Archaeology

Inerrant Truth and Daniel

When the Bible’s detractors read a supernatural account, it is necessary to naturalize the event. Yes, it escapes them that the Bible is a supernatural, inerrant, God-authored text. It escapes the minimalists that prophets of God, by divine revelation, foretold and foretell the future.
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Inerrant Truth and Daniel

Article#: 1502

John 14:13-14:

13 And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

14 If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.

The absoluteness of these words and the all-encompassing nature of this promise are staggering.  This passage is qualified with other passages, such as I John 5:14-15:

14 And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us:

15 And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.

Consider James 4:3:

Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

It’s a beautiful thing to be filled with the Holy Ghost as they were on the day of Pentecost because the solution for making the perfect prayer is received.  Romans 8:26-27:

26 Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

27 And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

The very first commandment Jesus gives the church as He prepares to ascend into heaven is for them to tarry at Jerusalem until they were baptized with the Holy Ghost (Luke 24:49-51 and Acts 1:4-9).  The followers of Christ were filled with the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost and Acts 2:4 reads:

And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

When Jesus describes a believer in Mark 16:17-18, He states:

17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;

18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

Have you yet to receive the baptism in the Holy Ghost as they did in the Bible?  Click onto the Holy Ghost series on GodSaidManSaid for answers and instructions.  You can receive this supernatural baptism on this website, as others have, in the privacy of your own home.  This is the doorway to a powerful and glorious arsenal of supernatural capabilities. 

Note that being born-again is a prerequisite to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and some of you may have yet to make your peace with God.  Are you ready to be set free from all your sin and shame?  Is today the day you will repent of your sins and commit your life to Jesus Christ?  Will today be the day you can mark your calendar as the day you were born again?  If so, then today will be the day you will participate in the greatest miracle of all time.  Click onto “Further With Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the supernatural Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Daniel 6:16-24:

16 Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel, and cast him into the den of lions. Now the king spake and said unto Daniel, Thy God whom thou servest continually, he will deliver thee.

17 And a stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den; and the king sealed it with his own signet, and with the signet of his lords; that the purpose might not be changed concerning Daniel.

18 Then the king went to his palace, and passed the night fasting: neither were instruments of music brought before him: and his sleep went from him.

19 Then the king arose very early in the morning, and went in haste unto the den of lions.

20 And when he came to the den, he cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel: and the king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions?

21 Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live for ever.

22 My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions'' mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt.

23 Then was the king exceeding glad for him, and commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, because he believed in his God.

24 And the king commanded, and they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces or ever they came at the bottom of the den.

MAN SAID: The Bible is a book of old folklore and fables. 

Now THE RECORD.  Welcome to GodSaidManSaid feature article 728.  All of these beautiful features are archived here in text and streaming audio for the edification of the saints and as bait for the fishers of men.  Every Thursday eve, God willing, they grow by one.  We are honored by your visit.  May God’s face shine upon you and yours with Light and Truth.

They’re called minimalists—or higher critics—and they are commonly found in the theological ranks.  These are skeptical of all claims of Biblical inerrancy and certainly of the miraculous accounts found in the Word of God.  It’s beyond them that a supernatural God could interact in the daily affairs of the lives of men. 

Years ago, a stranger (a young woman), came to the church asking for the elders to anoint her with oil and pray the prayer of faith.  She understood that this was God’s given prescription for healing as commanded in James 5:14-15:

14 Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:

15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.

She had a tumor the size of an egg above her breast.  She was already medically marked and scheduled for surgery the next morning.  We anointed her and prayed the prayer of faith.  The next morning, the operation took place and the medical people found no tumor. The embarrassed doctor could only offer the explanation that the diagnosis must have been in error.  I was somewhat shocked at the response of some Christians who actually bought the doctor’s response!  The proper response should have been: “Blessed be the name of the Lord who has healed and delivered our sister-in-Christ from the worst of outcomes!”  Was not that the intent of the prayer?  Many miracles are hidden in such foolishness. 

Bold-faced denial is not a modern contrivance.  This has been the M.O. of Satan’s camp from the beginning. 

