Episode 118 – Perfectly Quiet – The Intertestamental Period 4

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:

"Some years later an alliance will be formed between the king of the north and the king of the south. The daughter of the king of the south will be given in marriage to the king of the north to secure the alliance, but she will lose her influence over him, and so will her father. She will be abandoned along with her supporters. But when one of her relatives becomes king of the south, he will raise an army and enter the fortress of the king of the north and defeat him."

Daniel, chapter 11, verses 6 and 7, New Living Translation

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VK: Hello. I'm Victoria K. Welcome to another episode of Anchored by Truth. Today we are continuing our look at "The Intertestamental Period" - the 400-plus year period between the close of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament. I'm in the studio today with RD Fierro, author and Founder Crystal Sea Books. RD, today we're going into our 4th episode in this series. Can you give us a brief recap of where we are and why we are talking about a period of history when no new books were being added to the Bible?

RD: Greetings to all the Anchored by Truth listeners. Let's start with the second question first. The reason we thought it was important to take a close look at the intertestamental period is the same reason we do everything on Anchored by Truth – to help increase listeners' understanding and confidence in the Bible. The Bible contains the content of the Christian faith. The Bible contains God's special revelation to the world. We can know that God exists and that God is a God of immeasurable power and wisdom by looking at the created order but the amount of information we can derive about God just by looking at the created order is going to, of necessity, be limited.

VK: Theologians call the knowledge we get about God by our observations of the created order "general revelation." This knowledge is general in that is available to everybody but it also general in its content. By looking at galaxies and stars we can know that Whoever created them is a being of immense power and strength. We can look at the unmatched complexity of a cell and see that the Creator must have unimaginable wisdom and precision. But we won't know that God sent His only begotten Son to die for our sins just by staring at the stars or looking through a microscope. In order to know that God has a special plan and purpose for His creation we need His special revelation – and that is contained in the Bible.

RD: Right. It's not too strong a statement to say that if someone doesn't know what the Bible says any faith they possess is going to be incomplete. At a minimum it will not be the faith that God wants His children to have.

VK: The Good News Translation of the Bible says," faith comes from … hearing the Good News about Christ." Today, we only hear the Good News about Christ by either reading or listening to the revelation that comes from the Bible.

RD: Yes. So, we need to read and meditate on the Bible in order to develop our faith. But just about any honest reader will tell you that the first time they read the Bible there were lots of things that they read that they didn't understand.

VK: Quite possibly things such as our opening scripture. In our opening scripture we heard about the king of the north and the king of the south and them trying to form an alliance. We also heard about the king of the south sending his daughter to marry the king of the north but then the daughter gets abandoned. I don't think it's much of a stretch for many of us to wonder what all that has to do with coming to salvation through Christ. I'm sure you're going to say that's why we're doing this series.

RD: I don't have to say it because you just did. We're doing this series on the intertestamental period for two reasons. First, because studying that period helps us make sense of scripture passages like the one we heard from Daniel, chapter 11. Let's remember that the Bible is all about the grand saga of creation, fall, and redemption. In the Bible creation and the fall occur within the first 3 chapters of Genesis which is the first book of the Bible. So, the rest of the Bible is about the unfolding saga of redemption. And because that saga occurred during the real history of the world, to understand the saga we need to understand some of that history. Second, studying the history of the intertestamental period can actually help increase our confidence that the Bible is the word of God because many of the prophecies that were made in the Old Testament were actually fulfilled during the intertestamental period.

VK: Fulfilled prophecy helps demonstrate that the Bible truly has a supernatural origin. So, that's part of what we want to do during this study of the intertestamental period. We want to show that there were numerous prophecies made in the Old Testament period that were fulfilled during this time. We believe that seeing the precision of the prophecies and the precision of the fulfillment should increase our confidence in the fact that the Bible is the Word of God.

RD: Correct. The seemingly mundane facts of history connect to the Bible's spiritual messages about salvation and heaven in a very direct way. By reading the Bible and studying history we can see that the Bible contains a large volume of prophecies, hundreds of which have been fulfilled. This solidifies our confidence that the Bible is God's word so that it can be trusted in matters that are supernatural.

