of what the end times will be like. And so Nebuchadnezzar said, I saw a tree in the midst of the earth and its height was great. God sometimes uses a tree and he uses Lucifer as an analogy for a mighty person on earth or for a king. Like in Ezekiel, twice, two different chapters, he says to the king of Egypt, you are like the tree that was in the garden of Eden. You’re like that tree. And to another king, you were like Lucifer. You were like the anointed cherub in the Garden of Eden in his great fall when pride welled up in him and sin was found in him. Notice, not that God put sin in him. decreed or predestined. No. But sin was found in him. And then he fell. And God says to the king, you are like Lucifer in his fall. Or to Pharaoh, you are like the tree in the Garden of Eden, that great tree that fell. And that we see as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So here, again, God is using this imagery. And by the way, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a symbol of the law in the Bible. Because that was the only law initially, don’t eat from that tree. That was the law, and if you eat from it, you will die. So the curse came from the tree, and then Jesus was nailed to a tree, undoing the curse. But in an interesting metaphor, a visual picture, that tree was cut down and in the global flood it went to hell, basically, at least as an analogy. But its roots are still in the earth. In other words, its influence is still here. There are still billions of people who think that they will live forever or go to nirvana or eternal life if only they’re good enough, if only they keep the law. So the influence of the tree, the nations have grown up in its shadow. But let’s get back to Nebuchadnezzar. The tree grew and became strong. Its height reached to the heavens and it could be seen to the ends of all the earth. Its leaves were lovely and its fruit abundant and in it was food for all. And by the way, I’m not saying that even in this dream, this tree is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden. I’m just pointing out that God likes this kind of metaphor. And he might like it especially because he used the tree in Eden, a real tree, as a metaphor for obeying him or disobeying him. And so the beasts of the field found shade under it, and the birds of the heavens dwelt in its branches, and all flesh was fed from it. I saw in the visions of my head while on my bed, and there was a watcher, a holy one, coming down from heaven. He cried aloud and said thus, Chop down the tree and cut off its branches. Strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. Let the beast get out from under it and the birds from its branches. Nevertheless, leave the stump and roots in the earth bound with a band of iron and bronze. Remember the image had gold and bronze and iron and then it deteriorated into a mixture of iron and clay. And that was a symbol of the deterioration of the empires from a pure monarchy, which Nebuchadnezzar represented, down through the Medes and the Persians of the two arms of the chest of bronze, and then down to the Roman Empire, which splits eventually into just the nations of the world and the ten toes and all the nations of Europe. And from there, that world domination sort of crumbles. And it is possible in the end times that we’ll return to that type of an economy and a political system where there is a centralized authority. And so, nevertheless, leave the stump and roots in the earth bound with a band of iron and bronze in the tender grass of the field. let it be wet with the dew of heaven and let him graze with the beast on the grass of the earth. Now this is the dream. What does it mean? Well, Daniel’s going to come along and tell him what it means. And Daniel’s going to do so with fear and trepidation because it’s not a pleasant interpretation. Verse 16, let his heart be changed from that of a man. Let him be given the heart of a beast and let seven times pass over him. In the book of Daniel, a time, times, and half a time, we see explicitly later in Daniel that that word is used for a year. A year is a span of time. 365 times the earth is rotates on its axis as it orbits the sun once. So a year is a period of time. This decision is by the decree of the watchers and the sentence by the word of the holy ones in order that the living may know that the most high rules in the kingdom of men gives it to whomever he will and sets over it the lowest of men. Now, In the Bible, God comes and intervenes in some extraordinary ways. It’s so extraordinary that it makes it into the account of holy writ. It’s there in the sacred history that is the history of the world that’s recorded in the Bible because God intervened. The whole history of the world isn’t in the Bible because God didn’t intervene in the whole history of the world. The miraculous is when God came and intervened and it was so extraordinary that typically it was written up in the Word. So it is a mistaken type of interpretation to assume that whenever God does something a certain way in the Bible, then every time that circumstance appears, He has to do it the same way every time. That’s just a mistake. There are many who have been lepers throughout history. There are many who have been in terrible famine where they and their children are suffering, perhaps near death. And Jesus remembered that there were two people in the Old Testament that he had helped. One was a widow and the other was a leper. one in the time of Elijah and the other in the time of Elisha. And Jesus said, you know, I remember helping this widow. Now that doesn’t mean that he helps every widow. Well, what if there’s another widow who prays as earnestly as the first widow? Does that mean he’s guaranteed he’s going to do a miracle? No. And the same with a leper and the same with a king and the same with an empire or a nation. God can depose a king. That doesn’t mean that every evil king God will depose. And if he hasn’t deposed him, that means God is micromanaging how many years that he remains in office. That does not mean that. That is an utter confusion of interpretation. So in this case, God wants Nebuchadnezzar to know that God is inclined to depose him unless he repents.
SPEAKER 01 :
Stop the tape. Stop the tape. Hey, we are out of time here on KLTT Radio. If you want the entire thing, you can find it in two different ways. One, you can go to kgov.com, click on the store, and purchase the Daniel Bible Study, which is a little bit expensive. I’ll be honest. It’s a little bit expensive. Or for way cheaper, you can go to nyart.shop. and get all of Bob Enyart’s Bible studies for just $10. You do not want to miss that. That’s decades of Bible studies for just $10. What a steal. If that’s too expensive for you, reach out service at kgov.com, and we will find a way to get that to you. No charge. We want to be a blessing to you. Again, enyart.shop. That’s E-N-Y-A-R-T dot S-H-O-P. Hey, may God bless you guys.
