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Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI200460A
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00:28 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:30 This is a program 00:32 bringing you thought provoking insights 00:34 and information on religious liberty 00:36 through the ages 00:38 right up to our present situation, 00:40 and in the United States and often around the world. 00:43 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty Magazine, 00:47 and I want to talk to you 00:49 about sort of ancient events. 00:54 I said through the ages. 00:55 Let's go really back to 600 years BC, 01:00 because I want to talk about Daniel 01:02 and his friends, 01:04 and their captivity in Babylon, 01:06 the capital of the known world at that time. 01:11 When you read the history there, 01:12 God's people, of course, have been delivered by... 01:16 I don't think God delivered them up directly, 01:18 but God warned that by their neglect 01:22 of some of the precepts 01:23 that He'd laid down through His prophets 01:25 that they were likely to be exposed 01:31 to the negative things around them 01:33 and that included conquest and captivity. 01:36 So King Nebuchadnezzar, the leader of... 01:39 The king of Babylon came sweeping in, 01:42 destroyed the city, 01:44 killed many people 01:45 and took many captives and hostages. 01:48 And so Daniel and his three friends 01:50 found themselves 01:51 probably as members of the ruling families 01:55 found themselves in Babylon 01:57 probably too found themselves emasculated 01:59 so they could better suit the king's purposes. 02:02 I remember being really troubled by that 02:04 as a young guy, but it's almost certainly so. 02:07 That was the standard practice 02:10 to remove any possibility of other affections, 02:14 also to remove the possibility 02:16 that they would breed with the conquerors. 02:18 They didn't want that, 02:19 and that they wanted 02:21 to easy facile servants of the king. 02:26 And we know that Daniel and his friends 02:29 were put under the command of Arioch, 02:32 I think his name was the head of the... 02:37 of the eunuchs. 02:39 And so this, the training began. 02:42 I want to talk about just several incidents 02:46 in the story that's outlined there. 02:48 But to put it into context, 02:50 remember where Babylon was 02:53 because we know where, now where the site of Babylon is. 02:57 It's just about 60 miles down the Euphrates River 03:00 from the present day city of Baghdad. 03:03 You know, Gulf War 2 03:05 taught us a lot about geography, 03:06 but maybe people forget this biblical aspect of it. 03:10 I remember Mark Twain, a humorist of sorts. 03:15 I grew up reading 03:16 Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. 03:18 Not so funny, but very good for young people. 03:20 But Mark Twain was alive 03:23 at the time of the US military intervention 03:26 in the Philippines. 03:27 And he said once, darkly, he says, 03:30 "Foreign wars are God's way of teaching geography 03:33 to Americans." 03:35 And I noticed the other day, our President, 03:38 this is before the election, so President Trump, 03:43 I don't think himself 03:45 always the greatest on geography, 03:47 but he thought he had a reporter recently, 03:49 they got a bit snarky with him. 03:52 And so he says, you know, "Point on this map to Ukraine. 03:55 Point to Ukraine" 03:56 And the woman was able to so he got so mad, 03:59 he dismissed it but an unfortunate majority, 04:03 probably people are not too clear 04:05 on where things are. 04:06 But I'm telling you, Babylon, 04:08 just down the river from Baghdad, 04:10 and at that time 04:12 it was the greatest city in the world. 04:16 The hieroglyphics we have from that era 04:18 show an advanced civilization, 04:20 the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were... 04:23 While they're gone, they've been accounted 04:25 by contemporary references and projected forward 04:28 is one of the great 04:30 seven great wonders of the world. 04:33 This was a moment 04:34 when these young Jewish guys 04:37 taken from a relatively obscure city 04:39 and taken to the New York City of their time, 04:42 or let's say, the Paris, 04:44 I know there's some overseas viewers, 04:47 so it's not just New York. 04:49 But this was an amazing shift. 