Episode 5 – Fulfilled Prophecy in the Bible – Daniel and Cyrus

Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

Script/Notes:

During the third year of King Belshazzar’s reign, I, Daniel, saw another vision, following the one that had already appeared to me. In this vision I was at the fortress of Susa, in the province of Elam, standing beside the Ulai River.

Then he said, “I am here to tell you what will happen later in the time of wrath. What you have seen pertains to the very end of time. The two-horned ram represents the kings of Media and Persia. The shaggy male goat represents the king of Greece and the large horn between his eyes represents the first king of the Greek Empire. The four prominent horns that replaced the one large horn show that the Greek Empire will break into four kingdoms, but none as great as the first.”

Daniel, chapter 8 verses 1 through 2 and 19 through 22, New Living Translation

The day is coming when you will see what Daniel the prophet spoke about—the sacrilegious object that causes desecration standing in the Holy Place.” (Reader, pay attention!) “Then those in Judea must flee to the hills. A person out on the deck of a roof must not go down into the house to pack. A person out in the field must not return even to get a coat. How terrible it will be for pregnant women and for nursing mothers in those days. And pray that your flight will not be in winter or on the Sabbath. For there will be greater anguish than at any time since the world began. And it will never be so great again. In fact, unless that time of calamity is shortened, not a single person will survive. But it will be shortened for the sake of God’s chosen ones

The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24 verses 15 through 22

VK: I’m Victoria K and today on Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. Today we are continuing our discussion on how we can have confidence that the Bible is truly the Word of God with RD Fierro, author and the Founder Crystal Sea Books. RD, I understand that today you would like to share a personal story as a way of helping people to understand why studying questions about Christianity and the Bible became so important to you?

RD: - Personal Story – there are some questions everyone must answer for themselves.

VK: Well, that was a little longer than the greetings we’ve heard in the past. But I think it makes an important point. There ARE some questions that everyone must answer for themselves. It calls to mind Jesus’s question to His disciples in Matthew 16:15 and the other synoptic gospels. “But who do you say that I am.” At one point in all our lives we are all going to have to answer that question. That gives us a lot to think about. So why don’t we just jump right into our main topic for today. Today you want to give us two particularly compelling examples of prophecies from scripture that were both given a couple of hundred years ahead of time. But that we now know were fulfilled in precisely the way the prophet predicted. And both of these prophecies are from the old Testament, right?

RD: Right. The first prophecy we want to talk about is from the Book of Daniel and it’s actually found in various forms in Chapters 2, 7, and 8. In our opening scriptures we heard part of the version from Chapter 8. The second prophecy is from the book of Isaiah and is found in both Chapters 44 and 45. Our opening scriptures were from a portion of Chapter 45. In some ways the prophecy from Isaiah is even more amazing if that’s possible. Because while the Daniel prophecy concerns empires and events, the Isaiah prophecy actually includes the name of a specific person who would do something almost 200 years before he did it.

VK: That sounds both amazing and interesting.

Fulfilled prophecy:

◦ So let’s start with Daniel. There is some debate, but even many Bible critics will acknowledge that Daniel lived in the sixth century before the birth of Christ, probably born between 620 B.C. and 615 B.C. Daniel lived a good, long life dying after 530 B.C. Even though Daniel was a Jew he lived in Babylon, which is located in modern day Iraq. Daniel had been taken as a captive to Babylon after the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar had conquered Jerusalem and carried off a large number of captives from the upper crust of Jewish society. Even though he was part of the captured Jews, Daniel became a prominent member of the Babylonian court back when Babylon was the supreme power in the mid-east. Early in his career Daniel interpreted a dream for the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, and his interpretation contained a prophecy of a succession of four great empires that would dominate the mid-east and parts of Europe for the next several hundred years. Here’s the prophecy of the coming empires from chapter 2.

▪ “The head of this image was of fine gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay.” (Daniel 2:32-33)

◦ The various parts of the image which was that of a gigantic statue represent 4 coming empires that would dominate the Middle East and portions of Europe. We now know that those empires were - in order - the Babylonians, the Medo-Persian, the Greeks, and the Romans.

• So Daniel survived long enough to see the Babylonian empire fall to the combination of the Medes and the Persians because history tells us that Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539 BC. And, remarkably enough, Daniel also became an important counselor to the new Persian rulers.

◦ Yep. And over his lifetime during the reign of the Medes and Persians, Daniel made several more prophecies that amplified the original prophecy, adding a large number of specific, significant details. But one of the things that’s really interesting is that even before Babylon fell to Cyrus he had already specifically named the empire which would succeed the Medo-Persian one as that of Greece (Daniel 8:21). That prophecy would have been laughable when Daniel uttered it.

◦ Remember that Daniel was prophesying before 539 B.C. At that time Greece was just a collection of minor warring city-states a continent away. Greece wasn’t even unified until almost two hundred years later under Philip of Macedon and it was only then that it began to pose a real threat to the Persians. Daniel’s prophecy that Greece would become the third dominant empire finally came true when Philip’s son, Alexander the Great, defeated the Persians in the last half of the fourth century. So, over two hundred years had elapsed between the time Daniel called for the Greeks to become a world empire and it actually occurring.