VK: So, where are we then in our intertestamental series? Obviously, today you want to talk about the specific prophecy that's contained in Daniel 11:6 and 7. How does that fit it with what we have covered so far in our series?

RD: Well, in our first episode in this series we saw that there is a gap of hundreds of years between the close of Old Testament canon and the writing of the first book of the New Testament. In our second episode, we saw that at the start of the intertestamental period the Jews had returned to their ancestral homeland after an extended period of exile. But we also saw that at that time they were not an independent kingdom. At the start of the intertestamental period the Jews were a vassal state of the Persian Empire. Notwithstanding that they weren't truly independent though, we saw that the Jews had considerable reasons for hope because everything they had experienced had been consistent with prophecies they had been given. Therefore, they had reason to be hopeful because they also had prophecies of coming deliverance. In our third episode we saw as the intertestamental period progressed more and more prophecies they had been given also continued to come true.

VK: Now during the intertestamental period they Jews did not know that that was the period they were in. At that point the Jews had no idea that someday the arrival of the Messiah would inaugurate an entirely new part of God's special revelation. But what you're saying is that the Jews could still continue to maintain a hopeful expectancy. Because even though there were no new prophets giving them additional messages from God, they could still see that God was active in their nation fulfilling prophecies He had already given. So, what is the significance of the discussion in Daniel, chapter 11 of the kings of the north and the south?

RD: We covered last time that the Jews had been in exile at Babylon but they were allowed to return back to Palestine after the Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Medes and the Persians. The Persian Empire, in turn, fell to the Greeks who were led by Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great died fairly young at age 32. He had sons but they were far too young to take over for him and in the ensuing power struggle none of Alexander's relatives took power. After 20 years or so, 4 of Alexander's former generals divided his empire: Ptolemy, Seleucus, Cassander, and Lysimachus. The Bible is really only concerned with Ptolemy and Seleucus.

VK: Because Ptolemy took over Egypt and Seleucus took over Syria – and Palestine of course lies between Egypt and Syria. Because the Bible always designates its directions using Israel as the point of reference Ptolemy and his successors would become the kings of the south. Egypt is south of Israel. Seleucus and his successors would become the kings of the north. Syria is north of Israel. So, in our passage when it refers to the king of the south we're really talking about an Egyptian ruler. And when it refers to the king of the north we're talking about a Syrian ruler. Right?

RD: Right. So, chapter 11 of Daniel is devoted to a description of the struggle that would occur between Egyptian rulers and Syrian rulers over the territory of Israel. And all of chapter 11 of Daniel occurs chronologically during the intertestamental period.

VK: Again, just as a quick refresher the last book of the Old Testament Malachi was written around 450 B.C. Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire in 334 B.C. So, it was more than 100 years after Malachi wrote that the Jews saw many of the events of the prophecies of the book of Daniel come true.

RD: And, since Daniel had written his book about 100 years earlier than Malachi wrote, a total of more than 200 years elapsed between Daniel receiving his prophecy and the inauguration of the events that are described in chapter 11. But as we're going to see the precision of the prophecy is amazing and it would certainly defy the ability of any human being to make it unless that human had received a supernatural revelation from God.

VK: Ok. Let's get started and see how our amazingly God is able to act sovereignly through both prophecy and history. For purposes of this exposition we're going to use the Good News Translation version of the same scripture. In the Good News Translation Version the first line of verse 6 says "After a number of years the king of Egypt will make an alliance with the king of Syria…" What is this all about?

RD: The "after a number of years" means that the events of verses 6 and 7 did not occur during the lives of Ptolemy or Seleucus who had taken over immediately after Alexander, but during the reign of their successors: Ptolemy Philadelphus and Seleucus's successor, Antiochus Theos. "An alliance will be formed" means that these two successor kings would make an attempt to unite the two kingdoms more closely by a marriage between the royal families. All of Alexander's former generals had seen a bitter power struggle in the wake of Alexander's death and there were already tensions between these two royal families over which would control the boundary territory between the two kingdoms.