04:51 And they're in the middle of this pagan, 04:56 non-Jewish culture, 04:58 they were ready and able 05:01 and forced to stand by their spiritual guns 05:04 and witness to that nation. 05:06 The singular story 05:08 that I think is important is 05:12 after Daniel had interpreted the dream for the king, 05:15 which is quite a story in itself, 05:17 the king misunderstanding, or by his personality, 05:21 misinterpreting the dream as applying to him, 05:26 rather than explaining the kingdoms through the ages, 05:31 he built on the Plains of Dura, 05:33 about an 80 foot statue, all of gold, 05:36 I'm sure covered in gold 05:37 because there's barely enough gold in the world 05:40 to make such a statue. 05:42 You know that all the gold in the world 05:43 could fit into a warehouse in a cube. 05:47 There's not as much of it as people imagine. 05:50 But a gold covered statue 05:52 was erected and the king demanded 05:54 that everybody bowed down to it when the music played. 06:00 Daniel seems to have been away, 06:02 but his three friends were there. 06:04 And when the music played they stood. 06:07 And the king, obviously knowing them 06:10 and obviously, being friendly toward them, 06:14 said contrary to the instructions 06:16 before that, 06:17 which were said, you know, you're going to be killed 06:19 if you don't bow down. 06:20 He says, you know, "Let's play the music once more. 06:23 Another chance, boys. 06:26 If you bow down now, 06:27 all will be forgiven and they said, 06:29 "King, we don't need to think carefully 06:32 about answering you in this matter. 06:35 Our God is able to save us from you. 06:37 We're not under your power." 06:38 But they said "Even if He didn't redeem us 06:41 from this punishment, 06:43 we're not going to obey what you said." 06:45 This is an amazing denial of a secular king 06:49 claiming their loyalty. 06:51 And he said to them, in case they had any question, 06:53 he says, 06:54 "Why don't you respect me or my gods?" 06:57 He put the two together. 07:00 Which by the way is a great temptation 07:02 at the moment in the United States. 07:05 Church and state, long separate 07:06 are coming together very quickly, 07:08 where to be an American, 07:10 a good American is being equated 07:12 especially by the religious right, 07:14 with sort of the godly, Protestant thinking. 07:18 And, you know, 07:20 that they might have small amount of history to it, 07:22 but it's not a good dynamic. 07:26 So the king was not impressed when they refused. 07:32 And so he sent them into the fire. 07:34 And there in the fire, 07:36 he saw them walking around and he says, 07:38 "Didn't we put three men into the fire, 07:39 now there's four. 07:41 One like the Son of the God." 07:42 He didn't say like God, just a divine personage. 07:46 So it was very obvious 07:50 that God was working even in that pagan city, 07:53 that they were redeemed 07:55 from the secular power of the king, 07:58 that cause and effect 07:59 were not quite operating as normal, 08:02 that the faithful could be redeemed. 08:05 Then Daniel himself a little later, 08:07 when he was... 08:09 well respected the king, given special authority, 08:12 we don't quite know what his job was, 08:14 but he was known by the king working closely with him. 08:17 And the political enemies conspired to set the king up 08:21 to trick him into condemning Daniel 08:24 for praying to his God, rather than to the king. 08:28 And Daniel was thrown into the lions' den 08:31 as the punishment required, and delivered. 08:36 And he said to the king, he says, you know, 08:38 "My God has delivered me from the power of the lions." 08:44 I thought about this a number of times 08:48 and relating it to our day, 08:50 I'm reminded of something that Ellen White, 08:56 a young woman 08:57 who with her husband, James White, 09:00 both of them were part of the Millerite movement. 09:03 And after the disappointment they remained faithful, 09:05 studied their Bibles with others, 09:07 realized that the date setting was not good. 09:09 In fact, Ellen White once said, 09:11 "No time prophecy after 1844." 09:13 So, Adventists, don't set dates. 09:16 But we came out of a date setting phenomenon, 09:19 there's no question. 09:21 And Ellen White wrote to Adventists early on, 09:26 when they believed 09:27 and I still believe that God was influencing 09:30 what she said and did 09:31 that they were portentous dreams, 09:34 let's just put it that way. 09:35 She shared a dream she had in the early... 