A few paragraphs follow from the GodSaidManSaid feature, “Archaeology Certifies Bible, Miracles and All:”

The accuracy of Bible history—and, yes, all its miraculous accounts—is simply staggering.  Skeptics who challenge the accuracy of the Bible’s accounts abound, but their skepticism is being overturned on a very regular basis.  One of the world’s most renowned archaeologists, Dr. Eilat Mazar, had this to say concerning her confidence in the Bible’s history:

Mazar, who is both revered and reviled by some of her colleagues for being a “Biblical archaeologist,” says that the Bible is unquestionably the most important historical source for her work since it contains a “genuine historical account of the past.”  “I work with the Bible in one hand and the tools of excavation in the other,” she says.  “The Bible is the most important historical source.” 

In reviewing Dr. Paul McCoy’s 468-page book, Scripture Insights from Science and Archaeology, we have pulled excerpts that highlight the accuracy of Holy Writ.  They follow:

Genesis 23:3-18.  Cave and Machpelah.  The name means “double or fold.”  The site was sanctified in the Hasmonean period, and Herod the Great built the present building over the cave in 10 BC.  This is very likely the oldest authentic site in Israel, with Jacob’s well at Shechem the second oldest.  It was purchased from Ephron (the Hittite) at Hebron (20 miles south of Jerusalem).  In a bargaining tactic still used today, by insisting on paying for the cave, Abraham was obligated to buy it (at the offered price, 400 shekels of silver ca. [approximately] 300 troy oz.).  The Code of Hammurabi lists the wages of a working man at 8-11 shekels per year—Law 274, making the cost of Abraham’s cave equal to 36 years’ worth of wages.  A high price indeed. 

2 Chronicles 26:21-23: Uzziah the Leper.  On the grounds, in the cemetery of the Russian Church of Mary Magdalene at the foot of the Mt. of Olives, was found in 1931, an ossuary (now in the Israel Museum) with the inscription, “Hither were brought the bones of Uzziah king of Judah.  Do not open.”  His tomb was originally located in “the burial field of the kings” and not in the royal Tomb of the Kings in the City of David, because he was a leper. [End of quote]

Remember Sahadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace? 

Daniel 3:19. Fiery furnace of ca. 600 BC.  Excavations at Babylon found what looked like a brick kiln; however, an inscription reads, “This is the place of burning where men who blasphemed the gods of Chaldea died by fire.”  An inscription of Ashurbanipal 668-627 BC reads, “Saulmagina my rebellious brother, who made war with me, they threw into a burning fiery furnace and destroyed his life.” 

A king of Larsa (north of Ur), a contemporary of King Hammurabi gave sentence for a slave to be thrown into a furnace.  [End of quote]

They threw Daniel in the lions’ den, but he was not harmed.  Dr. McCoy continues:

Daniel 6:16.  Den of Lions ca. 538 BC.  The excavator, Dieulafoy, at Babylon, fell into what looked like a well, but upon examination found an inscription, “The place of execution where men who angered the king died torn by wild animals.” 

At the place in Shushan (Suza), a record list was found of 484 men of high rank who had died in a lions’ den.

One of Ashurbanipal’s inscriptions reads, “The rest of the people who had rebelled they threw alive among bulls and lions, as Sennacherib my father (grandfather) used to do, Lo, again following his footsteps, those men I threw into the midst of them.” [End of quote]

The archaeologists have unearthed ancient, pre-Moses (who penned the first five books of the Bible), Sumerian tablets that describe the creation account.  Finally, from Dr. McCoy:

Genesis chapters one and two.  Creation account.  The Sumerian creation account on six tablets known as the Enuma elish (“when on high”) dates to about 2500 BC.  In Babylon, it was recited on the fourth day of the New Year’s festival.  Creation is described ex nihilo.  The first tablet describes the time when heaven and earth did not exist. 

One tablet describes the creation of a woman who is named Nin ti in Sumerian, translated as “the lady of the rib” and “the lady who make live.”  Thus, well before Moses, these concepts were known, but badly garbled, with accounts of gods and goddesses fighting for control.  Many seals from 2000 BC show a sacred tree and a serpent, but no text reports the Temptation of Eve.  The earliest Sumerian pictograph script dates to 3300 BC.  [End of quotes]

The GodSaidManSaid feature “The Astounding Book of Daniel—Minimalists Minimalized” reported concerning the account of the animalization of King Nebuchadnezzar.  A few excerpts follow:

The following excerpts are from the GodSaidManSaid feature “Nebuchadnezzar:”

Daniel 4:33 reads, “The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and did eat grass as an oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles’ feathers, and his nails like birds’ claws.”  Could the Bible’s account of the seven years of bizarre madness that possessed Nebuchadnezzar actually be true?  Does extra-Biblical information exist to corroborate the veracity of the Word of God?  As you should suspect, the answer is YES! 

The Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, is referenced in ten Old Testament books of the Bible and the book of Daniel is directly quoted by Jesus Christ.  Nebuchadnezzar’s existence is questioned by virtually no one. 

The animalization of Nebuchadnezzar is recorded in secular history and it has been shown to have happened to others.  The scientific term lycanthropy describes a psychological—or as a Christian would suspect, spiritual—malady.  M. Henze, in his book The Madness of King Nebuchadnezzar, quotes E.B. Pusey from his 1885 book published by Funk & Wagnalls.  It reads:

It is now conceded that the madness of Nebuchadnezzar agrees with the description of a rare sort of disease, called lycanthropy, from one form of it, of which our earliest notice is in a Greek medical writer of the 4th century after our Lord, in which the sufferer retains his consciousness in other respects, but imagines himself to be changed into some animal, and acts, up to a certain point, in conformity with that persuasion.  Those who imagined themselves changed into wolves howled like wolves, and (there is reason to believe, falsely) accused themselves of bloodshed.  Others imitated the cries of dogs; it is said that others thought themselves nightingales, lions, cats, or cocks, and these crowed like a cock. 

Agathangelos, a historian during the fifth century, wrote the book History of the Armenians, which is characterized as Christian hagiography, or in this case, the account of the Christianization of Armenia.  Hagiography is the study of the lives of saints.  The following excerpts are again from The Madness of King Nebuchadnezzar:

Twice in his History, Agathangelos refers to Nebuchadnezzar’s metamorphosis in Daniel 4.  The first reference occurs in an account of the punishment of King Trdat, following the martyrdom of Gregory and a group of nuns:

The king spent six days in profound grief and deep mourning because of his passionate love for the beautiful Rhipsime.  Then afterwards he arranged to go hunting; he had his soldiers gather the pack of hounds, the beaters scattered, the nets fixed and the traps set; then he went out to hunt in the plain of Parakan Shemak. 

But when the king, having mounted his chariot, was about to leave the city, then suddenly there fell on him punishment from the Lord.  An impure demon struck the king and knocked him down from his chariot. And in the likeness of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, he lost his human nature for the likeness of wild pigs and went about like them and dwelt among them.  Then entering a reedy place, in senseless abandon, he pastured on grass, and wallowed naked in the plain. 

Again, Henze reports:

Later in the History, Agathangelos returns to the comparison to lay out in greater detail the similarities in appearance between the two monarchs:

For his whole body had become hairy, and on his limbs bristles had grown like those of great boars.  And the nails of his hands and feet had hardened like the claws of beasts that dig the earth or eat roots.  Similarly, the appearance of his face had turned into the likeness of the hard snout of an animal living among reeds.  Because of the beast-like nature of his way of life, he had fallen from the honor of his throne, and he roamed about in the likeness of pasturing beasts among the animals in the reeds, lost to the society of men.  [End of quotes]

Isaiah 44:28:

That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.

This account was prophesied nearly 200 years prior to the birth of Cyrus.  This caused the minimalists to challenge the Hebrew dating of the book of Isaiah, reasoning that the Cyrus passage required that it was written after Cyrus began to reign—simply because, in their minds, miraculous prophecies are not possible. 

Again from “The Astounding Book of Daniel—Minimalists Minimalized:”

Somehow, it escapes the Biblical minimalists who go before men (and especially in religious circles) as the fount of God, but who, in fact, are the scribes and wolves in sheep’s clothing that Jesus warns of.  Yes, it escapes them that the Bible is a supernatural, inerrant, God-authored text.  It escapes the minimalists that prophets of God, by divine revelation, foretold and foretell the future. 

Something else has escaped the minimalists concerning the Biblical book of Isaiah and its legendary prophecies of King Cyrus.  It is that the history of this issue is thoroughly recorded by Flavius Josephus.  Josephus is arguably the most famous ancient historian of all time and certainly the most read.  Josephus records the following:

Thus saith Cyrus the King:—“Since God Almighty hath appointed me to be king of the habitable earth, I believe that He is that God which the nation of the Israelites worship; for indeed He foretold my name by the prophets, and that I should build Him a house at Jerusalem, in the country of Judea.” 