VK: And that boundary territory included the territory of Israel. So, in an attempt to head off a protracted war these two kings decided to try to form an alliance. It was and is common among monarchies to try to create such alliances by intermarrying with one another. There have been some pretty famous attempts at such alliances – Henry the VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon springs to mind. Those attempts didn't always turn out so well. It certainly didn't for Catherine.

RD: Yes. And as we will see it didn't turn out all that well in this case for the bride either.

VK: In this case the bride was the daughter of the king of Egypt. Our text says the king of Egypt will give the king of Syria "his daughter in marriage." Who was the daughter?

RD: The daughter was Berenice, the daughter of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt. Philadelphus agreed that Berenice would marry Antiochus Theos, king of Syria. Ptolemy agreed to the marriage in order to bring a war in which they were engaged to an end. Philadelphus not only hoped to restore immediate but also hoped to establish a permanent peace and an alliance between the two kingdoms. One of the conditions of this alliance was, that Antiochus would divorce his former wife Laodice, and that the children of that former wife would be excluded from the line of succession. Ptolemy hoped that the kingdom of Syria might become part of Egypt, if Berenice had any children with Antiochus.

VK: But that didn't work out, did it? Our scripture goes on to say "But the alliance will not last, and she, her husband, her child, and the servants who went with her will all be killed." This is starting to sound an awful lot like Henry's marriage to Catherine. Henry abandoned Catherine for Anne Boleyn.

RD: And in the case of our scripture Ptolemy Philadelphus died two years after this marriage. When Philadelphus died, Antiochus returned to his former wife, Laodice, and put Berenice away. But that didn't work out so well for Antiochus because after he returned to Laodice she murdered him because she didn't want to risk being dismissed again. By then she obviously knew Antiochus was a fickle husband.

VK: Let me guess what happened next. Laodice wasn't all that fond of the woman who had replaced her so she decided to get rid of her as well.

RD: As they say, "Bingo!" The Syrian court officers conspired to plan the death of Berenice and her children. But Berenice got wind of the plan and fled with her children to the city of Daphne. But the officers caught up with her there and killed her and her children. And notice that the text also says that the servants who went with her will all be killed. It was common when a bride was sent from one royal family to marry into another that the bride would take along the servants who had been taking care of her. In some cases they had cared for her almost since birth. Not only would these familiar faces make settling into the new life and country easier but the bride knew she could trust them.

VK: And sometimes those servants included one or more who would send reports back to the king or royal family of the country she had left. A set of highly placed eyes and ears in the country to which the bride had been sent. And, of course, as we will see next the old queen killing the new queen, her child, and her servants didn't end of the matter. Verse 7 of Daniel 11 says, "Soon afterward one of her relatives will become king. He will attack the army of the king of Syria, enter their fortress, and defeat them." So, what is this verse about?

RD: Berenice was not the only child of Ptolemy Philadelphus. She had a brother called Ptolemy Euergetes. As soon as he heard of what was happening to his sister, he gathered an army together and went north to rescue her. Euergetes was too late to save he, but, in connection with an army which he had recruited from Asia Minor as part of the rescue, he decided to avenge her death. He not only conquered Syria but he also took over other territories that had been under Seleucid control including Israel. In fact, if Euergetes had not had to return home to put down a revolt he probably would have conquered all of the Seleucid controlled territory.

VK: But he didn't and the war between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids would continue for another hundred or so years with Israel caught in between. Ultimately, a particularly evil Syrian king would come to throne who would desecrate the Jewish temple which is sometimes referred to as the "abomination that causes desolation." Some commentators believe this "Abomination of Desolation" might pre-figure the anti-Christ who will appear just before Jesus' return.

RD: Yes. This Syrian king is known in history as Antiochus Epiphanes. Epiphanes means "god manifest" Well, the Jews were so outraged by the behavior of Antiochus Epiphanes that they revolted and eventually were able to throw off all foreign rule for a period of several decades. But despite this period of self-rule it's important to note that by that time Israel had been under Greek control for almost 2 centuries. Remember that even though the Ptolemies and Seleucids were warring for control both sides in the war were Greek. When Alexander had conquered the Mideast he didn't just bring his soldiers he also had brought the Greek language and culture. You will often hear people refer to "Hellenism" or "Hellenization." During this period while these struggles were going on the Greek culture and language were being spread throughout the Mideast and western Asia.