09:40 In the late 1800s rather. 09:43 And I want to relate this to Daniel. 09:46 Not that everything happened 600 years ago. 09:49 Six hundred years ago the fires could not burn them. 09:53 Six hundred years ago, 09:55 the lions' mouth was not full of ravaging teeth, 10:00 they were shut by the angels. 10:03 In our day, there is threat on every hand. 10:06 Even as I'm dictating this, 10:10 the Coronavirus is freaking the world out, 10:13 we don't know, a month, two months from now, 10:16 whether this will be another black death, 10:19 another plague, another massive die off or not. 10:22 But we do know that in our era, 10:25 those sort of things hang over us as a grand threat. 10:29 And we do know that when such things happen, 10:32 other bizarre social phenomena follow, 10:35 there's no question. 10:39 The inquisitions in Europe 10:42 followed hard on the heels of the plague 10:45 that wiped out about a third of Europe. 10:48 One thing breeds another. 10:50 And Ellen White wrote something 10:52 that I want to share with our larger audience. 10:54 It was given to Adventist. 10:56 The early group of believers, 10:59 and you can believe the dream or not, 11:01 but what the message she got out of it, 11:03 I think is something for our day. 11:05 This is what she wrote. 11:07 It's not really a normally published thing. 11:09 It's in... 11:11 called Manuscript releases, 11:12 which is circulated but not in any book per Se. 11:15 She says, "In the night, 11:17 I was I thought, in a room, 11:21 but not in my own house. 11:25 I was in a city where I knew not. 11:29 And I heard explosion after explosion." 11:32 I remember first reading this around the time of 9/11. 11:38 And there's no question that from a religious point, 11:40 liberty point of view, 11:42 things have not been the same since 9/11. 11:45 Among other legal shifts, the Patriot Act, 11:49 brought a broad array of restrictions 11:52 on individual freedom 11:56 and oversight on individual action 11:59 that really is against 12:01 the very principles of the constitution 12:03 that protect, 12:05 supposed to protect the privacy. 12:07 Since 9/11, 12:08 also the religious deck has been stacked, 12:12 where we see 12:14 religious fundamentalists of one sort 12:16 bringing most of these terrorist actions to us. 12:19 But the authorities not knowing much 12:22 about any religion 12:23 have come to the conclusion that 12:27 fanatical religious extremists of all types are dangerous. 12:32 Or to put it another way, 12:34 it's been stated to believe your Bible deeply 12:40 so that you'll order your life after it makes you an extremist 12:45 and a fundamentalist. 12:48 So these are dangerous times. 12:50 And I first noticed this quote on 9/11, 12:54 when the buildings exploded with the collisions with the... 12:58 The airline has collided with these two buildings, 13:00 when they collapsed, 13:03 the shock to New York City and indeed the whole country, 13:06 the whole world was severe. 13:08 They have these towers of complacency, 13:10 these Hanging Gardens of Babylon 13:12 come crashing down into the middle of a city 13:16 where people were running for their lives 13:17 and screaming with horror. 13:21 It's something that certainly in our lifetimes, 13:23 we will never see again. 13:26 It was... 13:27 As one writer 13:29 in a French magazine pointed out, 13:30 he says, "It was real." 13:32 But he says "It was worse than real. 13:35 It was symbolic." 13:36 And symbolically modern complacency, 13:40 these structures of our modern technology 13:44 came crashing down, 13:46 and the threat was visceral, and real, and immediate. 13:50 And we were not protected by distance as we imagine. 13:55 We're not protected like the drone pilots, 13:57 they sit in front of a screen, 13:59 half a world away 14:00 from where they're zapping people to death, 14:03 all of that affection disappeared in a moment. 14:06 And we saw people living in New York City, 14:09 in the middle of a city, plummeting to their deaths, 14:11 rather than to burn and to fall with the buildings, 14:14 an amazing moment. 14:16 And after a short break, 14:18 I'll come back and I'll finish this quote. 14:19 An amazing quote, 14:21 which shows not only a perception of an event, 14:26 possibly the event that we saw, 14:28 but how we should respond to this. 14:30 Stay with us. I'll be back. |
Revised 2020-05-07