◦ But Daniel went beyond just predicting the Grecian ascendancy, he predicted that the Greek empire would be split into four parts after the death of a great king. That occurred when Alexander died without leaving an heir and his empire was split among four of his generals. That kind of specificity in forecasting events two hundred years in the future defies human agency.

• That’s for sure. People today are shocked if someone can tell whether financial markets will be up or down next year or who will be the final teams in major sporting events. And let’s not get started on the weather predictions.

◦ Fulfilled prophecy: Another Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, (Isaiah, chapter 45) predicted that a great ruler named Cyrus would order the primary Jewish temple in Jerusalem to be rebuilt. Isaiah lived in the last half of the eighth century B.C. at a time when the Jerusalem temple was magnificent. At the time he uttered his prophecy Isaiah was making a statement that the people of his day would have considered ridiculous. Not that long before he made this prophecy the city of Jerusalem had been miraculously delivered from conquest by the Assyrians, who were the dominant power of Isaiah’s day. Anybody hearing Isaiah prophesy that a foreign ruler would order the Jewish temple to be rebuilt would have had to contemplate a truly unthinkable series of thoughts.

Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb:

“I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens,

who spread out the earth by myself, who frustrates the signs of liars

and makes fools of diviners, who turns wise men back

and makes their knowledge foolish,

who confirms the word of his servant and fulfills the counsel of his messengers,

who says of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be inhabited,’ and of the cities of Judah, ‘They shall be built, and I will raise up their ruins’;

who says to the deep, ‘Be dry; I will dry up your rivers’;

who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd, and he shall fulfill all my purpose’;

saying of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be built,’ and of the temple, ‘Your foundation shall be laid.

This is what the Lord says to Cyrus, his anointed one, whose right hand he will empower.

Before him, mighty kings will be paralyzed with fear.

Their fortress gates will be opened, never to shut again.

This is what the Lord says: “I will go before you, Cyrus, and level the mountains.

I will smash down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron.

And I will give you treasures hidden in the darkness — secret riches.

I will do this so you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, the one who calls you by name.

Isaiah, Chapter 44, verses 24 through 28 and chapter 45, verses 1 through 3, New Living Translation

◦ First, that the temple would be destroyed. Since the temple was the holiest building in Jerusalem for the temple to be destroyed meant the entire city would have to be destroyed. How in the world could that happen when the city had just survived an invading army camped on its doorstep that numbered close to two-hundred thousand soldiers?

◦ Next, that if Jerusalem were conquered, that the conqueror would one day order the destroyed temple of a defeated enemy to be rebuilt. This would have been a ludicrous thought. In those days each nation had its own gods. Wars among nations were seen not just as wars among people, but also wars among the gods the people worshipped. A nation’s defeat meant that the nation’s god had been defeated. So why would a conquering nation ever sanction the rebuilding of a temple of the defeated god? Simply put, absent supernatural intervention they wouldn’t.

◦ Finally, Isaiah’s listeners would have puzzled over the name Cyrus. Just like today you can often tell where a person is from by the type of name they have. Names tend to be distinctive not only to cultures, but also to location and times. Cyrus was not a Hebrew name so the people would have known that Isaiah was not prophesying that a Jew would order the temple rebuilt. Cyrus was not an Assyrian name, so the people would have known that the dominant power of their era, Assyria, was not the power that would conquer Jerusalem. Cyrus was not an Egyptian name – the other traditional most likely enemy to threaten Palestine. Cyrus was a Persian name, but during this time Persia had never been a dominant power in the region.

• So, for Isaiah to be right an entire sequence of unforeseeable events had to take place. Jerusalem would have to be conquered by a power other than the Assyrians or Egyptians. The conqueror would either have to be Persia or in turn conquered by the Persians, and most improbably, a Persian emperor would have to be motivated to rebuild a temple to a God who had been unable or unwilling to protect His own people. The whole sequence would have been fantastic to Isaiah’s listeners – but that’s exactly what happened.

◦ The Babylonians displaced the Assyrians and ultimately did devastate Jerusalem initiating the seventy year captivity and exile of the Jews. And as we discussed earlier, the Babylonians were conquered by a combined Medo-Persian alliance, an alliance led by Cyrus who was from the Persian side of the alliance. And as part of his pacification and stabilization program Cyrus did order the Jerusalem temple to be rebuilt.

• Well, those are remarkable examples and they do help illustrate that there has to be a supernatural mind at work who guided the human authors of the Bible.

VK: Sounds to me like a good time for a prayer. Today's prayer comes from another one of Crystal Seas’ offerings, and it’s a prayer of corporate confession for all the times we all haven’t listened attentively to and learned from the Word of God:

---- Prayer of Corporate Confession, radio version.

We hope you’ll be with us next time and we hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show.

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Psalm 119 verse 89, NIV

2 Peter, chapter 3 verses 15 and 16, NIV

Resources Cited or Recommended

https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/264-cyrus-the-great-in-biblical-prophecy