Cyrus also sent an epistle to the governors that were in Syria, the contents whereof follow:—

“KING CYRUS TO SISINNES AND SATHRABUZANES, SENDETH GREETING

“I have given leave to as many of the Jews that dwell in my country as please to return to their own country, and to rebuild their city, and to build the temple of God at Jerusalem, on the same place where it was before.  I have also sent my treasurer, Mithridates, and Zorobabel, the governor of the Jews, that they may lay the foundations of the temple, and may build it sixty cubits high, and of the same latitude, making three edifices of polished stones, and one of the wood of the country, and the same order extends to the altar whereon they offer sacrifices to God.  I require also, that the expenses for these things may be given out of my revenues.  Moreover, I have also sent the vessels which king Nebuchadnezzar pillaged out of the temple, and have given them to Mithridates the treasurer, and to Zorobabel the governor of the Jews, that they may have them carried to Jerusalem, and may restore them to the temple of God. [End of quotes]

When the Bible’s detractors read a supernatural account, it is necessary to naturalize the event as the new information in this feature will demonstrate.  Josephus wrote his history books shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  It is important to note that he had acquired the ancient library kept in the Jewish temple just prior to its destruction in 70 AD.  The following excerpts are from Josephus’s work, Antiquities of the Jews, and it concerns the prophet Daniel and the lions’ den—and the denial by his enemies that followed God’s miraculous deliverance of Daniel:

So Darius, hoping that God would deliver him, and that he would undergo nothing that was terrible by the wild beasts, bade him bear this accident cheerfully; and when he was cast into the den, he put his seal to the stone that lay upon the mouth of the den, and went his way, but he passed all the night without food and without sleep, being in great distress for Daniel; but when it was day, he got up, and came to the den, and found the seal entire, which he had left the stone sealed withal; he also opened the seal, and cried out, and called to Daniel, and asked him if he were alive; and as soon as he heard the king’s voice, and said that he had suffered no harm, the king gave order that he should be drawn up out of the den.  Now when his enemies saw that Daniel had suffered nothing which was terrible, they would not own that he was preserved by God, and by his providence; but they said, that the lions had been filled full with food, and on that account it was, as they supposed, that the lions would not touch Daniel, nor come to him; and this they alleged to the king; but the king, out of an abhorrence of their wickedness, gave order that they should throw in a great deal of flesh to the lions; and when they had filled themselves, he gave further order that Daniel’s enemies should be cast into the den, that he might learn whether the lions, now they were full, would touch them or not; and it appeared plain to Darius, after the princes had been cast to the wild beasts, that it was God who preserved Daniel, for the lions spared none of them, but tore them all to pieces, as if they had been very hungry, and wanted food.  I suppose, therefore, it was not their hunger, which had been a little before satisfied with abundance of flesh, but the wickedness of these men that provoked them [to destroy the princes:] for if it so please God, that wickedness might, by even those irrational creatures, be esteemed a plain foundation for their punishment.  [End of quote]

The skeptics continue to challenge because that is the spirit of their nature, but to the childlike, God’s Word is true and righteous altogether—a place to build a life that will last forever.

GOD SAID, Daniel 6:19-24:

19 Then the king arose very early in the morning, and went in haste unto the den of lions.

20 And when he came to the den, he cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel: and the king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions?

21 Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live for ever.

22 My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions'' mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt.

23 Then was the king exceeding glad for him, and commanded that they should take Daniel up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den, and no manner of hurt was found upon him, because he believed in his God.

24 And the king commanded, and they brought those men which had accused Daniel, and they cast them into the den of lions, them, their children, and their wives; and the lions had the mastery of them, and brake all their bones in pieces or ever they came at the bottom of the den.

MAN SAID: The Bible is a book of old folklore and fables. 

Now you have THE RECORD. 

 

 

 

References

Authorized King James Version

GodSaidManSaid, “Archaeology Certifies Bible, Mysteries and All

GodSaidManSaid, “The Astounding Book of Daniel—Minimalists Minimalized

Josephus, F., Complete Works, Kregel Publications, 1977

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