VK: And this Hellenization dramatically affected life within Israel didn't it? So, that's part of what we would like to talk about in our next episode of Anchored by Truth. But what do you want to emphasize as we close out for today?

RD: In our previous episodes on Anchored by Truth in this series we have seen some important truths. God wasn't providing additional special revelation during the intertestamental period but that doesn't mean that God wasn't active in superintending the unfolding of history to achieve His purposes.

VK: So, this tells us that even during the seasons of our lives when we may feel like we don't see a lot happening God is still in control. As the Apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians in Philippians 1:6 "I am sure that God, who began this good work in you, will carry it on until it is finished on the Day of Christ Jesus." God continues to work with us, in us, for us even in those times it seems like He is being very quiet in our lives.

RD: Exactly. God never sleeps or slumbers and He never leaves His children. During the intertestamental period there was a lot going on that affected the Jews and most of it was beyond their control. Empires were changing. Kings were coming and going. Palace intrigues were transpiring that would affect their lives. But God was directing it all in such a way that He preserved His people. The Jews during the intertestamental period could be assured of this because they could continue to see that prophecies that had been given to them uniquely were still coming true. Decades, even centuries, had passed but then they saw another prophecy fulfilled exactly as it had been given.

VK: In our last episode of Anchored by Truth we saw that God sometimes gave prophecies that affected entire empires and regions of the world. God is the God of the seemingly big and important. But today we saw that God also gave prophecies that pertained to specific individuals – in this case the daughter of an ambitious king and her brother. God isn't just the God of empires and world history. He is also the God for individual people and individual destinies.

RD: Yes. God knows each of us personally and, even though it seems trite to say it, He has a plan for each of us personally. God can work through anybody regardless of their station, status, age, or place. The key is whether we want to see God's will come to fruition in our lives – or be like Adam and Eve in the garden when the Bible tells us the first sin occurred because they desired to be like God. There can only be one Lord in anyone's life. It can be God Almighty or it can be a lesser being like us. That's one of the lessons that comes to us powerfully by watching prophecies continuing to be fulfilled during the intertestamental period.

VK: God can rule in our lives or we can. God is not going to share His throne with anyone. The tragic part is when we think that we can do a better job than God. And it's not that God wants to take away our free will. Far from it. God wants to enable us to experience His best. But as you say in our Christmas epic poem The Golden Tree: Komari's Quest God can only help us when we set our own power aside. The question ultimately is whether we want to experience all that we can provide or all that God can provide.

RD: Absolutely. And that's what we see so clearly as we study the Bible and history. The Jews went into captivity because they refused to honor God's commandments especially the first commandment to have no other gods before Him. During captivity a great many faithful Jews learned the lesson and, as promised, God returned them to their homeland. Also as God promised, God punished the nation that had exiled the Jews and ultimately God used a succession of world powers to continue to prepare the world for the arrival of Jesus. Chapter 11 of the book of Daniel was written about 200 years before any of the events it describes occurred. But in time they did occur exactly as prophesied. God, as only God can do, just recorded them 200 years ahead of time. This is a powerful confirmation of the supernatural origin of the Bible. The Bible's character is no different today than it was when any of the various human authors first prepared their records. It's just that today we have a complete revelation and that revelation clearly tells us that just as Jesus came to earth 2,000 years ago, He is coming again. It's just that the first time He came as the suffering servant. Next time He is coming as the conquering lion.

VK: Amen. This sounds like a great time for a prayer. Since all of us have sinned and fallen short of God's perfect plan for our lives, today let's listen to a prayer of corporate confession – knowing that God has promised that as we confess our sins God is faithful and just to forgive them:

---- PRAYER OF CORPORATE CONFESSION (MARCUS).

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(Bible Quote from the New International Version)

Daniel, chapter 8, verses 5 through 8 and 20 and 21, New International Version